What Is Legal Innovation?

Abstract

Technological progress, along with the economic success it brings innovators, has transformed technological innovation into an object of admiration. The law supports and regulates technological and creative innovation in other fields, but is law itself an arena of innovation – of legal innovation? Do the concepts, doctrines, theories and techniques produced by the law encompass innovation? If so, does legal innovation share similar characteristics with other kinds of innovation? Can we learn something about the nature of legal innovation from the general field of innovation research? The legal discipline is more preoccupied with identifying innovation in other areas than in analyzing the characteristics of its own innovations. In this Essay I argue that legal innovation has similar characteristics to innovation in other areas, although it is no less impressive and influential. The phenomenon of legal innovation can and should attract more scientific attention. 2021 U. Ill. L. Rev. Online 63, https://illinoislawreview.org/online/what-is-legal-innovation/

Keywords: Innovation, Inovation Research, Law, Legal Innovation, Legal Research, Legal History, Legal Scholarship, Jurisprudence, Land Law, Real Estate Law

JEL Classification: O03, K, R