 As for the descriptive-normative problem, thinkers from Kuhn to Robert Brandom (e.g., 2002: 13, 230ff) have appealed to the common law tradition as an instructive analogy, and Toulmin was no exception. Published legal cases provide legal precedents that later legal argumentation can cite for support. Over time, normative traditions emerge. Explicit rules may be formulated by reflecting on the history of precedents, but the practices typically remain implicit. There is a whiff of Hegelian, retrospective reconstruction in this idea of extracting norms from patterned historical practices that embody them implicitly and contingently. The main trouble with Toulmin’s account, said critics, is that it is so vague and abstract that it tells us little about how science works. It would seem to apply to just about everything.