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Law Without Values

The Life, Work, and Legacy of Justice Holmes

In recent decades, Oliver Wendell Holmes has been praised as "the only great American legal thinker" and "the most illustrious figure in the history of American law." But in Albert Alschuler’s critique of both Justice Holmes and contemporary legal scholarship, a darker portrait is painted—that of a man who, among other things, espoused Social Darwinism, favored eugenics, and, as he himself acknowledged, came "devilish near to believing that might makes right."

336 pages | 6 x 9 | © 2000

Biography and Letters

Law and Legal Studies: Legal Thought

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
1. Moral Skepticism in Twentieth-Century American Law
2. A Power-Focused Philosophy
3. Would You Have Wanted Justice Holmes as a Friend?
4. The Battlefield Conversion of Oliver Wendell Holmes
5. Holmes’s Opinions
6. Judging the Common Law
7. The Descending Trail: Holmes’s Path of the Law
8. The Beatification of Oliver Wendell Holmes
9. Ending the Slide from Socrates and Climbing Back
Notes
Index

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