Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 29, 1990 TAG: 9008010075
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Reviewed by TOM SHAFFER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Oliver Wendell Holmes is America's most famous judge, but the best that can be said about him as a judge is that he was an enigma.
Novick provides the necessary information, but he has been criticized in the lawyers' world for not solving the enigma. The criticism is probably unfair. (American lawyers no longer know what to admire.)
One of my teachers in law school told me that every law professor's assessment of Holmes was that he was a great judge in every field of the law except the one taught by the professor who was talking. Holmes, in other words, was a clever, charming and shallow. And that's the best that can be said. Novick, a Carter-administration government lawyer who now teaches at the Vermont Law School, summarizes the worst: Holmes was "marked by the bigotry and sexism of his age . . . a kind of fascist ideology. He was a violent, combative, womanizing aristocrat."
Holmes is famous because he had style. His judicial opinions were short, punchy and often caustic. His letters sparkle. His social observation was piercing and more efficient than that of his eminent father, the author of "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table." Holmes loved burlesque and said, "I thank God I have low tastes."
Novick covers the judicial career, the scholarship (three books, many speeches and articles, as well as 2,000 judicial opinions), the wit, the personal life and the politics. His biography is more thorough in all of these ways than a current competitor, "Oliver Wendell Holmes: Soldier, Scholar, Judge" (Twaine Publishers, $24.95), by Gary J. Aichele, a teacher of political science.
by CNB