Following the sudden death of Horace Harmon Lurton in 1914, Wilson nominated his Attorney General, James Clark McReynolds.
[3] Following the death of Joseph Rucker Lamar in 1916, Wilson surprised the nation by nominating Louis Brandeis to become a member of the U.S. Supreme Court.
[7]: 470 Further opposition came from members of the legal profession, including former Attorney General George W. Wickersham and former presidents of the American Bar Association, such as ex-Senator and Secretary of State Elihu Root of New York, who claimed Brandeis was "unfit" to serve on the Supreme Court.
Harvard law professor Roscoe Pound told the committee that "Brandeis was one of the great lawyers," and predicted that he would one day rank "with the best who have sat upon the bench of the Supreme Court."
In reply to the Committee, President Wilson wrote a letter to the Chairman, Senator Charles Culberson, testifying to his own personal estimation of the nominee's character and abilities.
He added: I cannot speak too highly of his impartial, impersonal, orderly, and constructive mind, his rare analytical powers, his deep human sympathy, his profound acquaintance with the historical roots of our institutions and insight into their spirit, or of the many evidences he has given of being imbued, to the very heart, with our American ideals of justice and equality of opportunity; of his knowledge of modern economic conditions and of the way they bear upon the masses of the people, or of his genius in getting persons to unite in common and harmonious action and look with frank and kindly eyes into each other's minds, who had before been heated antagonists.
Forty-four Democratic Senators and three Republicans (Robert La Follette, George Norris, and Miles Poindexter) voted in favor of confirming Brandeis.
[17][18] In June 1916, a vacancy arose on the Supreme Court when Associate Justice Charles Evans Hughes resigned to accept the Republican nomination for President.