Research Catalog

Title

The hidden Holmes : his theory of torts in history / David Rosenberg.

Author

Rosenberg, David (Professor of law)

Publication

Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 1995.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xii, 280 pages; 25 cm

Summary

• This book challenges a contemporary consensus on the titanic figure of Oliver Wendell Holmes. Holmes is one of the founders of twentieth-century tort law, but David Rosenberg takes sharp issue with the current portrayal of Holmes as a legal formalist who opposed the notion of strict liability and dogmatically advocated a universal rule of negligence in order to favor industrial development.
• Marshaling the evidence found in Holmes's classic The Common Law and other writings, Rosenberg reveals that the opposite was the case, and, in the process, raises troubling questions about the current state of legal scholarship.

Subjects

• Torts
• Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr., 1841-1935
• Strict liability > United States > History
• Torts > United States > History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Torts and the New Jurisprudence. Torts and Strict Liability. Holmes Revised -- 1. Formalist Legal Science. The Genesis of Holmes's Antiformalism. Analytic Legal Science. Historical Legal Science. The Powers of Darkness -- 2. The New Jurisprudence. Experience and Legal Evolution. A Unifying Theory of Tort Liability. Purposes of a General Theory of Law -- 3. The Common Ground Liability. Absolute Responsibility in Trespass. Absolute Responsibility as Morally Dry Precedent -- 4. General Theory of Torts - Part One. The Bifurcated Theory. The Foresight Theory of Responsibility. The Foresight Arrangement. Foresight-Based Strict Liability -- 5. General Theory of Torts - Part Two. The Negligence Rule. Strict Liability. Policy Limits to Strict Liability -- 6. Holmes in History. The Contemporary Consensus. Sources of the Current Misunderstanding. Rise of the Negligence-Dogma Thesis. "To Burst Inflated Explanations"

ISBN

0674390024 (alk. paper)

LCCN

95024264

OCLC

ocm32703724

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries