Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote and said many famous things during his long and illustrious judicial career. One of my personal favorites is: “The life of the law has not been logic, it has been experience.” As I tell my law students, that gem can be trotted out whenever one is in a jam for something to say; and its elasticity (and opaque meaning) will usually suffice to end whatever tough spot in which one finds herself.
Unfortunately, when Holmes penned his most infamous opinion in Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927), neither “logic” nor “experience” carried the day.
Originally published in Federal Bar Council Quarterly - Dec./Jan./Feb. 2018.
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