Bernick on The Opinion in Yellow

Evan D. Bernick, Northern Illinois University College of Law, has published The Opinion in Yellow as a Northern Illinois University College of Law Legal Studies Research Paper. Here is the abstract.

Four months ago, the Supreme Court of Arkham published an obscene document which cannot fairly be called an opinion. I cannot explain it and dare not try. What I can and will do is relate the substance of my conversation with a former clerk who is widely thought to be its principal author. The task ahead fills me with dread; I press on because I can think of nothing else to do under the circumstances.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Linarelli on The Cognitive Science of Comparative Law: An Emerging Area of Study?

John Linarelli, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, has published The Cognitive Science of Comparative Law: An Emerging Area of Study? as U. of Pittsburgh Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2025-31. Here is the abstract.

Comparative law is a heterodox field of legal study from the standpoint of method. It is a field because of what it does – “compare” - and not by how the comparing is done. It is open to any method advancing the aim of comparing law across national borders. Despite this methodological diversity, few published works have deployed the cognitive or behavioral sciences in comparative law. Insights from the cognitive sciences, including on the group aspects of human thought and action, on biases and heuristics, and on the evolution of culture, have the potential to offer in some instances significant advances in comparative law scholarship. Moreover, as comparativists we face the potential of interjecting our own biases into our work, or heuristics that work from our own jurisdictional perspective. A view from nowhere is impossible. Call this cognitive imperialism: the domination of a lawyer’s thinking about what is good and right about the law, based on what they sense or know about their own law. This article attempts a contribution to the methodological literature on comparative law by exploring how a new field of the study of comparative law using the cognitive sciences, might contribute to comparative law scholarship. Part I lays out the theoretical and methodological groundwork. It also explains that the cognitive science under investigation here is broader in scope than behavioral law and economics but certainly includes that approach. Parts II through IV explore several directions for this new field of study. Part II offers the case that the cognitive sciences offer tools to aid in understanding global law making, such as the work of UNCITRAL, UNIDROIT, and other intergovernmental organizations. Putting a group of lawyers from different jurisdictions in a deliberative process in an intergovernmental organization to produce a legal instrument that must be widely accepted across many jurisdictions could be understood as the setting for a natural experiment for comparativists. Part III explains that the cognitive sciences offer tools to evaluate legal transplants in a way that may help us to understand how they adapt to local conditions and on why some transplants are more successful than others. Part IV informs that the cognitive sciences may be able help us to get around the epistemological obstacles that “legal culture” has presented in comparative law. Part V deals with potential objections and limitations.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Trinity College, Dublin Offers M. Phil. in Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies

 The Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Centre at Trinity College, Dublin offers a M. Phil. in Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies. More information is available through this page. 

Call For Papers: The Law of the Liturgies and the Liturgies of the Law: Finding Common Ground Between Law and Religion in Ritual Speech and Performative Action

From Judith Hahn, University of Bonn, and Emory University, Center for the Study of Law and Religion:

As scholars with an interest in the intersection of law and ritual (or law and magic), I would like to draw your attention to the attached Call for Papers. Pamela Slotte Russo (Helsinki), Oliver Wright (Oxford), and I are organizing the conference (and edited volume), The Law of the Liturgies and the Liturgies of the Law: Finding Common Ground Between Law and Religion in Ritual Speech and Performative Action. The conference will take place 14–16 September 2026, at Magdalen College, University of Oxford. It may be of interest to you or others in your network who work at the broader intersection of law and ritual. We encourage submissions from emerging researchers and would be grateful if you could also share this call with your postdocs who might be interested in contributing. The conference is funded, so costs for accommodation and travel are covered. The call is open until 28 February 2026. Any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out.

          Judith Hahn 

Professor of Canon Law Seminar of Canon Law | University of Bonn Rabinstraße 8 | 53111 Bonn | Germany McDonald Distinguished Senior Fellow Center for the Study of Law and Religion | Emory University

Ayaz on Modernity, Mimicry, and Moksha: A Postcolonial Study of R. K. Narayan's The Guide and V. S. Naipaul's A House For Mr. Biswas

Amreen Ayaz, University of Aberdeen, has published Modernity, Mimicry, and Moksha: A Postcolonial Study of R. K. Narayan's The Guide and V. S. Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas. Here is the abstract.

