(
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (18411935) is generally con...)
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (18411935) is generally considered one of the two greatest justices of the United States Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Marshall being the other. In more than 2000 opinions, he delineated an impressive legal philosophy that profoundly influenced American jurisprudence, particularly in the area of civil liberties and judicial restraint. At the same time, his abilities as a prose stylist earned him a position among the literary elite.
In The Common Law, derived from a series of lectures delivered at the Lowell Institute in Boston, Holmes systematized his early legal doctrines. The result was an enduring classic of legal philosophy that continues to be read and consulted over a century later. Beginning with historical forms of liability (thought to have originated in the desire for vengeance in ancient Roman and Germanic blood feuds), the book goes on to discuss criminal law, torts, bails, possession and ownership, contracts, successions, and many other aspects of civil and criminal law.
Encompassing Holmes's profound, wide-ranging knowledge of the law in its historical aspects, yet written in a manner easily accessible to the layman, The Common Law provoked this observation from another famed jurist; "The book is a classic in the sense that its stock of ideas has been absorbed and become part of common juristic thought they placed law in a perspective which legal scholarship ever since has merely confirmed." Felix Frankfurter, Of Law and Men.
Now the influential ideas and judicial theory of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. can be studied and appreciated in this superb edition the only one in print of his magnum opus. This edition also features a new introduction by Professor Sheldon M. Novick, author of Honorable Justice: The Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes. First published in 1881, this book is still indispensable reading for lawyers, political scientists, historians, general readers anyone interested in the origins, development, and continuing evolution of the laws that govern human society.
(The idea of a man's "interviewing" himself is rather odd,...)
The idea of a man's "interviewing" himself is rather odd, to be sure. But then that is what we are all of us doing every day. I talk half the time to find out my own thoughts, as a school-boy turns his pockets inside out to see what is in them. One brings to light all sorts of personal property he had forgotten in his inventory. You don't know what your thoughts are going to be beforehand? said the "Member of the Haouse," as he calls himself. Why, of course I don't. Bless your honest legislative soul, I suppose I have as many bound volumes of notions of one kind and another in my head as you have in your Representatives' library up there at the State House. I have to tumble them over and over, and open them in a hundred places, and sometimes cut the leaves here and there, to find what I think about this and that. And a good many people who flatter themselves they are talking wisdom to me, are only helping me to get at the shelf and the book and the page where I shall find my own opinion about the matter in question.
(2012 Reprint of Original 1955 Edition. Exact facsimile of...)
2012 Reprint of Original 1955 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. "The Path of the Law" by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was originally published in the "Harvard Law Review" in 1897. By the time of his essay "The Path of the Law," Holmes had completed the evolution to a behaviorist theory of law. Whatever you may think of Holmes's jurisprudence, "The Path of the Law" is an unambiguously great exercise in legal philosophy; certainly it withstands the test of time much better than "The Common Law." Laws should be written, we learn, from the standpoint of "the bad man," he who will do the absolute minimum necessary to avoid the sanctions of his neighbors. In other words, it must create objective standards, that do not depend on the personal virtue or goodwill of the citizens. When the law seeks to determine the "intent" of someone who committed an act for which he is on trial, it is not seeking to determine whether he meant to do good or harm. The law seeks to know only whether he knew what the results of his action would be. The inquiry can be made only by considering the defendant's observable behavior.
(You may set it down as a truth which admits of few except...)
You may set it down as a truth which admits of few exceptions, that those who ask your opinion really want your praise, and will be contented with nothing else. -from The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table A superb example of a literary form that has long since fallen into disuse, this seriocomic one-sided conversation with the dictatorial "autocrat" was originally published in segments in the Atlantic Monthly magazine in 1857 and 1858. The unnamed speaker offers an entertainingly rambling series of observations on everything from the odd things that children believe to the unexpected benefits of old age, from the divide between the creative and the scholarly to a recommendation for drinking as a vice. An insightful and frequently hilarious discourse on American civic life, this is a forgotten classic of playful liberal intellectualism. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (1809-1894) was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard. Though he trained as a physician, he is best known for his verse, and was one of the most beloved poets of the 19th century. A regular contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, he also wrote novels. After his death, his son, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The autocrat of the breakfast table, (Everyman's library, ed. by Ernest Rhys. Essays. no. 66)
(This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.
