Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1997
Abstract
Although Justice Holmes did not much enjoy listening to speeches (he once wondered "what makes the world throng to hear loose-fibred and coarse-grained men drool"), he had a remarkable gift for writing them. Holmes's 1920 Collected Legal Papers includes a dozen speeches and addresses, all delivered to student audiences or lawyers' associations, and there are unexpected pleasures to be found in every one. He had published all but four in a previous book of speeches, where he described them as "chance utterances of faith and doubt.., for a few friends who will care to keep them."' Among the four he omitted from his compendium of speeches are his only surviving full length addresses, Law in Science and Science in Law and The Path of the Law. These, Mark Howe observes, "evidently seemed to Holmes to be something more significant than 'chance utterances of faith and doubt."'
Publication Citation
72 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 1547-1583
Scholarly Commons Citation
Luban, David, "The Bad Man and the Good Lawyer: A Centennial Essay on Holmes's The Path of the Law" (1997). Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works. 1743.
https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/1743