Susan Haack (University of Miami - School of Law) has posted Pragmatism, Law, and Morality: The Lessons of Buck v. Bell (European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, 2011 III 2) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
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Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. - a founding member of the Metaphysical Club, and traditionally regarded as the first legal pragmatist - would eventually become a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. In one of his best-known rulings for the Court, Buck v. Bell (1927), Holmes held that Carrie Buck's constitutional rights would not be violated by allowing the State of Virginia to sterilize her against her will. This disturbing ruling has sometimes been thought to confirm criticism's of Holmes' (alleged) moral skepticism. But this, I agrue, is a mistake: Holmes was no moral skeptic but, like James and Dewey, a moral ballibilist; and his ruling in Buck, misguided as it is, is nevertheless illustrative of his important theoretical point that judges are no less fallible about moral questions than the rest of us, and that it's dangerous for them to imagine otherwise.
