Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s Book List
Library of Congress historian Ryan Reft talks about Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.'s "black book" - a list of books read by the Justice.
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The Common Law
December 22 | 9PM EST | C-SPAN
C‑SPAN.org offers links to books featured on the C‑SPAN networks to make it simpler for viewers to purchase them. C‑SPAN has agreements with retailers that share a small percentage of your purchase price with our network. For example, as an Amazon Associate, C‑SPAN earns money from your qualifying purchases. However, C‑SPAN only receives this revenue if your book purchase is made using the links on this page.
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Oliver Wendell Holmes Stamp
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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Early Scotus Career
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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Gravesite
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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in Civil War Uniform
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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Later SCOTUS Career
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Summary
After serving in the Civil War, during which he was wounded, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. became a scholar and jurist, eventually rising to the U.S. Supreme Court after being nominated by President Theodore Roosevelt. While practicing law in Boston, Holmes summarized a series of lectures he had delivered and had them published in 1881 as a book titled The Common Law. Holmes is known for the maxim, "The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience" and that the law develops according to the "felt necessities of the time." He served on the high court for nearly 30 years, retiring at age 90, and has been of the most frequently cited justices.
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Oliver Wendell Holmes Stamp
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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Early Scotus Career
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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Gravesite
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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. in Civil War Uniform
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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Later SCOTUS Career
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Vignettes
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Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. as a Justice
Library of Congress historian Ryan Reft talks about how the Civil War impacted Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., his personality as a judge, and some of the people who clerked for him.
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Stephen Budiansky talked about his book, Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Life in War, Law, and Ideas, in which he recounted the life of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who served on the high court from 1902 to 1932.
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Justice Holmes and the Civil War
Panelists at the Supreme Court Historical Society talked about the impact of the Civil War on the life of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. The Supreme Court Historical Society's 2014 Leon Silverman Lecture Series, "The Supreme Court and the Civil War Revisited," marked the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War. "Touched with Fire: Justice Holmes and the Civil War," the second of the four lectures, was held in the courtroom of the Supreme Court of the United States in Washington, D.C.
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The Great Dissent
Thomas Healy, former Supreme Court correspondent for The Baltimore Sun, talked about his book, The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind - and Changed the History of Free Speech in America, in which he examines the limited interpretation of the First Amendment during the beginning of the 20th century, and its transformation due to Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' opinion in the 1919 case, Abrams v. United States. The author reported that First Amendment rights were often stifled prior to Holmes' opinion, and the Justice himself was once a skeptic of the right to speak freely. Thomas Healy spoke with Wendell Pritchett, chancellor of Rutgers University-Camden, at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
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Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer John Matteson looked at how the Civil War's 1862 Battle of Fredericksburg impacted the lives of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louisa May Alcott, Walt Whitman, Army chaplain Arthur Fuller, and Confederate soldier John Pelham. This was a virtual event hosted by the Boston Athenaeum.
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Imbeciles
Adam Cohen talked about his book Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, and the Sterilization of Carrie Buck, in which he recounts the Supreme Court's 1927 decision to allow the state of Virginia to sterilize Carrie Buck for being an "imbecile." The justices who composed the majority included William Howard Taft, Louis Brandeis, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, who authored the decision that resulted in the sterilization of 70,000 people considered mentally "defective."