Justice Holmes

Written in a lucid style and well illustrated, Justice Holmes: The Measure of His Thought offers a biographical look at the influences that have shaped his judicial outlook, especially his open-minded refusal to inject his own views into his legal decisions. The authors demonstrate—especially through United States Supreme Court Justice Holmes’s 1919 opinions on speech—what would be obvious to a veteran of the courtroom, but not always to a biographer or a professor: that there is a big difference between “questions of law” before an appellate judge, and “questions of fact” determined by a trial judge or jury. The authors also examine Holmes’s childhood and family influences as well as his Civil War experience that shaped his views on natural law and religion.

The book describes Holmes’s intellectual influences and includes photos of his book collection now at the Library of Congress. Through a discussion of the letters Holmes wrote at his Beverly Farms, MA home where he summered when the Court was not in session, we are given a window into his remarkable wit as well as his philosophical views. The book includes rare photographs of Beverly Farms.