Question

Consider the following scholarly evaluation of nineteenth-century legal history:

In his seminal historiography of nineteenth-century American jurisprudence, Morton posits that the antebellum judiciary systematically dismantled common law formalisms to subsidize nascent industrial capitalism. Morton’s instrumentalist framework compellingly maps the macroeconomic outcomes of landmark tort and contract decisions. However, by effectively reducing judicial reasoning to a mere epistemic epiphenomenon of capital accumulation, Morton flattens the multidimensional landscape of legal consciousness. He treats formal doctrinal fidelity as an ex post facto rhetorical veil, thereby failing to account for the profound ways in which judges remained cognitively anchored in, and constrained by, the internal architecture of precedent. To acknowledge that the judiciary was porous to market realities need not entail embracing Morton’s reductionist assumption that these jurists operated primarily as covert economic planners rather than as stewards of an inherited legal tradition.

Which of the following best describes the author's attitude toward Morton's instrumentalist framework?