Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1902 to 1932, previously Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Known as The Great Dissenter for influential dissenting opinions, notably in Lochner v. New York (1905), where he rejected the majority's reading of a single economic theory into the Constitution, and in Abrams v. United States (1919), where he framed free expression as a marketplace of ideas. His 1881 lectures published as The Common Law argued that legal rules grow from experience and social need rather than pure logic, an early and lasting statement of American legal realism.