Denial of the right to experiment may be fraught with serious consequences to the Nation. It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.

This passage is from Justice Louis D. Brandeis’s dissent in the U.S. Supreme Court case New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann (1932). The majority struck down an Oklahoma law that required a license to manufacture and sell ice, treating the business as one “affected with a public interest.” Brandeis, a leading Progressive-era reformer and advocate of regulatory experimentation, argued that federalism allows states to test new economic and social policies. His “laboratory” metaphor framed state-level innovation as a virtue of the constitutional system, especially when national solutions are uncertain or politically unattainable.

Brandeis contends that the ability of states to try “novel social and economic experiments” is a safeguard against both stagnation and overreach. If one state’s policy fails, the damage is contained; if it succeeds, it can be emulated elsewhere. The quote is often invoked to defend decentralized policymaking and to justify regulatory innovation in areas like labor law, public health, and economic regulation. It also implicitly criticizes judicial invalidation of state reforms under substantive due process: courts, Brandeis suggests, should be cautious about foreclosing democratic experimentation when the Constitution does not clearly forbid it.