Volume 42, Number 14 · September 21, 1995
The Complete Holmes
By Sheldon M. Novick, Reply by Thomas C. Grey
In response to Bad Man from Olympus
(July 13, 1995)
To the Editors:
Prof. Thomas C. Grey, in his otherwise positive review of The Collected Works of Justice Holmes, Volumes I–III [NYR, July 13], complained that a planned selection of Holmes's judicial opinions were not published together with these first three volumes of public writings (books, articles, and public addresses). The result, he says, is a "curiously distorted version of the Justice," for which he blames the publisher, the University of Chicago Press. The distortion will be short-lived, and the fault, if there is one, is not with the publishers. Two volumes of selected opinions, giving a substantially complete picture of Holmes's work as a judge, are planned for next year. In still later volumes, I hope to include Holmes's unpublished judicial papers, and his unpublished letters, which Grey rightly says are also "essential sources for the study of [Holmes's] work." I am flattered by the suggestion that all this could have been done at once; but two or three volumes at a time are about all that I can manage.
Sheldon M. Novick
Scholar in Residence
Vermont Law School
South Royalton, Vermont
