Change and continuity are recurring themes in law and history, the inexorably shifting ebbs and flows as society and its laws adapt to the dynamic contours of space, place, and time; and the physical and metaphysical influences of context. Change presages reform, disruption, and transformation, while continuity assures of stability, permanence, or the perceived comfort of incremental ‘progress’. Change and continuity appear as polar opposites, and they often are, yet at times, they also complement each other, speaking to latent tensions that are both coherent and incoherent and compatible and incompatible, often at the same time.
Change and continuity also remind us of circularity and relativity. As the truism goes, ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’, yet often, it seems that time speeds up (change) while on occasions, it passes more slowly (continuity). Or change and continuity are simply different gears on an erstwhile linear trajectory, where each co-informs and co-constitutes an ongoing confluence of legalities and histories.
