“Consistently gripping.… [I]t’s possessed of a zest and omnivorous curiosity that reflects the boundless energy of its subject.” —Steve Donoghue, Christian Science Monitor Oliver Wendell Holmes escaped death twice as a young Union officer in the Civil War. He lived ever after with unwavering moral courage, unremitting scorn for dogma, and an insatiable intellectual curiosity. During his nearly three decades on the Supreme Court, he wrote a series of opinions that would prove prophetic in securing freedom of speech, protecting the rights of criminal defendants, and ending the Court’s reactionary resistance to social and economic reforms. As a pioneering legal scholar, Holmes revolutionized the understanding of common law. As an enthusiastic friend, he wrote thousands of letters brimming with an abiding joy in fighting the good fight. Drawing on many previously unpublished letters and records, Stephen Budiansky offers the fullest portrait yet of this pivotal American figure.

Based on newly discovered letters and memos, this riveting scholarly history of the conservative justice who became a free-speech advocate and established the modern understanding of the First Amendment reconstructs his journey from free-speech skeptic to First Amendment hero.

An eBook edition of this fine biography is now available. The print edition garnered extraordinary praise; a new preface brings this eBook edition up to date. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. aspired to be a poet and philosopher, was wounded in the Civil War, courted aristocratic women, became one of the greatest judges in American history, and lived long enough to give advice to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. We see though Holmes’s eyes, and his searching intelligence, almost a century of American history and the slow growth of a new understanding of the Constitution. “An ideal biography for the intelligent general reader... the fascination [Holmes] exerts, a combination of toughness and style, shines through this book.” — The New Yorker “[Novick] is the type of scholar who, though trained in law, asks Harvard’s Arnold Herbarium to identify some leaves pressed into an old love letter... One opens his book with high hopes, and as chapter follows masterly chapter the hopes mature into admiration of author and awe of subject.” — Edmund Morris, The New York Times “The book’s strength lies in its fast-paced vividness of narrative and its steadiness of belief in the wholeness and stature of Holmes as a man... Novick tells Holmes’s story with verve, insight, and a command of his material. Even his footnotes capture the reader.” — Max Lerner, The New Republic “[Holmes’s life] is stuff for great biography and Sheldon M. Novick has given us just that... a work of original and exact scholarship... concise and readable, yet provides enough historical and legal background to enable the nonspecialist to read the book with comprehension and pleasure.” — Hon. Richard A. Posner, The Wall Street Journal

The story of an American hero who stood against all the forces of Gilded Age America to help enshrine our civil rights and economic freedoms. Dissent. No one wielded this power more aggressively than John Marshall Harlan, a young union veteran from Kentucky who served on the US Supreme Court from the end of the Civil War through the Gilded Age. In the long test of time, this lone dissenter was proven right in case after case. They say history is written by the victors, but that is not Harlan's legacy: his views--not those of his fellow justices--ulitmately ended segregation and helped give us our civil rights and our economic freedoms. Derided by many as a loner and loser, he ended up being acclaimed as the nation's most courageous jurist, a man who saw the truth and justice that eluded his contemporaries. "Our Constitution is color blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens," he wrote in his famous dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson, one of many cases in which he lambasted his colleagues for denying the rights of African Americans. When the court struck down antitrust laws, Harlan called out the majority for favoring its own economic class. He did the same when the justices robbed states of their power to regulate the hours of workers and shielded the rich from the income tax. When other justices said the court was powerless to prevent racial violence, he took matters into his own hands: he made sure the Chattanooga officials who enabled a shocking lynching on a bridge over the Tennessee River were brought to justice. In this monumental biography, prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Peter S. Canellos chronicles the often tortuous and inspiring process through which Supreme Courts can make and remake the law across generations. But he also shows how the courage and outlook of one man can make all the difference. Why did Harlan see things differently? Because his life was different, He grew up alongside Robert Harlan, whom many believed to be his half brother. Born enslaved, Robert Harlan bought his freedom and became a horseracing pioneer and a force in the Republican Party. It was Robert who helped put John on the Supreme Court. At a time when many justices journey from the classroom to the bench with few stops in real life, the career of John Marshall Harlan is an illustration of the importance of personal experience in the law. And Harlan's story is also a testament to the vital necessity of dissent--and of how a flame lit in one era can light the world in another. --

“Highly illuminating ... for anyone interested in the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the American democracy, lawyer and layperson alike." —The Los Angeles Review of Books In his major work, acclaimed historian and judicial authority Melvin Urofsky examines the great dissents throughout the Court’s long history. Constitutional dialogue is one of the ways in which we as a people reinvent and reinvigorate our democratic society. The Supreme Court has interpreted the meaning of the Constitution, acknowledged that the Court’s majority opinions have not always been right, and initiated a critical discourse about what a particular decision should mean before fashioning subsequent decisions—largely through the power of dissent. Urofsky shows how the practice grew slowly but steadily, beginning with the infamous and now overturned case of Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) during which Chief Justice Roger Taney’s opinion upheld slavery and ending with the present age of incivility, in which reasoned dialogue seems less and less possible. Dissent on the court and off, Urofsky argues in this major work, has been a crucial ingredient in keeping the Constitution alive and must continue to be so.