[EL] query for election law list: legal revolutions?

[Mark Rush]

Happy Thanksgiving, all.  I'm emailing to tap the community's knowledge on
a topic that is slightly off-list.  But, I'm also looking to tap other list
serves as well, fyi.  So, since this is not exactly election-law (tho it
could be) I welcome off-list responses.

In a  very recent discussion with colleagues, the question arose whether we
could think of a revolution in legal thinking that would compare to what
Thomas Kuhn described as a revolution in scientific thought.

The transition, say, from Plessy to Brown came to mind.  But this would
certainly be a "slow motion revolution" that took place over 60 years.  I
thought perhaps that the Court's establishment of particular "rules" such
as one person, one voter, the Miranda warnings, maybe the Carolene products
footnote…could be identified as "revolutionary" moments in judicial
thinking.     The "switch in time" in NLRB v. J&L clearly constituted a
sea-change.  But, would we regard these events as truly "revolutionary"?

They did change the way the court operated and, therefore, how litigants
behaved when litigating.   Still--would you all regard these (or other
examples) as mere decisions to change the rules, or are they akin to a
"scientific" revolution in the law.  We got hung up because none of the
examples we kicked around involved bona fide "discovery of new  or
previously unknown information".

Does the law fit the Kuhnian model or does it move too slowly?  Off line
responses welcome.  Thanks in advance for your thoughts.


Best wishes for the holidays
-- 
Mark Rush
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20131124/fbf5f345/attachment.html>