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In recent decades, Oliver Wendell Homes has been praised as "the
only great American legal thinker" and "the most illustrious figure
in the history of American law." In "Law without Values," Albert W.
Alschuler paints a much darker picture of Justice Holmes as a
distasteful man who, among other things, espoused Social Darwinism,
favored eugenics, and as he himself acknowledged, came "devilish
near to believing htat might makes right."
Alschuler begins by examinging Holmes's power-focused philosophy
and then turns to Holmes the person, describing how the horrors he
expereinced in the Civil War would transform his outlook into one
of moral skepticism and profoundly color his decisions, both
personal and legal. Thus skepticism, Alschuler argues, was at the
root of his personal indifference to others, his romanticization of
war and struggle, his persistent efforts to substitute powe
metaphors for judgments of right and wrong, and his "bad man"
concept of law. His pernicious leacy, according to Alschuler, is
evident in twentieth-century legal thought, whether one takes an
economic or a critical legal approach. Contrary to the perception
of many modern lawyers and scholars, Holmes's legacy was not a
"revolt against formalism" or against a priori reasoning; it was a
revolt against the objective concepts of right and wrong--against
values.
Alschuler's thoroughgoing, no-holds-barred debunking of Holmes,
together with his scathing critique of contemporary legal
scholarship, will be a lightning rod for discussion and debate.
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