From Publishers Weekly
A popular legend in his lifetime, Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) was a hero to progressives and liberals. Yet according to Baker, biographer of Felix Frankfurter, Holmes's "civil libertarian outbursts" were rare and were less libertarian than many assume; his mixed civil rights record during his three decades on the Court (1902-1932) "leaned toward support of Southern customs." In an engrossing, definitive biography Baker strips away the layers of mythology cloaking the "Great Dissenter" to depict an insular, aloof snob who only fitfully acted on his professed belief that the law should respond to ever-changing social and economic pressures. Rather than preserving a model of Olympian detachment, Baker limns an ambitious egotist who strived to outdo his famous poet-physician father, and a romantic rover whose transatlantic, extramarital involvement with Lady Clare Castletown of Ireland left him an "emotional wreck." Photos.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Baker (Miranda, 1983, etc.) presents a highly readable, scholarly biography of the distinguished and enigmatic jurist. Holmes's life prior to his elevation to the Supreme Court in 1902 was largely an insular and intellectual one, occupied with the arcana of legal scholarship and devoid of events of great drama (with the important exception of the Civil War, in which Holmes received wounds at Ball's Bluff, Antietam, and Chancellorsville). Nonetheless, Baker demonstrates that Holmes made enduring contributions to American legal thought during this period, first as a Harvard professor and author of the classic The Common Law, and later as a Massachusetts judge. Baker shows how the horrors of the Civil War shaped Holmes's pessimistic, skeptical, and highly rationalistic view of human nature, how his background as heir to the intellectual and cultural legacy of Puritanism made him an autocrat who ``didn't believe much in rights,'' and how his vast legal scholarship did not prevent him from rejecting hoary common- law rules. The author discusses Holmes's great (and infamous) opinions for the Supreme Court with intelligence and objectivity- -Giles v. Davis, in which Holmes upheld Alabama restrictions on the voting rights of black Americans; his free-speech dissents, which, although articulating the basis of modern free-speech jurisprudence, Holmes privately dismissed as upholding the ``right of a donkey to talk drool''; his notorious decision in Buck v. Bell, in which he upheld the sterilization of an allegedly feeble- minded woman with the declaration that ``three generations of imbeciles are enough.'' Although some of Holmes's decisions shock modern sensibilities, Baker rightly finds value in his careful and intellectually honest judicial restraint, even regarding legislation he disliked. A fine, thoughtful biography of one of American legal history's most formidable intellects. (Sixteen pages of b&w photographs--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
