Too Much Information

This Chapter explicates, explores, and commends Patrick Glenn’s choice to recognize and emphasize the significance of tradition, his master concept for understanding law, in the workings of all legal orders. However, it does not share the evangelical enthusiasm that Glenn suggests should flow from this recognition. That enthusiasm is based, I argue, on a quite idiosyncratic and contestable conception of what traditions ‘truly’ involve, absent contingency or corruption. Without his excessively sunny conception of the nature of tradition as its foundation, however, a lot of the ‘conciliatory’ hopefulness so winning in Glenn’s writings seems to rest on shifting and uncertain ground. In particular, while Glenn notes that traditions are normative, he does not follow through the implications of this normativity.