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Oliver Wendell, Jr. Holmes

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From: Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Date: 20070301
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(born March 8, 1841, Boston, Mass.—died March 6, 1935, Washington, D.C.) U.S. jurist, legal historian, and philosopher. He was the son of Oliver Wendell Holmes and Amelia Lee Jackson, daughter of a Massachusetts supreme court justice. As an officer in the American Civil War, he was seriously wounded three times. He practiced law in Boston from 1867, eventually serving as an associate justice (1882–99) and then chief justice (1899–1902) of the state supreme court. In The Common Law (1881), he advanced the notion of law as accumulated experience rather than science. Appointed ...

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