Brandeis, Louis, House

"If we hold with Burke," writes Alpheus Mason, the principal biographer of Louis Brandeis, "that the standard of a statesman is the 'disposition to preserve and the ability to improve, taken together,' then Brandeis met that test." The great juror stands as one of modern America's greatest defenders of the value of the single human being and the validity of freedom of choice. "Individual worth remained his favorite theme, human dignity his unvarying touchstone."2 With Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Brandeis stood in the vanguard of the movement to smash the mechanistic social Darwinism that dominated legal thinking at the beginning of the 20th century. His concern was translated into action in his fight for Progressive reform in Boston, and his famous dissents as a Supreme Court Justice were destined to become in later years the law of the land, vindicating his profound concern for the sympathetic application of human laws to human problems. Affirmed Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1956, "He proved not only the right to dissent in America but also that dissent can be constructive."

More than anywhere else, the old whaling village of Chatham on Cape Cod is intimately associated with the life of Justice Brandeis. He and his wife came to Chatham for the first time in the summer of 1922 and liked the place so well that the next year they purchased a modest, remotely-situated house on the Oyster River, to which they returned annually from their Washington apartment for the rest of their lives. Brandeis worked unremittingly on law cases through the Chatham summers, but in the "bare, familiar surroundings," he also found time to relax and be with his family. Men from all walks of life visited him there, "sought his advice and found it generously given." Writes Mason, "Brandeis' life at Chatham was typical of the man's deep love of simplicity and reflected the universal element of greatness-- the capacity to stand alone, to be independent of the activities and judgments of the rest of mankind." The house and its setting remain little changed today, and Brandeis, descendants still spend a portion of each year there.