Legal Commentary

I love HeinOnline.  Who?s with me?

Like all loves, I can?t completely explain it.  Maybe reading seventy-year-old law review articles on obscure topics like subrogation makes me subconsciously imagine a pudgy yet staggeringly brilliant assistant professor reading my work in 2080; maybe the hoary print aesthetics have more heart-pleasing character than the electronically-neutered text on Westlaw;  maybe I?m a tenth-level black belt nerd oddly smitten with dusty legal arcana. 

A little truth to all of that, probably.  But I also have a more flattering theory: the old articles are an invigorating reminder of the organic complexity of legal intellectual history.   The past can often seem entirely prefatory, populated by people, ideas, and events we reduce to simple simulacra to accommodate mental narratives that lead up to today.  And I?m not criticizing such simplification; in many ways it?s an important part of intellectual evolution.   Just the same, immersion in near-forgotten older scholarship can serve both as an engaging historical tour and a jarring creative catalyst. 

So that?s my fancy explanation of why I dig HeinOnline.  Either that or I?m just a weirdo.