 Philosophical writing about the common law of torts developed in the twentieth century, largely but not exclusively in response to a series of seminal arguments by the legal scholar and jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. in his 1881 book The Common Law. Holmes set the stage for much of contemporary philosophy of torts by asking how we should understand tort law’s apparent use of straightforward moral terminology—duties, rights, wrongs, injustice, malice, intent. Holmes himself was concerned with responding to what he saw as the excessive formalism of legal scholarship and education, as exemplified in the writings and introduction of methods of study by Christopher Columbus Langdell, Dean of Harvard Law School. A central theme of Holmes’s book is captured by his famous claim that “the life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience” (1881: 1). Throughout his discussion of the common law, Holmes aimed to bring the resources of social science to bear on understanding law in terms of the facts available to decision-makers and the likely consequences of legal rules. He believed that this approach would make the study of law more practical and useful, enabling lawyers to better advise their clients about the likely consequences of various courses of action.