Oliver Wendell Holmes The Path Of The Law

Holmes had been born into a wealthy New Hampshire family and was given the name Herman Webster Mudgett (America’s Serial Killers). “If Mudgett or his brother or sister were bad, their strict Methodist parents sent them to the attic for a full day without speaking or eating,. Mudgett’s father was especially abusive after he’d been drinking - which was often” (Spikol). However, his father was a wealthy and respected citizen and had been the local postmaster for nearly twenty five years (Taylor). It is surprising an important member of the community was a child abuser. The abuse of his father may be one of the

Henry Howard Mudgett, better known as H.H Holmes, to most is just a ghost story. He is nothing more than a black mark on America’s extensive history, a part of history that is skipped over more often than not. However, H.H Holmes was an important part of United States history. Without the horrors of H.H Holmes, we would not have as strong of a law enforcement as we do today. H.H Holmes helped open a new world of research to psychologists and without him, psychologists would not have as much knowledge of the impacts of poor mental health as they do today. Because of H.H Holmes, the government would not know how to punish crimes of such high degree, or how to contribute certain factors such as mental illness for such crimes. H.H Holmes helped

Lastly, Holmes has so much bravado.  As the creditors were swaying to arrest Holmes, “Holmes fled”(Larson 325).  This shows he won’t be a man and face the consequences. He won’t fight back. As Holmes fled, he shows the reader this fake courage and fake dignity.

A substantial debate over the law’s relationship with morality exists within the legal system. This debate gained new perspective when Oliver Wendell Holmes published The Path of Law in 1897, which outlined his view on the relationship between the law and morality. This paper will first consider whether or not Holmes believed that a writing must be moral in order to constitute a law. Next, we will explore my general agreement with Holmes’ view on this matter. Then, the paper will consider an objection to my agreement with Holmes, and then reply to that objection. Finally, we will end by analyzing the discussion of the relationship between morality and law. In this paper, I will argue that Holmes does not believe that a writing must be

The irony that such a positive global statement could be at the same place at the same time as such terror as Dr. Holmes’s murders was daunting and it lured him to pursue this particular case. He says he would not have been interested in just doing a book about the Fair or just about Holmes. But together they made a unity of good and evil. Though Holmes is the obvious criminal in this novel, Larson doesn’t particularly characterize him that way.

"... , for no such crime has come in the memory of men and there are no laws to provide for it." (Page 5)

When H.H. Holmes arrives in Chicago, he looks like any other ambitious young doctor braving the journey to the Windy City to start a new life. “He walked with confidence and dressed well, conjuring an impression of wealth and achievement. He was twenty-six years old… He had dark hair and striking blue eyes, once likened to the eyes of a Mesmerist,” describes the author. Larson cites a physician, John L. Capen, “‘Great murderers, like great men in other walks of activity, have blue eyes’” (35). In including this citation, Larson clues the reader in on Holmes’ true nature in addition to eliciting a feeling of unease through his diction. With this first impression, the reader is already wary of Holmes and his actions. Larson further solidifies this distrust with the following passages. “The city had impressed [Holmes], he said later, which was surprising because as a rule nothing impressed him, nothing moved him. Events and people captured his attention the way moving objects caught the notice of an amphibian: first a machinelike registration of proximity, next to calculation of worth, and last is a decision to act or remain motionless.” (37) With this quotation, Larson explains how Holmes chose

concentrates that law is purely used to promote good by the state. Furthermore, law should

The idea of laws was to make the morals of the community and their

“They tend to share certain key characteristics. They're manipulative, cold, and lack what we might call a moral compass--they know right from wrong but are not invested in that distinction. Their only concern with their ‘wrong’ behavior is getting caught, but because they are deceitful, callous and not subject to anxiety, they easily elude capture” (Spikol, 5). These sort of criminals were ones that the Chicago Police Department had never been introduced to before, causing them to change their entire perspective on cases once Holmes’ had passed. According to John Bartlow Martin, a writer for the “Harper’s Archive”, Holmes’ murder castle was filled with trapdoors, gas chambers, secret passageways, and even pits of acid used to get rid of bodies and other pieces of evidence. These were all things that the law enforcers had never even heard of in a story, much less seen or thought of in real life. It’s safe to say that Holmes drastically affected the police’s outlook on the cases in the near, and even far, future of criminals after his mystery; or at least part of his mystery had been

www.iep.utm.edu/legalpos/ [April 17 2001][accessed 4th November 2012] Plato.standford.edu/entries/legal-positivism/ [2003][accessed 4th November 2012] 6 Joseph Raz The Authority Of Law: Essays On Law And Morality(1979)p. 47

In Hart’s eyes, though there may be a congruence between law and morality, it is by no means a necessary connection. (Hart, DATE)

In the story “A Scandal in Bohemia,” we get a glimpse of Holmes’s character, a natural mastermind, through John Watson's narration. As with any narrated scene, our perception of Holmes

Since we were kids and became conscious of our surrounding, our parents and grandparents instilled in us an awareness of what is right and wrong. In other words, it is a trait of all human beings and fosters from our desire to get along with each other to live a harmonious life. Laws are a set of rules and behaviors set by governments that society illustrate on what people can or cannot do. The purpose of this paper is three-fold: it will identify and define what distinguishes law from ethics and what similarities they share. The second is an analysis of examples of where law and ethics either meet or diverge. Third is the role where law and ethics either meet or diverge.

act in favour of justice yet it is better to follow the law than to