ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the two main principles of Subversive Legal History can be derived from the two main reasons for the neglect of Legal History in Law Schools. The first reason for the neglect is been that divisions within Legal History and the development of historical work on law outside the sub-discipline have contributed to Legal History’s marginalisation by creating division. The second reason is the potential the subversive nature of Legal History, which means that it is unsettling to law students and teachers in that it flies in the face of the Law School curriculum and student expectations which value legal certainty and regard the legal system as being autonomous. This chapter will contend that these two causes of the decline of Legal History actually point the way to its resurgence. It identifies and examines the two main principles of Subversive Legal History that draws upon each of these two reasons. First, Subversive Legal History needs to recognise the value and complementary nature of different forms of Legal History. Subversive Legal History has to recognise and needs to develop at least an intellectual history dimension and a social history dimension.Second, Subversive Legal History needs to live up to its name and be critical and transformative; and to do this needs to draw upon and develop the Critical Legal History approach.
