"Indeed the authority of legitimacy of a judicial decision is to some extent a product of its ability to cloth itself in the history of law, to plausibly claim that there is nothing innovative or new being done or said even while new departures are being undertaken. Alternatively, when judges make a radical departure from the past, the gravitational force of law’s history “compels” them to find a loophole, a gap in the seamless web of history, or to say that there are no applicable precedents, or that the applicable precedents are somehow less relevant than they might otherwise seem. In this sense law is always facing backward, engaged with the past, constructing majestic narratives of continuity with occasional flaws in the tapestry."