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The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind--and Changed The History Of Free Speech In America (2013)

by Thomas Healy(Favorite Author)

4.16 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0805094563 (ISBN13: 9780805094565)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Metropolitan Books

review 1: A serviceable history of Holmes's conversion from dour authoritarian Boston Brahmin to free-speech firebrand. Sometimes wisdom comes slowly, and Holmes's prominence was a great aid to the cause, so I hate to complain about him. But the book did not leave me with a good impression of Holmes. The author tries to spin Holmes's conversion as the culmination of an intellectual journey touched off by a chance encounter with Learned Hand on the train to his summer home. But Holmes spent years affirming pointless and cruel sentences in sedition cases without complaint. He changed his tune only after various Boston and Harvard (I suppose that, for the time and place, I repeat myself) eminences set their sights on Harold Laski, Felix Frankfurter, and Roscoe Pound, all friends of hi... mores, for the crime of excessive liberalism. (And in Laski and Frankfurter's cases, for being the wrong religion.) He was fine with handing the criminal law over the the mob until he realized that the mob could go after his friends. But he eventually came around -- and how -- and his prominence was essential to the cause, so it seems petty of me to complain. But still, he came to soils well tilled.
review 2: All too often, we take the protection of speech for granted, forgetting the history restricted speech during long periods of our history as exemplified by the Alien and Sedition Acts and limitations imposed during World War I and the red scare that followed. This history of how Oliver Wendell Holmes came to change his opinion on the breadth of protections guaranteed by the first amendment is an interesting and accessible exploration of the legal ideas and doctrines predating our current understanding of the first amendment and how his thinking changed overtime, enshrining him as the Great Dissenter and advocate of individual rights to free speech. Holmes dissent in 1919 paved the way for our current and widely accepted understanding. It is refreshing to follow the story of how the thinking of this renowned jurist changed through the influence of a small group of his friends including federal judge Learned Hand, Harvard professor Harold Laski, and future supreme court justice Felix Frankfurter. An interesting and readable insight into the life of Holmes and the ideas that changed his mind. Higly recommended. less

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