Holmes Pragmatism Legal Thought

This article is devoted to the introduction, analysis and criticism of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.' s legal pragmatism.The first chapter hereof is primarily about the background of Holmes' legal pragmatism, of which the first section introduced the life of the Justice, as well as his two influential works, widely known as the living resources of legal pragmatism. The second section mainly analyzed the philosophical theories during Holmes' time. The descriptions of the coetaneous philosophers illustrated the philosophical and theoretical resources of Holmes' legal pragmatism. In the third section, the background, concerning about both the culture and the society, was illustrated. The culture diversification and the transformation of the society remarked the complexity of this background.The second chapter of this article anatomized Holmes' legal pragmatism in three aspects, i. e. his skeptical legal epistemology, legal prediction ontology and experience-favored methodology. According to this chapter, Holmes' epistemology was tinctured as skeptical, which consequently influenced his view about the truth. Holmes basically accepted the idea of William James about the truth, and therefore concluded that the nature of the law is the prediction of how judges would act, and such prediction should be conducted without the moral judgment. Such conclusion was referred to as the theory of prediction and the theory of "bad man" . In the last part, I also discussed about the relationship between experience and logic in Holmes' view, and concluded that Holmes, embracing this view, might have an experience-favored methodology in his practices.The third chapter focused on the influences of Holmes' s theories and served a brief comment on these influences. Admittedly, Holmes' legal pragmatism is remarkably influential, as proved by the legal realism and legal economics theories. Meanwhile, Holmes' legal pragmatism also contributed to the American judicial practices, especially in the area of the first Amendment of the American Constitution. By the last paragraphs, I made some brief comments on Holmes' legal pragmatism.