ABSTRACT
The common law rules, the legal system's first response to a problem that ballooned in importance as the pace of industrial development quickened and the risk of accidents increased, were in need of repair or replacement. The pattern of rule and reaction is not limited to the law's response to the problem of liability for industrial accidents. Divorce was unknown to the common law, so divorce had no necessary effect on wills. Something Oliver Wendell Holmes said earlier about consistency in the law is also true of the quest for legal perfection: The truth is, that the law is always approaching, and never reaching, consistency. No area of the law offers more examples than property law because of its extraordinary longevity. England, the home of the common law and the world's first industrial nation, responded with legislation in 1897, the year Holmes spoke.
