June 1, 1916: The 1st Jewish Justice On the U.S. Supreme Court

June 1, 1916: The U.S. Senate confirms Louis Brandeis to be a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, by a vote of 47 to 22. He is sworn in 5 days later, making him the 1st Jewish Justice on the highest court in the land.

He was the son of immigrants from Prague, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, who fled during the European Revolutions of 1848. His father, Adolph Brandeis, came to America first, and sent for the family, writing, "America's progress is the triumph of the rights of man."

Louis David Brandeis spent his life, beginning on November 13, 1856 in Louisville, Kentucky, trying to live up to his father's pronouncement. Admiring his uncle, Louis Dembitz, who was involved in the Zionist cause, and was a delegate for Abraham Lincoln at the 1860 Republican Convention, he changed his name to Louis Dembitz Brandeis.

He graduated from Harvard Law School with the highest grade point average the school had ever seen, a record that stood for 80 years. He practiced law in St. Louis and Boston, and so well argued a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that the Chief Justice at the time, Melville Fuller, called him the best attorney in the Eastern U.S. He married a 2nd cousin -- I wonder if Rudy Giuliani knew that -- and they had 2 daughters.

He was in favor of privacy and labor laws, and opposed to corruption. His establishment of the first savings bank insurance in 1907, a precursor to the FDIC, helped to make him known as "the people's lawyer." He said, "We want a government that will represent the laboring man, the professional man, the businessman, and the man of leisure. We want a good government, not because it is good business but because it is dishonorable to submit to a bad government."

Originally a progressive Republican, a supporter of Theodore Roosevelt and Robert La Follette, in 1912 he supported the Democratic nominee for President, Woodrow Wilson. After Wilson's election, he appointed Brandeis head of a new agency, the Federal Trade Commission. And on January 28, 1916, he appointed Brandeis to the Supreme Court. Despite already being known as a Southerner with antipathy toward black people, Wilson had no problem with being the 1st President to nominate a Jew to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Some people did have a problem with that. Justice James McReynolds, a Southerner, was very bitter about the possibility of sharing the Court with him. Former President William Howard Taft called him a "muckraker," and he didn't mean that as a compliment. Senator Elihu Root of New York, who had been Secretary of State under Roosevelt, called him unfit for the Court. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, another Roosevelt loyalist and a representative of the old Boston and Cambridge that Brandeis had tried to moderate, said, "If it were not that Brandeis is a Jew, and a German Jew, he would never have been appointed."

Nevertheless, the vote was 47-22 in his favor. He got 44 Democrats and 3 Republicans, including his former ally, La Follette of Wisconsin, to vote for him; with 21 Republicans and 1 Democrat, Francis Newlands of Nevada, a known bigot, against. He was sworn in 4 days later.

He became a great advocate for free speech and privacy. When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President, he generally supported the New Deal, but opposed FDR's "court-packing plan." He retired in 1939, due to ill health, and died on October 5, 1941, at age 84. He is often considered one of the best Justices in the Court's history.

Brandeis University, a school outside Boston, with a large Jewish contingent in its student body, and the law school at the University of Louisville, in his hometown, are named for him.

I wanted to have an entry for the 1st Catholic Justice on the Supreme Court, but that went further back than I thought: Roger Taney, appointed Chief Justice by President Andrew Jackson in 1836. He turned out to be the worst Justice in the history of the Court, with his ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857. Both his appointment and the Dred Scott decision were before my cutoff date of 1869, the start of the era of professional sports.

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June 1, 1916 was a Thursday. Football, basketball and hockey were out of season. These baseball games were played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Philadelphia Athletics, 5-0 at the Polo Grounds. This was a particularly embarrassing loss, since the A's, broken up over high salaries a year and a half earlier, were on their way to a 36-116 record. The .235 "winning" percentage remains the worst in American League history, and the 116 losses have been surpassed only once, by the 2003 Detroit Tigers with 119.

Bullet Joe Bush pitched a 4-hit shutout. He would later pitch superbly well for the Yankees.

* The New York Giants lost to the Philadelphia Phillies, 4-2 at Baker Bowl in Philadelphia.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers were swept by the Boston Braves in a doubleheader at Ebbets Field, 6-1 and 2-1.

* The Boston Red Sox beat the Washington Senators, 1-0 at Fenway Park in Boston. Babe Ruth pitched a 3-hit shutout, to outdo Walter Johnson. The Bambino did not, however, get a hit, as the Big Train allowed only 4. The game's only run scored on a groundout by Dick Hoblitzell.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Cincinnati Reds, 8-4 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. Honus Wagner went 0-for-2, but Max Carey hit a home run.

* The Chicago White Sox beat the Detroit Tigers, 6-3 at Navin Field in Detroit. (It was renamed Briggs Stadium in 1938, and Tiger Stadium in 1961.) Shoeless Joe Jackson went 3-for-3 with an RBI. Ty Cobb went 2-for-4.

* A doubleheader was split at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. The Cleveland Indians won the opener, 3-2. The St. Louis Browns won the nightcap, 6-5.

* And the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals were not scheduled to play.