The theory of critical legal studies (original) (raw)
1986, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies
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Abstract
I. A PROGRESSIVE INTERVENTION Critical legal studies is the first movement in legal theory and legal scholarship in the United States to have espoused a committed Left political stance and perspective.2 A left-wing academic trend of considerable breadth in the field of law is ...
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Critical Legal Studies (hereinafter CLS) movement of the U.S. marked the combination of a legal way of thought and a social network of left leaning legal scholars of 1970s. Though loosely constructed as a legal theory, CLS lacks the ingredients necessary for a full pledged legal theory. It is rather better described as anetwork of like-minded legal scholars at Harvard and a way of legal thought.1 Prominent among the scholars were Roberto Unger,Duncan Kennedy, David Kennedy, Morton Horwitz, Jack Balkin, Mark Tushnet and Louis Michael Seidman. As is put by Roberto Unger, though CLS was meant to be “continued as an organizing force only until the late 1980s,…its founders never meant it to become an ongoing school of thought or genre of writing.” Yet the movement became a very powerful school of thought popularised throughout America and the rest of the world. CLS has been perceived both as a reaction to legal Formalism and Realism and a distinct theory of law.
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The basic critique of the nature of Western liberal legal institutions, presented in various forms by Critical Legal Scholars, is relatively well developed. However, it is more difficult to ascertain how the Critics would structure a post-liberal society. Radical theorists generally fail to advance concrete proposals regarding the composition of such a society. This is partly due to their own belief that the determination of the values and institutions forming the basis for a future society must be postponed until it can be accomplished through truly democratic means. Nevertheless, there are recurring themes in the literature. The central flaw with liberalism is its isolation of the individual and the emphasis of pluralism on balancing competing interests while making no attempt to ascertain the overriding interests of society as a whole. A post-liberal society would shift the focus to notions of community. The author examines theories of community manifested in divergent critiques,...
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The objective of this paper is to analyze the factors that led to the decline of Critical Legal Studies from the 1990s. At first, we will analyze the emergence of critical theories of Law in the 1960s. We will then investigate the emergence of postmodern legal movements, placing Critical Legal Studies in this process. Finally, we will evaluate the impact of neoliberalism on the work of Critical Legal Studies.
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This chapter focuses on the relationship between critical legal studies as an intellectual movement in American law schools, and law and economics, in both Chicago and other forms. The critical legal studies critique of law and economics can reasonably be understood as an effort to foster alternative, radical approaches to law and economics that acknowledge and proceed from politically-charged contradictions within the discipline. The intellectual engagement between critical legal studies and law and economics over the last twenty years has not mediated the contradiction between the critical legal studies and law and economics views of law.
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CRITICAL LEGAL STUDIES MOVEMENT (Autosaved).docx
This is my project work on Critical Legal Studies Movement which roots can be traced back to the development of legal realism. In this article I have tried to define the characteristics of this movement, its theme and its contribution to the further development in the society like rise of feminist movement and critical race theory. Although CLS movement is not in such a grown up stage so that it could be taken as alternative of liberal legalism, however, it cannot be denied that it has played a crucial role to challenge the preexisting norms in our society and tried to make the world a better place for all.
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Thus, critical legal scholars reject the liberal and mainstream view of law as the product of a competition of "social interests," as well as the Marxist's contention that law is the necessary consequence of class struggle situated at a particular moment in a determined history.
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References (18)
- D. Kennedy, supra n 18.
- D. Kennedy, supra n 37.
- D. Kennedy, ibid, 4.
- D. Kennedy, ibid, 18. by guest on January 16, 2011
- K. Marx, 'The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte', Surveys From Exile (AUen Lane, 1973) 146 or Collected Works Vol 11, 103.
- P. Berger and T. Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (1966). For example Bob Gordon argues that 'what we experience as "social reality" is something that we are constantly constructing', 'New Developments in Legal Theory' in Kairys, supra n 6, 287. In a more ambiguous formulation Karl Klare insists that 'we are the ensemble of our social relations and shared meanings, and that our individuality is in many ways defined in relationship to our shared meanings and symbols'; K. Klare, supra n 32, 1419.
- D. Kennedy, supra n 18, 209.
- D. Kennedy, supra n 13, 563-64.
- M. Tushnet, supra n 11, 31.
- Unger is explicit about the limited theoretica] development of both the two strands of critical scholarship he identifies; both 'have yet to take a clear position on the method, the content, and even the possibility of prescriptive and programmatic thought'; R. Unger, supra n 9, 563.
- M. Tushnet, op cit 31-32; emphasis added AJH.
- A. Freeman, tupra n 11, 1236.
- P. Gabel, tupra n 32, 28.
- D. Trubek, supra n 3, 610.
- R. Unger, supra n 9, 579.
- D. Kennedy, supra n 13; I take it for present purposes that his concept of'motives' has the same role as Unger's concept of 'principles'.
- Ibid, 629.
- Ibid, 647.