He ran unsuccessfully as the Progressive Party's candidate for chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals in 1913, but withdrew from active politics shortly afterwards.

[1] He rose to fame outside the legal profession in 1944 during World War II after giving a short address in Central Park that struck a popular chord in its appeal for tolerance.

[10] Learned's mother thereafter promoted an idealized memory of her husband's professional success, intellectual abilities, and parental perfection, placing considerable pressure on her son.

[11] Lydia Hand was an involved and protective mother who had been influenced by a Calvinist aunt as a child; she passed on a strong sense of duty and guilt to her only son.

He never enjoyed the Academy's uninspired teaching or its narrow curriculum, which focused on Ancient Greek and Latin, with few courses in English, history, science, or modern languages.

He embarked on courses in philosophy and economics, studying under the eminent and inspirational philosophers William James, Josiah Royce and George Santayana.

[49] He blamed himself for a lack of insight into his wife's needs in the early years of the marriage, confessing his "blindness and insensibility to what you wanted and to your right to your own ways when they differed from mine".

[51] At the time, Croly was writing his influential book The Promise of American Life, in which he advocated a program of democratic and egalitarian reform under a national government with increased powers.

With the help of the influential Charles C. Burlingham, a senior New York lawyer and close friend, he gained the backing of Attorney General George W. Wickersham, who urged President William Howard Taft to appoint Hand.

[62] In his opinion, Hand recommended updating the law, arguing that the obscenity rule should not simply protect the most susceptible readers but should reflect community standards: It seems hardly likely that we are even to-day so lukewarm in our interest in letters or serious discussion as to be content to reduce our treatment of sex to the standard of a child's library in the supposed interest of a salacious few, or that shame will for long prevent us from adequate portrayal of some of the most serious and beautiful sides of human nature.

His efforts at first appeared fruitless, but Holmes' dissenting opinion in Abrams v. United States in November 1919 urged greater protection of political speech.

This discretion, plus a series of impressive speaking engagements, won him the respect of legal scholars and journalists,[98] and by 1930 he was viewed as a serious candidate for a seat on the Supreme Court.

[104] In a 1933 broadcast, he explained the balancing act required of a judge in interpreting statutes: On the one hand he must not enforce whatever he thinks best; he must leave that to the common will expressed by the government.

[98] On May 21, 1944, he addressed almost one and a half million people in Central Park, New York, at the annual "I Am an American Day" event, where newly naturalized citizens swore the Pledge of Allegiance.

His biographer Gerald Gunther, noting the paradox of the agnostic Hand's use of religious overtones, suggests that the most challenging aspect of the speech was that the spirit of liberty must entertain doubt.

It rested on her claim that her rights under the Fourth Amendment had been infringed by a warrantless search, and that details of illegal wiretaps had not been fully disclosed at trial.

In his opinion, Hand wrote: "[F]ew weapons in the arsenal of freedom are more useful than the power to compel a government to disclose the evidence on which it seeks to forfeit the liberty of its citizens.

[132] In 1953, Hand wrote a scathing dissent from a Second Circuit decision affirming the perjury conviction of William Remington, a government economist accused of Communist sympathies and activities.

[146] They included a controversial attack on the Warren Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which in Hand's opinion had exceeded its powers by overruling Jim Crow segregation laws.

Having read Croly's The Promise of American Life and its anti-Jeffersonian plea for government intervention in economic and social issues, he joined the Progressive Party.

The pragmatic philosophy Hand had imbibed from William James at Harvard required each issue to be individually judged on its merits, without partiality.

In his decision on Masses Publishing Co. v. Patten, he defined his position on political incitement: Detestation of existing policies is easily transformed into forcible resistance of the authority which puts them in execution, and it would be folly to disregard the causal relation between the two.

[197] In the opinion of Kathryn Griffith, "The importance of Learned Hand's philosophy in terms of practical application to the courts lies generally in his view of the pragmatic origin of all law, but most specifically in his unique interpretation of the Bill of Rights.

Critics of his position included his colleague on the Second Circuit, Jerome Frank, who wrote: "[I]t seems to me that here, most uncharacteristically, Judge Hand indulges in a judgement far too sweeping, one which rests on a too-sharp either-or, all or nothing, dichotomy.

According to Archibald Cox: "The opinions of Judge Hand have had significant influence both in breaking down the restrictions imposed by the dry literalism of conservative tradition and in showing how to use with sympathetic understanding the information afforded by the legislative and administrative processes.

In his dedication, Chafee wrote, "[Hand] during the turmoil of war courageously maintained the traditions of English-speaking freedom and gave it new clearness and strength for the wiser years to come.

Hand balanced these views with important decisions to protect a defendant's constitutional rights concerning unreasonable searches, forced confessions and cumulative sentences.

Law students studying torts often encounter Hand's 1947 decision for United States v. Carroll Towing Co.,[211] which gave a formula for determining liability in cases of negligence.

[212] Hand's interpretations of complex Internal Revenue Codes, which he called "a thicket of verbiage", have been used as guides in the gray area between individual and corporate taxes.

Finally, in an essay called Origin of a Hero discussing his novel the Rector of Justin, author Louis Auchincloss says the main character was not based on a headmaster—certainly not, as was often speculated, Groton's famous Endicott Peabody.