Bray on Multipurpose and Single Purpose Tools (in the Kitchen and in Law)

My friend Sam Bray has a marvelous essay just published in The Green Bag on doctrines that do many things and doctrines that do only one. Here's the beginning of the piece:

Every kitchen has two kinds of tools. Some of these tools do many things well, like a chef’s knife. Other tools do only one thing, but they are meant to do that one thing exceedingly well, like a garlic press. The same distinction appears in legal doctrines. Some doctrines do one thing and are meant to do it very well. Others do many different things. They serve multiple functions, though perhaps all imperfectly. Cooks and cookbook authors debate the relative merits of single- function tools and multi-function tools. So do legal scholars. It often happens that a scholar will criticize a legal doctrine because it serves multiple purposes and is therefore incoherent. 

And later, in defense of multipurpose tools:

One [advantage] is about skill. The use of a multi-function tool may be taxing. Yet use can lead to skill, and skill to expertise, and expertise to mastery, a kind of hard-won excellence that is rarely possible with a single-function tool. Perhaps this is why those who are most adept at chopping, dicing, and mincing garlic often deride garlic presses, calling them “ridiculous and pathetic,” even “abominations.” Some disagree. But it does tend to be the case that those who have greater experience and expertise prefer the chef’s knife, while those who have less of each tend to prefer the garlic press. Such tendencies suggest that any assessment of these tools also requires an assessment of the person who wields them: a tool that serves multiple functions can be mastered only by someone who is capable of achieving that mastery. And the same is true for mastering a doctrine that serves multiple functions. A person with skill in granting and fashioning a constructive trust may prefer the more general doctrine, with the possibility that one function will shade slightly into another, without the sharp and artificial choice imposed by the single-function tools. But that sharp and artificial choice may be appealing to one less skilled.

And on how people with distinct roles in the law are drawn to specific sorts of tools:

Nor is it an accident that the critics of multi-function doctrines tend to be scholars, and those who use and defend them tend to be judges. In making the choice between single-function doctrines and multi-function doctrines, the interests of the bench, the bar, and the academy do not align. Judges are generalists. And attorneys are specialists who write for generalists. But scholars are specialists who write for other specialists. Those roles affect the preferences each actor has. A generalist judge might want a smaller number of doctrines, each serving multiple functions – a set of doctrines that can be resorted to again and again, even if each is used in different ways and for different purposes depending on the case. Specialists, especially those who do not write to persuade generalists, may seek an ever greater refinement of the rules, so that each rule fits its function exactly. The evidence is the enthusiasm that so many scholars have shown for critiquing multi-function doctrines and urging their replacement with single-function doctrines. But the bench has resisted this. Judges have shown no interest in these scholarly projects of deconstruction. 

In the end, Sam writes, the choice of a tool is one thing, but the choice of what to make for dinner is something else. I quite agree. Why would anybody ever cook with garlic?