Interpretive History
“It is also nonsense to draw a line between ‘interpretive’ history and some other sort. All historians who are worth anything are and have always been interpretive. They never just throw data at the reader like dead fish and say: you make something of it. They have always tried to interpret their data imaginatively; and they interpret even as they decide what to study and where to look. The main distinction is to be drawn between good work and bad work. The good work is rigorous in its way and interpretive in its way. The bad work is sloppy or mindless or far-fetched.”
Lawrence M. Friedman, “Legal History: Israel and the United States-Some Remarks.” In The History of Law in a Multi-Cultural Society: Israel 1917-1967, edited by Ron Harris, Alexandre (Sandy) Kedar, Pnina Lahav, and Assaf Likhovski, Dartmouth, UK: Ashgate, 2002. 411.