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The Influence Of James B. Thayer Upon The Work Of Holmes, Brandeis, And Frankfurter, Wallace Mendelson

Vanderbilt Law Review

James Bradley Thayer was one of the major figures in American constitutional law if only because of his influence upon Holmes, Brandeis, and Frankfurter (to say nothing of Learned and Augustus Hand). Now almost forgotten, Thayer, along with Christopher Columbus Langdell, John Chipman Gray, and James Barr Ames, was one of the giants at the Harvard Law School during its "golden age"at the close of the nineteenth century.' His legal career began only after serious flirtation with divinity and the Greek and Latin classics. That his interest in such matters was never suppressed entirely is evident in his "A Western …