Holmes, Oliver Wendell Jr. The Common Law.

Based on a series of his lectures, Holmes opens the book begins by declaring, “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policies, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed.”