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The Critical Approaches to Law Research Group provides a space to study and develop multidisciplinary theoretical frameworks, using contemporary critical thought and continental philosophy, to investigate legal texts and practices. The group has particular interests in: political economy.
Abstract. ‘Critical legal theory’ examines how critical thought repudiates what is taken to be the natural order of things, be it patriarchy (in the case of feminist jurisprudence), the conception of ‘race’ (critical race theory), the free market (critical legal studies), or ‘metanarratives’ (postmodernism).
Oct 10, 2024 · Critical theorists also maintain that despite the law's claims to accord justified, determinate and controlled expressions of power, law fails on each of these dimensions and instead law mystifies outsiders in an effort to legitimate the results in courts and legislatures. " Overview of Critical Legal Theory on The Bridge (see link below)
- Overview
- History
- Influences
- Subgroups
- Further Reading
Critical legal studies (CLS) is a theory which states that the law is necessarily intertwined with social issues, particularly stating that the law has inherent social biases. Proponents of CLS believe that the law supports the interests of those who create the law. As such, CLS states that the law supports a power dynamic which favors the historic...
CLS was officially started in 1977 at the conference at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but its roots extend earlier to when many of its founding members participated in social activism surrounding the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War. The founders of CLS borrowed from non-legal fields such as social theory, political philosophy, econ...
Although CLS has been largely contained within the United States, it was influenced to a great extent by European philosophers, such as Karl Marx, Max Weber, Max Horkheimer, Antonio Gramsci, and Michel Foucault. CLS has borrowed heavily from Legal Realism, the school of legal thought that flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. Like CLS scholars, legal ...
CLS includes several subgroups with fundamentally different, even contradictory, views. Feminist legal theory examines the role of gender in the law. Critical race theory (CRT) examines the role of race in the law. Postmodernismis a critique of the law influenced by developments in literary theory, and it emphasizes political economy and the econom...
For more on critical legal studies, see this University of Minnesota Journal of Theory and Practice article, this Harvard Law Review article, and this University of Pennsylvania Faculty Scholarship article.
Critical legal theory rejects what is generally regarded as the natural order of things, be it the free market (in the case of Critical Legal Studies), ‘meta-narratives’ (postmodernism), the conception of ‘race’ (Critical Race Theory), and patriarchy (in the case of feminist jurisprudence). Critical legal theorists share a profound scepticism about many of the questions that have long ...
- Raymond Wacks
The myth of determinacy is a significant component of the critical assault on law. Far from being a determinate, coherent body of rules and doctrine, the law is depicted as uncertain, ambiguous, and unstable. And instead of expressing rationality, the law reproduces political and economic power. In the view of critical legal studies, social ...
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Aug 3, 2021 · The Index attempts to measure compliance with what its sponsors identify as “universal principles of the rule of law.”. These are that “ [t]he government and its officials and agents as well as individuals and private entities are accountable under the law,” that “laws are clear, publicized, stable, and just, are applied evenly, and ...
