SOURCE: "The Path of the Law," in Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.,—What Manner of Liberal?, edited by David H. Burton, Robert E. Kreiger Publishing Company, 1979, pp. 21-37.

In the following essay, originally published in 1896 in the Harvard Law Review, Holmes details his belief that legal considerations should rely on empiricism and reason rather than traditional absolutes.

When we study law we are not studying a mystery but a well known profession. We are studying what we shall want in order to appear before judges, or to advise people in such a way as to keep them out of court. The reason why it is a profession, why people will pay lawyers to argue for them or to advise them, is that in societies like ours the command of the public force is intrusted to the judges in certain cases, and the whole power of the state will be...