The Common Law (book)
1881 book by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr
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The Common Law is a book written by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in 1881,[1] 21 years before Holmes became an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Cover of the first edition of The Common Law. | |
| Author | Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publication date | 1881 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Paper |
| Pages | 480 |
| ISBN | 978-0486267463 |
The book is about common law in the United States, including torts, property, contracts, and crime. It is written as a series of lectures. It has gone out of copyright and is available in full on the web at Project Gutenberg.
A famous aphorism appears on the first page of the book: "The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience." Holmes's pronouncement is a qualification of a dictum by the famous seventeenth-century English jurist Sir Edward Coke: "Reason is the life of the law."[2]
