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The Brandeis Brief

Text by Librarian Scott Campbell

Louis D. Brandeis’s brief for the Supreme Court case Muller v. Oregon forever changed the way briefs for appellate court cases were written. It was the first brief to include citations to non-legal (mostly medical and sociological) citations and it forced the Court to consider the real world applications of its decisions. Its success led to the strategy being replicated so often that it is now a standard practice. Such briefs are called “Brandeis Briefs” and the brief in Muller v. Oregon is often referred to as The Brandeis Brief.

But as famous as this brief is, it has been hard for people to actually see it. While the Law Library has a copy under lock and key in its collection of Brandeis papers, it has never had a copy that can circulate to users. Until now.

After the case had been decided in 1908, the National Consumers’ League (which had hired Brandeis to defend the Oregon law at issue in the case) published Brandeis’s brief in a book titled Women in Industry. In honor of the 110th anniversary of the decision, the Law Library has purchased two reprinted copies of the book. One copy will go on permanent display in the Brandeis cabinets in the Reading Room, but the other copy will go into circulation so anyone can check it out to read for themselves the brief that started a revolution in American jurisprudence.

Women in Industry; Decision of the United States Supreme Court in Curt Muller vs. State of Oregon, Upholding the Constitutionality of the Oregon Ten H by Louis Dembitz Brandeis, Josephine Goldmark, Curt Muller (Plaintiff.), United States. Supreme Court., National Consumers' League

Call Number: KF3555.Z9 B7 2013

ISBN: 1313007218

Publication Date: 2013

Reproduction of the 1908 National Consumers' League edition.