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2024 Cardozo L. Rev. De-Novo 1 (2024)

handle is hein.journals/denovo2024 and id is 1 raw text is: C AR~z L)TC'7~IAwI RJvi de0novo AGAINST GAP-FILLING Noah C. Chauvint Legal scholars delight in gap-filling. They frequently claim that their works have identified a gap in the literature and to have filled (or begun filling) that gap. However, all too often, these same papers fail to explain why the gap needed to be filled at all.t Indeed, despite a robust tradition of meta-scholarship, the legal literature is largely devoid of a theory of academic gap-filling. This essay fills that gap. In it, I argue that gap-filling for the sake of gap-filling is an error for three interconnected reasons. First, gaps might exist for a good reason. Second, concern with gap-filling is often a misguided attempt to address other issues that are tangential to legal scholarship. Finally, focusing on gaps is incredibly limiting. Instead, I suggest that legal scholars should focus on exploring questions that interest them, regardless of whether that exploration leads them to a gap. Gaps might existfor a reason. To begin with, there may be a good reason why a gap in the legal literature exists. It is possible that a question is uninteresting to other scholars, that there is scholarly consensus that the problem an article seeks to address is so minor that it does not merit T J.D., William & Mary Law School; B.A., SUNY Geneseo. 1 See Ashley T. Rubin (@ashleytrubin), TWITTER (May 24, 2021, 3:02 PM), https://twitter.com/ashleytrubin/status/1396904421347393538 [https://perma.cc/TNE3- 22D9](I've been reading a *lot* of research lately and I can't tell you how often people use a gap in the literature to motivate their work.). I