  One such argument may well be found in a point already mentioned in passing above, i.e. that judges are in a different position from legislators when it comes to deciding how the law ought to be developed. Raz (1979 and 1994a) argues that when faced with the choice of adopting the (according to law) morally best outcome to a case over an outcome which coheres better with the settled law, courts have to bear in mind that if they choose the former route, then some problematic consequences may ensue, such as that they may introduce conflicting rules reflecting conflicting social and economic purposes into the law, and hence create a considerable degree of dissonance with regard to existing legal doctrines in a given area of law. Such consequences need not dog legislative attempts to develop the law in a way which deviates from the doctrinal past, because legislative institutions have the power to sweep away the past in introducing new legislation, and to do so in such a way as to radically reform a whole area of law at one stroke. Courts, by contrast, can only make decisions concerning the issues arising in the case before them, and have considerably less opportunity to engage in radical reform of the law. These factors mean that judicial reform of the law will always be partial in nature, and, as was noted above, such partial reform brings with it the possibility of introducing dissonance and conflict into the law in the meantime. This may provide one reason why sometimes courts should give greater weight to considerations of coherence with pre-existing law in deciding cases which come before them, rather than striking out in a (albeit otherwise morally preferable) direction which coheres less well with settled law. 