Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Life in War, Law, and Ideas

by Stephen Budiansky

Oliver Wendell Holmes twice escaped death as a young Union officer in the Civil War when musket balls missed his heart and spinal cord by a fraction of an inch at the Battles of Ball’s Bluff and Antietam. He lived ever after with unwavering moral courage, unremitting scorn for dogma, and an insatiable intellectual curiosity.


Named to the Supreme Court by Theodore Roosevelt at age sixty-one, he served for nearly three decades, writing a series of famous, eloquent, and often dissenting 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 by showing how the law always evolved to meet the changing needs of society. As an enthusiastic friend and indefatigable correspondent, he wrote thousands of personal letters brimming with humorous philosophical insights, trenchant comments on the current scene, and an abiding joy in fighting the good fight.


Drawing on many previously unpublished letters and records, Stephen Budiansky’s definitive biography offers the fullest portrait yet of this pivotal American figure, whose zest for life, wit, and intellect left a profound legacy in law and Constitutional rights, and who was an inspiring example of how to lead a meaningful life in a world of uncertainty and upheaval.

Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction, Law, American History, Politics, Audiobook

592 pages, Hardcover

First published May 28, 2019

About the author

Historian and journalist Stephen Budiansky is the author of twelve books about military history, science, and nature.

His latest book is The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox, which chronicles the struggles of five courageous men in the post-Civil War South as they battled a rising tide of terrorist violence aimed at usurping the newly won rights of the freedmen.

Reviews

[Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a new biography of Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935) published this year (2019). I have read a number of biographies about Holmes but most of those had a particular aspect of his life they focused on. This book is a complete thorough examination of Holmes’ life. Holmes is considered one of the greatest legal scholar/thinkers of his time. I was most interested in the detailed account of Holmes’ role in the Union Army during the Civil War.

The book is well written and meticulously researched. The book is long which allowed Budiansky to cover in-depth his early life as well as his time on the Supreme Court (1902-1931). Holmes was considered to be an expert on common law. Budiansky spent time examining Holmes’ tenure on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts (1882-1988). This is an excellent biography covering Holmes’ life. The author attempted to be neutral in covering Holmes’ life.

I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is sixteen hours thirty-eight minutes. The written book is 544 pages. Robertson Dean does an excellent job narrating the book. Dean has been nominated several times for an Audie Award. He has won eight Earphone Awards and was Audiofile Magazine’s “Best Voice of 2010”.

[Lorna · Rating 5 out of 5]

The biography Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Life in War, Law, and Ideas was comprehensive and meticulously researched, fleshing out of the very full life of Oliver Wendell Holmes, having a great impact on the body of law in this country during the twentieth century and is still echoing today. Born in Boston, he was the son of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, a prominent physician and writer known for his far-reaching philosophical ideas and his mother, abolitionist Amelia Lee Jackson.

Serving in the Civil War, Oliver Wendell Holmes was profoundly moved to a more pragmatic view of the law. Justice Holmes while serving in the Massachusetts Supreme Court espoused the precedent and value of The Common Law, a most important contribution to jurisprudence as we know it today, for it was based on experience. This was not only an insightful, but an inspirational book, as we lived these days with Justice Holmes through his beautiful letters and history brought to life. He has long been a fascinating person in the history of this nation but I feel that the biggest gift of Stephen Budiansky with this book, was the humanization of this most iconic legend in our history.

"I say no longer with any doubt -- that a man may live greatly in the law as well as elsewhere; that there as elsewhere his thought may find its unity in an infinite perspective; that there as well as elsewhere he may wreak himself upon life, may drink the bitter cup of heroism, my wear his heart out after the unattainable." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"The 1914-1915 term saw the beginning of a nearly unbroken series of Holmes dissents over the next fifteen years that would be his most lasting legacy to American constitutional law."

"Life is painting a picture; not doing a sum." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes

[David Eppenstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do not know what impressed me more, the story of this great man's life or the author's ability to tell Holmes' story in so touching a manner. I guess it doesn't really matter as long as the reader enjoys the telling and learns something in the effort. As a retired lawyer I am sure that in the course of my studies I have read several of Holmes' opinions. Unfortunately, while constitutional law did play a big part of my professional life it was the opinions handed down by the Warren Court that were of most importance in my narrow field of practice. Consequently, I can't say that I have ever developed any serious fascination or curiosity with this man's life and didn't really know a great deal about him. I knew he was a soldier in the Civil War but never to what extent he served. I also knew that he was and is a highly regarded member of the Supreme Court and might only be second to John Marshall in the public's recognition of prominent justices. Finding this book one day while browsing in a book store it seemed that this was a man that I should know more about so I bought the book. I am very glad that I did.

The book is 461 pages of text followed by 59 pages of notes. I imagine that non-lawyers might be intimidated by the subject and the length of this book. They shouldn't be as this is a man worth knowing about. Nevertheless, I will say that the book does have a less than exciting beginning. While recounting Holmes' early history and his family the author attempts to identify the sources of Holmes's philosophy of law and life. The author looks at his schooling, his teachers, his reading, and the various facets of his youth. Some of this was interesting especially life at Harvard in the mid 19th century but it seemed that the author was really going too far in this examination. I thought this book was destined for a three star rating but my view changed. Following the schooling portion of the story Holmes' time in the Army is dealt with and this is rather an impressive phase of this man's youth that affected him immensely. In retrospect it became clear to me that the author's efforts were entirely necessary and a foundation for his treatment of Holmes' activity on the bench.

For lawyers and laymen both it is Holmes' life as a judge where the story really becomes interesting. Initially I would like to inform non-lawyers that this book and especially its court phase is not a morass of legal jargon and latin phrases. This is a book that can be read by anybody interested in learning about a man whose life had an impact on our history. Holmes served first as a judge on the Massachusetts supreme court before being appointed by Teddy Roosevelt to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1902. The activity and cases Holmes dealt with on the SCOTUS are really the heart of this biography and the author's use of the letters of Holmes and his numerous correspondents is most enlightening and interesting. What I personally found fascinating was a look into the surroundings and routine of the early 20th century court as well as insights into the personalities of the various justices that Holmes served with during his long career. The author does deal with the significant cases that Holmes was involved with but does it in a way that is easily understood by any reader. In the course of learning about this man one also develops a better understanding of constitutional history and the evolution of law and its character in our society. A life well worth learning about and book well worth reading. Enjoy.

