What Emerson was doing instead: he was busy building his career as a public intellectual and growing increasingly comfortable in Boston society (“his set,” as he called it). This chapter looks at how deftly he monetized his lyceum career and how he avoided controversial subjects in the lyceum for fear of alienating his audience. Also examined is his participation in various social clubs, the trend being increasingly toward high status over interesting, even abolitionist, membership. One of the nineteenth century’s greatest letter writers, he avoided discussing slavery within his epistolary habit. All his attention was on social connections and popular success.

The contagiousness of childbed fever was first recognised by Alexander Gordon in Aberdeen in 1795. Epidemics occurred in cities, rural communities and lying-in hospitals. In the USA Oliver Wendell Holmes caused uproar by saying doctors were carriers of disease. In 1848 Semmelweis reduced the death rate in Vienna’s maternity hospital by introducing handwashing but was not recognised until later. In the 1870s panic took hold in England. Midwives were charged with homicide and the hospital death rate in London was 2.6%. In Europe Billroth described the streptococcus and Pasteur showed that it caused puerperal sepsis. In Britain Listerian asepsis transformed surgery and reduced the death rate in lying-in hospitals. In the 1930s Colebrook worked on aseptic maternity practice. In Germany Domagk discovered prontosil and in 1936 Colebrook demonstrated its life-saving effects. Fleming discovered penicillin and Florey and Chain turned it into an antibiotic. Maternal mortality fell rapidly. By 1982-4 antibiotics had abolished deaths from puerperal sepsis but by 2006-8 sepsis was again the leading cause of Direct death and the Reports emphasised the need for constant vigilance.

Political speech, now one of the most highly-protected forms of speech in the United States, wasn't always protected. In times of stress, particularly times of war, free speech has been curtailed: Congress passed the Sedition Act of 1798 to silence critics of the Adams administration, and it passed the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917/18 to silence critics of US participation in WW I. Both laws openly flouted constitutional free-speech guarantees. In a series of high-profiile cases over the course of the twentieth century, the US Supreme Court developed a First Amendment doctrine that gave more and more types of speech First Amendment protection. Starting with the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris in 2015, this chapter looks at increasing protections for political speech from 1791 to the present, including free speech for students. We assess the continuing impact of the doctrine that might be called "free speech, but." Yes, speech is protected, but there is still some speech considered outside the framework of legal protection.

Chapter 10 examines the spirit of liberty as expressed by Judge Learned Hand, and asks whether current and future generations will continue to revere and protect freedom of speech. Support for freedom of expression has long been part of the American character, and public opinion polls consistently have shown high levels of support for First Amendment protections, even in times of crisis. More recent trends, however, show declining levels of support and demands for the government to provide protection from “unsafe” speech. Among younger Americans, this has been illustrated by disinvitations of controversial campus speakers and demands for “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces.” Ugly demonstrations and deadly clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Berkeley have heightened such demands. Even with these trends, overall support for free speech remains high, but the course of events illustrates that protections for free speech cannot rely on current political fashions.

Chapter 1 introduces the concept of the censor’s dilemma: the notion that censors in America may wield significant power for a limited time, but ultimately are undone by the principles of free expression embodied in the First Amendment. Because of this, reformers seek to avoid the label of “censor,” even when their goal is to suppress speech. The urge to censor comes from both the political left and the right, yet both sides claim that only their antagonists engage in censorship. Paradoxically, censors exude sanctimony and a sense of certainty, but cannot shake off the taint of illegitimacy in societies devoted to freedom of expression.

This chapter explores the historical roots and purposes of the Free Speech and Freedom of the Press Clauses of the First Amendment. It shows that the most of the early conflicts in this area concerned press freedoms. Disagreements over these issues came to a head over the Sedition Act of 1798, which was used by the Federalist Party to jail its Republican opponents. Ultimately, out of this conflict the Republicans articulated a new model of citizenship, rooted in principles of popular sovereignty, which remains central to our system of government today. Freedom of speech, on the other hand, played a very limited role in early history. Regardless of its humble origins, however, the Framing generation agreed that Free Speech, like Freedom of the Press, was an essential element of democratic government. Unfortunately, these rights have often been ignored by our government and the judiciary during times of stress such as the Red Scare and the McCarthy era. Today, however, thanks to the influence of pioneering arguments by Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and Louis Brandeis, there is broad agreement that these rights are essential to democracy and so must be protected.

This chapter discusses the effect of the war on Holmes’s attitude toward life. It refutes the conventional view that it made him cynical and detached. This view has been echoed through fifty years of scholarship, each retelling increasing the dimension of the war’s harmful effect on his character. To the contrary, I argue that the war did not diminish Holmes’s exuberance or his ability to form relationships. He was still the Emersonian idealist – eager to encounter life and engage with it intellectually. As evidence, I cite his close relationship with William James and contrast him with his cousin Johnny Morse and his friend Henry Adams.

This chapter considers Holmes’s tenure as a judge – his twenty years on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and his thirty years on the US Supreme Court. It makes no attempt to run through all Holmes's notable decisions. Rather it selects a few that illustrate his technique. After a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of his approach, the chapter ends with an appraisal of his legacy.

This chapter describes Holmes's childhood, education, and early admiration of Emerson.

This chapter explores Holmes’s emerging theology. Holmes was deeply agnostic; he had a modern and scientific view about the limits of human understanding. At the same time, he was inspired by a spiritual conception of human life. In these views, he was influenced by the Transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Understanding Holmes’s views thus requires recognizing their connection to Eastern philosophy as well as their origins in New England Puritanism and the Unitarian movement.

This chapter describes Holmes's two great scholarly works: the twelfth edition of Kent’s Commentaries and The Common Law. Both books entailed a prodigious amount of legal research into the history of the common law. Both were written at a time when the law was rapidly changing to accommodate the increased commercialization and industrialization in the last half of the nineteenth century. Many men – most notably Christopher Columbus Langdell – were proposing new theories of common law decision-making, but Holmes was unique in his historical approach. This chapter explains Holmes’s approach and addresses some of the misunderstandings and criticisms it has generated.

This chapter explores Holmes's law school education and his ongoing philosophy discussions with William James. This leads into a description of the Metaphysical Club – a discussion club that Holmes formed with James, Charles Peirce, Chauncey Wright, and Nicholas St. John Greene that is well known as the originator of American pragmatism. Each member of the group made his own unique contribution, which the chapter details as a way of explaining pragmatism and its effect on Holmes.

This chapter gives the highlights of Holmes's final years. It describes the circumstances leading up to his death in 1935. It also gives some of the details of his funeral. It ends with Chief Justice Hughes's description of Holmes’s life as one of rare beauty.