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Legal History

Columbia Law School

Faculty Scholarship

2011

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A Foxy Hedgehog: The Consistent Perceptions Of Carol Rose, Jedediah S. Purdy Jan 2011

A Foxy Hedgehog: The Consistent Perceptions Of Carol Rose, Jedediah S. Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

In a tribute like this, the question arises unavoidably: is Carol a fox or a hedgehog? That is, following Isaiah Berlin’s iconic distinction, does she know many things, like the fox, or, like the hedgehog, does she know one big thing?

It may seem strange that the ecosystem of legal scholarship should contain so little biodiversity; but the question engaged me. I started out thinking that Carol must be a fox, but I may have thought so for the wrong reasons: reasons of style, basically, having to do with her light-footedness, her deftness, and the recurrent sense that, just when …