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Title: The Common Law by Oliver W. Holmes ISBN: 0-486-26746-6 Publisher: Dover Publications Pub. Date: 01 July, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.18 (11 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A Law School Preview
Comment: In his book, A Matter Of Interpretation, Justice Scalia recommends this title as summer reading to incoming first-year law students. The Common Law certainly covers most first-year law courses: Torts, Property, Contracts, and Criminal Law. It is invaluable both as a preview and as a reference during the academic year. Holmes' style is fluid and readable although a century old. It can't hurt to get used to his prose--it's certain to be encountered throughout one's time at law school.
Rating: 5
Summary: Worth more than one reading
Comment: This is one of those books that deserves more than one read. Some books are to be read more than once, because the content or style is too difficult - for some The Common Law may be one of those books. But others, like this one, deserve to be read more than once because every reading brings out more depth in the material. I originally read Holmes' work in the context of trying to understand the legal background of contemporary American controversies such as gun control, abortion rights and so on. I didn't discover much about those issues, but I WAS inspired to study law. Reading The Common Law (and Blackstone's Commentaries) was one of the crucial factors in my deciding to go to law school. Though there are some who feel that the style is "stilted" or "old-fashioned" it is in many ways a style profoundly more readable and even more beautiful than is much of the writing published today, and I can only lament that there are few contemporary writers who can match the fluency and clarity of Holmes. If you are at all interested in the law or in the historical aspects of society as affected by law, and if you enjoy books written in better than average English, then this is certainly one you should read.
Rating: 3
Summary: Philosophy in historical dress
Comment: Grant Gilmore, the late professor of contracts at Yale, got The Common Law right when he wrote in The Ages of American Law (1977) that Holmes' lectures have "long since become unreadable unless the reader is prepared to put forward an almost superhuman effort of will to keep his attention from flagging and his interest from wandering." (52) I also agree with Gilmore that Holmes is attempting to disguise a philosophic statement in historical dress. The Common Law may even be "an elaborate joke" that Holmes was amused to play on his audience. Influential, yes; worth reading, no.
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Title: Nature of the Judicial Process by Benjamin N. Cardozo ISBN: 0300000332 Publisher: Yale University Press Pub. Date: 01 January, 1960 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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Title: The Essential Holmes: Selections from the Letters, Speeches, Judicial Opinions, and Other Writings of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. by Oliver Wendell Jr. Holmes, Richard A. Posner ISBN: 0226675548 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1996 List Price(USD): $17.50 |
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Title: Introduction to Legal Reasoning by E.H. Levi ISBN: 0226474089 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1962 List Price(USD): $9.00 |
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Title: Commentaries on the Laws of England: A Facsimile of the First Edition of 1765-1769 by William Blackstone ISBN: 0226055388 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1979 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: A Matter of Interpretation by Antonin Scalia, Amy Gutmann ISBN: 0691004005 Publisher: Princeton University Press Pub. Date: 27 July, 1998 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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