Judges and jurists employ distinctive, and distinctly different, styles of reasoning. Judges develop the common law cautiously, by incremental analogical development. Judicial reasoning is characteristically practical, even pragmatic, with the resolution of concrete disputes paramount. The stability of the common law depends on strong shared, albeit implicit, understandings about its content.
Academia might seem hostile to much of this. Academics are expected to build ambitious theories, to investigate legal rules to their theoretical foundations, to question and reject consensus, and above all to innovate. In pursuing such goals, legal scholars risk misconceiving the nature of the common law enterprise, and overlooking its strengths.
Jonathan Morgan delivered his inaugural lecture as Professor of English Law on Friday 26 January 2024 at the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge.
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Public Lectures from the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge