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The ‘politics’ of British Critical Legal Studies
Blog Post for Social & Legal Studies - 'The "politics" of British Critical Legal Studies'2017 •
https://socialandlegalstudies.wordpress.com/2017/07/14/the-politics-of-british-critical-legal-studies/ It is perhaps disguised by other aspects of the article’s title, but ‘Derrida’s Law: The Socio-Historical and the Meta-Ethical; La and la politique’ [Social & Legal Studies (2017) Vol.26(2) 208-229] can easily be read as an engagement with the ‘politics’ of critical legal studies. Or, one could view the article as an engagement with what (critical) legal scholars are attempting to achieve in their research and what limits might be imposed by the use of certain methodologies therein. This blog, which I am delighted to contribute to, has provided me with the opportunity to illustrate these and other elements of the article in a way which is accessible aside from a full reading of the work. However, in order to familiarise the reader with the ‘politics’ of critical legal studies I must ask for their patience, albeit brief, as an introduction to this topic begins with a short genealogy (which could in fact serve as a preface to the article itself).
South African legal education remains trapped "at the centre of the knot" which is to say it is fundamentally disconnected from its social context and thus largely unable to grapple with the complex political and intellectual predicaments of post-1994 South Africa. This article reiterates arguments made previously concerning the need for a critical legal education that produces lawyers who are not only technically and professionally competent but also socially, politically and intellectually engaged. Three particularly significant themes for engagement in critical legal education are identified as firstly, the turn to a subversive approach to law; secondly, the problematisation of constitutional fetishism; and thirdly, the decolonisation of knowledge and legal knowledge in particular. Paulo Freire's insights on critical pedagogy are also considered as they disclose an alternative view of legal education linked to social justice, liberation and critical self-reflection. This argument for a renewal of legal education is then further extended to a critical analysis of the current Council on Higher Education's review of the standard of the LLB degree. What emerges throughout is the search for not only a higher education but also a deeper education, one that prepares law students for what is an ethically and politically complicated world. Teaching law critically in this time and space demands nothing less.
1999 •
This article, which should not in any sense be taken to reflect the views of the Editorial Board of Law and Critique, argues that the political project of critical legal studies in England remains overwhelmingly in the future. Lacking academic identity, political purpose and ethical conviction, critical legal scholarship in England has been too insecure in its institutional place and too unconscious of its individual and collective desires to resist absorption into the institution. Critical legal studies – as distinct from feminist legal studies, gay and lesbian studies or critical race theory –has tended to teach and so reproduce the core curriculum in a passive and negative mode. Resistant, ostensibly for historical and political reasons, to self-criticism and indeed to self-reflection upon their institutional practices, critical scholars have ended up repeating the law that they came to critique and overcome.
1984 •
2020 •
The call for decolonisation of legal education stems from the acknowledgement of the presence of retrogressive colonial approach to legal education. This approach includes a neutral and formal teaching that is blinded to ethical and social considerations. Law is a mirror of a country`s moral, cultural and social values and yet South African legal education distances itself with all other considerations and insists on a Western, autonomous and functionalist approach to legal education. This results in the moulding of uncritical and thoughtless “modern lawyers” with no concern to ethics and justice. Decolonisation demands a critical legal education and the replacement of the colonial “Black letter” teaching for a therapeutic jurisprudence. Both of which demand an interdisciplinary approach to legal education that acknowledges the impact of legal education on politics, society and culture. Thus, this article uses Critical Legal Studies (CLS) to deconstruct the colonial legal education ...
SCLS Law Review Vol 1 No 2
Law as Politics: Reflections on the Critical Legal Studies Movement2018 •
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.
2011 •
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,...
2019 •
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