Law Commons^™

The Third Best Choice: An Essay On Law And History, Theodore Y. Blumoff

Articles

The thesis of this Essay is that our use of history is as essential and unavoidable as conclusive answers are irretrievable. Irretrievability exists whether the historical reality sought results from a survey of traditional historical materials in an effort to recapture original understanding, or from a common-law effort to discover the Court's own history of an issue. In either case, however, the need to attempt to recover historical truths is perceived as essential. I subscribe, for the most part, to the contextualist premise that we cannot recover sufficient historical data on issues that matter to make history determinate in the …