The University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform is one of the nation’s leading law and policy publications, publishing cutting-edge legal scholarship by academics and lawyers. The journal seeks to make a contribution to legal reform by proposing constructive and well-reasoned proposals in all areas of law.
Change in the law is a constant and essential feature of the legal system, although it comes in many forms. Some are large, radical – think of the wholesale revolution that followed the Russian or Chinese revolutions, or the near extinction of the Soviet system – and some are small and incremental, like changing the wording in a statute to improve its clarity or effect.
More often, though, legal changes happen in ragged, complex ways that have little to do with formal or overt aspects of the law. This type of change is commonly referred to as “legal reform,” and it includes codification work in the form of judicial codes, as well as projects aimed at making legal systems more efficient or transparent by altering how laws are written or interpreted.
Other legal reforms are more significant – the kind that changes fundamental features of how a legal system functions. For example, a reform that allows judges to be elected rather than appointed would expose the judiciary to political and economic pressures that undermine judicial independence, putting the system’s separation of powers in jeopardy. It isn’t hard to imagine a Court that uses the constitutional power it has gained from this sort of structural reform to regularly issue overtly partisan rulings against Congress, further undermining the separation of powers and the rule of law.