The Fundamental Holmes

No figure stands taller in the world of First Amendment law than Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. This is the first anthology of Justice Holmes’s writings, speeches and opinions concerning freedom of expression. The book contains eight original essays designed to situate Holmes’s works in historical and biographical context. The volume is enriched by extensive commentaries concerning its many entries, which consist of letters, speeches, book excerpts, articles, state court opinions and U.S. Supreme Court opinions. The edited materials – spanning Holmes’s 1861–1864 service in the Civil War to his 1931 radio address to the nation – offer a unique view of the thoughts of the father of the modern First Amendment. The book’s epilogue, which includes a major discovery about Holmes’s impact on American statutory law, explores Holmes’s free speech legacy. In the process, the reader comes to know Holmes and his jurisprudence of free speech as never before.

Author Biography

Ronald Collins is a scholar at the First Amendment Center in Washington, D.C. He is a noted authority on free speech law. His last book, The Trials of Lenny Bruce (with David Skover), was selected by the Los Angeles Times as one of the best books of the year. Collins is also the co-author (with Sam Chaltain) of the forthcoming We Must Not Be Afraid to Be Free: Stories of Free Speech in America and the editor of Constitutional Government in America. His scholarly articles have appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Stanford Law Review and the Supreme Court Review, among other places.