[Porter Broyles · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my pick for 2020’s Pulitzer Prize in History or Biography.

Oliver Wendell Holmes is one of the two or three most influential Supreme Court Justices America ever had, but most Americans know extremely little about him. Holmes was the most prodigious writers of Court Opinion ever. He wrote more Court Opinions (about 900) than any other Justice. But he didn’t like writing concurrent opinions (ca 65) or dissenting opinions (ca 35). He is the only Supreme Court Justice write both the Official Court Opinion and the Dissenting Opinion on the same case.

That isn’t what makes Holmes one of the most significant Justices.

Holmes literally rewrote the way legal books are organized and categorized when he was hired as the editor of the Kent Law Review.

That isn’t what makes Holmes one of the most significant Justices.

He was a huge advocate of the notion that a judges job was to help “discover” what the law was. To this extent, he believed that the interpretation of law was not necessarily static, that it was informed by current cultural norms and expectations.

That isn’t what makes Holmes one of the most significant Justices.

Holmes was the leading voice behind the way the country views the First Amendment--- Freedom of Speech. Prior to Holmes, Freedom of Speech meant that the government would not apply a priori limitations on what a person could say, but it did not mean that the government wouldn’t act after the fact. It also didn’t mean that people could say whatever they wanted---and telling the truth was not a defense. The example used in the book was that a person could go to their local church to report that the minister was having an affair, but if you published the same information (even if true) in the paper, that doing so proved malice and was no longer protected! You might be telling the truth, but it was not protected speech!

While Holmes supported this stance for years, but he came to believe that the prevailing notion of Freedom of Speech meant that you could say whatever you want so long as it did not offend me. Holmes also originated the idea Freedom of Speech only means anything if it protected the rights of the people whose speech offends us the most.

How timely.

That is what makes him one of the most significant Justices, but what I found most amazing about OWH was about his dissents. He only wrote 35 dissents. Every dissent he ever wrote was later affirmed as a majority decision!

[Sonny · Rating 4 out of 5]

― With “The Path of the Law,” observed legal historian Morton J. Horowitz, “Holmes pushed American legal thought into the twentieth century.” It was in retrospect a defining moment when belief in the law as independent from politics and separate from social reality—the idea that the law was “discovered,” not made—was dealt the stunning blow from which it never recovered, and the Legal Realist movement born. (page 245)
― Stephen Budiansky, Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Life in War, Law, and Ideas

Along with John Marshall, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. is among the most famous of the U.S. Supreme Court justices. He was born into a prominent Boston family; his father was a distinguished doctor and author. As such, Holmes was exposed to some of the leading New England thinkers of his day, from which he gained the desire to learn and to achieve great things intellectually. After graduating from Harvard College in 1861, he received a commission as first lieutenant in the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment. He was wounded three times, in the Civil War battles of Ball’s Bluff, Antietam and Chancellorsville. One of the bullets passed through his neck; he carried another of the bullets in his body until his death at the age of 93. During the war, he also suffered a nearly fatal bout of dysentery. Despite his upbringing and education, it was his service in the Civil War that proved to be the most formative influence on his life. The war left him with a fundamental suspicion of moral certainty, fanaticism and ideologues on the right and the left.

Holmes left military service as a captain and studied law at Harvard Law School, graduating in 1866. He was admitted to the bar in 1867 and entered private practice, but soon returned to Harvard to teach constitutional law. From 1870 to 1873 he was an editor of the American Law Review. In 1880–81 Holmes was invited to lecture on the common law at the Lowell Institute in Boston. From these lectures he published his only book, The Common Law, in 1881. While there have been many great works written by great legal minds in the history of the law, only a few have had the lasting influence on a profession to truly be called classics. The Common Law is certainly one of these books, in part because of his elegant writing. Holmes emphasized that the “life of the law has not been logic, it has been experience.” He added that “the rules by which men should be governed” develop according to the “felt necessities of the time.” While Holmes thought that there were legal fundamentals that cannot be set aside, he believed the law should reflect changing social norms rather than embodying absolute moral principles. He believed that judges should respond to changes in their times in order to keep the law alive. Holmes rejected the idea of the conservative originalists of his day who argued that the Constitution should be strictly enforced according to its original public meaning. In his view, they were simply substituting their own political preferences and ascribing them to the framers of the Constitution. Despite his beliefs, Holmes maintained a constitutional philosophy of radical judicial restraint, not judicial activism.

― “If truth were not often suggested by error, if old implements could not be adjusted to new uses, human progress would be slow. But scrutiny and revision are justified.”
― Stephen Budiansky, Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Life in War, Law, and Ideas

Holmes was appointed in 1882 to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. Thinking Holmes's views compatible with his own, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1902. Holmes served as an associate justice for thirty years until his retirement at age 90. While serving on the Court, it was Holmes who devised the “clear and present danger” test for the limitation of free speech and argued that “free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”

Holmes is one of the most widely cited United States Supreme Court justices in history. He is noted for his concise, and pithy opinions—particularly for opinions on civil liberties. Many of his most notable opinions were written as dissents. His opinions endure largely because he kept them short and sprinkled with vivid phrases.

Holmes was one of only a handful of justices to be known as a scholar. Throughout his life, he never stopped cultivating his abilities to reason, setting aside time every day for learning. His reading habits were extraordinary. During his adult life, he read more than 4,000 books (more than a book a week), ranging from philosophy, sociology, religion, economics and science to novels. He accomplished all this while maintaining numerous close friendships.

― He wrote literally thousands of letters to friends over his life—there are an estimated ten thousand personal letters among his papers at the Harvard Law School archives, most of them as yet unpublished—that chronicle scores of warm and abiding friendships that he worked hard to keep up… (prologue, page 17)
― Stephen Budiansky, Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Life in War, Law, and Ideas

Despite his brilliance, some of Holmes’ opinions alarmed some people. He was criticized by Catholic legal scholars and civil-libertarians for his support for eugenics, which he displayed in upholding the compulsory sterilization of individuals whom the state deemed unfit (Buck v. Bell, 1927), writing that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.” He also upheld local laws disenfranchising African American voters in the Jim Crow South (Giles v. Harris, 1903).

