Blackwell Reference Online

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Critical legal theory refers to a body of scholarship developed primarily in the United States starting in the 1970s. Critical legal theory originated when a group of younger legal academics reflected on their largely political disagreements with more senior scholars, focusing on issues of race, wealth inequality, and the then ongoing American war in Vietnam (Tushnet 1991). Politically, the early critical legal theorists identified themselves as substantially to the left of mainstream liberals, whom they associated with the Cold War and an unwillingness to take the steps necessary to rectify racial and wealth inequalities.The political underpinnings of critical legal theory led its proponents away from concerns associated with jurisprudence understood in traditional terms. At least in the first instance, critical legal theorists were not interested in examining the question, “What is law?,” for example, or the question, “What is the connection between law and morality?,” although their narrower concerns ultimately intersected with these more traditional questions.The critical legal theorists understood themselves to be in a world of legal theory where a consensus-based “legal process” school had eclipsed a conflict-based legal realism. They thought that the ongoing social conflicts over the war in Vietnam, racism, and poverty rendered implausible what they took to be the legal-process ... log in or subscribe to read full text