History of legal scholars: the power of possibility

This paper makes two claims. First, it claims that there are various trends within academic
law that discourage legal scholars from learning about their predecessors. These trends
are explained. Secondly, it claims that there are a number of benefits which could flow from
addressing this neglect. Several of these benefits have been acknowledged elsewhere. For
example, some scholars maintain that ideas are best treated historically before being dealt
with analytically. The more scholars read whole bodies of their predecessors’ works, the
better their interpretations and understandings of such works become, thus strengthening
the intellectual integrity of the discipline. While agreeing with this argument, the purpose
of the second section of this paper is to articulate other, perhaps less obvious, benefits. It
is argued that by learning about a wider range of past academic endeavour, legal scholars
are encouraged to challenge existing notions of academic standing and consider not only
what the legal academy has become but also what it ought to be. Learning about scholarly
predecessors could help scholars better contextualise current challenges. Such learning
could be empowering in the context of a discipline whose scholarly practices have meant
that there has been little reason to look to the past.