Brandeis Brief

The Brandeis Brief was a pioneering legal brief that was the first in United States legal history to rely more on a compilation of scientific information and social science than on legal citations. It is named after then-litigator and eventual associate Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who presented it in his argument for the 1908 US Supreme Court case Muller v. Oregon. The brief was submitted in support of a state law restricting the number of hours women were allowed to work. The Brandeis Brief consisted of more than 100 pages, only two of which were devoted to legal argument. The rest of the document contained testimony by medics, social scientists, and male workers arguing that long working hours had a negative effect on the "health, safety, morals, and general welfare of women."