Evolution and the Common Law [Paperback]

This book challenges accounts about the development and operation of the common law.The book challenges existing accounts about the development and operation of the common law. Instead of the traditional tendency to view the common law as an incremental, self-contained and generally non-political endeavour, the book presents a sustained argument in defence of the idea that the common law is better thought of as an organic, situated and political enterprise in which anything might go . The book works the middle ground between high jurisprudential theory and day-to-day doctrinal practice of adjudication and lawyering.The book challenges existing accounts about the development and operation of the common law. Instead of the traditional tendency to view the common law as an incremental, self-contained and generally non-political endeavour, the book presents a sustained argument in defence of the idea that the common law is better thought of as an organic, situated and political enterprise in which anything might go . The book works the middle ground between high jurisprudential theory and day-to-day doctrinal practice of adjudication and lawyering.This book offers a radical challenge to all existing accounts of the common law's development. Contrary to received jurisprudential wisdom, it maintains there is no grand theory which will explain satisfactorily the dynamic interactions of change and stability in the common law's history. Offering fresh and original readings of Charles Darwin's and Hans-Georg Gadamer's works, the book demonstrates that law is a rhetorical activity that can only be properly appreciated in its historical and political context. It reveals that, like life, law is an organic process and that common law is a perpetual work-in-progress.1. Evolution and the common law: an introduction; 2. Darwin's excellent adventure: evolution and law; 3. The creationists' persistence: jurisprudence and God; 4. Taming the bulldog: the natural and pragmatic; 5. Tracl#-