Law and Society Commons^™

Covid, Climate Change, And Transformative Social Justice: A Critical Legal Research Exploration, Nicholas F. Stump

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

This Article explores intertwined contemporary crises via the Critical Legal Research framework (“CLR”), as initially developed by the critical legal scholars Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic. CLR as conceived of in this Article entails a truly radical approach to the legal research and analysis regime. While the traditional research regime—as taught in law schools and utilized in practice—functions to homogenize research outcomes towards hegemonic ends, a critically “reconstructed” approach to legal and broader socio-legal research permits more transformative futures. Specifically, CLR as deployed within such modes as radical cause lawyering can help engender genuine systemic “re-formations” of the ecological political …

Introduction To The Symposium: The Stakes For Critical Legal Theory, Elizabeth S. Anker, Justin Desautels-Stein

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Color Of Creatorship: Intellectual Property, Race, And The Making Of Americans (Introduction), Anjali Vats

Book Chapters

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW, the body of legal doctrine and practice that governs the ownership of information, is animated by a dichotomy of creatorship and infringement. In the most often repeated narratives of creatorship/infringement in the United States, the former produces a social and economic good while the latter works against the production of that social and economic good. Creators, those individuals whose work is deemed protectable under copyright, patent, trademark, trade secret, and unfair competition law, create valuable products that contribute to economic growth and public knowledge. Infringers, those individuals who use the work of creators without their permission, steal …

Commentary, Critical Legal Theory In Intellectual Property And Information Law Scholarship, Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal Spring Symposium, Sonia K. Katyal, Peter Goodrich

Sonia Katyal

The very definition and scope of CLS (critical legal studies) is itself subject to debate. Some scholars characterize CLS as scholarship that employs a particular methodology—more of a “means” than an “end.” On the other hand, some scholars contend that CLS scholarship demonstrates a collective commitment to a political end goal—an emancipation of sorts —through the identification of, and resistance to, exploitative power structures that are reinforced through law and legal institutions. After a brief golden age, CLS scholarship was infamously marginalized in legal academia and its sub-disciplines. But CLS themes now appear to be making a resurgence—at least in …

Heterodox Challenges To Consumption-Oriented Models Of Legislation, Luigi Russi, John Haskell

Luigi Russi

Consumption-oriented models of governance dominate the contemporary global legal architecture. The financial crisis beginning in 2008, however, poses fundamental questions about the future viability of these approaches to economics and law. This paper attempts to first, evaluate consumptionÕs salient historical development and themes from the post- World War II era to more recent legislative innovation, and second, introduce seven heterodox vignettes that challenge the hegemony of consumption in legislative policy. The paper concludes with some brief reflections upon potential opportunities and limitations of these heterodox traditions within future scholarship and policy addressing the interplay of law and consumption in global …

Intersectionality And Title Vii: A Brief (Pre-)History, Serena Mayeri

All Faculty Scholarship

Title VII was twenty-five years old when Kimberlé Crenshaw published her path-breaking article introducing “intersectionality” to critical legal scholarship. By the time the Civil Rights Act of 1964 reached its thirtieth birthday, the intersectionality critique had come of age, generating a sophisticated subfield and producing many articles that remain classics in the field of anti-discrimination law and beyond. Employment discrimination law was not the only target of intersectionality critics, but Title VII’s failure to capture and ameliorate the particular experiences of women of color loomed large in this early legal literature. Courts proved especially reluctant to recognize multi-dimensional discrimination against …

Cultural Collisions And The Limits Of The Affordable Care Act, Jasmine E. Harris

All Faculty Scholarship

National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (“NFIB”) settled the central constitutional questions impeding the rollout of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”): whether the federal government’s “individual mandate” to purchase or hold health insurance and the federal government’s authority to retract existing federal dollars if states fail to expand Medicaid eligibility violate the Constitution. However, a number of residual questions persist in its wake. While most of the focus this year has been on related constitutional issues — such as religious exemptions from offering contraceptive coverage to employees — NFIB also clears the path for a discussion …

Commentary, Critical Legal Theory In Intellectual Property And Information Law Scholarship, Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal Spring Symposium, Sonia K. Katyal, Peter Goodrich

