Taft, Holmes, and the 1920s Court: An Appraisal

This study of William Howard Taft and Oliver Wendell Holmes delivers much more than the title suggests, yet the title remains appropriate. This is an account not only of their common membership on the Court in the 1920s but an explanation, by means of a quasi-biographical method, of how they arrived at the summit of their careers as public men. By probing their Puritan influence, the foundations of much of what they believed and ruled upon as judges become clear and persuasive. Their public lives diverged, to be sure. Taft and Holmes both began as judges at the state level only to have Taft veer off in the direction of high-level administrative and elective offices.