Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine, from a critical point of view, the pragmatic ideas of experience and law in the thought of Oliver Wendell Holmes. In the last decades of the 19th century, he eagerly opens up a new path in law study beyond the consolidated legal doctrines. It is the application of the scientific method and the concept of experience that lends originality to his initiative. There is no such thing as a given in law: norms and legal institutions are always subjected to an examination of their raison d’être, which is the capability to meet evolving social needs. Legal theories immersed in life’s flow adapt continuously to the experience from which they draw all “juices of lifeµ. As a result, there is no other form of law than that “in actionµ for which judicial reasoning does not neglect what is expedient for the community.