SOURCE: "Property and Society," in Mr. Justice Holmes and the Supreme Court, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938, pp. 13-45.

In the following essay, Frankfurter discusses Holmes's views on constitutional property rights issues.

The United States got under way nearly one hundred and fifty years ago, and only seventy-seven men have shaped its destiny, in so far as law has shaped it. To understand what manner of men they were who have sat on the Supreme Bench is vital for an understanding of the Court and its work. Yet how meager is our insight into all but a very few. A lawyer's life before he becomes a judge, like that of an actor, is largely writ in water unless he has had a rich political career. And legal opinions are not conducive to biographical revelation. On the whole, we have a pitifully inadequate basis for understanding the psychological and...