(Selected works of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (184...)
Selected works of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841-1935). Included are The Path of The Law (1897), The Common Law (1881), and two famous Memorial Day speeches, given by Holmes, a Civil War veteran, in 1884 and 1895.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was an American physician, poet, and polymath based in Boston.
Background
Holmes was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on August 29, 1809. His birthplace, a house just north of Harvard Yard, was said to have been the place where the Battle of Bunker Hill was planned.
He was the first son of Abiel Holmes (1763–1837), minister of the First Congregational Church and avid historian, and Sarah Wendell, Abiel's second wife. Sarah was the daughter of a wealthy family, and Holmes was named for his maternal grandfather, a judge.
The first Wendell, Evert Jansen, left the Netherlands in 1640 and settled in Albany, New York.
His mother (the second wife of Abiei) was Sarah Wendell, of a distinguished New York family.
Education
From Phillips (Andover) Academy he entered Harvard in the " famous class of '29, " made further illustrious by the charming lyrics which he wrote for the anniversary dinners from 1851 to 1889, closing with the touching "After the Curfew. "
After graduation he studied law perfunctorily for a year and dabbled in literature, winning the public ear by a spirited lyric called forth by the order to destroy the old frigate Constitution.
He studied industriously under Louis and other famous physicians and surgeons in France, and in his vacations visited the Low Countries, England, Scotland and Italy.
Career
He won prizes, however, for professional papers, and lectured on anatomy at Dartmouth College.
In 1847 Dr Holmes was appointed professor of anatomy and physiology in the Medical School of Harvard University, the duties involving the giving of instruction also in kindred departments, so that, as he said, he occupied " not a chair, but a settee in the school. "
He delivered the anatomical lectures until November 1882, and in later years these were his only link with the medical profession.
He wrote two papers on homoeopathy, which he attacked with trenchant wit; also a valuable paper on the malarial fevers of New England.
In 1843 he published his essay on the Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever, which stirred up a fierce controversy and brought upon him bitter personal abuse; but he maintained his position with dignity, temper and judgment; and in time he was honouredas the discoverer of a beneficent truth.
They were fresh, witty and lively; and the students were sent to him at he end of the day, when they were fagged, because he alone could keep them awake.
Among these earlier lyrics was "The Last Leaf, " one of the most delicate combinations of pathos and humour in literature.
His collected poetry fills three volumes.
He accepted with pleasure, and at once threw himself into the enterprise with zeal.
He christened it The Atlantic Monthly; and, as Mr Howells afterwards said, he " not only named but made " it, for in each number of its first volume there appeared one of the papers of the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.
The opening of the Autocrat-"I was just going to say when I was interrupted "-is explained by the fact that in the old New England Magazine (1831 to 1833) the Doctor had published two Autocrat papers, which, by his wish, have never been reprinted.
Thus Dr Holmes made The Atlantic Monthly, which in return made him.
These twelve papers were immediately (1858) published as a volume.
The Professor was preferred by more thoughtful readers, though it has hardly been so widely popular as the Autocrat.
Its theology, which seemed in those days audacious, frightened many of the strict and old-fashioned religionists of New England, though to-day it seems mild enough.
Twelve years later, in 1871, the Landlady had another boarder, who took the vacant chair-the Poet (published 1872).
But here Holmes fell a little short.
In these three books, especially in the Autocrat and the Professor, the Doctor wrote as he talked at many a dinner table in Boston, but less well.
The animation and clash of talk roused him.
