Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Pragmatism, and the Jurisprudence ... - 9781611487930

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Pragmatism, and the Jurisprudence of AgonAesthetic Dissent and the Common Law\nAuthor(s): Allen Mendenhall\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Associated University Presses, United States\nImprint: Bucknell University Press,U.S.\nISBN-13: 9781611487930, 978-1611487930\nSynopsis\nThis book argues that Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., helps us see the law through an Emersonian lens by the way in which he wrote his judicial dissents. Holmess literary style mimics and enacts two characteristics of Ralph Waldo Emersons thought: superfluity and the poetics of transition, concepts ascribed to Emerson and developed by literary critic Richard Poirier. Using this aesthetic style borrowed from Emerson and carried out by later pragmatists, Holmes not only made it more likely that his dissents would remain alive for future judges or justices (because how they were written was itself memorable, whatever the value of their content), but also shaped our understanding of dissents and,.