The Fundamental Holmes A Free Speech Chronicle and Reader – Selections from the Opinions, Books, Articles, Speeches, Letters and Other Writings by and about Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Timeline: Holmes's Life and Free Speech Jurisprudence, 1841–1935
- Prologue: The Father of the Modern First Amendment
- Part I On Life and War
- Part II General Conceptions: The Early Writings
- Part III The State Court Years: Fettered Freedom
- Part IV Supreme Court Opinions: The Early Years
- Part V Supreme Court Opinions: “When a nation is at war”
- Part VI Supreme Court Opinions: Experimenting with Freedom
- Epilogue: The Long Shadow
- Appendix 1 Holmes on Free Speech and Related Matters: Selected Quotations
- Appendix 2 Holmes's Supreme Court Voting Record in Free Speech Cases
- About the Editor
- Index
- References
Part I - On Life and War
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
Edited by
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Timeline: Holmes's Life and Free Speech Jurisprudence, 1841–1935
- Prologue: The Father of the Modern First Amendment
- Part I On Life and War
- Part II General Conceptions: The Early Writings
- Part III The State Court Years: Fettered Freedom
- Part IV Supreme Court Opinions: The Early Years
- Part V Supreme Court Opinions: “When a nation is at war”
- Part VI Supreme Court Opinions: Experimenting with Freedom
- Epilogue: The Long Shadow
- Appendix 1 Holmes on Free Speech and Related Matters: Selected Quotations
- Appendix 2 Holmes's Supreme Court Voting Record in Free Speech Cases
- About the Editor
- Index
- References
Summary
Today it is easy to have striking assessments of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. But could one have sensed such things by tracing back to the early arc of his life? I think so. There were many signs that a mantle of greatness would one day be reserved for this grandson of a revered minister on his father's side and the chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on his mother's side. Born into Boston's upper-crust society on March 8, 1841, young Wendell was the son of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (an outgoing physician, Harvard professor, inventor, rhetorician, poet, and famed writer) and Amelia Jackson Holmes (a self-effacing affectionate woman, also an abolitionist). Ever since his Boston birth, young Holmes showed signs of pursuing the Puritan concept (he was of Calvinist heritage) of a calling. After studying Greek, Latin, German, French, ancient history, and math in a private school, the scholastic lad entered Harvard College in the autumn of 1857 – this was the college of his father and his ancestors.
It was in that peculiar atmosphere, the world of the Boston Brahmin as his father coined it, that Holmes was exposed to great men and great ideas. One of those men was Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82), the famed essayist, philosopher, poet, and Harvard professor. During Holmes's first year at college, his parents gave him a gift of five volumes of Emerson's works.
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- The Fundamental HolmesA Free Speech Chronicle and Reader – Selections from the Opinions, Books, Articles, Speeches, Letters and Other Writings by and about Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., pp. 1 - 44Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
References
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