There he met Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Sumner, Agassiz, Motley, and many other charming talkers, and among them all he was admitted to be the best. There were characters and incidents, but hardly a story, in the Autocrat and the Professor.
Holmes had an ambitior formore sustained work, and in 1861 his novel, Elsie Venner, at first called The Professor's Story, was published.
His humanity revolted against them, his reason condemned them, and he set himself to their destruction as his task in literature.
None the less, undaunted and profoundly earnest, he returned, six years later, to the same line of thought in his second novel, The Guardian Angel (published 1867).
This, though less well known than Elsie Venner, is in many respects better.
No more lifelike and charming picture of the society of the New England country-town of the middle third of the 19th century has ever been drawn, and every page sparkles with wit and humour.
He wrote some ringing war lyrics, and in 1863 delivered the Fourth of July oration in Boston, which showed a masterly appreciation of the stirring public questions of the day.
In 1884 he contributed the life of Emerson to the American " Men of Letters" series.
He admired the "Sage of Concord, " but was not quite in intellectual sympathy with him.
Both were Liberals in thought, but in widely different ways" But in spite of this handicap the volume proved very popular.
In 1888 he began the papers which he happily christened Over Ike Tea Cups.
As a tour de force on the part of a man of nearly fourscore years they are very remarkable.
After his return from Paris in 1835 Dr Holmes lived in Boston, with summer sojournings at Pittsfield and Beverly Farms, and occasional trips to neighbouring cities, until 1886.
He then undertook a four months' journey in Europe, and in England had a sort of triumphal progress.
During this visit Cambridge University made him Doctor of Letters, Edinburgh University made him Doctor of Laws, and Oxford University made him Doctor of Civil Law.
Already, in 1880, Harvard University had made him Doctor of Laws.
Many of his poems are still popular favorites, including "Old Ironsides, " "The Last Leaf, " "The Chambered Nautilus, " "The Deacon's Masterpiece, or, the Wonderful One-Hoss Shay" (which under its humorous story contains a sharp satire on the Calvinistic theology he attacked so often), "Dorothy Q, " and "The Moral Bully. "
His father, Abiel Holmes, was a Calvinist clergyman, the writer of a useful history, Annals of America, and of much very dull poetry.
By heredity the Doctor was a theologian; no other topic enchained him more than did the stern and merciless dogmas of his Calvinist forefathers.
The religious world of his time was still so largely under the control of old ideas that he was assailed as a freethinker and a subverter of Christianity; though before his death opinions had so changed that the bitterness of the attacks upon him seemed incredible, even to some of those who had most vehemently made them.
Politics
The Civil War, however, aroused him for the time; finding him first a strenuous Unionist, it quickly converted him into an ardent advocate of emancipation.
Views
Yet his scientific empiricism as it was applied to moral problems, combined with an energetic optimism and the gift of sparkling perception and startling insight, raised much of his work above the level of mere polished dilettantism.
Quotations:
Holmes states in the first volume:
"This business of conversation is a very serious matter. There are men that it weakens one to talk with an hour more than a day's fasting would do. Mark this that I am going to say, for it is as good as a working professional man's advice, and costs you nothing: It is better to lose a pint of blood from your veins than to have a nerve tapped. Nobody measures your nervous force as it runs away, nor bandages your brain and marrow after the operation. "
Membership
He was a member of the Fireside Poets.
Personality
Through her Dr Holmes was descended from Governors Thomas Dudley and Simon Bradstreet of Massachusetts, and from her he derived his cheerfulness and vivacity, his sympathetic humour and wit.
Quotes from others about the person
Literary scholar Lawrence Buell wrote of these poets: "we value [them] less than the nineteenth century did but still regard as the mainstream of nineteenth-century New England verse. "
Connections
In 1840 he married Amelia Lee Jackson, daughter of the Hon. Charles Jackson (1775 - 1855), formerly associate justice of the State supreme judicial court, a lady of rare charm alike of mind and character.