Twisting the Tourniquet Around the Pulse of Conventional Legal Wisdom: Jurisprudence and Law Reform in the Work of Robert A. Samek

The name Robert Samek first came to my attention in the summer of 1985 as part of a research project carried out under the auspices of the Law Reform Commission of Canada. I was struck by what at the time seemed to be a complete contrast in two of his publications; his book, The Legal Point of View and an article, "A Case for Social Law Reform". Although only a few years apart, it seemed impossible that the two works could have come from the pen of the same author: the former was traditional, opaque, dull, pedantic and repetitive; the latter iconoclastic, lucid, fresh, aggressive and inspiring. Further research reinforced this seeming antinomy; a host of technical articles on contract law counterbalanced by a series of polemics which appeared to be somewhere to the left of the Conference on Critical Legal Studies, and an obscure book with a Greek sounding title, The Meta Phenomenon. A mystery was beginning to develop.