Coquillette on the Birth of Baconian Rulemaking

Daniel Coquillette, Boston College Law School, has posted Past the Pillars of Hercules: Francis Bacon and the Science of Rulemaking, which will appear in the University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform  46 (2013).  Here is the abstract:    

The parallels between Francis Bacon’s career and that of Edward H. Cooper are obvious. Bacon was one of the great legal minds of his day and, unlike the common law judges who formed the law by deciding cases, Bacon expressed his greatness in writing brilliant juristic treatises and, as Lord Chancellor, drafting one of the first modern rule systems, the Ordinances in Chancery (1617-1620). My thesis is that Bacon invented modern, scientific rulemaking by fusing his new theories of inductive, empirical research with the traditions of equitable pleading, and is, in fact, the intellectual forebearer of the likes of Charles Clark, Benjamin Kaplan, and Edward Cooper.