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Lookup NU author(s): Professor TT Thiruvallore Thattai
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of a book chapter that has been published in its final definitive form by Hart Publishing, 2018.
For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
Although we primarily associate the term 'revolution' with radical, rupturing change, it also carries an older sense of coming full circle; marking the return to, or restoration of, an original position. This second, restorative, connotation is the focus of this paper. Unlike the scientific revolutions that were the focus of Kuhn's work, legal revolutions frequently claim to be restoring rather than rupturing the law's connection with its past, and recovering lost paradigms rather than inventing new paradigms. Is such a restoration possible? Can lost paradigms be regained, and put to work in a radically altered context? Drawing on Kuhn’s account of paradigms as problem-solving frameworks, this paper argues that they cannot, and that attempts to do so run the risk of providing inadequate and incomplete responses to the questions and dimensions of interaction on which they are brought to bear. Addressing this requires a shift of emphasis in obligations theory, putting concepts back in the historical context in which they arose, paying closer attention to the approaches they replaced, and to what, if anything, was lost in the revolution.
Author(s): Arvind TT
Editor(s): Worthington S; Robertson A; Virgo G
Publication type: Book Chapter
Publication status: Published
Book Title: Revolution and Evolution in Private Law
Year: 2018
Pages: 51-72
Print publication date: 11/01/2018
Acceptance date: 25/08/2017
Publisher: Hart Publishing
Place Published: Oxford
URL: https://www.bloomsburyprofessional.com/uk/revolution-and-evolution-in-private-law-9781509913244/
Library holdings: Search Newcastle University Library for this item
ISBN: 9781509913244