This research examined the concepts of modernity, mimicry, and moksha, their applications in postcolonial literature, and their altered meanings in the modern world. It studied modernity through various dimensions like colonialism, Nanni’s exploration of colonisation through time and religion, intergenerational variations in its impact, the redefined meaning of success through tools like life and career planning, and the makings of a modern man. The concept of mimicry was analysed through the works of scholars like Bhabha, Uytanlet, Harold, Chakrabarti, Alvarez, Phukan, Mandal, Sultana, and others. It looked at themes like the need for mimicry, its dual aspects, intra-national mimicry, masculinised mimicry, and gaps in postcolonial studies. The work also delved into the idea of mimicry by drawing on theories from other disciplines, like Hegel’s dialectics, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, evolutionary biology, performance theory, systems theory, and cultural hegemony theory, while drawing historical examples from India’s freedom struggle. The research aimed to explore the identity conflict in the present youth of the erstwhile colonial nations, which are experiencing massive changes in culture through globalisation and the fast-paced import of ideas. It endeavoured to bring out a synthesis between conflicting values of tradition and modernity, and highlight the possibility of evolved ways of living that the selected works of postcolonial writers were attempting to convey to their readers. For the purpose, the traditional framework of moksha was woven in with the literary theories of modernity and mimicry, explaining its meaning through religion, philosophy and socio-cultural perspectives. Manu’s Dharma Shastra was focused upon to trace the process of achievement of moksha; its modernised version was explored through the different paths taken by the characters of Naipaul and Narayan, ultimately answering the question of how to achieve moksha in a hybridised environment. Through the journeys of Raju and Mohun Biswas, the conclusion was reached that in the modern world, moksha is found not in a return to tradition, but in the courage to embrace one’s true identity amidst change.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Davies on Law Books in Caricature and Composition: Edward Thompson's Marketing in the Late 1800s

Ross E. Davies, George Mason University Law School; The Green Bag, has published Law Books in Caricature and Composition: Edward Thompson’s Marketing in the Late 1800s at 28 Green Bag 2d 307 (2025). Here is the abstract.

The Edward Thompson Company was one of the most successful American publishers of law books in the late 19th century. It was also one of the most innovative marketers of books of any sort.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Gales, Solan, and Tobia on Nix v. Hedden: Corpus Linguistics and the Interpretation of Statutes Over Time

Tammy Gales, Hofstra University, Lawrence M. Solan, Brooklyn Law School, and Kevin Tobia, Georgetown University Law Center, have published Nix v. Hedden: Corpus Linguistics and the Interpretation of Statutes Over Time (draft) Here is the abstract.

In the study of American statutory interpretation, Nix v. Hedden (1893) exemplifies the primacy of ordinary meaning. The Court famously held that, in a tariff act, a tomato is a "vegetable," not a "fruit." However, the Court suggested that the statute was addressed to buyers and sellers of produce and that it would eschew "ordinary" meaning for a technical meaning in trade or commerce-if one existed. In this chapter, from a book on corpus linguistics and the interpretation of historical statues, we revisit Nix with corpus linguistic analysis. We compiled a specialized corpus of 19th century trade sources and find that the usage of "tomato" was decidedly mixed: a vegetable, a fruit, and sometimes both simultaneously! This new data complicates the seemingly simple holding in Nix. It also challenges the case's import. Current Supreme Court Justices invoke Nix for the principle that (1) statutes should not be interpreted "literally" (they should be interpreted contextually), by (2) giving terms their ordinary, nontechnical meanings. Our study of Nix underscores the false equivalence between contextual and ordinary interpretation. In some cases, the contextually relevant meaning is a technical one. Our study of 19th century trade meaning supports that Nix may even be one of those cases.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Natelson on Virgil and the Constitution

Robert G. Natelson, Independence Institute, has published Virgil and the Constitution. Here is the abstract.

