The Collected Works of Justice Holmes, 3 vols.

Edited by Sheldon M. Novick The University of Chicago Press, 5801 South Ellis Ave., Chicago, IL 60637. 1,444 pp., $175. (three volumes)

Reviewed by Peter J. Messitte

To most Americans, lawyers and laypeople alike, Oliver Wendell Holmes is the towering figure in American law. Impressive to behold, with a penetrating gaze and wonderful mustache, he was a profound scholar of the law, author of some of its most memorable phrases, the Great Dissenter. Unquestionably, as captured in the title of Catherine Drinker Bowen's biography published 50 years ago, he was a "Yankee from Olympus."

When he died in 1935 at nearly 95 years of age, Holmes had completed 30 years of service as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and 20 on the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, the last three of those 20 as chief justice. By his 40th birthday, he had taught at Harvard Law School and written his magnum opus, The Common Law.

Since his death, a great deal has been written about him. But what is surprising is that, although more than 60 years have passed since that event, no comprehensive collection of his works has ever been published. Even his authorized biography, including materials previously withheld by his executors, was not published until 1989, when Sheldon Novick's Honorable Justice: The Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes appeared.

Now at last, Novick, a professor at the University of Vermont Law School, has complied the official collected works of Holmes, funded from a devise that Holmes made to the U.S. government for that purpose. Not all Holmes's works will be found here. For example, published volumes of his correspondence, including two volumes of letters exchanged with the great legal historian Sir Frederick Pollock, have been available for years and are not part of the collection.

But this compilation is almost certainly as comprehensive as a Holmes collection will ever get, and it is more than adequate. Volume one gathers Holmes's youthful works, including undergraduate essays and addresses; his Civil War poems and obituaries written for friends; and case digests, articles, comments, and book notices from the American Law Review where Holmes served as an editor from 1870 to 1878. Volume two consists entirely of Holmes's notes to Chancellor Kent's Commentaries on U.S. law, while most of volume three contains The Common Law and articles written in preparation for it, as well as later writings, speeches, and some personal and unpublished addresses.

Volumes four and five, when published, will include selections from the more than 2,200 opinions Holmes published and signed while on the Massachusetts and Supreme courts.

Novick's accompanying notes are especially informative, including his brief biography of the justice, a discussion of Holmes's philosophy and jurisprudence, and--best of all--his appraisal of Holmes's significance. From this, one learns why it took so long for Holmes's official biography and collected papers to be published. Mark deWolfe Howe, Holmes's first designated literary executor, died young. His successor, Grant Gilmore, was one of the justice's more severe critics, joining the few who have found the justice's character bleak and some of his sentiments unfeeling.

Holmes remains an extraordinarily compelling force, not only in U.S. law but in all of U.S. history. When completed, Novick's work will without question become the standard source for scholars and for the justice's many admirers. But there is a caution. Some of the materials in the collection--for example, reports of cases determined in the Supreme Court of the State of Nevada during 1867 and the history of the law of land tenures in England and Ireland--are highly esoteric. The collection may thus represent more than many would want for a personal library. Judge Richard Posner's The Essential Holmes, published in 1992, or AM Lerner's short collection of Holmes's work, The Mind and Faith of Justice Holmes, first published in 1945, may be more appropriate for that audience. Still, the Novick collection is a critical contribution to legal literature, and definitely worth having.