― Holmes had shown decidedly little sympathy for the plight of African Americans in the Jim Crow South in a number of cases that reached the Court early in his tenure. …he clearly looked upon segregation and the South’s maintenance of white supremacy as expressions of “the dominant force of the community,” which he always insisted the law inescapably reflected, and which it was vain for the courts to oppose. …his complex feelings about the war…had left him with a noticeable blind spot on racial matters, which led him directly to write several of the worst decisions of his career. (pages 412-413)
― Stephen Budiansky, Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Life in War, Law, and Ideas

Biographies have become one of my favorite genres, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. is certainly an interesting subject for a biography. Still, I was not enamored with Budiansky’s biography of Holmes. While he ably describes Holmes’ military service during the Civil War, I found his treatment of Holmes's judicial career didn’t capture my imagination. For one, Budiansky’s writing left something to be desired. I suspect the life and career of Holmes is far more interesting than the author made it. Despite this, it was apparent to me that Holmes was intellectually humble; he was willing to question even his own deeply held assumptions.

It's a shame that Holmes is not still alive today—a time when America is more polarized than at any time since the Civil War. He would be appalled at the political divisions, the self-righteous indignation, the widespread incivility, and the rancorous public discourse. It would be fascinating to see him take on the conservative originalists spouting their “dog-whistle” phrases during the confirmation hearings of Ketanji Brown Jackson.

[Ray LaManna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great bio of one of the greatest justices of the US Supreme Court. Holmes' life was fascinating, from his Civil War service to his great decisions and dissents on the Court. You will learn a lot about the law and how it develops...so be prepared for close reading. But well worth the effort.

[Bruce Katz · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5, actually. I’ve been wanting to learn more about Holmes for a long time now. What I had heard about him — wounded in the Civil War, Supreme Court Justice, writer of decisions still cited even today — intrigued me. I wanted to know more about him. Budiansky’s book more than adequately satisfied that desire.

Budiansky has a deft touch and a sharp eye. His book frequently moves along with the briskness of a novel. The adjective ‘peripatetic’ comes to mind as a way of describing his methodology. Instead of diligently trying to capture every element of Holmes’ life, he jumps across years — Holmes’ boyhood as a Boston brahmin in New England, his Harvard years, traumatic Civil War experiences, entrance into the law, and finally his rise through judicial levels, state and federal. Along the way, we read of his fraught relationship with his father, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., a doctor, poet, and essayist; his early acquaintance with luminaries like Ralph Waldo Emerson and friendships (and often likewise fraught) with William and Henry James; his many flirtatious relationships with attractive young women; the foundations and evolution of his judicial philosophy; the personal dynamics of the Supreme Courts on which he sat; how eager and adept he was in writing decisions (in remarkable one case, he wrote both the decision of the court and, on another justice’s behalf, the dissent); and a good deal more.

I confess that I was lost in trying to parse Holmes' language in some of the decisions quoted in the book. But Budiansky is good at explaining what it all meant and what principles (including the idea of a “living Constitution” and that “common law is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky”) guided them. The book covers many of the most important cases in late nineteenth and early twentieth century American history involving labor law, antitrust, freedom of speech, Fourth Amendment protections, etc.. Sometimes — frequently — Holmes comes off well, even in his dissents, many of which would come to be validated in later Supreme Court decisions. At other times, he does not: His statement in a case involving forced sterilization, Buck v Bell (“Three generations of imbeciles are enough”) sounds deplorable to us now, as does a position he took with regards to free speech: “Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical.” Later, Holmes came to change his opinion.

I think what truly makes the book as lively as it is, is the author’s gift for the telling anecdote or quote. Often, they are quite amusing. Early in the book, for example, Budiansky tells of how Fanny Holmes, Oliver’s wife, explained why they were Unitarians: “In Boston you had to be something, and Unitarian was the least you could be.”

Or how, as a judge, Holmes was frequently so bored by the needlessly long arguments that lawyers would make before the bench that he used the time to catch up on his letter writing, the consequence of which was, as he later put it, “an undeserved reputation for attention and industry” because observers believed him to be taking meticulous notes.

Or how Holmes, physically the very model of patrician poise, had a very different sensibility: After he was forced to remove a line from his opinion in a case, he told a friend, “As originally written, it had a tiny pair of testicles but the scruples of my brethren have caused their removal and it sings in a very soft voice now.”

Or: Holmes writing, “I say no to everything except to an invitation to a White House Reception to which I say yes and don’t go.”

Much more serious but definitely compelling is this distillation of Holmes’ world view, that the universe doesn’t care about the existence of human beings and what they believe or don’t believe: “I mean by truth simply what I can’t help accepting… My can’t helps are not necessarily cosmic can’t helps.”

A complicated man, Justice Holmes. Budiansky captures his contradictions well.

[David Doty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have always admired the intellect, common sense, and personal style of Oliver Wendell Holmes, who served on the U.S. Supreme Court for over 30 years, from 1902-1932, and that admiration only grew stronger after reading this terrific biography.

First, I was fascinated to learn of Holmes' experience as a soldier in the Civil War. Volunteering for a Massachusetts regiment shortly after his graduation from Harvard Law School, Holmes was injured three separate times in battle, and his impressive commitment to the Union cause and his fellow soldiers is inspiring.

Second, I enjoyed learning about his personal life, especially his 50+ year devoted marriage to his wife Fannie, and his relationships with his many law clerks and secretaries.

Third, I gained interesting insight into Holmes' philosophy and approach to the law. His views on the Constitution are just as important today as they were at the turn of the 20th century, and any serious student of the law should study his opinions and writings.

Holmes was arguably one of the greatest judges to ever sit on the Supreme Court, and this thoroughly-researched, thoughtfully-written book certainly makes the case that the honors attributed to the man are well justified.

[John Biddle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to know more about Holmes, probably the most famous supreme court justice with the possible exception of Marshall. I'm glad I read this, a detailedaccount of the full life of the man. I can't say, though, that I believe his stature is deserved. While he did great things for the freedom of speech in his dissents, on everything else he was all over the map. And he seemed to relish not being tied to the mere words of the constitution. Me, I'm a Clarence Thomas man through and through.

