Blackstone's Tower: The English Law School - College of Social ...

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women and minorities—again independently of legal categories—
and has suggested that this kind of reading reveals systematic political
biases on the part of the judiciary 45 ; in the United States a
specialism known as jurimetrics, a branch of cybernetics, involves
the application of statistical techniques to appellate opinions; for
example, with a view to assisting prediction of how American
Supreme Court Justices or other appellate judges are likely to vote
in future cases 46 ; at the core of the Law and Economics movement
is the application of certain standard techniques of microeconomic
analysis to reported cases; on the left, critical legal
scholars, using techniques developed in literary theory, deconstruct
judicial opinions and purport to show them to be selfcontradictory,
incoherent or meaningless. 47 James Boyd White, a
Professor of both literature and law, has applied methods of reading
literary texts to illuminate the law reports more sympathetically. 48
It has recently become quite fashionable to read the law reports in
terms of story-telling, rhetoric and semiotics. 49
Most of these alternative methods of reading have been
developed within law schools but, with the exception of economic
analysis, none has really been integrated into the mainstream.
Many of the techniques have been borrowed from other disciplines
and some have been applied rather crudely. Almost without exception,
these various readings have been applied to the law reports
for legal purposes, mainly to explain and interpret legal phenomena:
the role of judges; styles and techniques of argumentation; the
business of appellate courts as well as legal doctrine. I have argued
elsewhere that law students should be taught to read and use the
law reports more systematically, consciously developing more than
a dozen ways of looking at and handling this kind of text, rather
than the standard three or four. 50 To that extent the law reports are
an under-used resource even within the discipline of law.
The main reason for claiming that they are neglected, however,
is that they are hardly exploited at all by non-lawyers. Enough has
been said to make the point that this is an enormously rich body
of material in respect of extent, scope, accessibility, authenticity
and detail. The cases are there, asking to be studied. In order to
tap into this potential gold-mine it is of course useful to know what
is in them, how and why they are selected and constructed, and
some of the terminology and the institutional and procedural context.
In short, some local knowledge is needed before one starts
digging. The possibilities are potentially endless. Let me just give
a few examples of uses to which they have been put, though so
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