SOURCE: "The Positivism of Mr. Justice Holmes," in Harvard Law Review, Vol. 64, No. 4, February, 1951, pp. 530-46.

In the following essay, Howe examines Holmes's posthumous reputation.

On the occasion of the ninetieth birthday of Mr. Justice Holmes, his successor on the Supreme Court of the United States said that Holmes was "for all students of the law and for all students of human society the philosopher and the seer, the greatest of our age in the domain of jurisprudence, and one of the greatest of the ages."¹ At the conclusion of his essay, Mr. Justice Cardozo quoted from a letter which he had received from Holmes saying that he had always believed that neither place, nor power, nor popularity "makes the success that one desires, but the trembling hope that one has come near to an ideal."² Mr. Justice Cardozo was reminded by these words of the wistful confidence...