[Hill Krishnan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book very much. Inspirational biography. He read 4000 books from age 21 till his death (about a book a week). He set goals: to write an excellent law book by age 40, become a judge of the Massachusetts court and then supreme court justice and he achieved them all.

[Yvonne · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing man, who very nearly was killed several times during the civil war. He was a voracious reader and intellectual. A true defender of Freedom of Speech in that you cannot just defend speech that does not offend you must defend all speech. He was famous for his dissenting opinions which later were used to form laws for civil rights and labor. He believed that the law was common and would bend and mold as society changed. As an intellectual he willing looked at both sides of an argument he could be a staunch opponent at one point but later find understanding in the opposing direction. He stopped a black man from being railroaded by a southern justice system after receiving a letter from that man, unfortunately a mob lynching still ended the man's life. He instituted the wearing of black robes and a more formal attire on the bench as well as meeting prior to cases in a congenial manner. He had a few retractors but most who truly knew him adored him. He was a voracious writer of court opinions and felt it was important that each justice put his opinion to paper that it should be open to the public all opinions on the cases that were heard by the Supreme Court.

He is one of those individuals you would love to go back in time to meet and have a conversation. I will be adding his works to my TBR pile.

[Justus Hanson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prior to reading this book, I knew next to nothing about Oliver Wendell Holmes, but it seemed like a book I would really enjoy based on my interests in war, law, and ideas as the title describes. The book itself is slow moving and dry at points, but overall it definitely gives you a feel for the kind of man that Justice Holmes was. My main takeaways were that he played a very large role in the study of law through writing the main textbook regarding Common law. I would argue his main impact from his time on the Supreme Court had to be his decision in Abrams vs. U.S. in 1919 in which he dissented from the majority in order to protect the freedom of speech which he viewed as critical to the safety of our republic. His decision in this case served as a completely new rationale for the defense of free speech that had never been seen before. Lastly, when he passed away he gifted his $256,000 estate ($5 million today) to the U.S. government; this act proved how strongly he believed in our country. The government tried to commission a book series on the history of the Supreme Court using all the money he donated, but after 50 years and many failed attempts, the books were never even written and was just applied to regular needs of the government spending. In many ways our country and society have progressed a great deal in positive ways from the turn of the 20th century; however, I cannot imagine a situation today in which someone trusted and loved their country so much they would bequeath their estate to it with no strings attached. He truly was a man who lived guided by principles and a work ethic rarely seen in our modern society.

[Becky Loader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., far outshines his father in his contributions to history, the Supreme Court, and the law.

Born into Boston society, OWH attended Harvard Law School after serving as a Union officer in the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. He also taught at Harvard, served on the Massachusetts Supreme Court, edited the "American Law Review," and was appointed to the United States Supreme Court by President Theodore Roosevelt. His book, "The Common Law," was published in 1881 and is still used in law schools.

Great scholarship and excellent writing.

[Joshua Ziefle · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one was an Audible listen. An enjoyable picture of a Supreme Court Justice I had known very little about. An active and thoughtful man who lived a full life--he was born in the 1840s and died in the 1930s; he fought in the Civil War and met FDR. And, according to the author, Holmes had significant importance, notably in later impact. Some of the discussions of law were a little harder to follow (at least as I listened), but that is a generally small factor in an enjoyable book.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book about a fascinating man. One of the great Americans - and I doubt very few people know anything about him at all. He lived an incredible life and was one of the great minds in our country's history. Recommended for anyone that likes biography, but also anyone that wants a bit of history of the Supreme Court at the turn of the century and beyond.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

A complete history of one of the most influential and important men in U.S. legal history. Very well written and great narration. Holmes was definitely a driven intellectual but also a patriotic and brave man.

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

Civil war hero ( thrice wounded ) and long time sitting justice on the U. S. Supreme Court and Massachusetts Supreme Court, OWH (Oliver Wendell Holmes) was a prolific writer and a man of ideas. The author does a thorough job of detailing Holmes career as a soldier, jurist, husband and letter writer.

During much of his career many of his opinions were dissents that 5-7 years later became the majority opinion. He was a man ahead of his time, although he had a few opinions that were backward in his thinking. He was well respected among his peers whether they were conservative or liberal.

For readers who are interested in our court system and how our country was changing from agrarian to industrial during the late 19th and early 20th century, this is a very good read. OWH was appointed by one Roosevelt and left the court and was replaced by the other Roosevelt. A long and fascinating part of our heritage in which Oliver Wendell Holmes played a major role.

[Max Frankwicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good look into Oliver Wendell Holmes’s life. It also provides a fantastic understanding of the role the courts played in the exploitative Gilded Age up to the advent of the New Deal.

[Owen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A marvelous biography of a magnificent man.

[Dan Cotter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This biography by Budiansky is excellent. Well researched and while much has been written about Holmes, this book offered some new insights and things I had not read before. This book is a worthy addition to the judicial biography genre and gives the full insights into one of the most well known justices.

[Jakub Dovcik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writing a biography of a man, whose life and career spanned the antebellum Boston, the Civil War, and everything all the way to the election of FDR, is an immensely difficult task, made even more difficult by the intellectual development that Holmes went through in the last thirty years of his life.

In some respects, it is a story of four men - Holmes the solider, Holmes the legal scholar, Holmes the Massachusetts judge, and Holmes the Supreme Court Justice. I would argue that Budiansky does a great job with the first, commandable with the last, but the middle periods are dealt with insufficiently.

Holmes' upbringing, his father, and the Boston of his youth are portrayed wonderfully and his wartime service is presented well. I could really feel the emotions and dedication of the young Holmes at the Battle of Ball's Bluff and Antietam, but the latter stages are a bit brief. What is written supremely, are the intellectual effects the war had on Holmes and on the development of his intellectual outlook - his everyday skepticism and avoidance of subscription to any die-hard ideologies. His continuous development of legal realism is documented throughout and is probably the best aspect of intellectual history within the book.

What is however developed insufficiently, is the development of Holmes between about 1870 and the 1790s - the periods when he was writing the Common Law and actively practicing law. Way too much time is spent on his social affairs and various young female acquaintances that make a reader of our age wonder about the nature of his relationships. His service at Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is dealt with quite shallowly - Budiansky makes a case that Holmes was able to further develop (after his scholarly work on the Common Law) an intimate knowledge of the common law and the law of equity by doing more everyday cases, breaking the barrier between his Brahmin upbringing and the more real world.

