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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 …