Holmes and the Romantic Mind
Dailey, Anne C.
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Abstract
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. is perhaps best known for his "tough-minded" jurisprudence based on objective standards of reasonableness. Scholars have traditionally understood Holmes's jurisprudential outlook as fundamentally behavioristic. Professor Dailey challenges that understanding, revealing the importance of Romantic psychology in Holmes's major writings. His outlook, she argues, was shaped by his belief in unconscious motivations, imagination, irrationality and instinctual drives.
Rather than simply characterize Holmes as a "Romantic," Professor Dailey draws out the conflict in his thought, illuminating his struggle to develop an empirical approach to law that could also account for the depth and complexity of human nature.