[EL] sunlight, the best disinfectant

[Daniel Schuman]

That was the first link in the article. It good and worth reading.

On Wednesday, June 29, 2011, Smith, Brad <BSmith at law.capital.edu> wrote:
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> Here is Brandeis's actual use of the phrase in his Harper's Weekly piece, Other People's Money, written about what he saw as abuses in the banking and financial industries. http://www.law.louisville.edu/library/collections/brandeis/node/196
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> Bradley A. Smith
> Josiah H. Blackmore II/Shirley M. Nault Designated Professor of Law
> Capital University Law School
> 303 E. Broad St.
> Columbus, OH 43215
> (614) 236-6317
> http://www.law.capital.edu/Faculty/Bios/bsmith.asp
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> From: Daniel Schuman [mailto:dschuman at sunlightfoundation.com]
> Sent: Wed 6/29/2011 12:09 AM
> To: Smith, Brad
> Cc: law-election at uci.edu
> Subject: Re: [EL] sunlight, the best disinfectant
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> This may shed some light on the origins of the phrase.
> http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2009/05/26/brandeis-and-the-history-of-transparency/
> Brandeis And The History Of Transparency
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> Sunlight Intern <http://sunlightfoundation.com/people/sintern/>May 26, 2009, 10:47 a.m.
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> “I’m proud to present the third and final part in the series of research projects from the Sunlight Foundation spring semester interns. This post is by Andrew Berger, he spent time looking into the past and following Louis Brandeis career in transparency and how it relates to the current movement.” – Nisha Thompson <http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/people/nthompson/>
> By Sunlight Foundation Intern, Andrew Berger
> I never really feel like I understand something unless I have a sense of its history. (I once wanted to become a historian; I guess that's just how I think.) So it's no surprise that during my internship here at Sunlight, I found myself wanting to know more about the history of transparency. For my research, I decided to focus on efforts to increase transparency in the United States during the early twentieth century, using Louis Brandeis as a guide.
> Brandeis made his famous statement that "sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants" in a 1913 Harper's Weekly article, entitled "What Publicity Can Do." <http://www.law.louisville.edu/library/collections/brandeis/node/196> But it was an image that had been in his mind for decades. Twenty years earlier, in a letter <http://books.google.com/books?id=PJdTZbY44-AC&pg=PA100&dq=%22If+the+broad+light+of+day+could+be+let+in+upon+men%E2%80%99s+actions,+it+would+purify+them+as+the+sun+disinfects.&client=firefox-a> to his fiance, Brandeis had expressed an interest in writing a "a sort of companion piece" to his influential article on "The Right to Privacy," <http://www.law.louisville.edu/library/collections/brandeis/node/225> but this time he would focus on "The Duty of Publicity." He had been thinking, he wrote, "about the wickedness of people shielding wrongdoers & passing them off (or at least allowing them to pass themselves off) as honest men." He then proposed a remedy:
> If the broad light of day could be let in upon men’s actions, it would purify them as the sun disinfects.Interestingly, at that time the word "publicity" referred both to something like what we think of as "public relations" as well to the practice of making information widely available to the public (Stoker and Rawlins, 2005 <http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&q=%22The+light+of+publicity+in+the+progressive+era+from+searchlight+to+flashlight%22+author%3Astoker+author%3Arawlins&btnG=Search>). That latter definition sounds a lot like what we now mean by transparency.
> Curious to know more about Brandeis' early views, and disappointed to learn that he never wrote the article on publicity he suggested in the letter, I went looking for detailed statements he might have made on transparency from earlier in his career. I eventually found transcripts of several speeches he gave on municipal reform and good government in 1903 and 1904, the longest of which I discuss below. This speech is not just a window onto the past, but a way to see what has and what has not changed in the movement for transparency: a way to see both how far we have come and how far we still have to go.From Brandeis' Boston to today
> Brandeis graduated from Harvard Law School in 1878 and for the first decade or so of his legal career, he does not seem to have been very heavily involved in public affairs. But in the 1890s, he began to take on cases that brought him into closer contact with the political system. One important case dealt with the reform of the Massachusetts state liquor laws, which followed the revelation that the liquor lobby was bribing state legislators. In another case, he represented a group of merchants--some of whom were already his clients from other contexts--who opposed an attempt by the Boston subway company to gain a monopoly over the city's mass transportation system, which at the time was not entirely in public hands. He was largely successful in both cases (Strum, 17-19 <http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/strbra.html>).
> In addition to his legal work, Brandeis gave speeches on politics before business, reform, and good government groups. His April 1903 address before Boston’s Unitarian Club made several of the local papers. The Boston Herald considered the event important enough for a front page headline: "USE SEARCHLIGHT ON THE CITY HALL: Brandeis Says It Is High Time to Delve Into Corruption in City Affairs." The article included a transcript of Brandeis' remarks.
> Here, in the course of highlighting a number of questionable expenditures the city had made in recent years, Brandeis hit on some key topics that remain at the forefront of transparency efforts today: the importance of collecting and disseminating government data, the need for open

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Daniel

Daniel Schuman
Director | Advisory Committee on Transparency<http://transparencycaucus.org/>
Policy Counsel | The Sunlight Foundation <http://sunlightfoundation.com/>
o: 202-742-1520 x 273 | c: 202-713-5795 | @danielschuman
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