Willis: Anglo-American Law 
171 
Holmes (1841-). 79 The greatest judge who has sat upon 
the supreme bench since Miller is Oliver W. Holmes, Jr. 
Chief Justice Taft has called him “the most brilliant and 
learned member” of the Supreme Court at the present time. 
He was appointed associate justice by Roosevelt in 1902 and 
is still sitting upon the bench. He is a son of the essayist; 
was born in Boston ; graduated from Harvard and the Harvard 
Law School; and served in the Civil War, where he was 
wounded at Ball’s Bluff, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. After 
the Civil War he practiced law in Boston and for three years 
was the editor of the American Law Review . In 1882 he 
became professor of law at Harvard, and in that year his 
judicial career also began. He was associate justice of the 
Massachusetts Supreme Court from 1882 to 1899, and chief 
justice from 1899 to 1902 when he was appointed to the 
United States supreme bench. Justice Holmes has published 
an edition of Kent’s Commentaries, his Collected Papers, and 
The Common Law, a book recognized on both sides of the 
Atlantic as a legal masterpiece. Justice Holmes is one of the 
greatest jurists this country has ever had. He is a master 
of legal philosophy as well as legal history, yet does not for- 
get the practical needs of the day; and is the possessor of a 
literary style, full of wise maxims, sententious summaries, 
and pithy brocards, worthy of his distinguished father. He 
has had an open-minded progressive viewpoint and has done 
as much as any other single man in the United States towards 
the socialization of the law. He has tried to “conserve the 
(other) rights of men as well as those of property”. Some 
of his best known opinions are found in the cases of Noble 
State Bank v. Haskell , 80 Schenck v. United States, 81 Lockner 
v. New York , &2 and Adair v. United States 83 He is one judge 
who has thought thru the general truths of life, has framed 
a system of legal ideas, and in his constitutional decisions 
recalls us to the traditions of Marshall. He is known wherever 
the common law is studied. Honorary degrees have come 
to him from Amherst, Williams, Yale, Harvard, Berlin, and 
Oxford. 
79 29 Harv. L. Rev. 601, 702 ; 10 III. L. Rev. 617 ; 7 Am. Bar Assw. Jour. 359. 
80 219 U.S. 104 (police power) . 
81 249 U.S. 47 (sedition). 
82 1 98 U.S. 45 (dissent). 
83 2 0 8 U.S. 161 (dissent). 
