Thinking with Wolves: Left Legal Theory after the Right's Rise (original) (raw)

Deep Cuts: Four Critiques of Legal Ideology

2021

This Article begins an effort to rekindle the intellectual tradition of critical legal theory. The context for the project is significant. On the one hand is the grip of a social crisis, the contours of which continue to confound the commentariat. Racism, xenophobia, gendered violence, migration and nation, climate change, health pandemics, political corruption. The parade is as intimidating as it is spectacular. On the other hand, the very tools of criticism we depend upon in identifying these characters in the parade, much less the spectacle of the parade itself, are themselves in crisis. There is, in a word, a crisis for critique itself. The working assumption of this Article is that these crises—crises in society and the crises of critique—are not unrelated. It is in this context that we believe in the need to revitalize the tools of critical legal studies, an intellectual songbook from the 1970s that deserves a 21st century reboot. The argument is as follows. Among the crises o...

Liberal politics and the judiciary: The supreme court and american democracy

Res Publica, 1997

In recent years, constitutional government has come to be identified largely with the judicial protection of individual rights. This characterisation of constitutionalism draws inspiration from both standard liberal concerns and the recent practice of the United States Supreme Court. Indeed, there has been a tendency amongst contemporary analytical American legal and political philosophers - most notably John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin and those influenced by, or critical of, their work - to conflate liberalism with the judgments of the Warren and Burger Courts. As a result, the philosophical treatment of a whole range of important social issues, from abortion and pornography, to racial and gender discrimination, has been framed to a remarkable degree by the concerns of American constitutional jurisprudence. Curiously, however, scholars outside America rarely have a direct knowledge of these landmark decisions or the reasoning underlying them. In consequence, a somewhat rarefied understanding of liberal principles and judicial decision making has emerged amongst many social and political philosophers, that rarely engages with the real contexts within which such ideals supposedly operate. It is the great merit of the books under review that in different ways they all seek to explore the actual theory and practice of the Supreme Court. In the process, they are led, albeit to varying extent, to critically examine the philosophical assumptions as well as the workings of the liberal interpretation of the American Constitution and its related view of democracy.

Law on the Left: a Conversation with Duncan Kennedy

An extended interview with Duncan Kennedy about his intellectual and political formation, contributions to legal theory, the history of Critical Legal Studies, and further topics including Marxism, legal indeterminacy, and the globalisation of legal thought.

A Different Legal Conservatism

Contemporary Pragmatism, 2018

In Conservatism and Pragmatism, Seth Vannatta posits and explores several major conceptual and practical affinities between classical (especially Peircean) pragmatism and conservatism. Characterizing both as essentially methods rather than ideologies, he argues that the two ought to be understood as mutually supportive and corrective, and that they conjointly supply an especially robust set of intellectual resources relevant to contemporary moral, political, and legal concerns. This essay critically examines Vannatta's marriage of conservatism and pragmatism in the realm of legal theory. It argues that while Vannatta's work provides a rigorous pragmatist alternative to the familiar legal formalism adopted by many American conservatives, its foundations may be narrower than Vannatta appreciates and the resulting theory may have little necessary connection to the dispositional, methodological conservatism upon which it is purportedly based.