"The Living Law" is the title of an address Louis D. Brandeis gave to the Chicago Bar Association on January 3, 1916, three weeks before he was nominated to serve on the United States Supreme Court by President Woodrow Wilson. The "living law" reflects and arises out of contemporary social, economic and political "facts of life" not antiquated abstract theory.
Reflecting the spirit of the Progressive Era, he contended that the people wanted "democracy and social justice" rather than "legal justice."
"[L]egal science -- the written or judge-made laws as distinguished from legislation -- is largely deaf and blind" to contemporary economic and social changes. Popular distrust of the judiciary increases when social welfare laws are struck down because they conflict with judges' 18th century conceptions of liberty or property.
In the last fifty years, many lawyers became specialists at a cost to the profession and the bench:
"The growing intensity of professional life tended also to discourage participation in public affairs, and thus the broadening of view which comes from political life was lost. The deepening of knowledge in certain subjects was purchased at the cost of vast areas of ignorance and grave danger of resultant distortion of judgment.
"The effect of this contraction of the lawyers' intimate relation to contemporary life was doubly serious; because it came at a time when the rapidity of our economic and social transformation made accurate and broad knowledge of present day problems essential to the administration of justice."
But, he concluded, the "distorting effects [of specialization can be corrected] by broader education -- by study undertaken preparatory to practice -- and continued by lawyer and judge throughout life: Study of economics and sociology and politics which embody the facts and present the problems of today."
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