“The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.”
Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47, 52 (3 March 1919).
1910s
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.[nota 1] fue un jurista estadounidense, juez asociado de la Corte Suprema de los Estados Unidos entre 1902 y 1932 y presidente interino del alto tribunal entre enero y febrero de 1930.
Reconocido por su larga carrera, concisas y precisas opiniones, y el respeto profesado por el legislador a sus decisiones jurídicas, es uno de los jueces de la Corte Suprema de Estados Unidos más reconocido y citado en la historia, particularmente por su argumentación en la sentencia dictada por unanimidad en el caso Schenck contra Estados Unidos de 1919.[nota 2] Honrado como uno de los jueces más influyentes e importantes en el derecho anglosajón en Estados Unidos y también en Reino Unido, Holmes se retiró a la edad de 90 años, convirtiéndose en el juez más longevo de la Corte Suprema en toda su historia. Previamente también fue juez asociado y juez presidente de la Corte Suprema Judicial de Massachusetts, además de profesor asociado en la que había sido su alma mater, la facultad de Derecho de Harvard.
Profundamente influido por sus experiencias bélicas en la guerra civil estadounidense, Holmes ayudó a desplazar el pensamiento legal estadounidense hacia el «realismo jurídico», como él mismo resumía en su máxima «la vida de la ley no ha sido lógica, ha sido experiencia».[3] Holmes se opuso a la doctrina del derecho natural y abrazó una forma de escepticismo moral, provocando un cambio de paradigma en la jurisprudencia estadounidense. En una de sus más célebres opiniones concibió, en su voto particular del caso Abrams contra Estados Unidos de 1919, a la Constitución estadounidense «como un experimento, ya que toda la vida es un experimento», y esgrimió que como consecuencia lógica «deberíamos estar eternamente atentos a los intentos de verificar la expresión de opiniones que detestamos y creemos que están repletas de muerte».[4][nota 3] Nombrado juez de la Corte Suprema por el presidente Theodore Roosevelt, durante su mandato promovió y apoyó los esfuerzos para regular la economía y abogó por una amplia libertad de expresión al amparo de la Primera Enmienda; estas posiciones, su personalidad distintiva, así como su particular estilo literario, lo convirtieron en una figura popular, especialmente entre los «progresistas» estadounidenses.[5] Su jurisprudencia tuvo una notablemente influencia en el pensamiento jurídico estadounidense posterior, incluido el consenso judicial que permitió el nuevo derecho regulatorio surgido de las políticas del New Deal, además de en las escuelas pragmáticas, del análisis económico del Derecho y en los estudios jurídicos críticos. Señalado como uno de los pocos jueces eruditos en su campo, el Journal of Legal Studies lo identificó «como el tercer jurista estadounidense más citado del siglo XX».[6]
Wikipedia
“The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.”
Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47, 52 (3 March 1919).
1910s
Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47, 52 (3 March 1919).
1910s
“Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.”
1910s, "Natural Law", 32 Harvard Law Review 40, 41 (1918)
"The Path of the Law," Address to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts at the dedication of the new hall of the Boston University School of Law (8 January 1897), published in Harvard Law Review, Vol. 10 (25 March 1897).
1890s
250 U.S. at 630.
1910s, Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616 (1919)
“Eloquence may set fire to reason.”
Gitlow v. People of New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925) (dissenting).
1920s
1910s, "Natural Law", 32 Harvard Law Review 40, 41 (1918)
“Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.”
A paraphrase of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., in "The Poet at the Breakfast-Table" in The Atlantic Monthly Vol. 29 (1872), p. 231: "I like children, — he said to me one day at table. — I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by them".
Misattributed
“Young man, the secret of my success is that at an early age I discovered that I was not God.”
On his 90th birthday to a journalist (8 March 1931), as quoted in Information 2000: Library and Information Services for the 21st Century, Vol. 1991, Part 2 (1992) by the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, p. 272.
1930s
Writing for the Court, New Jersey v. New York, et al., 283 U.S. 336, 342 (1931).
1930s
1880s, In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire (1884)
Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197, 400-401 (1904).
1900s
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., dissenting, Adkins, et al., Constituting the Minimum Wage Board of the District of Columbia, v. Children's Hospital of the District of Columbia; Same v. Lyons, 261 U.S. 569–70 (1923).
1920s
250 U.S. 616; 630.
1910s, Abrams v. United States, 250 U.S. 616 (1919)
1910s, "Law and the Court" (1913)
United States v. Schwimmer, 279 U.S. 644 (1929) (Holmes, J., dissenting).
1920s
“Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.”
1890s, The Path of the Law (1897)
"Common Carriers and the Common Law", 13 Am. Law Rev. 608, 630 (1879).
1870s
Blinn v. Nelson, 222 U.S. 1, 7 (1911).
1910s
Writing for the Court, United States v. Wurzbach, 280 U.S. 396, 399 (1930).
1930s
1880s, In Our Youth Our Hearts Were Touched With Fire (1884)
Often given as: A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.
Or: A mind that is stretched by a new idea can never go back to its old dimensions.
Actually by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Senior, from " Autocrat of the Breakfast Table https://books.google.com/books?id=BoQ3AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA502&dq=%22stretched+by+a+new+idea%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwidspn60tTJAhVJ1GMKHbt3Bn0Q6AEIHTAA#v=onepage&q=%22stretched%20by%20a%20new%20idea%22&f=false", originally published in The Atlantic, September 1858.
Misattributed
“To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.”
Almost certainly attributable to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., who is, in various sources, credited with having said this in letters to Harriet Beecher Stowe (who turned 70 in 1881) and Julia Ward Howe (who turned 70 in 1889), as well as having made the commented about himself. Holmes, Sr. reached the age of 70 in 1879, while Holmes, Jr. reached that age in 1911, some time after the earliest reports of this quote.
Misattributed
Assertion famously directed at then-President Abraham Lincoln when he came under enemy fire at Fort Stevens during the American Civil War, as quoted in Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (2005) by Doris Kearns Goodwin, p. 643.
1860s
“The power to tax is not the power to destroy while this Court sits.”
Panhandle Oil Co. v. Mississippi ex rel. Knox http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?friend=oyez&court=us&vol=277&invol=218, 277 U.S. 233 (1928).
1920s
“Lawyers spend their professional careers shoveling smoke.”
Attributed in Watergate and the White House, Volumes 1-2 (1973) by Edward W. Knappman, p. 100; this has also become paraphrased as "Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke".
Attributions