"Concern for the memory of slavery and its place in law also animates the next essay, by Brook Thomas. His concern, however, is less with memory than with the way law both lives in, and finds resources to escape, the precedential world it creates. Thomas wants to illuminate what might be called the indeterminacy of historical argument in legal decision making as well as the way judges can both appeal to history and yet evade the history to which they appeal. He argues that, at least in the context of decisions on racial discrimination, judges deploy metaphors to produce novel interpretations of legal doctrine while continuing to honor the doctrinal history that they are changing. “Metaphor . . . allows for innovative interpretations that paradoxically claim to stay true to the meaning of the text at hand.”"