The Common Law |
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Common terms and phrases
action actual alleged answerable applied argument assigns assumpsit bailee bailment bailor blameworthiness bound Bract Bracton breach cause charge circumstances cited Comm common carriers common law condition conduct consequences consideration contract court covenant covenantee criminal law damage debt defendant defendant's detinue disseisor doctrine doubt duty easement Eliz explained fact Fleta followed further German harm heir Henry VI horse Inst instance intent judges jury Keilway land Lecture Lex Salica Lord Lord Coke malice manor matter means modern moral murder nature negligence object obligation owner party peril person plaintiff possession possessor principle privity promise promisor punishment question Raym reason regard remedy Roman law rule Salic law seems sense servant ship shown Southcote's supposed supra tenant theory thing tion tort trespass true Ulpian unless warranty words writ wrong
Popular passages
Page 1 - 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 policy, 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. The law embodies the story of a nation's development through many centuries, and it cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms...
Page 41 - If people would gratify the passion of revenge outside of the law, if the law did not help them, the law has no choice but to satisfy the craving itself, and thus avoid the greater evil of private retribution.
Page 7 - If an ox gore a man or a woman, that they die : then the ox shall be surely stoned, and his flesh shall not be eaten ; but the owner of the ox shall be quit.
Page 116 - We think that the true rule of law is that the person who, for his own purposes, brings on his land and collects and keeps there anything likely to do mischief if it escapes, must keep it in at his peril; and if he does not do so, is prima facie answerable for all the damage which is the natural consequence of its escape.
Page 50 - And whether it brings those conditions to pass immediately by the use of force, as when it protects a house from a mob by soldiers, or appropriates private property to public use, or hangs a man in pursuance of a judicial sentence, or whether it brings them about mediately through men's fears, its object is equally an external result. In directing itself against robbery or murder, for instance, its purpose is to put a stop to the actual physical taking and keeping of other men's goods, or the actual...
Page 60 - So where a person does an act, lawful in itself, but in an unlawful manner, and without due caution and circumspection; as when a workman flings down a stone or piece of timber into the street, and kills a man ; this may be either misadventure, manslaughter, or murder, according to the circumstances under which the original act was done : if it were in a country village, where...
Page 5 - The reason which gave rise to the rule has been forgotten, and ingenious minds set themselves to inquire how it is to be accounted for. Some ground of policy is thought of, which seems to explain it and to reconcile it with the present state of things ; and then the rule adapts itself to the new reasons which have been found for it, and enters on a new career. The old form receives a new content, and in time even the form modifies itself to fit the meaning which it has received.
Page 296 - When one person signifies to another his willingness to do or to abstain from doing anything, with a view to obtaining the assent of that other to such act or abstinence, he is said to make a proposal...
Page 36 - Every important principle which is developed by litigation is in fact and at bottom the result of more or less definitely understood views of public policy; most generally, to be sure, under our practice and traditions, the unconscious result of instinctive preferences and inarticulate convictions, but none the less traceable to views of public policy in ""The Common Law'' by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Page 1.
Page 202 - But to prevent litigation, collusion, and the necessity of going into circumstances impossible to be unravelled, the law presumes against the carrier, unless he shows it was done by the king's enemies, or by such act as could not happen by the intervention of man, as storms, lightning, and tempests.