Have There Been Scientific Revolutions in Law?

What this paper will assert is that the history of European legal thought indicates that there is no evidence of such paradigm revolutions of the Kuhn type (although there have been changes of method and outlook). Indeed, it will be argued, importing Kuhn’s thesis into law (even superficially) shows a lack of epistemological sophistication with respect both to Kuhn and to legal history. In turn this perhaps leaves jurists open to some ridicule from epistemologists outside of law. Of course jurists are not the only social scientists to be guilty of trivialising Kuhn’s thesis; but law is one of the – perhaps the – oldest of the social sciences and is thus a discipline in which the Kuhn thesis can be examined in some depth.