ABSTRACT
Law is surprisingly amenable to flights of fancy. Imaginary situations help us test the implications of policies and statutes, and good legislation may require a kind of science-fictional thinking, since one might hope that laws governing technology would anticipate, rather than attempt to keep up with, innovation. Good lawmakers will speculate about possible worlds as well as this one, and the future as well as the present, and some of that speculation may appear fantastical. Good researchers and good teachers will do something similar: by tweaking reality, a scholar – let’s call her Margaret Brazier – might hope to gain insight into what the law means in practice or what it should be, and provide similar insight to students. But thinking about merely possible worlds isn’t simply legislatively and academically valuable. Sometimes it’s just fun.
