The Law To Know

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Critical and social movements

Critical Legal Studies

Legal reasoning is not neutral: it is unsettled by its own contradictions and tends to support existing power.

1970s to 1990s · United States and United Kingdom. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.

Read this first. This is a first map of a large subject. Each school is a family of views, and its thinkers often disagree with one another, so every summary simplifies. We describe each school in terms its own followers would accept and give the strongest criticism beside it. Read the original works before you cite anyone, and check your own course's reading list. This is general information, not legal advice.

What is law?

Law is not a neutral science. Legal doctrine is full of opposing principles that can justify opposite results, so outcomes depend more on power, ideology and hierarchy than on logic.

Law and morality

Law reflects and entrenches political choices. The aim is to uncover those choices and to imagine others.

Where does its authority come from?

Not neutral reasons, but power and ideology.

How should judges decide?

Judges choose between competing principles. Critique should show where the choices are made.

The question it asks

Whose interests does 'neutral' law serve?

Main criticism

Accused of nihilism and of offering critique without a positive programme, and of ignoring law's real protective role.

Legacy today

It seeded feminist legal theory and critical race theory, and a habit of critical thinking in many law schools.

Key thinkers

Roberto Unger, Duncan Kennedy, Mark Tushnet, Karl Klare, Morton Horwitz.

Key works

  • Unger, Knowledge and Politics (1975)
  • Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780–1860 (1977)
  • Kennedy, Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy (1983)

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Read further

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: philosophy of law (an overview). For the exact arguments, go to the original works above.

TheLawToKnow Tools’s guide to schools of legal thought is an educational overview. It is not legal advice. Report a mistake.