Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 15.pdf/32

 Oliver IVcndell Hohnes. schoolmaster and a descendant of John Dixwell, the regicide. In 1873 he published in four volumes the twelfth edition of Kent's Commentaries, adding elaborate and valu able notes. From 1870 to 1873 he had edito rial charge of the American Law Review, then published in Boston. For this review, especially for volumes five, six and seven, which he edited, he wrote many leading arti cles and innumerable shorter reviews and notes. His longer articles contain the germ of the lectures which he was to deliver in 1880 before the Lowell Institute, and which were in their turn to form the basis of his book on "The Common Law," published in 1881. His articles show the range of his in quiries and the extent of his learning. The principal ones were the following: i. Codes and the Arrangement of the. Law. 2. Ultra Vires. 3. Misunderstandings of the Civil Law. 4. Grain Elevators. 5. Arrangements of the Law. Privity. 6. The Theory of Torts. 7. Primitive Notions in Modern Law, two articles. 8. Possession. 9. Common Car riers and the Common Law. m. Trespass and Negligence. As has been said, Mr. Holmes delivered a course of lectures in 1880 before the Lowell Institute, and in 1881 Little. Brown and Company published the lectures, somewhat amplified, in book form, under the title of The Common Law. The Lon don Spectator called the book "the most origi nal work of legal speculation which has Ap peared in English since the publication of Sir Henry Maine's 'Ancient Law,' " and the little volume at once took its pla<~r as a legal classic. It has been translated into Italian by Sig. Francesco Lambertenghi. In 1882 Mr. Holmes was offered and ac cepted a new professorship in the Harvard Law School, founded by the late Mr. Weld. He held the position for a few months only, resigning to accept an appointment from Governor Long as associate justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, vice Judge Otis P. Lord, resigned. Judge

Holmes took his seat on December 8, 1882, and has thus served this commonwealth in judicial capacity exactly twenty years. He was the senior associate justice at the time of the late Chief Justice Field's death in 1899, and succeeded by appointment to Chief Jus tice Field's position. In 1891 Judge Holmes published, for private circulation, a volume of his occasional speeches. "These chance utterances of faith and doubt are printed for a few friends who will care to keep them." In 1900 he added to the collection a few ad dresses delivered during the last decade. Since taking his seat on the bench Judge Holmes has written several important arti cles for the Harvard Law Review; "Privi lege, Malice and Intent,' published in April, 1894: "Executors," published in April, 1895: and "The Theory of Legal Interpretation," published in January, 1899. The same Re view has reprinted two of his most learned and eloquent addresses: "The Path of the Law,1' delivered at the dedication of the new hall of the Boston University School of Law, in January, 1897, and "Law in Science and Science in Law," delivered at a meeting of the New York State Bar Association, in Jan uary, 1899. Judge Holmes has written something more than twelve hundred opinions since 1882, and a review of his work in this place must necessarily be wholly fragmentary and inadequate. Perhaps the most striking in stance of his constructive and co-ordinating ability is to be found in the domain of torts. It is not too much to say that when Mr. Holmes came to the bar there was no general law of torts. Hilliard on Torts, published in Boston in 1859, treated the law in the old' manner, enumerating and discussing in suc cessive chapters the time-honored and ap parently unrelated heads of his subject, expatiating in their turn upon assault and battery, false imprisonment, libel and slan der, malicious prosecution, nuisance, trespass and conversion. "The idea of a book on