The Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise: an Introduction

by Maeva Marcus

Abstract

As the third general editor of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court, I had the good fortune to be in that position when Mark Tushnet and Robert Post produced their manuscripts on the Hughes and Taft Courts respectively—both truly monumental achievements. By way of introduction, I thought it might be helpful to give JACH readers a short account of the checkered progress of the Devise History, so they might better understand how Professors Tushnet and Post came to undertake such massive projects.