Realism and incongruity Oliver Wendell Holmes and Felix Frankfurter mentor and novitiate on the court

Oliver Wendell Holmes and Felix Frankfurter are worthy of examination because in many ways their tenures on the Supreme Court presented a fascinating study in similarity; To study these judges is to be privy to a relationship that began at Harvard Law School and would display itself in a shared intellectual elitism that importantly defined the years each of them sat on the bench. Examining their work is discovering a strong thread of similarity that binds both their lives in law and their philosophy as human beings. Because neither can be irrevocably categorized, they typify that special quality which sets the memorable apart from the ordinary; What I plan here is an examination of the most telling free speech cases in the careers of both these men. My interest is in presenting documentation that their decisions were hardly characteristic of an always divinable ideology. Inconsistency gave color to the tenures of both on the Court. The possibility that the human intellect is capable of finding new answers is appropriate to a true understanding of the credo that underscored the juristic lives of Frankfurter and Holmes. It is the sense of what represents the responsibility of a Supreme Court justice that joins them, and it is in their work where it may be found. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)