Oliver Wendell Holmes

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., byname The Great Dissenter, (born March 8, 1841, Boston—died March 6, 1935, Washington, D.C.), associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, U.S. legal historian and philosopher who advocated judicial restraint. He stated the concept of “clear and present danger” as the only basis for limiting the right of freedom of speech.

In the autumn of 1864 he entered Harvard Law School, ironically without any clear sense of vocation. He had even contemplated medicine, to which his father objected. On different occasions, he said that his “Governor” “put on the screws to have me go to the Law School” or “kicked” him into it. There is a story that, when young Holmes announced to his father the decision to enter the law school, the doctor said, “What’s the use of that, Wendell? A lawyer can’t be a great man.” There was not a deep affinity between father and son. The little doctor’s puns and quips, his easy display of emotion, and a somewhat patronizing attitude chafed the tall, less talkative, inherently shy law student. The philosopher William James, perhaps the closest friend of Wendell in the immediate postwar years, once remarked that “no love is lost” between father and son.

Holmes experienced a certain restlessness in law school, finding the tradition of the law as presented in an uninspired curriculum to be stagnant and narrowly precedent-centred. The science, philosophy, or history of law were slighted, and these, rather than what he later called “the small change of legal thought,” were what captured Holmes’s mind and drew him into the depths of a profession toward which at first he had not felt a powerful incentive.

After finishing law school in 1866 he made the conventional “pilgrimage” abroad, visiting England, France, and Switzerland and meeting a variety of distinguished men. He was admitted to the bar in 1867 and for 15 years practiced law as a member of several firms. From 1870 to 1873 he was an editor of the American Law Review. He edited the 12th edition of the classic survey Commentaries on American Law (1873), by Chancellor James Kent (1763–1847). He also lectured at Harvard on law.