"[T]he past unsettles and destabilizes the stories we tell about law..."

One of the preeminent legal historians of the present day is Robert W. Gordon. I like what he has written here:

[T]he historicized past poses a perpetual threat to the legal rationalizations of the present. Brought back to life, the past unsettles and destabilizes the stories we tell about the law to make us feel comfortable with the way things are. Often  this is done by explaining how meanings and applications of legal terms have changed; or by exposing the origins of a rule in archaic cultural assumptions or barbaric practices or corrupt or authoritarian influences. Sometimes it is done by revealing the traces of such pasts continuing pervasively into the present.

Robert W. Gordon, Taming the Past: Essays on Law in History and History in Law 5 (2017).