All three legends on the Great Seal of the United States are adaptations of verses attributed to the Roman poet Virgil—reflecting Virgil’s status as the unofficial “poet laureate” of the American Founding. This article examines how Americans employed Virgil’s poetry during the debates over the United States Constitution. It also explains how the selected passages implicate constitutional meaning.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Interest: Empowering the Environmental Consumer: Flexibility & Harmonization in Global Legal Communication

 

Call for Interest – Section 14: Empowering the Environmental Consumer

I’m pleased to share the call for contributions to Section 14 – Empowering the Environmental Consumer: Flexibility & Harmonization in Global Legal Communication, part of the forthcoming International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication: From Text to Semiotics (Springer).

This section explores how harmonized yet adaptable consumer standards—such as energy labels, lifecycle disclosures, and repairability indices—can promote sustainability, prevent greenwashing, and empower consumers worldwide.

📝 We invite proposals that bridge law, linguistics, environmental science, and communication studies.

For more details, please see the attached call or visit:
🔗 https://meteor.springer.com/ihllc

Contact: Aurélien Fortunato – aurelien.fortunato@univ-lille.fr

 

2026 Law and Humanities Workshop for Junior Scholars

 

Call for Participation

Georgetown University Law Center, Stanford Law School, UCLA School of Law, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Southern California Center for Law, History, and Culture invite submissions for the 24th meeting of the Law and Humanities Workshop for Junior Scholars, to be held at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School on June 8-9, 2026.

 

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP

The workshop is open to untenured professors, advanced graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, and independent scholars working in law and the humanities. In addition to drawing from numerous humanistic fields, including Black and Indigenous studies, history, literature, political theory, critical race theory, feminist theory, and philosophy, we welcome critical, qualitative work in the social sciences, including anthropology and sociology. While the scope of the Workshop is broad, we cannot consider proposals that are focused solely on quantitative social science research or that are limited to doctrinal legal research. We are especially interested in submissions touching on themes of inequality, anti-racism and anti-subordination. We welcome submissions from those working at regional and teaching-intensive institutions.

 

Based on anonymous evaluation by an interdisciplinary selection committee, between six and eight papers will be chosen for presentation at the Workshop, where two senior scholars will comment on each paper. Commentators and other Workshop participants will be asked to focus specifically on the strengths and weaknesses of the selected scholarly projects, with respect to subject and methodology. The selected papers will then serve as the basis for a larger conversation among all the participants that may include themes connecting all of the projects, as well as discussion of the evolving standards by which we judge excellence and creativity in interdisciplinary scholarship.

The selected papers may appear in a special issue of the Legal Scholarship Network at SSRN; there is no other publication commitment. (We will accommodate the wishes of chosen authors who prefer not to have their paper posted publicly with us because of publication commitments to other journals.) However, we will only accept Workshop participants whose papers are true works in progress; articles or chapters that are already in page proofs or are otherwise unable to be revised by the time of the Workshop are ineligible.

The Workshop will pay the domestic travel and hotel expenses of authors whose papers are selected for presentation. For authors requiring airline travel from outside the United States, the Workshop will cover such travel expenses up to a maximum of $1250.

 

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Applications should be submitted through the submissions portal on the Law and Humanities Workshop website at LawandHumanitiesWorkshop.org.

Your application should consist of a single Microsoft Word document (not PDF)

containing:

a 1500-2000 word summary of your paper (word count includes footnotes or endnotes); a 1-2 page bibliography; and, if your paper is a chapter in a book or dissertation, an optional 1-page chapter outline of the larger project.

Applications are due on Monday, December 1, 2025.

If your application advances to the final stage of consideration, you will be asked to submit the full paper by January 15, 2026. Please do not apply if you will not have a full paper on January 15. Your application should be a summary of existing, ongoing work rather than a proposal for new or planned work.

The full paper must be a work-in-progress that does not exceed 10,000 words in length (including footnotes/ endnotes). A dissertation chapter may be submitted, but we strongly suggest that it be edited so as to stand alone as a piece of work with its own integrity. A paper that has been submitted for publication is eligible for selection so long as it will not be in galley proofs or in print at the time of the Workshop; it is important that authors still be in a position at the time of the Workshop to consider comments they receive there and to incorporate them as they think appropriate in their revisions.

