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The Age of Antiquarius: On Legal History in a Time of Troubles
Gilmore, Grant
Gilmore, Grant
Abstract
During the greater part of the past hundred years the American law schools enjoyed a spectacular success. The students, the professors, even the deans, shared a buoyant self-confidence, an ebullient enthusiasm, a pervasive intellectual and spiritual euphoria. It is only during the past twenty years or so that we have begun to doubt, to question ourselves, to wonder whether, after all, we were on the right track. The selfconfidence of our predecessors has given way to a disquieting intellectual disarray. Various proposals have been put forward in the attempt to rekindle the enthusiasm of the past in the service of new causes. One such proposal, which has recently enlisted a considerable amount of support, is that, abandoning the antihistorical bias which has characterized most American legal writing in this century, we should, at long last, become historians and turn our energies to the reconstruction of our long despised past. If indeed the study of law is to become a branch of the study of history, we will do well to give some thought to the problem which the adoption of an historical approach-to law or anything else-poses in the declining years of the twentieth century.