The historical resonances are sharp. [Louis] Brandeis is nominated on Jan. 28, 1916. Confirmed on June 1. Waits 125 days between nomination and confirmation, which remains an unbroken record, although Merrick Garland will surpass it in July, if my math is right. Anti-Semitism was definitely not the central reason for the opposition, which tended to focus more on his anti-corporate radicalism, but it was a theme.

Initially the papers said that the fact that Louis Brandeis was picked because he was Jewish. The New York Sun said he's the first Jew ever picked for the bench - a long and bitter fight expected in the Senate over confirmation.

I think the answer has to do with the fact that [Louis D.] Brandeis was a consistent critic of bigness in business and in government.

[Louis Brandeis] believes in natural rights of speech and liberty and the right to pursue happiness.

We need to protect the same amount of cognitive liberty in an age where you can invade people's thoughts without physically intruding into their homes than you did at the time of the framing.

[Louis] Brandeis is often painted as an acolyte of judicial restraint, or the view that judges should uphold laws whether or not they like them.

I'd say that [Louis] Brandeis practiced a kind of a "living originalism," to use the title of Jack Balkin's great book. He said you start with the paradigm case, which in the case of the Fourth Amendment was these general warrants or writs of assistance, but you define it at a level of abstraction that you can take it into our age and make it our own.