Since the early twentieth century, a major focus in the Western study of Islamic law has been regarding Islamic law and its relationship to social and legal change. Progressing from the Orientalist position that Islamic law was removed from socio-cultural change, and hence, irrelevant, Hallaq and others have shown that it was through the incorporation of fatwas into the corpus of the legal schools (madhahib) that Islamic law remained relevant. Hallaq also argues that in the contemporary period, the pre-modern structures based on adherence to the madhhab have all but become obsolete, resulting in a major structural change in Islamic legal thought. Today, we see that important pre-modern and classical texts of both Islamic substantive law (furu') and legal theory (usul al-fiqh) are consulted, but no longer within strict school boundaries. Instead, a comparative-based approach to the madhahib and collective fatwa pronouncements have become the norm, alongside a focus on legal maxims (qawa'id fiqhiyya) and legal objectives (maqasid al-shari'a). This paper discusses the historical development of this process of legal change, before giving a case study of The Amman Message, its aims and objectives. Also discussed is the fatwa of Yusuf al-Qaradawi found within The Amman Message text.