[WBrentWilliams]

I'm not certain is if this is because I live in a city with a well-known law school, or if Lawrence Lessig dropped the idea into my thoughts first.

The idea: The first duty of any court of law is to defend its own existence.

My thesis is that this first duty colors in the rest of the legal profession, including why laws, orders, and proclamations are written in a certain way.

Minor point: The article calls out in-place definitions. Useful, if unwieldly, when footnote and endnote conventions have yet to have been defined and practiced.