Senate Judiciary Committee

The Senate Judiciary Committee is identified as one of the settings in which the intensely contested nomination of Louis D. Brandeis to the United States Supreme Court unfolded. Its place in the account connects the Senate’s consideration of a judicial appointment to a controversy that Brandeis understood as shaped by his being the first Jewish person nominated to the Court.

Role in the Brandeis Nomination

In 1916, Woodrow Wilson appointed Brandeis as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. The nomination provoked an intense controversy lasting four months, centered both in the Senate Judiciary Committee and in public debate around the country. The account identifies the committee as an institutional site of that dispute, without specifying particular hearings, votes, or arguments made within it.

Brandeis and the Controversy

Brandeis attributed the opposition to the fact that he was the first Jew nominated to the Court. His appointment therefore placed questions of religious identity within a consequential confirmation debate, rather than keeping them outside the formal process of judicial selection. He ultimately served on the Court for twenty-three years, until 1939.