Abstract
This article addresses the question whether a legal system can have an identity through time. The jurisprudential debate over the question has been dominated by Hans Kelsen's account of systemic unity of norms, on the one hand, and John Finnis's and Joseph Raz's accounts of the identity of a social system (for example a state) of which a legal system is a part, on the other. Drawing on two previously unexplored situations as test cases for successful explanation, the article demonstrates that the major existing accounts are not wholly satisfactory. A new solution is proposed: it is the practice of legal officials that evinces the criteria for recognising the continuity of the legal system whose officials they are. The article develops an account of the practice's central features and demonstrates that the account supplies coherent solutions to the test cases.
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