We the People: Justice Holmes influences business of judging

The emergence of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes as a dominant influence in the work of the Supreme Court began in 1905, just three years after his appointment to the High Bench, in a dissenting opinion in Lochner v. New York that many scholars hail as the most famous dissent ever written.

The majority opinion in Lochner has been widely rebuked for the past century as an exercise in judicial activis...