Wow! HeinOnline has a great new website containing 100 "legal classics." Which would you read first? I opened Langdell's famous casebook, Selection of Cases on the Law of Contracts, and read the preface, which included this:

I entered upon the duties of my present position, a year and a half ago, with a settled conviction that law could only be taught or learned effectively by means of cases in some form.... Law, considered [as] a science, consists of certain principles or doctrines. To have such a mastery of these as to be able to apply them with constant facility and certainty to the ever-tangled skein of human affairs, is what constitutes a true lawyer; and hence to acquire that mastery should be the business of every earnest student of law. Each of these doctrines has arrived at its present state by slow degrees; in other words, it is a growth, extending in many cases through centuries. This growth is to be traced in the main through a series of cases; and much the shortest and best, if not the only way of mastering the doctrine effectually is by studying the cases in which it is embodied. But the cases which are useful and necessary for this purpose at the present day bear an exceedingly small proportion to all that have been reported. The vast majority are useless and worse than useless for any purpose of systematic study.

Thus commenced the modern teaching of law. But take a look through the body of that work and note how short the cases are, how many Langdell included, and the absence of explanatory text. Modern casebooks bear only passing similarity to this seminal text.

Thanks to Bonnie Shucha for the tip.

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