On opinions...............

 

     Holmes and Hand were indeed very far apart, a gap in values all the more remarkable because Hand and Holmes shared a common philosophical outlook in most respects.  Neither believed in absolutes or eternal truths; both were skeptic; and both doubted the effectiveness and even the legitimacy of judicial restraints on legislative enactments.  Yet from these premises Hand was able to derive arguments for the judicial protection of minority views, more than a year before Holmes finally arrived at a similar (albeit weaker) conclusion.

     The dispute was remarkable at a more personal level as well.  That Hand would disagree with Holmes on anything, and would do so strongly and persistently, was extraordinary. . . .

"Opinions are at best provisional hypotheses, incompletely tested," Hand argued, so "we must be tolerant of opposite opinions or varying opinions by the very fact of our incredulity or our own."  Deference to majoritarianism was ordinarily central to Hand's beliefs, but here he could not follow Holmes's guide.  Yes, he agreed, silencing "the other fellow when he disagrees" was indeed "a natural right," but not one that a democratic society and its law could afford to endorse.

-Gerald Gunther, Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge