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The Great Dissenter; Justice Holmes put principle first.(NEWS)

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From: Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)
Date: 19960308
Author:

"Certainty generally is illusion," wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., "and repose is not the destiny of man."

Surely repose was not the destiny of Holmes, who was born on this day in 1841 and left the U.S. Supreme Court at 90, after three decades of making quotable imprints on American law.

Holmes is widely misremembered as a chief justice. In fact, he made his place in history not as the court's leader but as its Great Dissenter.

In his speaking for the minority, more eloquently than often, Holmes confounded those who would predict him (including Theodore Roosevelt, ...

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