Controversies over Holmes linger, seventy-four years since his death. In retrospect we gain insight into the work of an original thinker, but one may wonder how long the settlement of Holmes's reputation must take. Not quite a half century ago, Paul Freund remarked:

While among over two thousand opinions, in fifty years of judging, there are ample matters for which Holmes is happily, as well as unhappily, not an authority, I have bypassed much relevant criticism to suggest that contemporary legal and political theory has something to gain from a comprehensive reassessment. The Common Law has passed its 125th year, still widely misunderstood.

Much hinges on the turn Holmes's work took in 1876, examined in chapter 6, after his early critical scholarship had developed a deep skepticism of the project of analytical classification and an alternative rooted in common law.