Goodbye Simpson

A.W.B. Simpson died this week.  Simpson was a professor at Oxford, working in legal history and jurisprudence.  I particularly liked his Cannibalism and the Common Law and his Legal Theory and Legal History.  I think the works are an interesting starting place for exploring two things: first, the distances between legal theory or doctrine, on the one hand, and the cases about which the former are supposed to be, on the other; and, second, the distance between the facts and the cases.  A fair portion of philosophy of law would benefit from more respect for history, and for practice.  A lower regard for pure theory.