For Holmes, rationality was not based on an abstract reasoning but on real men exercising the rationality that experience taught. "The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, institutions of public policy [and]....even the prejudices that judges share with their fellow men" had more to do with the outcome of cases and the path of legal development than fixed principles or abstract logic. He consistently believed in judicial restraint and deference to the elected branches. "Common Law (1881)" As David Hollinger wrote of the justice - Holmes was eager to focus on contingent historical forces rather than on timeless, rational structures; he was persistently fatalistic rather than voluntaristic; and he attributed
