The impact of legal meta-scholarship: Love thy navel

© 2009, Routledge. All rights reserved. This article considers the role and value of legal meta-scholarship (scholarship about legal scholarship) to the discipline of law. The United States has a large and robust body of meta-scholarship that provides an ongoing commentary to the development of the discipline. The body of UK and Australian works is relatively meagre (though growing). The separate significance and impact of meta-scholarship to the discipline of law has not been seriously considered in any of these bodies of work. The purpose of this article is to begin to fill this gap and to prompt legal scholars to reflect further on whether and how best to write meta-scholarship. Close study of US meta-scholarship highlights its critical role in defining and exposing the boundaries of the discipline and its great potential as both an evaluative tool and driver of scholarly development. This article explores the strengths and shortcomings of the US work with a view to fostering the thoughtful progression of meta-scholarship in Australia and the United Kingdom.