Over at Volokh Conspiracy, several posts take on the significance of the decision overturning the Louisiana law on a death penalty for child rape and the significance in a case based system of the decision. It brings to mind the issue of cased based systems in psychiatry. Psychoanalysis is a cased based system as least as started by Freud. The dynamic of repressed homosexuality as essential in paranoia is a result of the Schreber case. The idea, not really so useful, that depression is 'anger turned against the self' arises from a case where a woman was said to be depressed and accused herself of being a robber when actually it was her father, who had recently died, who was a robber. One could elaborate this. One thing it 'solves' for me is the fact that it is an English lawyer, Roger Bacon, who, apparently correctly, is given much credit for our cultural evolution toward science. Case law suggested an impetus for finding derivative patterns in nature.