Introduction: “Plus Ça Change …?”

This is a time of self-conscious attention to legal scholarship that, although hardly unprecedented, must seem remarkable to many in the profession. We hear of “malaise” in the academy, of the decline of doctrinal scholarship, and more generally, of the decline of law as an autonomous discipline. For some who believe it, the news may be profoundly disturbing, tolling the thirteenth hour on entire careers. For others, bearing the news-and having it believed-may be essential to launching or sustaining careers.

Most of us, I suspect, are inclined to suspend judgment, inured more than most mortals to the harsh reality that there is little new under the sun. This Symposium furnishes additional evidence of the wisdom of that posture in the current debates about continuity and change in legal scholarship.