KSR and the Supreme Court: The Silence is Deafening

Abstract

One of the uses of history is to free us of a falsely imagined past. The less we know of how ideas actually took root and grew, the more apt we are to accept them unquestioningly, as inevitable features of the world in which we move. One reason for the stifling solidity of received opinion about antitrust, why counterargument makes so little headway, is that most of us accept our first principles and even our immediate premises uncritically, as given, because we assume that they were established theoretically and confirmed empirically by legislators and judges long ago.

If awareness of anomaly plays a role in the emergence of new sorts of phenomena, it should surprise no one that a similar but more profound awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory.