'The Common Law' is a book that was written by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., 21 years before Holmes became an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The book is about common law in the United States, including torts, property, contracts, and crime. It is written as a series of lectures. One of the most famous aphorisms to be drawn from this book occurs on the first page: "The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience."