At the 1995 Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Boaventura de Sousa Santos delivered an invited plenary address in which he challenged sociolegal scholars to consider the current state of our field. Perhaps, he argued, the paradigms that stand behind the conventions of much current scholarship are inadequate for understanding critical aspects of the law-society relationship. He proposed three metaphors to describe paradigmatic crises and possibilities: the frontier, the baroque, and the South. Santos provoked considerable discussion in the corridors of the Royal York Hotel in Toronto, but a jam-packed meeting program did not offer an opportunity for any sort of public commentary from those who heard him.