Holmes the Supreme Court Justice takes the last 40% of the book and it is presented well - likely because his social affairs at that time moved from trying to attract the wives of Irish lords to discussions with Learned Hand and Harold Laski about the protection of free speech. As such, this part is a good overview of Holmes' jurisprudence and key decisions, with more personality given into the discussions of his reasonings. Yet some of his legendary opinions and particularly dissents, such as the Lochner or Abrams cases, although highlighted and sometimes directly quoted, are not given their fair share. Sometimes the author falls into a bit of a cliche when quoting the "old Holmes" as rather a grandfather-ish figure, but that is mostly enjoyable.

Holmes’ dissents in the Taft court are quite short, relative to their importance. A better understanding of the interplay between personalities and decisions, such as in more intimate biographies of Frankfurter or Brandeis, would be beneficial to the overall understanding of Holmes’ reasoning and jurisprudence. What is very interesting in that period, are the stories of his secretaries, that could be an interesting book in itself.

As Budiansky is an author of popular histories, it is likely my own fault to expect a heavier dependence on the legal history and intellectual developments within Holmes' jurisprudence. This is nevertheless an amazing and enjoyable book, presenting a fascinating story of a great man, that does not omit his limitations - particularly his cases on the forced sterilizations of allegedly mentally ill people or the violations of the rule of law cases from the South.

As such, Holmes is not presented as a perfect man or all-wise justice, but rather as a man whose life experiences and intelligence allowed him to see through the limitations and mindlessness in the jurisprudence of his time - such as the misuse of the due process clause in service of ideological goals in the long Gilded Age.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

The sum total of my understanding of the law can be stated as follows - Never put it in writing, always get it in writing. So it was with some trepidation that I read Stephen Budiansky's amazing biography of the giant of American jurisprudence, "Oliver Wendell Holmes." As expected, Holmes' dissents for which he is most renowned were almost incomprehensible to me, a nitwit when it comes to the law. So as a layman I had to stipulate that the cases and the opinions that Mr. Holmes wrote about were brilliant. As a biography though the life of Oliver Wendell Holmes is a difficult one to top. Holmes crowded as much excitement in one lifetime as any American soldier and as much influence as many of our U.S. Presidents. The son of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., doctor, writer, and member of the Boston Brahmin class, Holmes, Jr., was raised in a household of privilege and counted Boston luminary Ralph Waldo Emerson as a friend. Nevertheless, when the Civil War broke out in 1861, Holmes enlisted in the Union army and fought in, and was wounded in, the battles of Battle of Ball's Bluff, the Battle of Antietam (the single bloodiest day in American history), and Chancellorsville. When the war ended, and searching for a career, he entered law school almost as a lark but mainly to do something different from his father, whom he considered a dilettante. Holmes was not content to learn the law however, he meant to master it. And master it he did. His expertise and love for the law led him from the Supreme Court in Massachusetts to the Supreme Court of the United States where served for almost 30 years. Budiansky's narration of the times and the historic figures Holmes interacted with are priceless. Presidents such as Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft, other judges like Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, public figures like John Hay and brothers William and Henry James weave in and out of the book. I unequivocally give "Oliver Wendell Holmes" five stars. If, unlike me, you know anything about the law you will probably give it ten.

[Daniel Elliott · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very fun admiring portrait of Holmes. The man was clearly a genius, a funky character, and a hugely important character in American legal history, so he deserves a thorough autobiography that leaves you a bit in awe, and this does just that.

The book does a good job placing Holmes in his political and cultural context. He was raised up in a world of Boston geniuses. His was the generation that fought in the civil war and largely because of it, lapsed from Unitarianism to pragmatism, their fathers having left Calvinism for Unitarianism. As someone raised in a different American Calvinist subculture, it’s hard not to read this as the defining cast of his whole life. He had an axe to grind against moralizing and metaphysical confidence the way that so many people reared in Calvinist worlds seem to.

I’m such an intuitive moral realist and general non-skeptic, that it’s hard for me to really get excited about someone like Holmes. It’s fun to hear about all the books he could read and how charismatic he was, but ultimately he was an odd mix of majoritarian and elitist impulses without any really deep guiding beliefs because he thought those were stupid. Budiansky praises him for all his progressive decisions and apologizes for the really unprogressive ones, but he basically acknowledges that Holmes thought progressives were just as silly as any idealists. The guy really seemed to like being a judge mostly for the intellectual challenge, the status, and the power. The only places that he seemed to have any sort of deep conviction or sense of meaning was in the gloomy (and kind of nuts?) thought that war was kind of great because soldiers had to fully embrace the pointlessness of life and do crazy things.

Holmes clearly knew a ton about the law. I’ve enjoyed reading him so far in law school and I look forward to continuing to do so, but it’s hard to make a hero of the guy.

[Matt McCormick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful biography of a truly fascinating person. Budiansky is obviously a fan and his bias toward his subject shows through. However, his writing is clear, orderly and often compelling. He makes a strong and successful effort to provide a multi-facetted view of Holmes and the effect of culture, family, war and education on Holmes legal and philosophical views. Budiansky's summary of legal doctrine and cases is quickly grasped by the pay reader.

It's easy to envy much about Oliver Wendell Holmes. He had a towering intellect, an amazing grasp of language and a remarkable memory. He often seemed kind and supportive of others. There was little trace of the overt racism that so permeated his time in his character. Holmes was independent of thought and disciplined in thinking. His advantages were many; a safe and financially secure childhood and a good (for it's time) education. He wanted for little. But Holmes also showed courage both in action and conviction. I don't mean the courage of a fighter in war, but rather the fact he went and stayed. It's easy to forget that a well off family could buy a boy's avoidance of war duty in the 1860s

If I have any critique it's that too much time was spent on his flirtatious ( in fact disrespectful if one takes a moment to consider Mrs. Holmes) interactions with women and too little spent analyzing the controversial decisions regarding cases which involved race and the government's powers over the reproduction.

Budiansky has motivated me to read a little more about those who served on the Supreme Court and my best friend has suggested Brennan as my next topic.

