They said the walls were gleaming -
transparent as justice should be,
sunlight bounding through glass façades,
account books lay barren
akin to scripture in a republic of reason.
The opening stanza sets up an artificial promise of institutional purity. The gleaming "glass façades" evoke Brandeis's ideal of transparency in government and business, famously expressed in his quote "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants." The line "account books lay barren" is reminiscent of one of Brandeis's works Other People's Money, where Brandeis argued that financial secrecy fostered corruption. His version of the American Dream starts with confronting this illusion of openness, tearing it down and building it back up with ethical clarity.
Yet he could see the fractures.
The fine-print footnotes.
The one-way mirrors.
Brandeis, unlike others, noticed the structural impurities within the judicial system: hidden clauses, selective visibility, and injustice adopting the mask of legality. The "fine-print footnotes" suggest exploitations maliciously nested in contracts and legislation, while "one-war mirrors" alludes to how power surveils the public yet shields itself from scrutiny - a prescient nod to Brandeis's foundational article, The Right to Privacy (1890).
He entered solemnly,
as to not disturb the peace
A slender man amidst thick corridors
uninvited by Wall Street
yet to exacting to dismiss
Brandeis valued humility above all else, respecting the institutions he would go on to critique from within. His physical slightness contrasts with the bloated machinery of corporate and political power - "thick corridors" symbolizing deeply entrenched interests. Despite being an outsider, both ethnically and ideologically, his intellect made him undeniable, echoing how he gained respect while opposing the banking elite.
Brandeis listened -
to loom-tied women
and soot veiled miners,
to murmuring clerks
with stiff wrists and crooked backs.
He gathered their words like he would filings
absorbed by the magnet of duty and diligence
This verse serves as a reimagining of the creation of the Brandeis Brief in Muller v. Oregon (1908), which included testimonies and scientific studies about working women. Brandeis was an empathetic and fair supreme justice, using a unique legal method: listening to human experience instead of citing precedent. His dream was a democratic legal process, where real people's suffering informed the law. The imagery of "filings' references both legal documents and the tangible emotional weight present in the people.
He made the law speak human.
He made reason evoke morality
This stanza encapsulates Brandeis's greatest contribution: making legal discourse moral and accessible, unrestricted and indiscriminatory, a theme discussed in Cullis (1996) and Stob (2011). Rather than viewing the law as static or abstract, he made it resonate with the values of justice, fairness, and civic duty.
The Brief was not brief -
pages rife with studies
arguments carved from lived days.
He argued not from precedent,
but from people,
from lungs and tired bodies,
from callouses and affection.
This stanza serves to intensify the focus on the Muller case and Brandeis's revolutionary use of sociological data. He viewed the law as a tool for safeguarding human dignity, not enforcing rigid logic. The poem's tactile imagery invokes laborers' real suffering and roots Brandeis's arguments in the material conditions of life, a stark contrast to the personal tone of most constitutional law.
They called him dangerous.
Unpredictable, an anomaly.
Not because he sought to burn the house down
but because he knew where the wires met.
Brandeis evoked reactionary fear - he wasn't a radical revolutionary, but his intimate knowledge made him dangerous to the status quo. "he knew where the wires met" shows that Brandeis understood the systems he challenged - his critiques of monopolies were surgical, precise and informed, making them all the more threatening.
They said he was too Jewish,
too unorthodox,
too susceptible to the outsider's truth.
Yet he stood firm.
A sentinel, unyielding.
He became the first
without becoming the exception.
Brandeis faced antisemitism and classism, especially during his Supreme Court nomination. Strum (1994) and Spillenger (1996) document how his Jewish identity and reformist politics set him up to be a lightning rod for elite backlash. The line "without becoming the exception" implies that he opened the door for others - he wasn't tokenized; he set a precedent for pluralism in American leadership.
His robes were not armor but fabric.
His mind, not fixed, but everchanging,
He danced with the law,
among the people, with the people.
anchored by a belief.
Justice must not solely rule.
It must breathe.
Here, Brandeis is portrayed as a living jurist - flexible, humane, responsive. His belief in a "living law," covered in his Illinois Law Review speech (1916), is echoed in the phrase "Justice must... breathe." Brandeis upheld a reciprocal relationship between law and society, supporting his evolving vision of justice.
He warned us of bigness,
not from fear
but from faith in the dignity of the small.
A direct nod to Brandeis's anti-monopoly stance echoed in Other People's Money, this stanza reinforces that Brandeis wasn't anti-business - he was pro-democracy. He believed small, individualized units - local banks, citizens voices, decentralized institutions - were far more ethical and American. His American Dream centered on protecting the individual from being devoured by systems too large to pay notice to them, mindlessly gorging without a care in the world.
He said privacy was the right to be left alone,
yet he never turned his back.
Brandeis walked the paneled halls,
glimpsed through the gilded façades,
and when his steps fell silent,
he left a trail in glass.
This reversal reveals Brandeis's nuanced view of personal freedom. While he co-authored the foundational article on privacy, he remained deeply involved in public life. Privacy for Brandeis didn't mean withdrawal - it meant freedom from intrusion, not freedom from responsibility. Brandeis saw the fragility of justice and worked to reshape it . The legacy he left behind was fragile, reflective, and enduring.
Let there be light.
And let it be just.
Light is not just exposure, it's ethical clarity. This final couplet captures Brandeis's American Dream, portraying it not as material gain, but as a moral obligation to democracy, dignity, and justice for all.