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Thank You, Louis BrandeisAs you enjoy your weekends and holiday with your family, pause for a moment to think of Louis Brandeis. Lawyers, like farmers, may rarely enjoy a 40-hour week or overtime pay for working on holidays. Yet we all have family members or friends for whom this is the rule, and it's essential to much of family life as we know it today. Few recall that the laws underlying hourly limits on the work week are only a century old. When legislation was first passed limiting the length of the work week, it was immediately attacked as unconstitutional. In Lochner v. New York the U.S. Supreme Court found such a limit to be "unreasonable, unnecessary and arbitrary interference." Enter Attorney Louis Brandeis. He developed a strategy for defense of the law into a brilliantly innovative brief. So brilliant, if fact, that it got special mention in the majority opinion in Muller v. Oregon, that first upheld an hourly limit to the work week. Brandeis went on to greater heights, ultimately serving with distinction on the U.S. Supreme Court itself. But his most noteworthy contribution to everyday life may be his dedicated lawyering that led to the 40-hour work week. - REW Links to more information (sites not sponsored by WSBA)
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