[Rarebooks] FS: First Issue of One of the Most Influential 19th Century Book on Legal Scholarship

[Charles Agvent]

HOLMES, Oliver Wendell, Jr. THE COMMON LAW. Boston: Little, Brown, and 
Company, 1881. First Edition. First Issue with the two-line printer's 
imprint on title page verso repeated with ampersand on page 422. 
Original pebbled russet cloth, as with Holmes's personal copy. A classic 
of literature on law, this collection of lectures given at the Lowell 
Institute in Boston is one of the most influential books on legal 
scholarship of nineteenth century America. Grolier, 100 American, 84: 
"This brilliant exposition, as effective on English scholarship and 
legal thinking as on American, of the true nature of law both as a 
development from the past and an organism of the present, blew fresh air 
into lawyers' minds encrusted with Blackstone and Kent." From its 
opening paragraph: "The life of the law has not been logic: it has been 
experience.... In order to know what it is, we must know what it has 
been, and what it tends to become." Fraternity law library bookplate on 
the front pastedown with an ink annotation above it and a small ink 
stamp on the front endpaper. Minor fraying to the spine tips. A Near 
Fine copy of this high spot of legal scholarship.

Holmes served as chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court from 
1899 until 1902. In 1902 he was appointed to the United States Supreme 
Court by President Theodore Roosevelt, a position he held until his 
retirement in 1932. Holmes became famous for his liberal interpretations 
of the United States Constitution and was known as the "Great Dissenter" 
because of his disagreement with the views of his colleagues on the 
Court. (#018647) $2,000.00

https://www.charlesagvent.com/shop/agvent/018647.html

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