WHEREVER the Common Law is administered by the Courts, there are few who do not respect and admire Mr. Justice Holmes. Now in his thirtieth year of service as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court he is famous as the great liberal of the bench.

Two years ago Alfred Lief published a collection of Mr. Justice Holmes' dissenting opinions. Now in a companion volume to this earlier one, the same editor has collected opinions which portray the jurist not as the "Great Dissenter" but as the spokesman for the majority of the Court.

The selections published in this volume cover thoroughly, with the exception of the topic. Holmes' judicial career from 1899, when he presided as chief justice over the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, to the recent case of New Jersey v. New York over the diversion of water from certain tributaries of the Delaware River to increase the water, supply of New York City. The exception is Holmes' opinions on prohibition, in which, true to his liberal philosophy, he has favored the right of the government to experiment with social reform. Save for one case in which a bootlegger's income was held taxable under Federal laws, no mention is made of this important issue.

According to Professor Laski, Mr. Justice Holmes may be called a "legal pragmatist; legal doctrines and institutions, for him, are to be explained in terms of the convenience they represent." He is a realist. To quote Professor Laski again. "He has never spoken of law as the equivalent of justice. He has seen that, in any society, it is merely the will that has known how to get itself accepted . . . The true justification of a statute, he has somewhere written, lies 'in some help which the law brings toward reaching a social end which the governing power of the community has made up its mind that it wants." This statement is the kernel of Holmes" philosophy. It has kept him looking forward instead of backward at the lessons of history, and has made him the great liberal of the bench and the champion of social experiment.