I bow to no man in terms of my reverence for Thomas Sowell. But I’m not 100% with him in his support for Oliver Wendell Holmes. I spent a good amount of time reading up on Holmes for my book (which, for the record, Sowell has raved about) and consulted quite a few legal eagles I respect. And I basically think Holmes is overrated and his judicial restraint has a lot more to do with the fact that progressives were running wild and he wanted to rationalize giving them a free hand. He was a champion of a pernicious judicial pragmatism and an enemy of natural law. He was a eugenicist of the first order (Buck v. Bell, anyone?) and a very dark man personally. I did a quick search for Ramesh’s magazine piece on Holmes from a while back and couldn’t find it, but it’s well worth reading, if memory serves. I recall that Adler is no fan either. I’d be curious what our Bench Memoers et al think of the guy.