Academic

Blomquist on Creative Moments in American Law

By Lawrence Solum

Robert F. Blomquist (Valparaiso University - Law School) has posted Thinking About Law and Creativity: On the 100 Most Creative Moments in American Law on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

In most cultural contexts creativity is viewed as an unalloyed virtue. Law is different: given the inherently conservative and slow-moving pace of legal evolution, innovation in the law is viewed by many observers as problematic. Yet American revolutionaries, constitutionalists, legislators, chief executives, judges, administrators, scholars and activists have creatively changed the law for over two centuries in mostly positive ways with some admittedly questionable innovations. This article makes a bold new proposal¿the articulation and ranking of America's most creative legal moments¿designed to energize and clarify our synoptic thinking about the nature of legal creativity.

Starting with the opinions of numerous eminent legal historians on the most creative moments in Anglo-American law, we will explore the meaning of creative moments in law, and advance to analytically compare legal creativity with other kinds of creativity (corporate, artistic, military and rhetorical). Then we will heuristically entertain a ranking of the top hundred moments in American law and a justification for the ranking.

This is fun to read.  Some of the items on the list would meet with widespread agreement.  The list obvoiusly reflects an implicit and not fully articulated theory of what is valuable (as opposed to innovative).  Or to put it different, I think my list would overlap by 25 items or so.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on May 23, 2008 (boomark / email).