Customer Reviews

The Justice from Beacon Hill: The Life and Times of Oliver Wendell Holmes

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ms. Baker has succeeded in developing not only a view of Justice Holmes, a free thinker and a freer spirit, but also a profile of the era or, perhaps, of several eras. Justice Holmes' life crossed a number of turning points in American jurisprudence. On the academic side, Holmes took part in sea changes in the approach taken to legal teaching and legal scholarship. On the historical side, Justice Holmes witnessed and took part in events that had a marked impact on the rule and role of law in the United States -- the Civil War, Emancipation, Reconstruction, Industrialization and aggressive business practices at the turn of the last Century, World War I and the Red Scare, the Roaring Twenties and the onset of the Great Depression.

The work provides insight into the workings of the 19th century court system, the decline in influence of the Boston aristocracy and the rise of a social conscience among the judiciary. On the whole, this is an enjoyable read for history buffs, social analysts, lawyers and those who tolerate them.

Liva Baker's book contains a comprehensive discussion of the many decisions that made Oliver Wendell Holmes a significant
figure among "the Supremes." Hers is a superlative biography, the detailed content differing greatly from Catherine Drinker
Bowen's 1944 work YANKEE FROM OLYMPUS, a treatment that could be called sentimental.
To give a fair idea of the man's disposition and temperament without getting bogged down ina mass of detail, it seems
appropriate to select key passages from his correspondence and quotes from Baker's text.

"It is revolting to have no better reason for a law than that so that it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still
more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists
from blind imitation of the past."
"Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cock-sure of many things that were not so."
"I have considered the present tendencies and desires of society and have tried to realize that its different portions want
different things, and that my business was to express not my personal wish, but the resultant, so nearly as I could guess, of the pressure of the past and the conflicting wills of the present.".
,

A magnificent study of egotism at its fullest. It is easy to understand why Holmes reached the status that he did, because he spent his life in an effort to maintain the social status that he thought was his. He may have been an intellectual, but it seems he directed his efforts at establishing and maintaining a position that he thought was rightfully that of the upper class of which he considered himself supreme. A good read about a man who obtained a position in history that he did not deserve.