The Ashwander Rules

About The Ashwander Rules


This project began over a decade ago as a napkin rumination: what would Louis Brandeis think of today's US Supreme Court? 


If he was alive, Brandeis' sense of propriety would constrain him from any direct comment, so I imagined how me might address the question as a novelist (in a private letter he once expressed an interest in trying his hand at fiction). 


The result is The Ashwander Rules, a parable of the modern Supreme Court, in which a secret Israeli Mossad operation in Washington D.C. works to save a fictional chief justice from assassination at the hands of domestic terrorists. 


In the spirit of Brandeis' Supreme Court opinion writing, The Ashwander Rules is an effort to educate the public -- and remind the Court -- about the importance of judicial restraint, especially as it relates to questions of constitutional law. 


The narrative also introduces a non-fiction alternative to two-party politics called the American Majority Party, www.american-majority.org, which is an internet adaptation of a good government initiative organized by Brandeis in 1903.


About the Author


Neal Rechtman is an American writer and devoted (amateur) scholar of Louis D. Brandeis, the Supreme Court Justice of the last century. 


His published works include the 2008 novel The 28th Amendment and the current (2018) Fear of Dying, a short non-fiction work that chronicles his wife Jane's stress-free acceptance of her terminal cancer diagnosis and guides the reader along a path to the same fearless perspective.


Rechtman lives and works in Christ Church, Barbados. www.nealrechtman.com.