64 266.  There are a great many more interests in legislation than there were fifteen years ago.      There   is   much   more   need   for   consultation   with   a   wide   range   of organisations  and  bodies  before  legislative  proposals  are  launched  upon  their path.  There is a need to base proposals for law reform on empirical data which often  requires  survey  research  or  other  social  science  methodology  to  be employed before options for reform can be effectively evaluated.    267.  Furthermore, there is decline of law as an autonomous discipline.  This was the subject  of  a  famous  essay  by  Judge  Richard  A  Posner  in  the  Harvard  Law Review “The Decline of Law as an Autonomous Discipline: 1962 to 1987”.⁵⁴  In his essay Posner outlined that economists, statisticians and other social scientists will  have  a  far  more  prominent  role  in  efforts  at  legal  reform  than  has traditionally been the case. 268.  Posner was not arguing for or predicting the disappearance  of  traditional  legal thought and scholarship, but he pointed out that the growth of interdisciplinary legal   analysis   involving   disciplines   such   as   economics,   sociology   and anthropology had been a good thing, and it will continue.    269.  There is a further factor that applies particularly to New Zealand.  New Zealand is  a  much  less  homogeneous  community  than  it  used  to  be;  it  is  becoming  a highly pluralist society in which there are many aims, values and aspirations that are often in conflict with one another.    Need for Greater Multi-disciplinary Expertise 270.  Many legal areas constitute a social battleground for conflicting values and the inevitability of this means that professional agreement among a few lawyers that a  particular  legislative  proposal  is  desirable  is  hardly  the  end,  or  even  the beginning,  of  the  matter.    New  Zealanders  understand  better  now  perhaps  that law  is  a  tool  for  achieving  social  ends,  as  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  made  clear more  than  a  century  ago.⁵⁵    Legal  reform  must  now  interest  itself  in  the interdisciplinary insights of the economist, the statistician, the philosopher, the sociologist, the political scientist, the historian, the psychologist, the linguist and the anthropologist.                                                     54   (1987) 100 Harvard Law Review 761.