Faculty Scholarship

The very definition and scope of CLS (critical legal studies) is itself subject to debate. Some scholars characterize CLS as scholarship that employs a particular methodology—more of a “means” than an “end.” On the other hand, some scholars contend that CLS scholarship demonstrates a collective commitment to a political end goal—an emancipation of sorts —through the identification of, and resistance to, exploitative power structures that are reinforced through law and legal institutions. After a brief golden age, CLS scholarship was infamously marginalized in legal academia and its sub-disciplines. But CLS themes now appear to be making a resurgence—at least in …

Social Construction Of False Necessities And The Material Basis Of Socio-Legal Power: A Reply To Irrationalism In Critical Legal Studies Critiques Identifying Latent Social Violence As A Potential New Material Foundation For Systematic Socio-Legal Theory, Samantha Godwin

Pace Law Review

This Article is deliberately unconventional and exploratory. It begins by raising many conceptually problematic questions which cannot be answered simply or definitively. The point is not to provide any one right answer for these questions but to raise possible directions for new lines of inquiry rather than accepting the theoretical dead end that is irrationalism. I do not necessarily hope to offer a new systemizing theory that can withstand rigorous critique, but rather to show that such attempts remain possible and worthwhile even after the influence of post-modernism and the deconstruction of the most significant social theories.

There Is No Single Field Of Law And Development, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Scholarship

Let me begin – following Ohnesorge following Trubek and Santos – with the notion that the concepts of “law and development” and “rule of law” are closely intermingled with the process of legal reform in developing countries and the role foreign advisers and multilateral institutions play in that undertaking. Describing the “field” in this fashion reveals that the glue that holds together a set of disparate activities by disparate actors (for under what other circumstances do we assume common ground between family and securities lawyers, or professors and world bankers?) is a shared belief in the virtue of law.

Constitutionalizing Class Inequality: Due Process In State Farm, Martha T. Mccluskey

Buffalo Law Review

This essay takes a step toward building a story of economic class in U.S. constitutional law, as part of a special essay issue of the Buffalo Law Review developed from a series of workshops titled ClassCrits: Toward a Critical Analysis of Economic Inequality, sponsored by the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy at the University at Buffalo. The essay focuses on the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision in State Farm Mutual Insurance Co. v. Campbell, one of a series of recent cases using the due process clause of the 14th Amendment to limit punitive damage awards against corporate defendants …

Introducing Classcrits: Rejecting Class-Blindness, A Critical Legal Analysis Of Economic Inequity, Athena D. Mutua

Journal Articles

In 2007, two workshops at the University at Buffalo launched a project bringing together legal scholars interested in exploring the relationship between law and economic inequality. This article provides an overview of the workshops’ key understandings and discussions. The essay suggests that these understandings, informed by critical legal scholarship, constituted a set of shared assumptions among the participants and informed the groups’ rejection of class blindness, a society-wide blindness to the existence and use of economic power. Discussing some of the functional similarities of gender, race and class blindness, the article argues that feminist and critical race scholars’ critiques of …

“This Woman’S Work” In A "Man's World": A Feminist Analysis Of The Farm Security And Rural Investment Act Of 2002, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

This paper will discuss the background of the 2002 Farm Bill and its origins in the Federal Agricultural Improvement and Reform Act of 1996 (hereinafter the 1996 Farm Bill). Secondly, a basic discussion of feminist international relations and more generally, feminist legal theory will be invoked to provide a theoretical beacon for the rest of the journey. Thirdly, specific arguments about ecofeminsim and postcolonial feminism are teased out in order to critically investigate the direct and indirect consequences of United States farm policy. Fourthly, the 2002 Farm Bill's disparate impact on international womyn will be discussed and theories about the …

Toward An Ethic Of Teaching: Class, Race And The Promise Of Community Engagement, Roberto L. Corrada

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Three Jeromes: A Tribute To Professor Jerome Mccristal Culp, Jr., Adrienne D. Davis

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Latcrit Introduction: Methods, Reginald Oh

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Schooling And The Empire Of Capital: Unleashing The Contradictions, Antonia Darder

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Satirical Legal Studies: From The Legists To The Lizard, Peter Goodrich

Michigan Law Review

In Part I, I expand on the distinction between the Horatian and the Menippean forms of satire and then suggest that a similarly bold division can be used to map satirical legal studies. In support of that argument, I use the example of the earliest surviving satirical legal poem within the Western tradition. My analysis of this exemplary satirical legal artifact delineates four principal modes of legal satire that will organize the ensuing discussion of more contemporary examples of the genre. In Part II, I will address the currently popular and yet somewhat novel mode of ad hominem or nominate …

Gendered Shades Of Property: A Status Check On Gender, Race & Property, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the relationship between gender, race and property.Women in the United States continue to be economically disadvantaged, and women of color are even more disadvantaged. This article will open with a review of laws, past and present, which have shaped women's rights to own, manage and transfer property. It will then provide a status check of where women, including women of color, stand in the United States relative to the rest of the population vis-a-vis income and other indicators of economic well-being. The article will then discuss why economic inequality persists, trotting out the usual reasons of discrimination …

Re/Forming And Influencing Public Policy, Law And Religion: Missing From The Table, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

Taking a leap to be at a table from which Mexican American women have always been absent, and are still not invited, takes tremendous courage, knowing that much personal sacrifice will be required. This Essay addresses why Mexican American women have been absent from the tables of influence in the worlds of public policy, religion, and law, and how they can establish their presence as part of an anti-subordination agenda.

Latinas And Religion: Subordination Or State Of Grace?, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay addresses how religion simultaneously subordinates Latinas while serving as a source of strength. More specifically, it focuses on Catholicism and how the same church and religion have a fragmented and varied impact on Latinas, particularly Mexican-Americans, with whom I am most familiar.

Technocentrism In The Law School: Why The Gender And Colour Of Law Remain The Same, Margaret Thornton

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Despite valiant endeavours by feminist, critical race, and Queer scholars to transform the legal culture, the transformative project has been limited because of the power of corporatism, a phenomenon deemed marginal to the currently fashionable micropolitical sites of critical scholarship. However, liberal, as well as postmodern scholarship, has largely preferred to ignore the ramifications of the "new economy," which includes a marked political shift to the right, the contraction of the public sphere, the privatization of public goods, globalization, and a preoccupation with efficiency, economic rationalism, and profits. I argue that technical reasoning, or "technocentrism," has enabled corporatism to evade …

Cultural Criticism Of Law, Guyora Binder, Robert Weisberg

Journal Articles

Professors Binder and Weisberg expound a "cultural criticism" of law that views law as an arena for composing, representing, and contesting identity, and that treats identity as constitutive of the interests that motivate instrumental action. They explicate this critical method by reference to "New Historicist" literary criticism, postmodern social theory, and Nietzchean aesthetics. They illustrate this method by reviewing recent scholarship of two kinds: First, they explore how legal disputes take on expressive meaning for parties and observers against the background of legal norms regulating or recognizing identities. Second, they examine "readings" of the representations of character, credit, and value …

Critical Cultural Law And Economics, The Culture Of Deindividualization, The Paradox Of Blackness, Linz Audain

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Word On Trial, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Milner Ball's extraordinary book, The Word and the Law, begins with a narrative account of "seven practices in law." The seven practitioners Ball brings to life for the reader share two powerful traits: they all, in quite different ways, use law to lessen the multiple sufferings of various communities of poor people, and they all, by doing so, strengthen the communities within which and for which they labor. The reader gains from these accounts not only a sympathetic understanding of the lives of seven lawyers, but a renewed sense of the possibilities their practices present. This can be put any …

Chaos Theory And The Justice Paradox, Robert E. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

"[T]he laws have mistakes, and you can't go writing up a law for everything that you can imagine."

"When you reach an equilibrium in biology you're dead."

As we approach the Twenty-First Century, the signs of social disarray are everywhere. Social critics observe the breakdown of core structures – the nuclear family, schools, neighborhoods, and political groups. As these traditional social institutions have disintegrated, the law has expanded to fill the void. There are more laws, more lawyers, and more use of legal mechanisms to accomplish social goals than at any other time in history. The custodians and interpreters of …

Contradiction And Denial, Pierre Schlag

Michigan Law Review

A Review of A Guide to Critical Legal Studies by Mark Kelman

Book Review Of Passion: An Essay On Personality , Richard F. Devlin Frsc

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Passion is a cogently structured, compel Jingly argued and seductively enthralling masterpiece which, in years to come, will undoubtedly stand out as an inspirational source for many who seek social transformation. Unger's style, in this essay at least, is lucid and inviting. Substantively, Passion demonstrates not only the depth of his penetrating intellect but also his command of an array of' disciplines. Unger's polymathy is all the more impressive when we remember that ours is an era in which idiosyncratic specialization is the norm.

Values And Assumptions In American Labor Law, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Values and Assumptions in American Labor Law by James B. Atleson