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December 31st, 2000. "Lawyers, History and Literature." "A lawyer without history and literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possess some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect." [Sir Walter Scott, Guy Mannering.] "The Laws of a country are necessarily connected with every thing belonging to the people of it; so that a thorough knowledge of them, and of their progress, would inform us of every thing that was most useful to be known about them; and one of the greatest imperfections of historians in general, is owing to their ignorance of law." [Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), Lectures on History.] "The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience. The seed of every new growth within its sphere has been a felt necessity. The form of continuity has been kept up by reasonings purporting to reduce everything to a logical sequence; but that form is nothing but the evening dress which the new-comer puts on to make itself presentable according to conventional requirements. The important phenomenon is the man underneath it, not the coat; the justice and reasonableness of a decision, not its consistency with previously held views. No one will ever have a truly philosophic mastery over the law who does not habitually consider the forces outside of it which have made it what it is...."1 [Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.] For further material on this subject, see "Wigmore's Reading List." ________________ NOTES: 1 A Selection of Cases on the Law of Contracts, 2d ed., by Christoper C. Langdell, American Law Review 14 (1880): 233. [Top] [Archives] [To Blupete's Essays] [Thoughts & Quotes of blupete] [Home] Peter Landry December, 2000 (2019)