What is to be Done (With Critical Legal Theory)?

The American Journal of Jurisprudence, 1985

Legal Studies, 2012

Acta Juridica Hungarica, 2001

Scholarship has already warned us to soundness in relation to modernisationist legal reforms. For it consistently (1) emphasised the framework-creating nature of the otherwise prevailing social normativity, and its primordial role in determining social processes, (2) put the possibility and demand of organicity with every step in the limelight, (3) did not consider the effectiveness of initiating elitist actions to influence overall social movements plannable for the long run and with lasting effects. Therefore, it regarded any regulatory legal intervention as the primarily symbolic confirmation with sanctioning of the direction otherwise ongoing movements were taking, (4) warned to the damages caused by any adventurer policy in as much as they not only fail, but discredit even the thought of change itself. Therefore, it (5) gave voice to the advantage of a systematically planned, consistent, convincing, pragmatic, and all-comprehensive social programme, as opposed to the occasional temptations of worldcuring intentions, exposed to the alternate danger of sudden forwarding and quick tiring, supported solely by intellectual arguments.

Legal Studies, 2010

The purpose of this paper is to consider how leading scholars are interpreting the role and status of the core tenets of legal scholarship in England and Australia – the tenets that have provided an element of unity in legal scholarship over the past century or so. Instead of focusing on the way that scholarship has diversified and expanded, the paper considers whether elements of the prior orthodoxy have remained: do the tenets persist, what status are they afforded and what impact will their presence have on the future identity of the discipline and its conception of law? The paper captures insights into the way that scholars – as opposed to administrators or managers – are interpreting changes in the discipline. It is based on the premise that scholarly attitudes can shape the discipline and that therefore such attitudes are worthy of study.

1995

The annotations presented in this chapter present a commentary on a number projects that globalize, or at least carry around, legal thought. Starting with Duncan Kennedy's characterisation of contemporary legal thought and the critical jurist, it describes some ways in which the cultivation of the persona of the jurist and jurisprudent has been undertaken in projects that address Australia as if it were a part of a lawful south. The challenge raised by the editors of this book and by the work of Duncan Kennedy is to encapsulate something about the contemporariness of contemporary legal thought that is not simply what people – jurists, scholars and the critical intelligentsia-are doing at the moment. Contributors, it was suggested, might want to look for 'signs of the transcendence' of the chaos or at least the lack of form of contemporary legal. What is annotated in this chapter are some of the globalizations or transmissions of the training in conduct of the personae of the critical jurist as they search for patterns of law and lawful relations (or ways of living with law). 2 These annotations are reported from Australia. Over the last fifteen years Duncan Kennedy has presented a restatement of his analysis of legal thought and the work of the critical legal scholar. In offering accounts of the globalizations of legal thought, Kennedy has presented his work as an analysis of contemporary legal thought, a resource for the critical intelligentsias of the 1 Associate Professor, Melbourne Law School University of Melbourne. I would like to thank Justin Desautels-Stein, Ann Genovese, Chris Tomlins for their comments. The work on office draws on long 2 The term jurist is given a very wide meaning here. It accommodates the jurist as legal scientist, legal advisor and someone who cares for the conduct of lawful relations (or ways of belonging to law).

Tidskrift For Rattssociologi, 1986

Cleveland State Law Review, 1990