Introduction

Summary

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., is, as Thomas Grey put it, “[t]he great oracle of American legal thought.” More than any other figure, he lived greatly in the law.

• As a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court for thirty years, he was the “Great Dissenter,” whose opinions in Lochner, Schenk, and other important cases became and remain the law.

• Some call his 1881 book, The Common Law, “[t]he best book on law ever written by an American.”

• The Common Law opens with the most famous American legal quotation: “The life of the law has not been logic, it has been experience.”

• Holmes later developed this theme theoretically in his 1897 essay, The Path of the Law. Some call this essay “[t]he best article-length work on law ever written.” Others disagree but do not doubt its importance in shaping American legal thought in the twentieth century.

This volume focuses on The Path of the Law and its legacy, with due attention to both its context in history and the contemporary relevance of its themes. Thus, some of our contributors place this essay in the intellectual climate of its time; some trace its influence; others discuss one or another of its themes in the light of current thinking.

This volume does not dwell on biography, interesting as Holmes's life was. (Three biographies of him, including an acclaimed one by G. Edward White, have been published in recent years.) Nor do we focus on Holmes's product on the bench or his fascinating correspondence.