The HLS Library recently announced that it digitized several important unpublished dissenting opinion drafts penned by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis for the free speech case Ruthenburg v. Michigan. These documents are now available in digital format on the library website.
Justice Brandeis, who graduated with an LL.B. from Harvard Law in 1877 at the age of 20, was revered as an adamant supporter of an individual’s right to free speech. He is also the namesake of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, which was founded seven years after his death. Following his graduation from HLS, Justice Brandeis continued to be an active member of the law school community. In addition to publishing articles in the Harvard Law Review, Justice Brandeis was a founding member and served as the secretary of the Harvard Law School Association, the school’s official alumni organization.
This new addition to the Louis E. Brandeis Papers collection consists of seven folders of Brandeis’ drafts for the plaintiff, Charles Emil Ruthenburg, and is complete with an overview of the case by Ronald Collins and David Skover of the University of Washington and the Seattle University Schools of Law, respectively.
To access the Brandeis Papers, visit the HLS Library website.
