Book Review: The Spirit of the Common Law

Abstract

This volume contains the brilliant lectures delivered by Dean Pound in the summer of 1921 as one of the lecturers of the Dartmouth Alumni Lectureships on the Guernsey Center Moore Foundation. Starting with the premise that "if not actually upon trial in the United States, the common law is certainly under indictment," Dean Pound says that it behooves the lawyer "to examine the body of legal tradition on which he relies, to ascertain the elements of which it is made up, to learn its spirit, and to perceive how it has come to be what it is, to the end that we may know how far we may make use of it in the stage of legal development upon which the world has now entered." For such a survey certainly no one could be found better qualified by scholarship, training and experience than Dean Pound.