ABSTRACT
It is hard to find a unifying thread to tie together those decisions by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. which fall outside of the civil liberties area. Holmes as economist does not play an important role in these decisions. Holmes had an eye for the realities of the legislative and administrative processes. The cases themselves have been selected partly for their legal importance, partly for their role in American history. Holmes, while conceding by implication that freedom of contract comes under the due process protection of the Fourteenth Amendment, answered that in this case there was no violation. Like an archaeologist Holmes digs into the subsoil to reveal the buried intellectual cities beneath Peckham's legal language. The Holmes dissent served to polarize the forces of a newer jurisprudence. The crux of Holmes's Coppage opinion is to be found in the clause, "to establish the equality of position between the parties in which liberty of contract begins.".
