The Times of Law

In this essay, I situate Kunal Parker's Common Law, History, and Democracy in America, 1790–1900, within a broader set of intellectual currents engaged with questions of time and temporality. Although Parker's book centers on the common law and history and develops specific conceptions of time, in so doing, he invites legal historians and legal scholars to ruminate on the times of law, particularly the temporal relations that law has with itself. Placing Parker in conversation with Henri Bergson and the recent Bergsonian revival in critical theory, I suggest that law has a duration, a formulation that opens other itineraries to consider the dynamic times of law.