[Scott Pomfret · Rating 4 out of 5]

At just under 600 pages, this life of Holmes is startlingly brisk and fascinating. Budiansky's thesis is that Holmes Civil War service, including multiple near-fatal wounds, informed all his life thereafter but especially his judicial philosophy. Holmes ejected any noble and high-minded characterization of rights as "sacred" or the constitution as anything but a useful document. Neither conservative nor progressive, Holmes saw the rights as merely a name for something society valued in the context of a particular set of facts. From this approach arose his many balancing tests and his heroic resistance to inserting into the Constitution any particular view of economics. He similar rejected the now-popular conservative notion that the words themselves as imagined by the framers were a reliable guide or curb to interpretation.

Budiansky seems to rely a great deal on letters between Holmes and his many much younger female correspondents as well as on his law secretaries (now called law clerks). This reliance has the effect of humanizing Justice Holmes. His ego was huge, but his genuine affection for his female correspondents and legal secretaries is undeniable. Nonetheless, Budiansky doesn't quite succeed in rescuing Holmes from his own worst opinions (e.g., Buck v Bell, in which he upheld the forced sterilization of patients with supposed mental deficiencies), but he does place them in context (eugenics was at the time a widely popular movement embraced by progressives, including the founder of Planned Parenthood).

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I must confess that as I began this biography I was a little concerned that my non-background in law would prove a hindrance as, after all, this was the life-story of one of the greatest Supreme Court Justices in U.S. history, a man who was deeply immersed in the law that his court assistants said that he never had to resort to consulting law books when writing his numerous opinions.

Luckily, however, although the biographer of necessity does cover Holmes’ views of the law in great depth, he does so in a manner that allows laypersons a chance to understand without being overwhelmed in “legalese.”

Which is really helpful as this man was definitely one of the legal and moral giants of our history. Moreover, like all true biographers, since Professor Budiansky does not shy away from portraying Holmes with “warts and all,” we also come to understand that he held lifetime views formed by his patrician upbringing in Boston which made it difficult for him to understand some of the difficulties faced by the “common man” in the workforce as well as to have much sympathy for those Black or Jewish people who suffered from the racist attitudes and behavior of others. Nonetheless, he could and did learn from his long tenure on both the Supreme Courts of Massachusetts – and then that of the United States –Also so that he later issued opinions markedly different from those of his younger days.

Because of his aversion to all kinds of reasoning that had for its basis any form of natural law – that is, a “law” which superseded all human law, and which formed the basis for “true justice” – he was loathe to accept that there was anything like inherent human rights, including those mentioned in the ringing words of the American Declaration of Independence. For him, the bedrock of law was our heritage of the Common Law as it originated and developed over the centuries in England. This conviction on his part thus made any appeal to the courts dealing with labor “rights” or “civil rights” very difficult for him to regard favorably unless there were precedents for it to be found in the Common Law.

In one respect it is remarkable that any of us living today ever came to hear of him, as he was twice grievously wounded in the Civil War when he was a young man in his early 20s. Once a bullet shot through his throat, missing every vital structure, and another time he was shot through the chest where the bullet once again missed his spine, organs, and arteries. This photo shows Holmes as the young man he was then:



Budiansky writes that “He frequently told friends that the great lesson of the war for him had been that it taught him early on to face with courage and calmness the inevitable hardships of life – the setbacks, the moments of tedium and boredom, the self-doubt that everyone experiences at times.” (P. 128)

“Repose,” Holmes observed, “is not the destiny of man.” Budiansky: “Life is a struggle, and it is the struggle that gives it meaning. The only thing to do was to give one’s all, and leave the consequences to fate.” (P. 129)

By the late 19th century, the courts had begun regularly interpreting the 14th amendment in ways that scholars today – and Holmes then – see as both diminishing and redirecting what its authors in the aftermath of the Southern rebellion had intended. “We must be cautious about pressing the broad words of the Fourteenth Amendment to a drily logical extreme… Many laws which it would be vain to ask the court to overthrow could be shown, easily enough, to transgress a scholastic interpretation of one or another of the great guarantees in the Bill of Rights.” He was critical of judges who get pedagogical and read into Constitutions prohibitions of whatever doesn’t suit their social or economic prejudices….”

“The provisions of the Constitution are not mathematical formulas having their essence in their form; they are organic, living institutions transported from English soil. Their significance is vital, not formal; it is to be gathered not simply by taking the words and a dictionary, but by considering their origin and the line of their growth.” (P. 342)

In this and many other places Holmes argued against what is today an idea popularized by the Federalist Society and taken as Gospel by the recent Republican-appointed justices on today’s Supreme Court – the idea that the Constitution should be interpreted with the intent and context it had when written by the Founders.

“Holmes,” Budiansky writes, “is often associated with the idea of the ‘living Constitution’; but that was not really how he saw it at all. It was not the Constitution that was the living organism, in his view; it was the nation that that Constitution had called into being that continued to grow and develop. The Founders had intentionally created a document that was a framework, not a straitjacket, that would allow the nation to meet new challenges which the men wise enough to draft its inspiring words were wise enough to know they could not possibly foresee. Its broad precepts were the very antithesis of the absolutism that whose whom Morris Cohen characterized as having a “fetishism of the Constitution” tried to read into it, hoping to give their political views the imprimatur of absolute right.”

As but one example, “Holmes moored freedom of speech not to an individual human right to self-expression but to the greater interests of society….” (P. 460)

“Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.” (Holmes)

“More than any other single thing, it was this ability – to see that none of us has all the answers; that perfection will never be found in the law as it is not to be found in life; but that its pursuit is still worth the effort, if only for the sake of giving our lives meaning – which people found so striking about Holmes, as a human being and as a thinker. ‘His own insistence that we view critically what we love and reverence, and the example of his unfailing courage,’ Morris Cohen wrote a month after his death, made Holmes both a ‘titanic’ and a ‘lone’ figure.” (P. 461)

[Cody Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s life can be divided into three clean-cut chapters: he fought in the civil war (wounded three times), he sat on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for twenty years (1882-1902), and then he sat on the United States Supreme Court for thirty years (1902-1932).

