Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: Law and the Inner Self
- ISBN-10
- 0199880212
- ISBN-13
- 9780199880218
- Series
- Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 648
- Language
- English
- Published
- 1995-11-16
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Author
- G. Edward White
Description
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 Court's work into his nineties. In Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, G. Edward White, the acclaimed biographer of Earl Warren and one of America's most esteemed legal scholars, provides a rounded portrait of this remarkable jurist. We see Holmes's early life in Boston and at Harvard, his ambivalent relationship with his father, and his harrowing service during the Civil War (he was wounded three times, twice nearly fatally, shot in the chest in his first action, and later shot through the neck at Antietam). White examines Holmes's curious, childless marriage (his diary for 1872 noted on June 17th that he had married Fanny Bowditch Dixwell, and the next sentence indicated that he had become the sole editor of the American Law Review) and he includes new information on Holmes's relationship with Clare Castletown. White not only provides a vivid portrait of Holmes's life, but examines in depth the inner life and thought of this preeminent legal figure. There is a full chapter devoted to The Common Law, for instance, and throughout the book, there is astute commentary on Holmes's legal writings. Indeed, White reveals that some of the themes that have dominated 20th-century American jurisprudence--including protection for free speech and the belief that "judges make the law"--originated in Holmes's work. Perhaps most important, White suggests that understanding Holmes's life is crucial to understanding his work, and he continually stresses the connections between Holmes's legal career and his personal life. For instance, his desire to distinguish himself from his father and from the "soft" literary culture of his father's generation drove him to legal scholarship of a particularly demanding kind. White's biography of Earl Warren was hailed by Anthony Lewis on the cover of The New York Times Book Review as "serious and fascinating," and The Los Angeles Times noted that "White has gone beyond the labels and given us the man." In Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, White has produced an equally serious and fascinating biography, one that again goes beyond the labels and gives us the man himself.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 1995-11-16
- 648 pages
- Ebook
- Oxford University Press
-
- 1993-09
- 278 pages
- Paperback
- NYU Press
-
- 1973-03-21
- 280 pages
- Paperback
- Da Capo Press
Similar books
-
The Common Law
By Oliver Wendell HolmesUniversity Press , 1957 ) ; and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes : The Proving Years ( Cambridge , Mass . ... 297 ; Mrs. Henry James , Sr. , to Henry James , Jr. , August 8 , 1869 , James Papers , Harvard University Archives . 9.
-
The Common Law
By Oliver Wendell HolmesThis volume of the ABA Classics Series is The Common Law.
-
Holmes and Frankfurter: Their Correspondence, 1912-1934
By Oliver Wendell Holmes, Felix FrankfurterThe first publication of an extensive correspondence between two of the century's greatest American jurists.
-
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
By G. Edward WhiteThe book first sketches Holmes's early years--his childhood in Boston, his undergraduate years at Harvard (which his father and both grandfathers also attended), and his valiant service in the Civil War, during which he was severely wounded ...
-
Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Life in War, Law, and Ideas
By Stephen BudianskyHealy, Great Dissent, 88–91; Debs v. United States (1919). Commonwealth v. Davis, 162 Mass. 510 (1894); McAuliffe v. Mayor and Board of Aldermen of New Bedford, 155 Mass. 216 (1892). Burt v. Advertiser Newspaper Company, 154 Mass.
-
Constitutional Doctrines of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
By Dorsey RichardsonConstitutional Doctrines of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
-
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Legal Theory, and Judicial Restraint
By Frederic R. KelloggThe 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.
-
The Occasional Speeches of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
By Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.The Occasional Speeches of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
-
Holmes-Sheehan Correspondence: Letters of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Canon Patrick Augustine Sheehan
By Oliver Wendell Holmes, Patrick Augustine Sheehan... Mr. John P. Quinn , and to invoke the memory of the Honorable Francis X. McClanaghan who first organized the Law Alumni . ... Robert F. Jones has my thanks for advising me of the practicality of bringing out this edition .
-
The Black Book of Justice Holmes: Text Transcript and Commentary
By Oliver Wendell HolmesThis volume gives insight into his mind and activities for a half-century. Here the original text is provided in facsimile, with a transcription on facing pages.