In recent decades, there has been an explosion in legal scholarship marked by the proliferation of new law journals and the growing use of interdisciplinary analysis. Still, there has been little systematic analysis of the manner in which academic writing on law evolves over time. This lecture's purpose has been to address this gap and offer insights concerning the development of legal scholarship. The first step was to identify five potential trajectories. The general survey offered in part II of the lecture indicates that all are plausible to at least some degree. At the same time, no single account is fully convincing. Moreover, the various options yield lessons that are, at least in some measure, contradictory.

A case study of corporate law was conducted to shed light on the manner in which academic writing on law in fact evolves. The analysis offered confirms that each of the five trajectories previously identified account at least partially for the trajectory of corporate law scholarship. For instance, Berle and Means' pioneering work on the separation of ownership and control had a scientific aspect and the use of event studies helps to ensure that formal verification of hypotheses is a component of the contemporary theoretical literature. With Kuhn's work, characterising corporate law scholarship in terms of paradigms, normal science and so on has proved to be a popular endeavour.