The Nature and Sources of the Law

The life of the law has not been logic, it has been experience. Holmes's lectures trace liability, contract and possession through history and laid the ground for American legal realism.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Holmes's 1897 address defines law as a prediction of what courts will actually do and separates law from morality. The most cited essay in American jurisprudence.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

A judge explains how judges really decide cases, weighing logic, history, custom and social welfare. Cardozo's Yale lectures remain a classic account of judicial reasoning.

Benjamin N. Cardozo

Pound examines the forces that shaped the common law, from feudalism and Puritanism to the courts, and calls for a sociological jurisprudence suited to modern society.

Roscoe Pound