Louis Brandeis Wehle was born in Louisville, Ky. , the son of Otto A. Wehle and Amy Brandeis, a sister of Louis Dembitz Brandeis. His father emigrated from Vienna in 1867 and settled in Louisville, where in 1868 he entered the practice of law with his future brother-in-law, Louis Brandeis. His mother's family emigrated from Prague in 1849.
Wehle attended both academic and manual-training high schools in Louisville before entering Harvard University, where he received the B. A. in 1902, the M. A. in 1903, and the LL. B. in 1904.
Admitted to the Kentucky bar, Wehle joined his father in Louisville as a partner in the firm of Wehle and Wehle. He practiced law there between 1904 and 1917, gaining considerable experience as counsel for contractors on local, state, and national public works projects. With the beginning of American participation in World War I, Wehle joined the legal committee of the General Munitions Board, the function of which it would be to organize the drafting of emergency production contracts for the War Department. Thus began a brief but active period of public service that continued until the Republican victory in the elections of 1920. Wehle also served briefly on the legal committees of the War Industries Board and the Council of National Defense. In June 1917, as special assistant to Secretary of War Newton Baker, Wehle was instrumental in negotiating and drafting a written agreement between Baker and Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, with respect to adjustment of labor disputes in the building of cantonments. This agreement became a model for such arrangements in other areas of wartime production, greatly minimizing the possibility of strikes in crucial industries. Wehle's success in labor negotiations led to his appointment as counsel to both the Cantonment Labor Adjustment Commission and the Federal Shipbuilding Labor Adjustment Board. Wehle also served as a counsel to the Emergency Fleet Corporation from August 1917 until March 1919, when he was appointed general counsel for the War Finance Corporation. There he acquired expertise in the areas of foreign trade and international law that subsequently influenced his career. Wehle returned to the private practice of law in 1921 and maintained offices in New York and Washington. Between 1927 and 1935, he was associated with J. Markham Marshall in the law firm of Marshall and Wehle. After Marshall's death, in 1935, Wehle practiced independently for the rest of his life. At Harvard, Wehle had coedited the Harvard Crimson with Franklin D. Roosevelt, beginning a friendship that continued until the latter's death. During World War I, Wehle and Roosevelt, who was then assistant secretary of the navy, worked together on matters concerning labor relations in the shipbuilding industry. In the autumn of 1919, they discussed the possibility that Roosevelt might run for vice-president on the Democratic ticket. Wehle proposed this to the Democratic National Campaign Committee and worked for Roosevelt's nomination. He later assisted Roosevelt in the unsuccessful presidential campaign of 1920. When Roosevelt became the Democratic candidate for president in 1932, Wehle attempted to enlist the support of organized labor. During the New Deal he served as a member of the White House Conference on Power Pooling in 1936 and was chief of the U. S. Foreign Economic Administration's mission to the Netherlands during World War II. He died in New York City.
On May 17, 1911, he married Mary Gray Patterson Liddell; they had three children.
