The Influence And Contribution To American Legal Institutions Of Associate Justice Of The Supreme Court Oliver Wendell Holmes

Download or read book The Influence and Contribution to American Legal Institutions of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Oliver Wendell Holmes written by Ira B. Hyde and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis is concerned with the life of Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Oliver Wendell Holmes. He lived during a period of American history in which rapid and substatial changes took place in economic, social, and legal institutions. Justice Holmes, born in 1841, was influenced in early life by the long-established institutions of American society. He was also exposed to many new ways of thinking about and of solving economic and social problems. During the latter half of the nineteenth century many groups in the nation began to struggle for power, thereby causing conflicts such as the Civil War, Populistic agitation, and the organization of labor. These conflicts were accompanied by new social and economic thories which did not recommend the same course of action as had long-established social and economic theories. Justice Holmes had a keen and inquiring mind. He was exposed to the conflicts of American society, as well as to the new currents of social and economic theories then being proposed. When Holmes entered the legal profession following the Covil War period, he was aware that it was strongly influenced by the established intellectual and cutural environment. He probably was also aware that the law was to be the last stronghold of these long-established forces in this country. With his knowledge of current developments in social science and economics, Holmes sought to teach practicing lawyers and judges, as wel as the public, that legal principles do not necessarily have to be interpreted in terms of the past in a way that inhibits any change in the use or application of those principles. He proposed that law should be used as an instrument for social and economic good. In 1881, when Holmes was just forty years old, he wrote a book, "The Common Law", in which he outlined his conclusions about the history and uses of law. In it he reflected his knowledge of progress then being made in social and economic thinking. The book represented a break with established legal theories. He stated that the life of the law has not been logic, but experience; that cultural forces, far more than mechanistic principles, have determined what law has been and what it has been used for. He went on to explain how law had not been impartial in many of its applications and that it had been and was being used to support a power system of business and property interests at the expense of other groups in American society. Holmes continued to express the views first stated in his book in a unique career during which he was a judge in the courts of this country for fifty years. Holmes thus became an important figure in influencing the social, economic, and legal life of the United States because of the quality of his mind and because of the position he held in the Court.