Law Commons^™

Does It Matter What We Say About Legal Interpretation?, Karen Petroski

All Faculty Scholarship

Despite a common interest in justifying their scholarly output, legal academics have resisted seeing how their work is molded by the institutional environment in which it is produced, and not just by legal doctrine, ideology, or individual perspectives. This paper presents a case study from this neglected perspective, considering the shape of scholarship on legal interpretation in light of the social conditions of its production. After a brief discussion of the debates over whether scholarship (and which scholarship) matters, the paper explores how such concerns are addressed in various academic accounts of scholars’ textual practices. It then offers some initial …