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Honorable Justice: The Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes
Traces the life of America's most influential Supreme Court Justice, and describes the forces that shaped his career
512 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 21, 2019
Thanks to Catherine Drinker Brown's book Yankee From Olympus and the play and film derived from
it our concept of Oliver Wendell Holmes is complete. Who among us who has seen Louis Calhern on
the big screen and Alfred Lunt in the Hallmark Hall of Fame teleplay and hasn't got Holmes fixed in
their minds.
More remarkable was that Holmes began his Supreme Court career at the age of 60. The Grandma
Moses of law.
Holmes was already the carrier of a distinguished name. The first Oliver Wendell Holmes, noted
physician and part time poet, he authored that ode to the USS Constitution, was famous enough in the
19th century. His oldest boy and namesake was born in 1842 in Boston of the patrician class known
as Brahmins. A great many of that kind thought their body waste didn't stink, but also many like
Holmes had a sense of class responsibility. He was always interested in the law as a profession but
his people were the bedrock of abolitionism in the Union. When Civil War came Holmes as did so
many others saw service in the Union Army. Holmes was wounded at Ball's Bluff and at Chancellorsville, but he made it through.
Holmes went to Harvard and Harvard Law as was expected, but the actual practice of it was not his
cup of tea. Had Holmes never gotten a judicial appointment his fame and strictly in legal circles
would have rested on his acclaimed work of commentary on the English Common Law. A man who
can write like this belongs on the bench.
So he was appointed to the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 1881 and eventually becoming its
Chief Justice by the time the new century rolled around. It was then in 1902 when Justice Horace Gray of
the Supreme Court retired that Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts prevailed on his good
friend President Theodore Roosevelt to appoint Holmes to the US Supreme Court.
Holmes may have been 60, but he was vigorous of mind and body until almost the end. He went on
to an aged court that saw many changes. He would like to have become Chief Justice, but it wasn't
in the cards for him.
It was in dissent that Holmes made his greatest contributions. He fought the idea that social
darwinism is the natural order of things and ordained by our Constitution. In one opinion he made
it clear that the Constitution was not there to propigate Herbert Spencer's Social Statistics. He also
in dissent fought for the rights of unpopular opinions to be heard. But with a bit of common sense
for he also spoke for the court authoring that popular phrase about free speech not giving someone
the right to yell fire in a crowded theater.
After the Civil War Holmes married Fannie Dixwell who's father was of that Boston Brahmin class
and who was headmaster of Dixwell's Latin School where Brahmin kids went. They had no children
but were devoted especially as her health deteriorated faster than his. She died in 1929.
Holmes retired in 1932 and it was like if the Washington Monument had retired, such a beloved
institution as he had become. He died in 1935.
Sheldon Novick's book keeps the legend of Holmes intact, but he does become more real and
approachable in this fine work.
He became
it our concept of Oliver Wendell Holmes is complete. Who among us who has seen Louis Calhern on
the big screen and Alfred Lunt in the Hallmark Hall of Fame teleplay and hasn't got Holmes fixed in
their minds.
More remarkable was that Holmes began his Supreme Court career at the age of 60. The Grandma
Moses of law.
Holmes was already the carrier of a distinguished name. The first Oliver Wendell Holmes, noted
physician and part time poet, he authored that ode to the USS Constitution, was famous enough in the
19th century. His oldest boy and namesake was born in 1842 in Boston of the patrician class known
as Brahmins. A great many of that kind thought their body waste didn't stink, but also many like
Holmes had a sense of class responsibility. He was always interested in the law as a profession but
his people were the bedrock of abolitionism in the Union. When Civil War came Holmes as did so
many others saw service in the Union Army. Holmes was wounded at Ball's Bluff and at Chancellorsville, but he made it through.
Holmes went to Harvard and Harvard Law as was expected, but the actual practice of it was not his
cup of tea. Had Holmes never gotten a judicial appointment his fame and strictly in legal circles
would have rested on his acclaimed work of commentary on the English Common Law. A man who
can write like this belongs on the bench.
So he was appointed to the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 1881 and eventually becoming its
Chief Justice by the time the new century rolled around. It was then in 1902 when Justice Horace Gray of
the Supreme Court retired that Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts prevailed on his good
friend President Theodore Roosevelt to appoint Holmes to the US Supreme Court.
Holmes may have been 60, but he was vigorous of mind and body until almost the end. He went on
to an aged court that saw many changes. He would like to have become Chief Justice, but it wasn't
in the cards for him.
It was in dissent that Holmes made his greatest contributions. He fought the idea that social
darwinism is the natural order of things and ordained by our Constitution. In one opinion he made
it clear that the Constitution was not there to propigate Herbert Spencer's Social Statistics. He also
in dissent fought for the rights of unpopular opinions to be heard. But with a bit of common sense
for he also spoke for the court authoring that popular phrase about free speech not giving someone
the right to yell fire in a crowded theater.
After the Civil War Holmes married Fannie Dixwell who's father was of that Boston Brahmin class
and who was headmaster of Dixwell's Latin School where Brahmin kids went. They had no children
but were devoted especially as her health deteriorated faster than his. She died in 1929.
Holmes retired in 1932 and it was like if the Washington Monument had retired, such a beloved
institution as he had become. He died in 1935.
Sheldon Novick's book keeps the legend of Holmes intact, but he does become more real and
approachable in this fine work.