We ask that those submitting applications be careful to omit or redact any information in the paper summary, bibliography, or chapter outline that might serve to identify them, as we adhere to an anonymous or “blind” selection process.

 

For more information, please send an email inquiry to Lawandhumanitiesworkshop@gmail.com or visit LawandHumanitiesWorkshop.org.

 

Program Committee, 2026 Law and Humanities Workshop for Junior Scholars Riaz Tejani, Chapman University, Law, Chair LaToya Baldwin Clark, University of California Los Angeles, Law Danielle Boaz, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Africana Studies David Eng, University of Pennsylvania, English & Asian American Studies Melynda Price, University of Michigan, Women and Gender Studies Clyde Spillenger, University of California Los Angeles, Law

 

The Law and Humanities Workshop for Junior Scholars is committed to anti- racism both inside and outside the academy.

Lukina on Beyond Political Decisionism and Legal Normativism: Schmittian-Kelsenian Synthesis

Anna Lukina, London School of Economics & Political Science, has published Beyond Political Decisionism and Legal Normativism: Schmittian-Kelsenian Synthesis. Here is the abstract.

Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt, two most prominent legal minds of the interwar era, are always imagined as antagonists as they repeatedly clashed on the relationship between the law and the state. To Kelsen, the state and the legal order shared the same space, as the former could not exceed the latter. To Schmitt, every sovereign had a latent power to declare an emergency and set the law aside. Nevertheless, their two stances are similar in their convergence against attempts to mix moral and legal validity. As a result, in exploring how the law and the state interact, one can draw on the best of both positions by looking at that relationship on two levels. In normal circumstances – when we look at the boundaries of the legal order – one can easily adopt a modified version of the Kelsenian positivist picture to identify its content. In the situation of exception, when emergency action is required, this legal order can, as per Schmitt, be transcended. Adopting this mixed ‘Schmittian-Kelsenian’ stance would be preferable in both descriptive and normative terms, as both law and politics are and should be equally important and do not exclude each other, but work together.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Interest: Legal Implications and Representations in Gaming

 

Call for Interest: Legal Implications and Representations in Gaming ⚖️

 

Contribute to the International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication: From Text to Semiotics (Springer)!

This section explores how games portray legal concepts, shape virtual identities, and raise new challenges in digital law—from intellectual property to avatar accountability.

📄 Submit a 300-word abstract + short bio
📧 Dr. Gabriele Aroni
🔗 https://meteor.springer.com/ihllc

Bradley on Extradition in the Early Republic: International Law and Constitutional Authority

Curtis Bradley, University of Chicago Law School, has published Extradition in the Early Republic: International Law and Constitutional Authority as University of Chicago Law School, Public Law & Legal Theory Research Paper No. 25-34. Here is the abstract.

This Article is the first comprehensive account of the constitutional foundations of U.S. extradition practice and its relationship to international law. Through detailed analysis of early American extradition controversies—including the Longchamps Affair and the Robbins case—the Article shows how political actors and courts constructed the modern constitutional law of extradition, resolving key issues concerning presidential power, the role of the states, and the scope of congressional authority. This regime, the Article argues, emerged not from appeals to the constitutional text or original understandings, but rather from structural intuitions, consequentialist considerations, and, as time went on, historical traditions. As the Article further documents, the constitutional law of extradition had a relational interaction with international law, in that the views of U.S. interpreters concerning the nation’s international law duties were relevant to their views of constitutional authority, and vice versa. The Article also complicates the dominant narrative of a unilateral “imperial presidency” in foreign affairs by showing that, because of the liberty interests involved, extradition authority evolved and remained as a shared power, requiring a treaty-based or statutory foundation as well as judicial involvement. In this respect, extradition parallels the development of certain other unenumerated foreign affairs powers, including most notably the authority over immigration. Finally, the Article situates extradition within the broader field of foreign relations law, illuminating its ties to doctrinal developments such as treaty non-self-execution, foreign affairs federalism, and sovereignty-based legislative power—developments that still resonate today.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

2026 LCH Conference Call For Papers

From Simon Stern, President, Association for the Study of Law, Culture, & the Humanities