My biggest take away from this book was the idea that the Constitution is a living and breathing document that should evolve and adapt in step with society. I had heard the phrase ‘living document’ before, but as someone with no formal education in the law, I had never really considered what it actually meant. “The provisions of the Constitution are not mathematical formulas having their essence in their form; they are organic, living institutions” Holmes wrote in one of his Supreme Court case opinions, “it is to be gathered not simply by taking the words and a dictionary, but by considering their origin and the line of their growth.” Holmes was a firm believer that judges had a responsibility to examine how laws operated in real world contexts, and not how they appeared on paper. This same approach would be adopted by numerous court judges who followed in his footsteps, most notably Thurgood Marshall—the first black justice to sit on the United States Supreme Court—who once gave a speech titled: The Constitution: A Living Document.

Holmes is one of the most famous Supreme Court justices in United States history because of his record of dissents. His dissents “not only feature prominently among the classic opinions in the annals of the United States Supreme Court,” but “time and again, became the majority view a decade or more later.” His first major dissent on the Supreme Court came in the 1905 case Lochner v. New York. In it, a New York law limited bakery employees to working only 10 hours a day and 60 hours a week. Joseph Lochner, a prominent baker from upstate, believed the law to be unconstitutional. The case eventually was brought to the Supreme Court in which a five-judge majority decided that the law violated the fourteenth amendment, citing that it breached “the right and liberty of the individual to contract.” Holmes disagreed, writing that the “word liberty in the Fourteenth Amendment is perverted when it is held to prevent the natural outcome of a dominant opinion.” He believed that the Fourteenth Amendment did not embrace laissez-faire economics (defined as minimal governmental involvement) and that if New York’s legislators passed this law on behalf of the betterment of its citizenry, it was shameful for the Supreme Court to overturn it. In his book The Common Law, he wrote that “The law should be based on external standards of conduct rather than subjective moral judgments.” In 1955, precisely fifty years later, in a case involving state licensure of optometrists in Oklahoma, the court ruled in favor of the state with the majority opinion noting that “the day is gone when this court uses the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to strike down state laws.” While Lochner was Holmes’ first major dissent that would prove prophetic, it would not be his last.

Another of his famous dissents came in the 1919 case Abrams v. United States. In this case, a number of Russian Jews (all living in America) had been arrested and sentenced to prison for distributing pamphlets denouncing the United States for aiding the revolutionary Bolshevist movement in Russia. The court ruled 7-2 in favor of the sentencing, the majority opinion being that the offenders had incited revolutionary thoughts against the US government and had undermined the national war effort to detrimental effect. While his fellow justices encouraged him not to dissent, Holmes wrote a blistering one. In it, he advocated for the free speech of individuals under the First Amendment in addition to “introducing the notion of the free trade of ideas.” (He also believed the defendants had been unfairly prosecuted due to their Judaism.) The reason this case was a landmark one was because it came about during a time of intense social anxiety—it was directly a result of the United States’ involvement in the First World War and subsequently the Bolshevik campaign in Russia. It seems to me to be no coincidence that it happened at a time of national (and global) turmoil, when people were living through a heightened state of fear and instability. The coronavirus pandemic of our own time is our equivalent and the same national conversations about speech are being had today. What constitutes ‘clear and present danger’ when it comes to the spoken word? Where do we draw the line between censoring truly harmful speech and not trampling on people’s first amendment right to express their opinions? One hundred years ago Oliver Wendell Holmes drew his line and it is now up to us to draw our own.

Throughout his career on the bench, Holmes argued for “upholding legislation regulating workers’ wages and hours, banning child labor, restricting labor injunctions and yellow-dog contracts, and protecting consumers.” While his decisions were not always embraced by the majority of justices at the time, they were often adopted in later years as membership on the court (and society as a whole) became more progressive. Holmes reached his conclusions not “from a political concern with the outcome, but from his deep study of the law and its purpose in society.” He had a remarkable knack to see where society was heading and always did his best to steer his judicial opinions in that direction. We are undeniably a better society because of him and his exceptional contributions to our understanding and practice of the law.

[Tracie Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Print:5/28/2019 (W. W. Norton & Company, 592 pages, 9780393634723 [illustrated with photographs] ); Audio: 15/28/2019 (Tantor Media, 16 hrs. 38 min., 9781977354655) ; Feature Film: No.
Series:

MAIN CHARACTERS:
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Fanny Holmes

SUMMARY:
A sweeping portrayal of the life of Oliver Wendell Holmes from childhood, through college, the Civil War, his days as a lawyer, his days as a Massachusetts judge, and his days as a Supreme Court Justice. It includes many written opinions with commentary.

AUTHOR:
According to his website, Stephen Budiansky (March 3, 1957) “. . . is the author of eighteen books of biography, history, and science. In 2011 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Creative Arts as a writer of general nonfiction.” He has a fascinating past, so I will quote more from his website:
“Stephen Budiansky grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, and graduated from Lexington High School. He received a bachelor of science degree in chemistry from Yale University in 1978 and a master of science degree in applied mathematics from Harvard the following year. From 1979 to 1982 he was a magazine editor and radio producer at the American Chemical Society in Washington, D.C.; from 1982 to 1985 he was Washington correspondent and then Washington editor of the scientific journal Nature. After a year as a Congressional Fellow at the U.S. Congress’s Office of Technology Assessment, he joined the staff of U.S. News & World Report, where he worked for the next twelve years in a variety of writing and editing positions, including national security correspondent, foreign editor, and deputy editor.”

NARRATOR:
According to Goodreads, “Robertson Dean has recorded hundreds of audiobooks in most every genre. He's been nominated for several Audie Awards, won eight Earphones Awards, and was named one of AudioFile magazine's Best Voices of 2010. He lives in Los Angeles, where he records books and acts in film, TV, and (especially) on stage.” He has a marvelous voice and delivery, seemingly particularly suited to this book.

GENRE:
Biography, law, history

LOCATIONS:
Massachusetts, D.C.
Philosophy, history, Civil War, law, Supreme Court Justices

EVALUATION:
Long, but quite good. It doesn’t paint Holmes as a Saint, but as a good, well-meaning, compassionate person (who maybe made a mistake here and there, some which he later realized, some not. It quotes landmark opinions that were often descents, but have since become the rule.

