Law Without Values: The Life, Work, and Legacy of Justice Holmes

by Albert W. Alschuler

Overview

In recent decades, Oliver Wendell Holmes has been praised as "the only great American legal thinker" and "the most illustrious figure in the history of American law." But in Albert Alschuler's critique of both Justice Holmes and contemporary legal scholarship, a darker portrait is painted—that of a man who, among other things, espoused Social Darwinism, favored eugenics, and, as he himself acknowledged, came "devilish near to believing that might makes right."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226015200
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	12/01/2000
Edition description:	1
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Albert W. Alschuler is Wilson-Dickinson Professor of Law at the University of Chicago.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
1. Moral Skepticism in Twentieth-Century American Law
2. A Power-Focused Philosophy
3. Would You Have Wanted Justice Holmes as a Friend?
4. The Battlefield Conversion of Oliver Wendell Holmes
5. Holmes's Opinions
6. Judging the Common Law
7. The Descending Trail: Holmes's Path of the Law
8. The Beatification of Oliver Wendell Holmes
9. Ending the Slide from Socrates and Climbing Back
Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

...an exuberantly and entertainingly polemical attack on the character, scholarship and philosophy of America's most revered judicial saint...Holmes's judicial abstinence may have grown out of his aristocratic indifference, but he points the way toward a vision of judicial humility that is more relevant than ever in a pluralistic and egalitarian age in which people violently disagree. For reminding us of the power of Holmes's embattled vision, in spite of his valiant efforts to discredit it, we have Albert Alschuler to thank.
—New York Times Book Review

Jeffrey Rosen