Dear all, We are excited to announce that we are now accepting submissions for the Twenty-Eighth Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities. The conference will be held in person (with some online components) on June 17-18, 2026 at the DePaul University College of Law in Chicago, Illinois. This year's theme is "Uprooted Law: Reflecting on the Origins and Outgrowths of Law."  You can find the call for papers on our website or view the PDF version. We are also accepting applications for our annual Graduate Student Workshop, which will take place the day before the conference on June 16, 2026. Information on how to apply for the workshop can be found in the PDF or on our website here. Please help us spread the word and circulate the CFP in your academic communities. We look forward to gathering for the conference again this year and hope to see you there! Best regards,   Simon Stern, President, Association for the Study of Law, Culture & the Humanities

Chauvin on Understanding Free Speech Values at the Supreme Court

Noah Chauvin, University of Oklahoma College of Law, is publishing Understanding Free Speech Values at the Supreme Court in volume 78 of Rutgers Univ. L. Rev. Commentaries (forthcoming 2025). Here is the abstract.

This essay is a book review of The Supreme Court and the Philosopher: How John Stuart Mill Shaped US Free Speech Protections, by Professors Eric Kasper and Troy Kozma. The book argues that John Stuart Mill had an indelible impact on the Supreme Court's free speech jurisprudence, and that through the power of precedent, we have come to have a "Millian" First Amendment. As I explain in the review, Kasper and Kozma have made a compelling case. However, because Mill offered an expansive defense of freedom of expression, it is not enough to say that the Court's free speech jurisprudence is "Millian," because that could mean many different things. Understanding with greater precision what motivates the justices in free speech cases is crucial for attorneys, advocates, and scholars.

Download the review from SSRN at the link.

Tushnet on History and Tradition in First Amendment Intellectual Property Cases: A Critique

Rebecca Tushnet, Harvard Law School, is publishing History and Tradition in First Amendment Intellectual Property Cases: A Critique in the Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review. Here is the abstract.

There are indications that the "history and tradition" approach the Supreme Court applied to gun rights and abortion restrictions may be coming for First Amendment doctrine. In intellectual property cases, it already has, with the Court using historical analogies for the right of publicity, copyright, and trademark. Unlike in the Second Amendment context, where the Court has reasoned from things earlier regulators didn’t do to strike down gun regulations today, in “history and tradition” First Amendment law the Court has reasoned by broad analogy to allow new speech restrictions. One lesson is that the history and tradition approach does not meaningfully constrain Justices even in low-political-salience areas like copyright and trademark, outside highly politicized contexts. The manipulability of levels of generality in making historical analogies has been justly criticized, but the IP cases provide a particularly clear contrast in outcomes from those in the Second Amendment cases, despite putatively using the same method of looking to historical models before—and even in place of—applying a means-ends test or other non-analogic scrutiny.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Handler on The Administrative Law of McCarthyism

Nicholas Handler, Texas A&M School of Law, is publishing The Administrative Law of McCarthyism in volume 78 of the Stanford Law Review (2026).

This Article recovers the largely overlooked legal and administrative history of the federal loyalty-security program, and argues that it played a formative role in the development of modern civil service protections and administrative law. During the McCarthy era, the United States Civil Service Commission (CSC), under pressure from Congress, implemented a sweeping loyalty program aimed at rooting out purportedly disloyal federal employees. Though often remembered as a moment of political overreach and civil liberties violations, this Article shows that the loyalty program simultaneously catalyzed a surprising expansion in procedural rights for government workers—both through internal reforms initiated by the CSC and through judicial decisions that extended emerging administrative law doctrines into the domain of federal employment. Drawing on original archival research, this Article reconstructs how the Loyalty Review Board, housed within the CSC, developed formalized standards for loyalty adjudications, including evidentiary thresholds, rights to notice and counsel, and appellate review. These procedures, while initially limited to loyalty hearings, came to inform broader doctrines governing the removal and discipline of civil servants. In particular, courts began to apply principles such as the Accardi doctrine and the Chenery rule—originally developed for public-facing regulatory action—to disputes between the federal government and its own employees. The result was a nascent body of administrative law that treated personnel decisions not as matters of unfettered executive discretion, but as legal acts subject to procedural constraint. The Article makes two central claims. First, it argues that civil service law should be understood as a core component of administrative law—not merely a subspecialty of public employment law. Legal rules governing the hiring, discipline, and removal of civil servants serve the same functions as more familiar administrative law doctrines: they mediate interbranch conflict, preventing any one branch from dominating federal policy-making and thus serving deeper separation-of-powers and rule of law values. Second, it argues that the regulation of federal employment not only prevents the aggrandizement of the political branches, but also protects individual rights. In the postwar era, federal jobs functioned as a major form of state-administered benefit, and the procedures surrounding those jobs shaped broader public expectations about fairness, merit, and due process. Those expectations were deeply challenged during the unrest of the McCarthy period, but were ultimately vindicated by the creative adaption of administrative law principles. These lessons are newly relevant today, as the second Trump administration embarks upon one of the most ambitious attempts to remake the federal civil service in generations, often explicitly seeking to replace merit systems with tests of personal and political loyalty.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Pontz on Eisenhower's Crusaders: District Court Appointments as Civil Rights Policy, 1953-1961

