ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter explores the paradoxical relationship between Law Schools and Legal History. It begins by pointing out the strange and dangerous nature of Law Schools. It examines how law students have a different experience from their peers studying other disciplines. It raises the question of whether the study of legal doctrine leads to indoctrination: how law students are trained to value certain arguments, sources and questions above all others. The chapter contends that history plays a paradoxical role in Law Schools. On the one hand, history is everywhere in Law Schools: every discussion of every case law involves taking a chronological approach. On the other hand, history is absent from the Law School: cases are presented as authorities that exist in a historical vacuum. Law students are concerned with using the past only to understand the present. Legal History has declined in importance in Law Schools and is seen as being quaint and conservative. This chapter counters this by providing seven reasons why a historical approach to law is necessary and desirable. It contends that, far from being archaic and dull, a historical approach shows that the law is constructed and contingent. Legal History is revolutionary, showing that legal change on a larger scale is possible. Legal History can and should be subversive, and this Subversive Legal History has the potential to widen the scope and ambition of legal education. Legal History is marginalised in legal education because its hidden subversive nature means that an unleashed Legal History would be too unsettling and disturbing for Law Schools.
