ABSTRACT
This chapter takes its inspiration and substance from ephemeral performances, or 'improvised doings' as Landgraf calls them, which resist the compulsion towards the archiving of mistakes for which apology is subsequently demanded. Improvisation is theorised here as a social practice, one that can be applied to the discipline or field of law. Critical Studies in Improvisation (CSI) theories improvisation as a complex and dynamic social phenomenon, one that interrupts traditional orthodoxies of judgment and takes on a shared responsibility for participation in the community, all the while accepting the challenges of risk and contingency. What is at stake in this exploration is the continued depiction of legal decision-making as uncreative and static, as opposed to a depiction of the creative life of law as a dynamic social phenomenon, one that pertains to the life-affirming vibrancy of the musical extempore in which the past, present and future dance together in a never-ending paradox of living and learning, justice and social change.
