This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1856-1941). Among the greatest lawyers and Supreme Court Justices of the twentieth century, Brandeis' reputation as a giant of the modern Supreme Court is unequalled by any Justice other than Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. His secular, nonsectarian freethinking provides an exemplar of our University's mission.A forerunner of today's public interest lawyers, Louis Brandeis was the quintessential "people's lawyer" who believed in the primacy of democracy and an educated citizenry; who defended free speech and the right to privacy; who fought the power and corruption of monopolies and championed the responsibility of trade unions, defending workers against "the curse of bigness"; and whose Zionism embodied progressive commitments towards education, community self-determination and political equality, which he likened to Periclean Athens and the dreams of the American Pilgrims.

At our University, we wrestle with the same issues on which Brandeis left his mark. We confront globalization and fair trade, free speech on campus and elsewhere, and controversies over civil liberties and national security, including dual aspirations and rights of Zionists and Palestinians.

While individuals may pursue ethnic and religious identities, Louis Brandeis did not; when our University does so, it risks compromise to our intellectual and academic mission. The University's Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies reports, with regret, that a preponderance of undergraduates believe more in being a good person and "making the world a better place than they do on any particularistic Jewish concerns," as summarized in the March 2006 issue of the Brandeis Reporter. There's an admirable institutional goal-and count Louis Brandeis in that majority.

Married in an Ethical Culture ceremony (that era's "secular humanism" movement, founded by his brother-in-law), Brandeis' personal life, from cuisine and Christmas to his daughter's marriage to the son of a prominent Protestant theologian, was largely devoid of "particularistic concerns." He visited a synagogue three times in his life.

Brandeis' relations with Chaim Weizmann (later Israel's first president) over Zionism were difficult. Despite Weizmann's urging, Brandeis preferred to stay on the Supreme Court than work for the Zionist program that Brandeis himself championed, nor did Brandeis fully comprehend the Yiddishkeit of his Eastern European Jewish brethren.

We remember Brandeis for his landmark pro bono briefs, Supreme Court judgments as well as for his innovations beyond the courtroom. Brandeis complemented his legal fight against corruption in the insurance industry by creating savings bank life insurance, today providing affordable insurance to millions of Americans. His Zionism was yet another example of practical social engineering, not the wish fulfillment of millennia. Brandeis personified aspects of historian Isaac Deutscher's heroes, who "looked for ideals and fulfillment beyond [traditional Judaism] ... that enabled them to rise in thought above their societies, above their nations, above their times and generations, and to strike out mentally into wide new horizons and far into the future." We've inherited Brandeis' vision of a progressive, democratic universe.

Brandeis' American legacy is thus Hebraicized and Hellenized (an alliteration I learned from my colleague Prof. Jonathan Sarna [NEJS]), reflecting both his assimilation, and the Greek roots of his democratic ideas. The Jewish pejorative "apikoros" (heretic) likely derives from Epicurus, who believed in prudent, secular individualism, and the notion of justice as a social contract. (An errant Epicurean adherent was Antiochus, of Hanukkah infamy.) Brandeis' freethinking also recalls Baruch Spinoza, whose Ethics evoked Euclidean geometry; unlike Spinoza, Brandeis was not excommunicated from his religious roots, but embraced by a wider community. How are Brandeis' broad humanitarian ideals viewed at Brandeis University today?

Jerome Karabel's recent book, The Chosen, describes the admission quotas at Harvard-Yale-Princeton in the last century; the words of these institutions' leaders are filled with delusions of ethnic and religious-in this case, WASP-grandeur. (A. Lawrence Lowell, then Harvard's president, opposed Brandeis' appointment to the Supreme Court.) It's the sort of inequity that Brandeis excelled in fixing. The creation of his University did.

Every undergraduate, every thinking person should take inspiration from Brandeis' intellectual engagement. He brought a profound change to legal argument-the famous "Brandeis brief," submitted in a Supreme Court labor dispute (Muller v. Oregon, 1908), buttressed appeals to legal precedent with massive economic and sociological data, inspiring new approaches in constitutional law. Whether it was working conditions, life insurance or ownership of railroads, he became a walking encyclopedia on the social issues involved.

Brandeis exemplifies the University's greatest charge: teaching people to think for themselves, especially in a participatory democracy. His biographer, Philippa Strum, wrote:

"Democracy as a ceaseless process rather than an end, education, civic responsibility, ideas, decentralization of power, experimentation: these were Brandeis' constant focus. One colleague called him a 'serenely implacable democrat.' Another noted that to Brandeis, 'democracy is not a political program. It is a religion.' It was the concept that illuminated his life."

Brandeis University embodies his devotion to critical thinking and intellectual experimentation, and secular nonsectarianism makes those possible. Justice Brandeis said of his Court judgments, "The whole purpose, and the only one, is to educate the country." There's a succinct expression of the University's mission.

As we embark on this anniversary year, remember that we can't speak for the dead. "What would Brandeis do?" is a rhetorical shorthand for "inspired by Brandeis, what can we do?" Psychohistory would be better if the historian got psychoanalyzed, instead of his subject. History is, inevitably, a form of contemporary narcissism, where we see a reflection of our ideals. Remembering Brandeis is a way we talk about ourselves.

The writer is a professor of computer science.