WilliamW. Fisher III 56 schools is that legal historians are asked somewhat more often than other historians to shape their work so as to generate laws of this sortd°5 None of the four variants of intellectual/legal history is likely to provide much service in this cause. In part, this is because all four deliberately neglect many things (such as economic and technological developments) that would likely figure in any general laws of social development. A more fundamental reason is that all four share (albeit to different degrees) an antifoundationalist, perspectival stance that is corrosive of scientism. The more one acknowledges the inevitable Impact of the interpreter on the data she interprets, the less reliable will appear the general laws one might seek to derive froma cluster of individual interpretations. These predictions are reinforced by the manner in which non-legal intellectual historians have responded when confronted with questions that might invite responses in the form of general laws. For example, in a recent essay, Stephen Greenblatt (the most prominent of the NewFlistoricists) confronted the issue of the relationship between capitalism and art.*°^ Frederic Jameson, he observes, blames capitalism for the repressive and pernicious separation of the aesthetic domain from other sectors of contemporary Western culture. JeanFrancois Lyotard, by contrast, blames capitalism for the corrosion of discursive boundaries - for a drive toward monological totalization. Neither generalization, argues Greenblatt, is convincing. If there is any discernible pattern, it is one of “restless oscillation,” in which a working distinction between the aesthetic and the real is repeatedly established and then abrogated.In Greenblatt’s willingness to entertain any general hypotheses concerning “the distinct power of capitalism,” one can perhaps see some hope for universal laws. But more prominent in his essay is the insistence upon the complexity and particularity of relations between art and capital. Transferred to the domain of legal history, this analytical predisposition is not likely to produce generalizations of the sort that would satisfy Hempel. (3) Contribute to contemporary policy debates by enabling readers to assess the merits andpreconditions of policies pursued in other societies. Viewed from this standpoint, the past consists of a set of (uncontrolled) experiments. The notion is that historically knowledgeable leaders will be able to capitalize on '“5 The outlines of a historical analysis that might (with some further elaboration) meet Hempel’s expectations may be found in Robert C. Clark, “The Four Stages of Capitalism; Reflections on Investment Management Treatises,” Harvard Law Review 94 (1981): 561 (identifying four stages of increasing specialization of private economic activity and attributing the progression tt:) a combination of (i) “the efficiency advantages of role specialization”; (ii) “a general increase in wealth”; and (iii) a process of natural selection of institutional forms). 136 Megill, supra n. 23, 636—37; Russell Jacobv, “A New Intellectual History?” American Historical Review 97 (1992): 423-24. Stephen Greenblatt, “Towards a Poetics of Culture,” in Veeser, supra n. 29, 1-14. 'OS Ibid., 80. 106 107
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