Source: https://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2009/04/a-casual-casebook-the-canon-of-american-common-law.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 19:58:30+00:00

Document:
This summer I am planning to put together a casebook that is for leisurely reading, rather than a law-school course. My tentative title is "The Canon of American Common Law."
It is an idea of mine that started with the thought that it would be exciting to give a special award to the first-year law student with the highest combined grade-point average in the three common law courses: Contracts, Property, and Torts. A good name would be the Holmes Award. But what would be a suitable prize? A perfect token, I thought, would be a book of the classic common-law cases. I think such a book would also be nice to have available for casual students of the law – people who would like to do some exploring in the law – but who are not looking for three years of law school.
Below is my very-rough draft table of contents, along with a list of “on the bubble” cases that are deserving, but that I might leave out to keep the size of the book manageable. I would be very grateful for your comments. Do any of the cases fail to qualify as classics? Am I grievously leaving something out? Am I close to closing in on a canonical list? Or am I way off?
Vanna White v. Samsung Electronics America, Inc.
U.S. v. Carroll Towing Co.
Indiana Harbor Belt. R. Co. v. American Cyanamid Co.
You’ll notice there are a few English cases in the mix, but they are ones that, I think, are nonetheless, classics of American common law, generally because of their entrenchment in the American 1L curriculum.
Also, you’ll notice I have not included any U.S. Supreme Court cases. That’s another casual-casebook project – but a worthy one. I plan to take that up separately.
I agree with Matt Bodie on Frigaliment Importing! The issue is, what is a chicken?
I know you want to leave out Supreme Court cases, but I just don't see how a canon of the American common law can be complete without Swift, Erie, and, from admiralty, at least Jensen (particularly Holmes' dissent: "The common law is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky, . . . ." etc.).
For torts, how about Wagner v. Int'l Railway (Cardozo, J.) ("Danger invites rescue. The cry of distress is the summons to relief . . . The emergency begets the man. The wrongdoer may not have foreseen the coming of a deliverer. He is accountable as if he had.").
Objectively speaking, he was just joking about Zehmer!
Take out Lucy v. Zehmer?!? You're as high as a Georgia pine!
Count me as another vote for Williams v. Walker-Thomas... its articulation of unconscionability is resurgent in many recent mortgage cases.
I think I'd have to agree with the poster above me, having no real justification for doing so. I'm a current 1L who completed contracts last semester, and the cases he mentioned just seem much more memorable/important in my mind.
If I had to swap some out, I'd probably take out Lucy v. Zehmer, Wood v. Boynton, and Webb v. McGowin.

References: v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 v.