Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
Today’s Justice of the Day is: OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. Justice Holmes was born on this day, March 8, in 1841.
Justice Holmes was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the state from which he would be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. He was the son of an illustrious family and grew up in privilege; his father, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., was a famous poet and author in the mid-to-late-19th century. He graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. in 1861, and later attended Harvard Law School, earning an LL.B. there in 1866.
Justice Holmes fought in the American Civil War as a United States Army Lieutenant with the 20th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment from 1861 to 1864, sustaining three injuries during the conflict and ending up with a bullet that would be lodged in his body for the remainder of his life. The year after he graduated from law school he began a 15 year-long stint in private practice in his home town of Boston; during that time he also established his reputation as a distinguished scholar of the law through his work as an instructor in constitutional law at Harvard College (from 1870 to 1871), Editor of the American Law Review (from 1870 to 1873), Lecturer on Common Law at the Lowell Institute (in 1880), and the Weld Professor of Law at his law school alma mater (in 1882). The year he ceased working as a private attorney, Justice Holmes was appointed to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, where he went on to serve as both an Associate Justice (from the time of his appointment to 1899) and Chief Justice (from 1899 to 1902) of that court; he would ultimately remain on Massachusetts’ highest court until his appointment to the SCUS.
Justice Holmes was nominated President Theodore Roosevelt on December 2, 1902, to a seat vacated by Justice Horace Gray. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on December 4, and received his commission that day. Justice Holmes took the Judicial Oath to officially join the SCUS on December 8, and served on the Fuller, White, Taft, and Hughes Courts. His service was terminated on January 12, 1932, due to his retirement.
Justice Holmes is one of the most well-recognized figures in the American legal field, and was the oldest person to ever serve on the SCUS (he was 90 when he retired). In fact, he has been identified as one of three most cited American legal scholars of the entire 20th century. He had a particularly profound impact on the nation’s understanding of the First Amendment and how it operates in the real world, which can best be seen in two of his most famous cases: first, Schenck v. United States (1918), wherein he wrote an opinion of the Court articulating the famous “clear and present danger” test for courts to use when determining whether or not a certain law that appears to curtail free speech rights is unconstitutional; and second, Abrams v. United States (1919), a case where the majority held that the speech at issue (the distribution of leaflets calling for an end to arms manufacturing) was not protected under the First Amendment, reasoning that was countered by Justice Holmes’ dissent (joined by Justice Louis Brandeis), which asserted that the kind of speech under scrutiny was clearly protected and offered a rousing defense of the broader concept of freedom of speech.