Holmes writes concerning a case before him.  In full:  “I am sorry that I must return this once more.  I do not remember to have assented to issues, as I told you, and it is not a matter of course to grant them on agreement of counsel.  The usual course is to present them to the judge who is to try them.  If for any reason the matter should be attended to now you will have to see me and notify me that issues should be granted.  I say this assuming that I have not passed on the question already which I do not remember having done.” 

In our experience, Holmes is very scarce in letters relating to cases before him.  This one, therefore, would be an excellent addition to any Holmes or Supreme Court collection.

Holmes, one of the most influential Supreme Court Justices of the 20th Century, was a Boston native, the son of renowned physician and poet Oliver Wendell Holmes.  He attended Harvard University, but when the Civil War began during his senior year he enlisted in the Massachusetts militia.  While serving in the Union Army, he was shot eight times, suffering wounds at the Ball’s Bluff, Antietam, and Fredricksburg, and could easily have been killed.  His wartime experiences colored his views for the rest of his life.

After the war, Holmes enrolled in Harvard Law School.  He was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1866 and began practicing law in Boston.  In 1870, he became the editor of the American Law Review, edited a new edition of Kent’s Commentaries on American Law, and published numerous articles. In 1881, at age 40, he published the first edition of his famous book The Common Law, in which he summarized the views that he had developed over the preceding years.  That book contains Holmes’s oft-quoted observation that the “life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.”

Holmes joined the Harvard law faculty but served for just a short time before he was appointed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 1882.  He served 20 years, the last three as its Chief Justice, until President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him to the United States Supreme Court in 1902.  He went on to serve another 30 years on the nation’s highest court, where he advocated his philosophy of judicial restraint, often approving legislation that he might have thought unwise, and that his colleagues struck down, because he believed it his duty to allow the political branches to enact laws as they saw fit. The quality of his dissents, many of which ultimately became the prevailing view, earned him the nickname “The Great Dissenter.”

This letter is in very fine condition.  It is bright and crisp.  It has a single vertical mailing fold, which does not touch the signature, and former dealer pencil notations in the upper corners of the first page.  Holmes has penned it in black fountain pen.