Law and Society Commons^™

Legal Change, The Eighty-Third Cleveland-Marshall Fund Visiting Scholar Lecture , Gerald Torres

Gerald Torres

This Essay will proceed in the following steps. First, I want to propose a preliminary definition of legal change. As I hope to make clear, there are technical and non-technical dimensions to the definition. Second, I want to offer a preliminary definition of social change and social movements. Third, I want to build on the analysis of the late Professor Thomas Stoddard in which he sketched out a relationship between what he calls "rule shifting" and "culture shifting."' Finally, I want to describe what Professor Lani Guinier and I have come to call "demosprudence." I appreciate that it is not …