ABSTRACT
Louis D. Brandeis was the first Jew to be appointed a Justice of the United States Supreme Court. His work as a jurist made him one of the three or four most important Justices in the history of the Supreme Court. Brandeis' financial independence enabled him to work without compensation for public causes that interested him. Brandeis pioneered for the idea of collective bargaining between employers and labor unions. This agreement has played a notable role in American labor history as one of the first important collective bargaining agreements. It was characteristic of Brandeis, once won to the cause of Zionism; he would approach it on the practical, pragmatic level, and give it the fullest measure of his devotion. At the national Zionist convention in Cincinnati in 1913, Brandeis advocated the diversion of Jewish immigration to Palestine, negotiation with the Turkish government for large concessions, and the industrialization of Palestine through capital investment.
