Restoring the Constitution

by Louis D. Brandeis, Roger B. Taney, Busrod Washington

Numerous groups and leaders have voiced complaints that the Federal Government has exceeded its authority, usurping powers that can only be legally exercised by the states (if at all). These comments seldom mention any details about how it is believed the Government has usurped those powers—how it has become dictatorial in the sense that it is enforcing laws which the people have never given it the power to enact, indeed as to which this power has been withheld by the people. A new book, Restoring the Constitution, details precisely how this happened and the major areas in which this illegal governing has occurred. It is written in accurate language understandable by any literate reader, and is based on the terms of the Constitution, which is itself written in simple, understandable language. It details how one thing and only one thing made this usurpation The service rendered by the federal courts to politicians eager to expand their powers without limit. Those courts devised and published dishonest “reasoning” that made the seizure of these usurped powers appear lawful to the casual unthinking observer. It is an outgrowth of an earlier work, Judical Tyranny, An Inquiry Into the Integrity of the Federal Judiciary (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1977). An expanded 21st Century Edition should be available from Amazon in late September, 2012. No one has declared the proofs in Judicial Tyranny to be inaccurate. Indeed, the Supreme Court Historical Society acknowledged that it was accurate, but called its author biased. The author My bias is my insistence that as every sworn witness should testify truthfully in court, the identical obligation rests upon every judge who has sworn to uphold the Constitution—that he should honestly carry out the promise of that oath. In fact, few judges pay any attention to the Constitution. Their loyalty is instead thoughtlessly given to the body of decisions by the Supreme Court, many of which are patently dishonest. Any patriotic American who believes that the U. S. Constitution should be supreme in fact, as the people declared it to be when it was adopted, will find this short book enlightening.

233 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 27, 2012

About the author

Louis Dembitz Brandeis was an American lawyer and Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939.

He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Jewish immigrant parents from Bohemia, who raised him in a secular home. He enrolled at Harvard Law School, graduating at the age of twenty with the highest grade average in the law school's history.

Brandeis settled in Boston where he became a recognized lawyer through his work on progressive social causes. Starting in 1890, he helped develop the "right to privacy" concept by writing a Harvard Law Review article of that title, and was thereby credited by legal scholar Roscoe Pound as having accomplished "nothing less than adding a chapter to our law". He later published a book titled Other People's Money And How the Bankers Use It, suggesting ways of curbing the power of large banks and money trusts, which partly explains why he later fought against powerful corporations, monopolies, public corruption, and mass consumerism, all of which he felt were detrimental to American values and culture. He also became active in the Zionist movement, seeing it as a solution to antisemitism in Europe and Russia, while at the same time being a way to "revive the Jewish spirit."

When his family’s finances became secure, he began devoting most of his time to public causes and was later dubbed the “People’s Lawyer.” He insisted on serving on cases without pay so that he would be free to address the wider issues involved. The Economist magazine calls him "A Robin Hood of the law." Among his notable early cases were actions fighting railroad monopolies; defending workplace and labor laws; helping create the Federal Reserve System; and presenting ideas for the new Federal Trade Commission (FTC). He achieved recognition by submitting a case brief, later called the "Brandeis Brief," which relied on expert testimony from people in other professions to support his case, thereby setting a new precedent in evidence presentation.

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson nominated Brandeis to become a member of the Supreme Court. However, his nomination was bitterly contested, partly because, as Justice William O. Douglas wrote, "Brandeis was a militant crusader for social justice whoever his opponent might be. He was dangerous not only because of his brilliance, his arithmetic, his courage. He was dangerous because he was incorruptible. . . [and] the fears of the Establishment were greater because Brandeis was the first Jew to be named to the Court." He was eventually confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 47 to 22 on June 1, 1916,—21 Republican Senators and one Democratic Senator (Francis G. Newlands of Nevada) voted against his nomination—and became one of the most famous and influential figures ever to serve on the high court. His opinions were, according to legal scholars, some of the "greatest defenses" of freedom of speech and the right to privacy ever written by a member of the Supreme Court.