The Promethean Spirit and the Israelites' Choice of Judges

A fine-grained common law is precisely context aware, right? It is a conflict between two real situated humans in a real actual environment. And a proper judge has proper responsibility for addressing the whole thing. How do we deal with the Promethean spirit which regards tradition as something to be overcome because we emphasize progress into the new? The philosopher kings are very much Plato's attempt to give something like the judges.