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.

Allan C. Hutchinson is Professor and Associate Dean at Osgoode Hall Law School in York University. He has published on a variety of subjects including civil litigation, constitutional law, torts, jurisprudence, evidence, legal profession, and legal ethics. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and awarded Osgoode Hall's inaugural Excellence in Teaching Award.

1. Evolution and the common law: an introduction; 2. Darwin's excellent adventure: evolution and law; 3. The creationists' persistence: jurisprudence and God; 4. Taming the bulldog: the natural and pragmatic; 5. Tracking the common law: the routine and revolutionary; 6. Looking for Gadamer: traditions and transformations; 7. Reading between the lines: courts and constitutions; 8. Making changes: progress and politics; 9. Among the trees: a conclusion.