In case any one else in curious:
"It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule than that it was laid down in the time of Henry IV.
It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule
simply persists from imitation of the past."
Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Path of the Law, 10 Harv.L.Rev. 457, 469 (1897)
> One of our professors recalls a quotation that he thinks might be
> by Holmes. The subject is the limited value of precedent. The quotation
> is something like: "If the only thing a proposition has to commend itself
> is that it has been followed for hundreds of years, then it is of little
> value." Or substitute "rule," "idea," or "principle" for "proposition,"
> and substitute "a hundred years" or "centuries" or any other long period
> of time for "hundreds of years," and so on. This sounds familiar to me
> and to a couple of colleagues here, but I haven't been able to find it
> using legal quotation books and LEXIS (US file and ALLREV file, various
> searches). The professor tried The Common Law and The Path of the Law.
> If this passage seems familiar to you and you have any more clues or even
> a citation, please let me know. Thanks.
>
> Mary Whisner
> Head of Reference Telephone: (206) 543-6794
> Gallagher Law Library FAX: (206) 685-2165
> University of Washington Internet: whisner@u.washington.edu
> 1100 NE Campus Pkwy, JB-20
> Seattle, WA 98105
>
>
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