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Structure And Value In The Common Law, Shyamkrishna Balganesh, Gideon Parchomovsky

University of Pennsylvania Law Review

Legal concepts are seen today as archaic relics of the past, and as representing a largely dispensable feature of the common law. This Article challenges the widely accepted view of legal concepts as remnants of formalist thinking, and argues that legal concepts play a crucial role in ensuring the vitality and subsistence of the common law over time, place, and context. Legal concepts embody what we term “a duality of meaning,” which effects a separation between a concept’s analytical and normative meanings. The analytical (or structural) meaning of a concept is, at its core, well-defined and remains stable over time, …