The Accidental Bookseller

New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1899. Though inscribed on the front paste down to the author’s cousin, comparison to Brewer’s letters from the same period indicates that the inscription is not in the Supreme Court Justice’s hand.  More likely, it was signed by Brewer’s secretary, and we have seen other copies similarly inscribed. Justice Brewer served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1889 to 1910.   As an intellectual leader of the court presided over by Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller – a court that has been seen as reactionary, determined to infuse the law with social Darwinism and laissez-faire ideology – Brewer has traditionally been viewed negatively by most scholars.  “History has not been kind to David Brewer”, commented legal scholar Owen M. Fiss, going on to later say that ”[h]e has faded into obscurity, in part because some of his colleagues—Field, Harlan, and Holmes—were figures of great prominence.” More recently, however, Brewer’s reputation as a reactionary has been reconsidered.  While accepting that “Brewer can fairly be labeled a conservative”, the legal scholar J. Gordon Hylton wrote in 1994 that “to say that he was a self-conscious defender of the interests of corporate America or an enthusiastic disciple of laissez-faire is both unfair and inaccurate” Further, Brewer’s biographer Michael J. Brodhead maintains that Brewer accepted most of his generation’s reform goals. He championed many forms of social legislation, the regulation of business, the rights of women and minorities, the support of charities, educational reform, and world peace.  During his term, Brewer was the author of such notable court opinions as In re Debs, Muller v. Oregon, and Kansas v. Colorado. He supported property rights, admired honest entrepreneurial activity, and opposed the concentration of power in any form. Brewer favored the individual in all instances, whether that individual was the initiator of a great economic enterprise or a farmer struggling to extend agriculture into the western plains.  Brodhead concluded his biography of Brewer by writing that he “deserves to be remembered as an important figure of a much misunderstood period in the judicial history of the United States”. Thin volume in very good condition with two small abrasions to front cover and minimal rubbing to board edges. less