Messy, Experimental and Stimulating

The common law, made up of thousands of individual decisions taken over centuries, has often threatened to overwhelm its practitioners. In the 19th century a new form of legal literature tackled this problem: the study of “leading cases.” The authors of such works advised aspirant lawyers that any given area of law was based on a few fundamental principles, contained in a select group of the most enduring judicial decisions. Master those, and you had it made.

To a large extent modern legal education is still based on this premise, but a different approach to leading cases emerged in the late 20th century. Pioneered by the English legal historian A.W.B. Simpson, these new studies enhanced our understanding of leading cases through fuller historical contextualization. They added to our knowledge of the parties, their lawyers, the judges, the communities in which the dispute happened...