Legal scholars can perform an edifying role by broadening the perceived scope of legitimate institutional alternatives. One way to do this is to demonstrate the contingent and malleable nature of legal reasoning and legal institutions. The greatest service that legal theorists can provide is active criticism of the legal system. Criticism is initially reactive and destructive, rather than constructive. But out mistaken belief that our current ways of doing things are somehow natural or necessary hinders us from envisioning radical alternatives to what exists. To exercise our utopian imagination, it is helpful first to expose the structures of thought that limit our perception of what is possible. Judges rationalize their decisions as the results of reasoned elaboration of principles inherent in the legal system. Instead of choosing among available descriptions, theories, vocabularies, and course of action, the official who feels "bound" reasons from nonexistent "grounds" and hides from herself the fact that she is exercising power. By systematically and constantly criticizing the rationalizations [*59] of traditional legal reasoning, we can demonstrate, again and again, that a wider range of alternatives is available to us.
Joseph Singer, The Player and the Cards: Nihilism and Legal Theory, 94 Yale L.J. 1, 58-59 (1984).
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