Ben Pontz, Harvard Law school, has published Eisenhower's Crusaders: District Court Appointments as Civil Rights Policy, 1953-1961 at 55 Presidential Studies Quarterly 115 (2025). Here is the abstract.

During his eight years in office, President Eisenhower appointed 182 federal judges, 127 of whom served on federal district courts. Historical and legal scholarship has paid considerable attention to the judiciary's role in the Civil Rights Era as well as to Eisenhower's civil-rights legacy. The scholarship has not, however, connected those two strands to examine how Eisenhower used judicial appointments-especially of district court judges-as part of his civil-rights policy, one that should inform his civil-rights legacy. These district judges embodied Eisenhower's earnest-but-not-activist approach to civil rights, which sits in stark contrast to that of Eisenhower's Supreme Court appointments, especially Chief Justice Earl Warren, whose outspoken nature struck Eisenhower as counterproductive. For Eisenhower, durable civil-rights progress came through incremental change backed by the rule of law, which judges could achieve through the steady interpretation and enforcement of statutes and the Constitution-to much greater effect than grand, moral pronouncements from presidents or judicial pronouncements from Supreme Courts. The district judges that Eisenhower appointed took that approach, and their appointment is as much the civil-rights policy of the Eisenhower administration as any rhetoric or government program.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Pfander on Looking for Art in the Law Review Article

James E. Pfander, Northwestern School of Law, has published Looking for Art in the Law Review Article at the Harvard Law Blog, September 5, 2025 and as Northwestern Public Law Research Paper No, 25-44. Here is the abstract.

This short essay considers the nature of and market for legal scholarship. Taking a page or two from the book Air Guitar by the critic, Dave Hickey, the essay reflects on how we measure greatness and failure in art and in the art of the law review article. Blame for all seemingly irrelevant asides should be assigned to Arthur Leff, whose work taught us much about greatness. Failure we have all had to work out for ourselves.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Lehrer on Jurists as Evolutionary Engineers: Artificial Selection in Legal Doctrine

Ignacio Adrian Lehrer has published Jurists as Evolutionary Engineers: Artificial Selection in Legal Doctrine.

This study analyzes how legal scholars, judges, and codifiers function as evolutionary engineers who practice artificial selection on legal doctrines, accelerating legal evolution through conscious intervention. Drawing on Darwin's observations of artificial selection and Harari's analysis of religious interpreters as normative engineers, we document systematic mechanisms by which legal professionals consciously select, cultivate, and eliminate doctrinal variants. The research reveals four primary mechanisms: academic cultivation through scholarly networks, judicial breeding of precedential lines, systematic codification, and institutional elimination of dysfunctional variants. Unlike natural legal evolution operating through unconscious social pressures over centuries, artificial selection achieves comparable changes within decades through directed intervention. Case studies demonstrate successful artificial selection including elimination of "separate but equal" doctrine, integration of common law and civil law principles in mixed jurisdictions, and development of European contract law. Failed attempts illuminate factors necessary for successful doctrinal engineering. This analysis provides theoretical foundation for understanding how legal systems achieve rapid adaptation while maintaining institutional continuity, with implications for legal education, judicial administration, and international harmonization efforts.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.