This book offers a radical challenge to all existing accounts of the common law"s development. Contrary to received jurisprudential wisdom, it maintains there is no grand theory which will explain satisfactorily the dynamic interactions of change and stability in the common law"s history. Offering fresh and original readings of Charles Darwin"s and Hans-Georg Gadamer"s works, the book demonstrates that law is a rhetorical activity that can only be properly appreciated in its historical and political context. It reveals that, like life, law is an organic process and that common law is a perpetual work-in-progress.