Holmes 1881 Common Law

THE COMMON LAW i BY / OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, Jr. lAte Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States LAW LIBRARY ST. LOUIS UNIVERSITY LINDELL BLVJ. ST. LOUIS, MO 63108 FORTY-FIFTH PRINTING BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY Copyright, 1881, By O. W. Holmes, Jb. CopyrigU, 1909, 1928 % By Olivkr Wkndell Holmb& TOUTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA i PREFACE, This book is written in pursuance of a plan which I have long had in mind. I had taken a first step in publishing a number of articles in the American Law Review, but I should hardly have attempted the task of writing a connected treatise at the present time, had it not been for the invitation to deliver a course of Lectures at That encoura; accomplish my wish. The necessity of preparing for the Lectures made it easier to go farther, and to prepare for printing, and accordingly I did so. made articles iiu» uwu uikuu irom tnat source nas been re- 1 I arranged, rewritten, and enlarged, and the greater **- part of the work is new. The Lectures as actually delivered were a good deal simplified, and were twelve in number. The twelfth, however, nj was a summary iv PREFACE. been omitted, as not necessary for a reader with the book before him. The limits of such an undertaking as the present must necessarily be more or less arbitrary. Those to which I have confined myself have been fixed in part by the…