The Spirit of the Common 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

Gray argues that law is what the courts lay down, while statutes, precedents and custom are only its sources. A key precursor of legal realism, written with unusual clarity.

John Chipman Gray