Whe did Justice Holmes consistently defer to legislative initiatives, while his colleagues were more likely to invoke traditional constitutional limitations on government authority? According to Jerome Frank, it was because Holmes was “The Completely Adult Jurist,” who has “put away childish longings for a father-controlled world” and attained “an adult emotional status, a self-reliant, fearless approach to life.” He therefore “can afford not to use his authority as if he, himself, were a strict father.” See Jerome Frank, Law and the Modern Mind 270-276 (1931).
It’s remarkable that the intellectual class once took such Freudian claptrap seriously. [Oddly, modern scholars still cite Frank’s famous characterization of Holmes as “a completely adult jurist” as if it reflected some real insight beyond a crude Freudian analysis. I wonder if this reflects a failure to read the original source.]