The way to gain a liberal view of your subject is not to read something else, but to get to the bottom of the subject itself. The means of doing that are, in the first place, to follow the existing body of dogma into its highest generalizations by the help of jurisprudence; next, to discover from history how it has come to be what it is; and, finally, so far as you can, to consider the ends which the several rules seek to accomplish, the reasons why those ends are desired, what is given up to gain them, and whether they are worth the price.
(Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The Path of the Law," Harvard Law Review 10 [25 March 1897]: 457-78, at 476)
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 