The Common Law
E103576
The Common Law is a foundational 1881 legal treatise by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. that profoundly shaped American legal realism and modern understandings of judge-made law.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| The Common Law canonical | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T881415 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: The Common Law Context triple: [Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., notableWork, The Common Law]
-
A.
The Growth of the Law
The Growth of the Law is a seminal legal treatise by Benjamin N. Cardozo that explores how judicial decision-making and evolving social needs shape the development of common law.
-
B.
Article XXXVII Of the Civil Magistrates
Article XXXVII Of the Civil Magistrates is a doctrinal statement within the Church of England’s Thirty-Nine Articles that outlines the proper authority and role of secular rulers in relation to the church and matters of faith.
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C.
Judicature Acts
The Judicature Acts were a series of 19th-century reforms that reorganized the English court system by merging common law and equity courts into a unified Supreme Court of Judicature.
-
D.
Common law of New South Wales
The Common law of New South Wales is the body of judge-made legal principles and precedents that underpins and guides the operation of the state’s legal system alongside statute law.
-
E.
In Chancery
"In Chancery" is a novel by John Galsworthy, part of his acclaimed Forsyte Saga, exploring the complexities of marriage, divorce, and social convention in upper-middle-class Edwardian England.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: The Common Law Target entity description: The Common Law is a foundational 1881 legal treatise by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. that profoundly shaped American legal realism and modern understandings of judge-made law.
-
A.
The Growth of the Law
The Growth of the Law is a seminal legal treatise by Benjamin N. Cardozo that explores how judicial decision-making and evolving social needs shape the development of common law.
-
B.
Article XXXVII Of the Civil Magistrates
Article XXXVII Of the Civil Magistrates is a doctrinal statement within the Church of England’s Thirty-Nine Articles that outlines the proper authority and role of secular rulers in relation to the church and matters of faith.
-
C.
Judicature Acts
The Judicature Acts were a series of 19th-century reforms that reorganized the English court system by merging common law and equity courts into a unified Supreme Court of Judicature.
-
D.
Common law of New South Wales
The Common law of New South Wales is the body of judge-made legal principles and precedents that underpins and guides the operation of the state’s legal system alongside statute law.
-
E.
In Chancery
"In Chancery" is a novel by John Galsworthy, part of his acclaimed Forsyte Saga, exploring the complexities of marriage, divorce, and social convention in upper-middle-class Edwardian England.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (49)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
book
ⓘ
legal treatise ⓘ |
| argues |
law develops historically through judicial decisions rather than purely through abstract logic
ⓘ
legal rules evolve from the felt necessities of the time, prevalent moral and political theories, and intuitions of public policy ⓘ |
| author | Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. ⓘ |
| basedOn | lectures delivered by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. at the Lowell Institute ⓘ |
| centralThesis | the life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience ⓘ |
| contributesTo |
foundations of American legal realism
ⓘ
modern analytic approaches to case law ⓘ |
| countryOfOrigin |
United States of America
ⓘ
surface form:
United States
|
| discusses |
contracts
ⓘ
criminal law ⓘ evolution of legal doctrines from primitive forms to modern law ⓘ liability and fault ⓘ objective standard of the reasonable person ⓘ property law ⓘ torts ⓘ |
| emphasizes |
the historical development of legal doctrines
ⓘ
the predictive theory of law as a prophecy of what courts will do ⓘ the role of judges in making and shaping law ⓘ |
| focusesOnJurisdiction |
English law
ⓘ
surface form:
Anglo-American law
|
| genre | non-fiction ⓘ |
| hasEdition | multiple later editions and reprints ⓘ |
| hasInfluenced |
legal realism
ⓘ
surface form:
American legal realism
modern understandings of judge-made law ⓘ |
| hasLegacy | remains a standard reference in discussions of common law methodology ⓘ |
| hasReception |
considered a classic of American legal scholarship
ⓘ
influential in the development of 20th-century jurisprudence ⓘ widely cited in American legal education ⓘ |
| influencedBy |
English common law tradition
ⓘ
historical school of jurisprudence ⓘ |
| keyConcept |
distinction between morality and law
ⓘ
fault as a basis of liability in tort ⓘ historical method in legal analysis ⓘ law as prediction of what courts will do in fact ⓘ objective theory of contract ⓘ |
| language | English ⓘ |
| legalSystemDiscussed | common law legal system ⓘ |
| libraryOfCongressClassification | KF213 .H6 ⓘ |
| notableQuote | The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience. ⓘ |
| publicationYear | 1881 ⓘ |
| publisher | Little, Brown and Company ⓘ |
| structure | collection of lectures ⓘ |
| subject |
United States law
ⓘ
surface form:
American law
common law ⓘ judge-made law ⓘ jurisprudence ⓘ legal realism ⓘ legal theory ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: The Common Law Description of subject: The Common Law is a foundational 1881 legal treatise by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. that profoundly shaped American legal realism and modern understandings of judge-made law.
Referenced by (1)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.