Posted on 08/22/2022 5:04:30 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
Side Note by Rooster: I post this because I just came across a reference to CLT by Victor Davis Hanson HERE (article posted at FR).
Though some Freepers may be quite familiar with it, I was not (and I have made a careful study of Critical Race Theory over the years). I thought other Freepers might appreciate the heads-up re: this matter.
Critical Legal Theory
Overview
Critical legal studies (CLS) is a theory which states that the law is necessarily intertwined with social issues, particularly stating that the law has inherent social biases. Proponents of CLS believe that the law supports the interests of those who create the law. As such, CLS states that the law supports a power dynamic which favors the historically privileged and disadvantages the historically underprivileged. CLS finds that the wealthy and the powerful use the law as an instrument for oppression in order to maintain their place in hierarchy. Many in the CLS movement want to overturn the hierarchical structures of modern society and they focus on the law as a tool in achieving this goal.
History
CLS was officially started in 1977 at the conference at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, but its roots extend earlier to when many of its founding members participated in social activism surrounding the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War. The founders of CLS borrowed from non-legal fields such as social theory, political philosophy, economics, and literary theory. Among noted CLS theorists are Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Robert W. Gordon, and Duncan Kennedy.
Influences
Although CLS has been largely contained within the United States, it was influenced to a great extent by European philosophers, such as Karl Marx, Max Weber, Max Horkheimer, Antonio Gramsci, and Michel Foucault. CLS has borrowed heavily from Legal Realism, the school of legal thought that flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. Like CLS scholars, legal realists rebelled against accepted legal theories of the day and urged the legal field to pay more attention to the social context of the law.
Subgroups
CLS includes several subgroups with fundamentally different, even contradictory, views. Feminist legal theory examines the role of gender in the law. Critical race theory (CRT) examines the role of race in the law. Postmodernism is a critique of the law influenced by developments in literary theory, and it emphasizes political economy and the economic context of legal decisions and issues.
All law schools more or less imitate the Ivies.
Truth is all colleges and universities imitate the bigger more “prestigious” schools. Faculty and administrators are far far from being icons of independent thought and action they’re more imitative than a bunch of parrots.
Reform the colleges & universities then reform by seizing control their governing boards (and alumni associations!). If state schools put pressure on the legislators to control them through their budgets.
Magical thinking: if we just tear down everything that is and all we have been then the just society will pop out of no where like Zeus from his daddy’s thigh.
Yes, amazing isn't it?
It totally aligns with why socialism/marxism always fail....it was not tried by the right people who cares about race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
But, in the end, it all comes down to "trust us" over what you have now. Replace those racist, greedy, hateful people with us and it will be far better.
Of course, we know it will fail again.
One big reason why these ALWAYS fail is that they are great at the distribution of things, but they have ZERO plan for production of things.
That is why Venezuela produces no oil, has shortages of food, toilet paper, etc. Socialism redistributed things equally, but collapsed the production side (due to lack of incentive and talent).
YES! Exactly! The fast food restaurants and gasoline stations have worked for a low interstate highway speed limit which leads to longer travel times meaning more stopping. It’s a conspiracy! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Yes- the Frankfurt School social theorists developed the underlying thinking. An important example is Herbert Marcuse’s essay “Repressive Tolerance”.
Juergen Habermas, a student of Adorno, was not part of the Frankfurt School per se, but he coined the term “critical theory” and much of the perspective. But he didn’t go so far as to say that structural injustice was insurmountable or a subconscious consequence of “privilege”.
This last idea was suggested by Michel Foucault, who wasn’t part of the Frankfurt School, although he was influenced by it. He wasn’t a Marxian, and later in life he sounded more like the (conservative) novelist Michel Houellebecq than anyone in the Frankfurt School.
Legal Scholarship was transformed first (also with influence from John Rawls), then the humanities, then social sciences, and then the physical sciences.
Even before critical theory penetrated these disciplines, grievance studies emerged (1970s) as “interdisciplinary” fields, e.g. African-American Studies or Women’s Studies.
The contemporary CRT celebrities like Derrick Bell or Nikole Hannah-Jones won’t acknowledge the Frankfurt School
Every “innovation” in education over the past 50 years has come from the radical left.
Yup. When uou see the word, “Critical,” substitute, “Marxist” and you’re on the way to understanding.
Douche-ocracy: rule by douchebags
Douche-archism: a form of crypto-anarchy that actually serves the Douche-ocracy ... where the people are self-oppressing as a core of woke individuals terrify both themselves (collectively) and everyone else to group think or be harmed by mass indignation.
Note: Douche-archism is greatly supported by something I call “socioempathy” or the belief that someone not only knows what others feel (thereby enabling them to be offended by proxy), they know how others should and must feel if they are to be reckoned good people and not things like Deplorables or race traitors.
“Socioempaths” naturally clump together in common cause and are founts of both virtue signaling and oppression of their own fellows who aren’t good enough (who don’t virtue signal their conformity loudly enough, really) by whatever fad dominates the group at the moment ... thus the natural tendency of socioempathy is to drive socioempaths and those not wanting to be browbeaten by them to the most extreme form of their fashionable cause ... notably will be informed by Cultural Marxism.
Douche-archy: when a bunch of Douchebags harass or try to harass everyone who isn’t some PC woke twit, marching to the tune that Cultural Marxism set forth.
Douche-archist: a douchebag who claims to be something that they are not (like if one claims to be a “libertarian”) even as they rally — or even riot and loot — with and in support of people like communists, notably self proclaimed communists.
Also any sideline supporter and/or apologists for such douchebaggery who provides these proverbial tall grass to hide in. The latter includes race grievance pimps who are not actively marching and harassing ordinary people for the ruling douchebags or douchebags who want to rule.
This was created by academics who have ZERO real world experience....another reason why it is doomed to failure.
PS: Yes, most academics are douchebags
What we have here is a blatant symptom of the poisoning of academia.
Excellent! Thx much for that.
Unger was an Obama mentor if I am not mistaken.
Proponents of CLS believe that the law supports the interests of those who create the law.
like the Ten Commandments...
I never took such a travesty, of course I graduated law school in 1979.
Critical Theory regardless of subject is pushed by communists. It views everything through the lens of oppressor vs oppressed
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