Oliver Wendell Holmes b. March 8, , Boston, MA d. March 6, , Washington, D. Holmes attended private school and then Harvard College, graduating in The Civil War broke out just before his graduation, and he joined the 20th Massachusetts Regiment of Volunteers and served for three years, suffering serious wounds in at Ball's Bluff, in at Antietam, and in at Chancellorsville.
He had started the war an idealist and ardent abolitionist; by the end he was disillusioned and dispirited. Uncertain about his vocation, Holmes entered Harvard Law School in and graduated in He was admitted to the bar in and practiced without great distinction for several firms over the next 15 years. In Holmes was invited to deliver a series of 12 lectures on common law at the Lowell Institute in Boston.
Holmes wrote some of the most significant free speech decisions ever handed down by the Court. Holmes was born in Boston, Massachusetts, into a prominent, staunchly abolitionist family.
After graduating from Harvard in , he served with the Massachusetts 20th Volunteers during the Civil War. He graduated from Harvard Law School in He returned to Harvard to teach legal history, constitutional law, and jurisprudence after a brief period of private practice in partnership with his brother.
In Holmes, a progressive Republican, accepted a position on the Massachusetts Supreme Court where he served for 20 years.
He was named Massachusetts chief justice in Holmes did not begin his tenure as a First Amendment advocate, assuming that role after more than a decade on the Court. His first significant experience with the First Amendment as a justice occurred with Patterson v.
Colorado , in which a newspaper editor was convicted of contempt after printing articles and cartoons depicting members of the Colorado Supreme Court in a derogatory manner. Writing for the majority, Holmes determined that no First Amendment issues were at issue because the amendment limited only the actions of the national government.
The Court addressed the constitutionality of a similar statute in Fox v. Washington In Schenck v. United States , Holmes delivered the majority opinion upholding the conviction of socialist Charles Schenck, who had been charged with violating the Espionage Act of by attempting to discourage draftees from responding to draft notices.
Later that same year, in Abrams v. Brandeis , when the Court upheld the convictions of five petitioners also charged under the Espionage Act of By World War I had ended, and the mood of the Court had become more open on the issue of seditious speech.
Such was the case when the Court agreed to hear Gitlow v. New York reargued The case involved socialist Benjamin Gitlow, who had been accused of plotting to overthrow the government and had been convicted of criminal anarchy for distributing socialist literature.
Although noting that Gitlow had not managed to encourage others to revolt, the Court upheld his conviction. Gitlow began the process of incorporating the First Amendment freedoms of speech and press and making them applicable to the states. Considered a leading judicial figure in the nation, Holmes would only be chief justice for a short time before he received a call to a higher post. President Theodore Roosevelt nominated Holmes to the U.
Supreme Court in During his time on the court, he earned the nickname "the Great Dissenter" for how often he opposed his fellow justices in their opinions. Holmes objected the finding in Lochner v. New York , which removed a hour limit on bakers' workweek. Holmes helped set the standard for speech protected by the First Amendment with his decision in Schenck v. United States In this case, the court refused to overturn the conviction of Charles Schenck, an antiwar activist.
Schenck had distributed pamphlets against U. Holmes wrote in the court's majority opinion that each case must be examined to determine "whether the words are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.
That same year, Holmes wrote one of his most famous dissenting opinions in the case of Abrams v. United States. The court upheld the convictions of several Russian-born political radicals under the Espionage Act. This time, Holmes thought that this case failed to meet to the "clear and present danger" measure. He wrote that "the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas—that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out.
In January , Holmes retired from the Supreme Court after nearly 30 years of service. He died on March 6, , in Washington, D. Holmes is remembered as one of the court's most eloquent and outspoken justices. We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us!
0コメント