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Mikhail Bakhtin And Change In The Common Law, Russell West Jr.
Mikhail Bakhtin And Change In The Common Law, Russell West Jr.
Washington Law Review
Traditional legal analysis comprehends change in the common law over time as a shifting legal response to different facts and circumstances. This approach does not examine the internal mechanisms by which the meaning of a judicial opinion changes when cited in later legal writing. Mikhail Bakhtin, a literary and cultural theorist, argued that any statement can be understood only through the context in which it is uttered and that every change in context causes a shift in the statement's meaning. This Comment analyzes the internal mechanisms of judicial opinions in light of Bakhtin's theories. First, this Comment describes one example …