QUOTATION:
“As oft noted as the justice’s mental and physical vigor was his extraordinary embodiment of the sweep of history. As a Union officer in the Civil War he had barely escaped death at Ball’s Bluff and Antietam when musket balls tore through his chest and neck, missing heart, spine, and carotid artery by an eighth of an inch. He had spoken to Grant and shaken hands with Meade at the Battle of Spotsylvania, and seen Lincoln dodge enemy fire at Fort Stevens during Jubal Early’s raid on Washington. As a boy he knew Ralph Waldo Emerson as a family friend and dimly remembered Herman Melville, a summer neighbor, as ‘a rather gruff taciturn man’. Traveling Europe after the war, he climbed the Alps with Lesllie Stephen, better known to later generations as the father of Virginia Woolf; while in law school he became fast friends with Henry James and his brother William, soon to become, respectively, the novelist and philosopher of their generation. To Holmes they were ‘Harry’ and ‘Bill’. On visits to England he met the young Winston Churchill and the old Anthony Trollope; in Washington, Bertrand Russel stopped by more than once to talk philosophy.”

RATING:
This one gets a 5 for bringing Holmes to life, making me wish I knew him, and covering so much so eloquently while keeping it interesting.

[Bryon Brandt · Rating 5 out of 5]

He was an Elitist, but never a Snob.

There were others I might look down upon, if Experience had not taught me to Look Up.

It was because he knew from bitter experience:
Moralists are the Most Dangerous of Men, oblivious to the Nuances of Life,
in the certainty of their own Virtue and Rightness.

When You Know That You Know, Persecution Comes Easy.

The Hard Choices were true Moral Reckoning took place.

To have doubted one’s own First Principles is the mark of a Civilized Man.

Skepticism was his abiding cautionary Principle.

Most questions of Constitutional Law come down to Claims of Competing Rights.

Guilty of Imposing their personal political prejudices on the law, than those who faced up to the duty to draw difficult lines in fashioning workable solutions.

It is more Our Loss than His Failure.

It is the last 5% that makes the difference between the Great and the Clever.

What would you like, if you could have it?

If you do not take yourself very seriously, you are very unlikely to fool yourself into thinking that you have All the Answers.
Not thinking you have all the answers, you are less likely to challenge the decisions of the other branches of Government.

Acknowledging, His, or anyone’s opinion, might be wrong. And the only way to find out, was to allow the States and Congress room to Experiment.

Realism. Insistence that Judges had a duty to evaluate the actual operation of the law in the real world, rather than retreat to legalistic formulas.

Almost all legal decisions come down to weighing competing and equally valid claims of Rights and Interests.

General Propositions do not decide Concrete Cases.

A Reasonable Man.

The Court of the Law. The Court of Public Opinion.

Holmes thought the Sherman act was an Imbecile statute which
aims to make people to fight, but forbidding anyone to be victorious.

His 12,000 books weighing 4 tons.

The Greater Good

Freedom for the Thought We Hate. Tied It to the Democratic Experiment Itself.

Embodies What it means to be a Civilized Man as well as a Citizen in a Free Land

He Proposed Giving up the Comforts of Certainty for the Risks of Freedom, trading the dogmas of Faith for the Wisdom to Question even our own Beliefs. Embracing the Courage to Have more Trust in the Democratic Compromise of Ideas than in the Triumph of an Ideological Cause.

Perfection will never be found in the Law as it is not found in Life,
but that its Pursuit is still worth the effort, if only for giving our life meaning.

The secret isolated joy of the Thinker, who knows that a hundred years after he is dead and forgotten “Men Who Never Heard of Him Will Be Moving to the Measure of His Thought.”
He reaped that reward far more than he ever dared believe, which was
the final testimony to the greatness of his skeptical humility.

[Kameron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stephen Budiansky's biography of Oliver Wendell Holmes is that rare history that balances intellectual development with human experience. The relevance of the work is slow-building, but crystallizes in striking ways. This is no surprise to anyone familiar with Holmes's era or opinions, but it is a refreshing approach to the often convoluted history of his time. Much has been said about Holmes, but amazingly little has been written of him. That distinction is worthy of our time and of the Justice himself.

Adm. Rickover once distilled a sage old maxim of the 19th century: "Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people." No pithy comment can summarize Holmes's approach to life, but this is close. It was the ongoing conversation, or argument, with another human being that truly mattered. He was, if nothing else, a social being. That focus anchors the work, marrying the personal and the intellectual and driving home the importance of Holmes's life and words for today. It commends the story not just to Holmes's time but transcends his life to show how those ideas influenced others and changed our world.

A Holmes biography runs the risk of overstuffing. He lived during some of the most tumultuous and revolutionary periods of American history. His opinions (officially written at least) have been taught and studied since the vague beginnings of the information age. Budianksy manages this considerable historiography with a keen eye that belies great effort. The epilogue is particularly deft in this regard. There's difficult work at play under the surface, immersing us in Holmes, but it's rarely belabored; a conversation in the background, particularly if you peek into the notes. Some might consider Holmes a dry subject simply because so much has already been said. But I found Budiansky a welcome guide and an excellent commentator himself.

Budianksy also provides excellent insight into Holmes's wartime experiences, subtly connecting these experiences with Holmes's novel (and ironic) general principles. On reflection, what I find most striking is that this effort requires identification of intellectual threads tying together antebellum, reconstruction and post-reconstruction ideas. That has been done many times, but never has it been done so simply without a hit on accuracy or informative value. The concise elegance of Budiansky's work here is marvelous. It sets the stage for growth in Holmes himself as well as the political philosophies and institutions ancillary to the story. This more than anything provides fantastic background commentary on a host of modern topics.

For anyone wondering whether a biography of another old, dead, white Supreme Court Justice is worth their attention, I would recommend the purpose of diverse thought and experience. Holmes's life is a story worth telling now in greater clarity because his ideas appeal outside and across the political spectrum. “The logical method and form flatter that longing for certainty and for repose which is in every human mind," Holmes said, "But certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.” Our society needs to talk face-to-face more, especially argue more, and avoid the trappings of online life that have buried helpful discord in attention-seeking sham and groupthink dogma. Hearing things you disagree with will make you uncertain, even fearful, but that will make you wiser. Holmes ideas teach that vital piece of wisdom for us. Democracy cannot survive without the free discussion of ideas because none of us, including Holmes and even those of faith, has a certainty of complete answers.