The Life of the Law has not been logic; it has been experience

This is Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes central slogan of legal modernism.

Holmes wrote "It is the merit of the common law that it decides the case first, and determines the principle afterwards." Holmes, Codes, and the Arrangement of the Law, 5 AM. L. Rev. l, reprinted in 44 Harv. L. Rev. 725 (1931)

Holmes found worth in intuitive case-by-case adjudication. On the other hand, Christopher Columbus Langdell shifted the focus of legal instruction from abstract principles to cases and ended up promoting the case-centered view of adjudication that Holmes had stated. Langdell became the first Dean of the Harvard Law School in 1870. He was the one who started the Case Law Socratic Method taught in law school today.

In my opinion, Langdell deprived law students out of a worthy education of legal instruction.