The following is an excerpt of an article that can be found at on the Brandeis Juilee Web site. While at Brandeis in the 1950s, I learned little about the life and work of Supreme Court Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis. There may be a number of reasons why the University in the '50s did little to educate its students about its namesake's remarkable and inspiring life.

Among these factors was probably the fact that with the large number of influential refugee scholars then on the Brandeis faculty, our focus was more international than national. Another factor may have been that the generation of our teachers, having lived through many years while Brandeis was alive (he died in 1941), was well aware of his iconic contribution to American and Jewish life, but did not see him yet as a subject of academic study. Finally, Brandeis was so incredibly modest and self-effacing during his lifetime that he did not attract the attention and recognition that he richly deserved.

Indeed, it seems to me now that the only time that Brandeis' life and legacy came alive on campus while I was there was on a cold November day in 1956, when the University celebrated the 100th anniversary of his birth, and the statue of Brandeis that now stands at the center of the campus was unveiled.

I do not know how much attention or recognition Louis Brandeis has achieved at the University during the 50 years since my graduation. But I do know that it was not until October 2005 that he more fully came onto my radar screen. And even then, my focus on Brandeis turned out to have been somewhat accidental.

In October 2005, John Roberts was facing his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee to succeed the late William Rehnquist as the Supreme Court's chief justice. One morning during that month I noticed, on a bookshelf, a book entitled Brandeis and Frankfurter, by Leonard Baker. I had been presented with the book years earlier by my daughter, Beth, since Baker was the father of a school friend of hers, but I had never read it. This time, remembering that Brandeis had a bitter four-month confirmation hearing after being nominated to the Supreme Court by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916, I opened the book and began to read. Several uninterrupted hours later I stopped, utterly stunned by what I had absorbed, with the clear conviction that I needed to know much more, if not everything possible, about this extraordinary human being.

After all my reading, I came to the conclusion that the public is woefully ignorant of Brandeis' contribution to American life and its political culture. My concern turned to what Brandeis University would do to celebrate the upcoming 150th anniversary of his birth. I contacted my friends at the University, including President Jehuda Reinharz, with whom I had worked when I chaired a committee of supporters of the University's Transitional Year and Posse programs.

My concern and interest resulted in an appointment to a committee headed by Reinharz that was planning a year-long Jubilee celebrating Louis Brandeis' 150th birthday. The Jubilee will commence with a birthday celebration on Nov. 13 and includes a number of other events.

Furthermore, I was pleased to learn that the University recently established a Louis D. Brandeis Legacy Fund for Social Justice, which, among other things, is sponsoring a new biography of Brandeis to be written by Prof. Jonathan Sarna (NEJS) and distributed to all incoming freshmen in the years to come. Also, a Louis Brandeis scrapbook is being prepared by the University.

Hopefully, the celebration of Brandeis' 150th birthday will serve to assure that the life and work of this extraordinary American will be fully studied and appreciated on the Brandeis campus and beyond in the coming years so that Brandeis students will not have to wait 50 years-as I did-to become familiar with his incredible legacy.

The writer is a member of the Class of 1957.