Law and Culture

Abstract

A little more than a century ago, Oliver Wendell Holmes took up a task something like mine today. On January 8, 1897, Holmes dedicated a new law school building, and took the measure of law and culture at the turn of a century. Holmes spoke in Boston, at the university of that name. His lecture went into the books as “The Path of the Law” and became a classic of legal literature. Of course, I do not pretend to be the towering figure that Holmes was. He was over six feet tall; besides, I am not even a lawyer. Still, I am grateful for the opportunity to come to this new law school, important in its founding and in its promise, to offer some reflections on law and its relation to culture in this new century. Perhaps I should preface my remarks by noting a few differences between what Justice Holmes did at Boston University and what I intend to do here at Ave Maria. First, measured by the text published in the Harvard Law Review, Holmes spoke that chilly day in Boston for about two hours. I will not, at least, not quite. Second, Holmes placed before his audience the proposition that “the man of the future is the man of statistics and the master of economics.” My view is very different. While I do not belittle statistics and economics or deny their importance in the law, what I wish to urge today upon lawyers, law professors, and law students is reflection on fundamental moral truths: truths that are by nature irreducible to numbers and resistant to calculation. What Holmes did, and what I am here to do, differ in still another way: my charge is to consecrate to God, as well as to dedicate to human purpose, a law building. From what we know