Critical Legal Studies

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History
Critical Legal Studies (CLS) can be generally

traced toAmerican Legal Realism, as a distinct scholarly movement CLS fully emerged only in the late 1970s. started roughly at a similar time as its American counterpart.

The British critical legal studies movement

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Overview of CLS
Critical legal studiesis aMarxistapproach to

studying the law that focuses on the ways in which the law works to reinforce social divides. The approach also has an activist angle as it aims to counteract the law's role in reproducing social inequality.

Critical legal studies (CLS) is a theory that

challenges and overturns accepted norms and standards in legal theory and practice.
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Themes
Although the CLS (like most schools and

movements) has not produced a single, monolithic body of thought, several common themes can be generally traced in its adherents' works.

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A first theme is that contrary to the common

perception, legal materials (such asstatutesandcase laws) do not completely determine the outcome of legal disputes, or, to put it differently, the law may well impose many significant constraints on the adjudicators in the form of substantive rules, but, in the final analysis, this may often not be enough to bind them to come to a particular decision in a given particular case. politics."

Secondly, there is the idea that all "law is

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A third strand of the traditional CLS school is

that far more often than is usually suspected the law tends to serve the interests of the wealthy and the powerful by protecting them against the demands of the poor for greater justice.

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Finally, CLS questions law's central

assumptions, one of which is theKantian notion of the autonomous individual.

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Theory
Critical legal studies builds on the "critical

theory"

sociological thinkers.

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CLS scholars commonly:

seek to demonstrate the indeterminacy of

legal doctrine and show how any given set of legal principles can be used to yield competing or contradictory results; psychological analyses to identify how particular groups and institutions benefit from legal decisions despite the indeterminacy of legal doctrines;

undertake historical, socioeconomic and

expose how legal analysis and legal culture

mystify outsiders and work to make legal results seem legitimate; and 4/21/12

Feminist Legal Criticism

The law," sees and treats women the way

men see and treat women."

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Critical Race Theory (CRT)

CRT began in the mid-1970s when many

intellectuals perceived that the civil rights movement of the 1960s had ended and that in fact many of its gains were being turned back.

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CLS and Its Alternative View of the Law and Societywith their leftist heritage, CLS Consistent

theorists call for radical changes in the law and in the structure of society itself. Unger has called this radical project "institutional reconstruction."

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Indeterminacy
Legal principles and doctrines are said to be

indeterminate in two ways.

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Laws Contribution to Group Inequality

Despite the indeterminacy of legal doctrine,

critical theorists argue that actual judges and legislatures produce predictable results.

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Mystification and Legitimation

How can law appear fair and objective and

nonetheless predictably tend to perpetuate the power of the powerful?

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New Visions
Some critical theorists nonetheless elaborate

constructive efforts to use law in pursuit of progressive politics.

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Opposition
Opponents argue that critical legal

approaches in the classroom and in legal scholarship undermine respect for law and dedication to laws aspiration to be independent of politics or irrationality.

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Continued influence
CLS continues as a diverse collection of

schools of thought and social movements. The CLS community is an extremely broad group with clusters of critical theorists at law schools such asHarvard Law School, etc.

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