Is what lasts thereby good?
On the axis: Tradition and transformation · a tradition
Does an institution's endurance prove its worth, what has held having proven itself, or does "it has always been so" also shelter injustices that have lasted just as long?
Justification
Bentham judges institutions by their present utility alone, never by their antiquity: law must be methodically reformed, statutes codified, irrational survivals abolished. A radical reformer of the penal and carceral system (the Panopticon project), he denounces the nonsense of the common law and campaigns for a rational recasting of the codes. This is an avowed reformist progressivism.
A Fragment on Government (critique of Blackstone and the common law) · Panopticon, or the Inspection-House
Anchors: Burke · Paine · Bentham