Abstract
This essay is an invited response to “Advisory Opinions and the Problem of Legal Authority,” Vanderbilt Law Review, vol. 74, by Christian R. Burset. The essay explores the relationship between English legal education in the 18th century and the crisis affecting the law. English legal education lacked a formal institutional basis after the decline of the Inns of Court, and this affected the acculturation of English lawyers and their maintenance of a shared sensibility or common erudition. The evidence suggests that American legal education faced similar challenges. As a result, lawyers and legal writers embraced a view of the law that emphasized elements that narrowed the discretion of judges: precedent and a doctrine of stare decisis; the law as a system; lengthy, written judicial opinions; and legal decision-making as deductive. The development of a doctrine of justiciability and the decline of advisory opinions was related to these developments.
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