Who Should Reign Supreme?

Reason asks libertarian legal experts: Who are your favorites--past, present, and future--on the nation's highest court?

From the July 2005 issue

(Page 6 of 6)

All-time favorite Supreme Court justice: My all-time favorite U.S. Supreme Court justice is Louis D. Brandeis, who understood and acted upon Ben Franklin's warning that one who would trade a little bit of liberty for a little bit of security deserves neither. Brandeis was and is an effective voice for liberty against the intrusion of the government.

For example, in Olmstead v. United States (1928), which was the first wiretap case in Supreme Court history, Justice William Howard Taft wrote for the Court that a wiretap was not a "physical entry," and by speaking on a telephone, defendant Olmstead might just as well have been broadcasting to the world. In his dissent, Brandeis argued that "the progress of science and invention will make it possible for the government, by means more effective than the rack, to obtain disclosure in court of what is whispered in the closet."

Since that time, Brandeis' dissent in Olmstead has gradually evolved into controlling law in personal privacy cases such as Griswold, Estes, Miranda, and Katz. We owe this great justice a great debt, and he is my hero.