Isaiah's flame: Brandeis's social-liberal and Zionist tradition

Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1856-1941) evolved from a political liberal, committed to free competition, hard money and honest government, to become in his maturity a social liberal chiefly pursuing social justice and free speech. In the Supreme Court (1916-1939) he remained faithful to his liberal and progressive parameters. Since about 1905 he evolved from being a half-assimilated Jew to an identified Jew and a Zionist. His original concept of Zionism was as a mission to achieve higher social goals. However, from about the mid-1920s he intensified his Zionism as a vital goal in itself. His synthesis of Progressivism and Zionism gradually came to be the classic tradition of all major American Zionist and pro-Israel trends.