The Common Law

Holmes, O. W., & Jr. (1881). The Common Law.

Type

Book

Intellectual base

Review or monograph

Year

1881

Link

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2449/2449-h/2449-h.htm

Cited from

computer_science, law_governance

Cited by

2 citations across 2 artifacts.

Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.

Primes

• Dependency
  • Constraints answer "what is forbidden?"; dependencies answer "what is required?", a grammatical separation Holmes (1881) traced through contract doctrine, where consideration is a required precondition for enforceability rather than a constraint on the bargain's content.
• Precedent (Stare Decisis)
  • Consistency can emerge from common principles without precedent; precedent enforces consistency even when decision-makers disagree on underlying principle, a separation between rule and life-of-the-law that Holmes (1881) makes foundational to common-law thought.

    This sourceFoundational text of American legal realism: separates the "logic" of legal rules from the "life of the law" (experience, policy, equity), grounding the distinction between consistency as a property and precedent as a mechanism that can enforce it across disagreement.

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