Summoning Up the Past: Detecting Legal Change Through Architecture’s Evidence

Abstract

This essay puts on the table the following question: how has architecture helped catalyze legal change? I use as a specific illustration a debate regarding the codification of English common law that took place between Jeremy Bentham and William Blackstone in the late eighteenth century. Bentham and Blackstone’s competing architectural metaphors provided vivid illustrations of perceived dangers that they saw underlying proposed changes in law. The debate shows not only how powerful architectural metaphors were in constructing legal reform. It also demonstrates how novel architectural ideas can mask the lack of substantive changes in legal practice.