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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, is considered by many to be the most influential American jurist. The voluminous literature devoted to his writings and legal thought, however, is diverse and inconsistent. In this study, Frederic R. Kellogg follows Holmes's intellectual path from his early writings through his judicial career. He offers a fresh perspective that addresses the views of Holmes's leading critics and explains his relevance to the controversy over judicial activism and restraint. Holmes is shown to be an original legal theorist who reconceived common law as a theory of social inquiry and who applied his insights to constitutional law. From his empirical and naturalist perspective on law, with its roots in American pragmatism, emerged Holmes's distinctive judicial and constitutional restraint. Kellogg distinguishes Holmes from analytical legal positivism and contrasts him with a range of thinkers.
“Consistently gripping.… [I]t’s possessed of a zest and omnivorous curiosity that reflects the boundless energy of its subject.” —Steve Donoghue, Christian Science Monitor Oliver Wendell Holmes escaped death twice as a young Union officer in the Civil War. He lived ever after with unwavering moral courage, unremitting scorn for dogma, and an insatiable intellectual curiosity. During his nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, he wrote a series of opinions that would prove prophetic in securing freedom of speech, protecting the rights of criminal defendants, and ending the Court’s reactionary resistance to social and economic reforms. As a pioneering legal scholar, Holmes revolutionized the understanding of common law. As an enthusiastic friend, he wrote thousands of letters brimming with an abiding joy in fighting the good fight. Drawing on many previously unpublished letters and records, Stephen Budiansky offers the fullest portrait yet of this pivotal American figure.
DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Common Law" by Oliver Wendell Holmes. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
With Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Legal Logic, Frederic R. Kellogg examines the early diaries, reading, and writings of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935) to assess his contribution to both legal logic and general logical theory. Through discussions with his mentor Chauncey Wright and others, Holmes derived his theory from Francis Bacon’s empiricism, influenced by recent English debates over logic and scientific method, and Holmes’s critical response to John Stuart Mill’s 1843 A System of Logic. Conventional legal logic tends to focus on the role of judges in deciding cases. Holmes recognized input from outside the law—the importance of the social dimension of legal a...
Albert Alschuler's study of Holmes is very different from other books about him, in that it is an exercise in debunking him.
"On his retirement from the Supreme Court at the age of 90 in 1932, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was celebrated as few judges have ever been, beloved and revered as a national treasure. Holmes's influence, magnified into legend by the attention he has continued to receive, has helped to constitute the identity of the legal profession, the conception of the judicial function, and the role of the public intellectual in modern American culture." "The present collection of seven essays attempts to view Holmes's work apart from the restricted framework supplied by traditional jurisprudence by reassessing Holmes as an intellectual, a legal theorist, and an iconic public figure and culture hero. Each...
An influential justice who refused to bow to politics and devoted his keen mind to the U.S. Supreme Court until the age of 90, Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935) helped formulate some of the most progressive judicial thought in 20th-century American history. G. Edward White first sketches Holmes's early years-his childhood in Boston, undergraduate years at Harvard, and his valiant service in the Civil War, during which he was severely wounded three times. After the war, Holmes went into private law practice, wrote his landmark treatise The Common Law in 1881, had a short tenure on the Harvard Law School faculty, and spent 20 years as a judge on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts befo...
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., has been called the greatest jurist and legal scholar in the history of the English-speaking world. In this collection of his speeches, opinions, and letters, Richard Posner reveals the fullness of Holmes' achievements as judge, historian, philosopher, and master of English style. Thematically arranged, the volume covers a rich variety of subjects from aging and death to themes in politics, personalities, and law. Posner's substantial introduction firmly places this wealth of material in its proper biographical and historical context. "A first-rate prose stylist, [Holmes] was perhaps the most quotable of all judges, as this ably edited volume shows."—Washington ...
A Supreme Court justice for four decades, Holmes is renowned for his learning, judgment, and eloquence, as reflected in this compilation of 26 of his papers and addresses.
By any measure, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., led a full and remarkable life. He was tall and exceptionally attractive, especially as he aged, with piercing eyes, a shock of white hair, and prominent moustache. He was the son of a famous father (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., renowned for "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table"), a thrice-wounded veteran of the Civil War, a Harvard-educated member of Brahmin Boston, the acquaintance of Longfellow, Lowell, and Emerson, and for a time a close friend of William James. He wrote one of the classic works of American legal scholarship, The Common Law, and he served with distinction on the Supreme Court of the United States. He was actively involved in the...