Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

In Otis v Parker, the California constitution prohibited sales of corporate stock on margin. A client sued a broker to reverse his transactions. The broker said the law deprived him of liberty and property without due process of law under the 14th amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed and deferred to the state's interest in addressing stock speculation based on margins.

  Holmes was on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for 20 years, and wrote nearly 1,000 opinions there.  As a justice and later chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, Holmes had extensive trial duties, both at law (with a jury) and in equity. He tried dozens of cases per year. About 4/5 of his rulings as a trial judge were upheld on appeal to the full court. 1/5 were overturned. At that time, the justices sat on the full court when their own trial-level rulings were reviewed. Holmes himself wrote a few of the decisions overturning his own trial-level judgments. O.W. Holmes: a Life in War, Law, & Ideas.

  "As a Union officer in the Civil War, [Holmes] had barely escaped death at Ball’s Bluff and Antietam when musket balls tore through his chest and neck, missing heart, spine, and carotid artery by an eighth of an inch." Oliver Wendell Holmes: A Life in War, Law, and Ideas (2019).