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Patchwork Law Reform: Your Idea Is Good In Practice, But It Won't Work In Theory, Roderick A. Macdonald, Hoi Kong

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

This article elaborates a conception of law reform that is pluralistic, interactional, non-formulaic, attentive to implicit normativity and not exclusively instrumental. It argues that law reform practice is always informed by theory. Where theory is inadequate, law reform practice is likely to result in a sub-optimal patchwork. An appropriate theory of law reform will have the following attributes. First, it will have a respect for human agency. This respect is made manifest in law reform on dimensions of form, substance, purpose, authority, mode, regime, sites, and system. Second, an adequate practice of law reform must attend to structural features of …