He became
December 25, 2020
At one time, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was regarded as the epitome of a judge - terse, intellectual, independent-minded, and, with his dramatic shock of white hair and mustache, straight from central casting in his appearance. Holmes' opinions continue to be cited, especially in the area of freedom of speech, though on other subjects he has become less influential over time. The most striking aspect of Holmes' judicial thought was his majoritarianism - the willingness to allow the will of the majority to prevail. This majoritarianism has taken a battering in recent decades, with those on the political left favoring the rule of the majority only when it produces results they like, while people of a more libertarian bent seek strong, consistent enforcement of constitutional rights regardless of what a temporary majority may favor.
Contemporary society does a poor job of preserving national icons. This shortcoming makes biographies of the leading figures of prior eras an important part of everyone's reading.
This volume- which was billed as the first full-length Holmes biography to be published - does a competent job of delineating the course of Holmes' life and thought. As a biography intended for the general reader rather than the specialist, it cannot provide a systematic explication of Holmes' jurisprudence and how he reached it. It also does not reach far into Holmes' somewhat tortured psyche as the son of a famous and somewhat domineering father who made his foibles part of an immensely popular humor column in the early Atlantic Monthly; a young army officer who participated in pitched battles during the Civil War and suffered several wounds (and may have suffered from post-traumatic stress), then declined to re-enlist in 1864 despite the demands of honor and the wishes of his parents and sat out the remainder of the war in a somewhat tenuous position in Boston; a young scholar who wanted to pursue poetry or philosophy but faced the conflicting need to earn a living; an obsessed young scholar-attorney who lived an almost monkish life while compiling the material and developing the ideas published in his famous treatise The Common Law; and ultimately an old man facing his own mortality. For my money, Liva Baker's The Justice from Beacon Hill does a better job of explaining Holmes the man. On the whole, though, Mr. Novick's book does a fine job of explaining Holmes' life and thought for the general reader and is a worthwhile read for anyone to take up.
Contemporary society does a poor job of preserving national icons. This shortcoming makes biographies of the leading figures of prior eras an important part of everyone's reading.
This volume- which was billed as the first full-length Holmes biography to be published - does a competent job of delineating the course of Holmes' life and thought. As a biography intended for the general reader rather than the specialist, it cannot provide a systematic explication of Holmes' jurisprudence and how he reached it. It also does not reach far into Holmes' somewhat tortured psyche as the son of a famous and somewhat domineering father who made his foibles part of an immensely popular humor column in the early Atlantic Monthly; a young army officer who participated in pitched battles during the Civil War and suffered several wounds (and may have suffered from post-traumatic stress), then declined to re-enlist in 1864 despite the demands of honor and the wishes of his parents and sat out the remainder of the war in a somewhat tenuous position in Boston; a young scholar who wanted to pursue poetry or philosophy but faced the conflicting need to earn a living; an obsessed young scholar-attorney who lived an almost monkish life while compiling the material and developing the ideas published in his famous treatise The Common Law; and ultimately an old man facing his own mortality. For my money, Liva Baker's The Justice from Beacon Hill does a better job of explaining Holmes the man. On the whole, though, Mr. Novick's book does a fine job of explaining Holmes' life and thought for the general reader and is a worthwhile read for anyone to take up.
February 15, 2019
Interesting But Not Fascinating
A well written synopsis of the long life of a Civil War officer, a lawyer, author, and long time jurist. I would recommend reading "The Great Dissent" to get a fuller view of Justice Holmes' evolution as an arbiter of constitutional principles and liberties, especially the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment. The author here touched only briefly on opinions written by Holmes that require far more explication to be more fully appreciated. And he completely left out the very important chance meeting and discussion between Holmes and Judge Learned Hand on a long train ride which set the Supreme Court Justice to thinking more expensively about the First Amendment.
A well written synopsis of the long life of a Civil War officer, a lawyer, author, and long time jurist. I would recommend reading "The Great Dissent" to get a fuller view of Justice Holmes' evolution as an arbiter of constitutional principles and liberties, especially the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment. The author here touched only briefly on opinions written by Holmes that require far more explication to be more fully appreciated. And he completely left out the very important chance meeting and discussion between Holmes and Judge Learned Hand on a long train ride which set the Supreme Court Justice to thinking more expensively about the First Amendment.
January 26, 2017
This was a very readable and informative bio of Mr. Holmes. Interesting observations of his times, including the somewhat archaic state of the legal profession when he started, and the conservative views of the SC justices in his tenure on the high court. We have come a long way.
June 7, 2016
A very thorough biography of one of the leading legal experts in American history. Judge Holmes' life experienced some of the most major changes in the history of the US. Shot 5 times in the Civil War fighting to save the Union and end slavery, travelling throughout Europe to meet leaders and discuss legal systems, tutoring Japanese students of law who went on to work to create a new system in Japan and experience the technological changes at the turn of the century-cars, phones and planes.
Lacking is the analysis of his Supreme Court decisions. While he was involved in many important decisions, there is not a great deal of review of these thoughts, the dissensions, the outcomes and the impact on society.
That aside, the depth of who was in his life, the interaction, the impact of others that had on his life and career is important.
Lacking is the analysis of his Supreme Court decisions. While he was involved in many important decisions, there is not a great deal of review of these thoughts, the dissensions, the outcomes and the impact on society.
That aside, the depth of who was in his life, the interaction, the impact of others that had on his life and career is important.
December 28, 2015
Top shelf judicial biography. Plenty of detail from the life and doesn't spare the whining. Legal parts are accurate, thoughtful, and not too technical.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews