the common law for the rule that fits the case. He is the "living oracle of the law" in Blackstone's vivid phrase. Looking at Sir Oracle in action, viewing his work in the dry light of realism, how does he set about his task?
The first thing he does is to compare the case before him with the precedents, whether store in his mind or hidden in the books. I do not mean that precedents are the ultimate sources of the law, supplying the sole equipment that is needed for the legal armory, the sole tools, to borrow Maitland's phrase,[1] "in the legal smithy." Back of precedents are the basic juridical conceptions which are postulates of judicial reasoning, and farther back are the habits of life, the institutions of society, in which those conceptions had their origin, and which, by a process of interaction, they have modified in turn.[2] None the less, in a system so highly developed as our
