¹ Bertolt Brecht, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, in 7 Bertolt Brecht Collected Plays 141, 207-37 (Willett, John & Mannheim, Ralph eds., 1976).Google Scholar

² Id., 209.Google Scholar

³ See, e.g., 1 Kings 3:10–28. In this Biblical account, Solomon ascertained the true mother of a child by suggesting that the infant be cut in half with a sword. The woman to whom the child truly belonged would, Solomon knew, give up the infant before allowing him to be harmed. “And all Israel heard of the judgment which the king had judged. And they feared the king, for they saw that the wisdom of God was in him to do judgment.” 1 Kings 3:28.Google Scholar

⁴ Brecht (note 1), 209, (“Judgment must always be passed with complete solemnity,” Azdak says, “because it's such rot.”).Google Scholar

⁵ The German phrase herrschende Meinung is freely translated as “prevailing opinion.”Google Scholar

⁶ This is the Federal Constitutional Court of West Germany.Google Scholar

⁷ The fable of the hare and the hedgehog is of German origin. See The Hare and the Hedgehog, The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales 760 (1972). The hare, being haughty, insults the hedgehog by poking fun at his crooked legs. Id., 761. The hedgehog responds by challenging the hare to a footrace. The hedgehog “outruns” the hare because he positions his mate at each turning point of the race. Id., 762. The hare cannot tell one hedgehog from another, and every time the hare reaches a turning point a hedgehog welcomes him with “I am here already.” Id. After running 74 times, the hare finally drops dead of exhaustion. Id., 763. One moral of the story is that “no one, however great he may be, should permit himself to jest at anyone beneath him.”Google Scholar

⁸ This is an allusion to both modernity and postmodernity and a first step in an attempt to think them about simultaneously. Cf. Immanuel Kant, Von einem neuerdings erhobenen vornehmen Ton in der Philosophie, in Schriften Zur Metaphysik und Logik 377 (Weischedel, Wilheim ed., 1977 Werkausgabe VI), and Jacques Derrida, Von einem neuerdings erhobenen apokalyptischen Ton in der Philosophie, in Apokalypse 9 (1985).Google Scholar

⁹ The accusation of legal nihilism or hostility to law is always raised when a relative truth is posited as absolute with doctrinaire seriousness. Such intolerance, which critics of law wish to ban from legal discourse, signals a hegemonic thought that cannot abide doubts. Joseph W. Singer, The Player and the Cards: Nihilism and Legal Theory, 94 Yale Law Journal 1 (1984). On the prohibition against speaking, see also Michel Foucault, Die Ordnung des Diskurses 215 (1982) (translated in The Discourse on Language in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972)).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Juridification, the English translation of Verrechtlichung, refers to the transformation of social relations and conflicts into legal relations, through such means as statutes and court decisions. The process of juridification is discussed further at notes 24-27 and accompanying text.Google Scholar

¹¹ Rudolf Von Jhering, Scherz und Ernst in Der Jurisprudenz v-vi, 1, 245 (1885); see also Ernst Immanuel Bekker, Ernst und Scherz Uber Unsere Wissenschaft (1907).Google Scholar

¹² Cohen, Felix, Transcendental Nonsense and the Functional Approach, 35 Columbia Law Review 809 (1935). An informative and ironic self-presentation of “legal realism” is offered in Karl Llewellyn, Some Realism About Realism – Responding to Dean Pound, 44 Harvard Law Review 1222 (1931) (discussing Roscoe Pound, The Call for a Realist Jurisprudence, 44 Harvard Law Review 697 (1931)).Google Scholar

¹³ For a detailed discussion of the CLS movement, see, infra, Part G (notes 62-76 and accompanying text).Google Scholar

¹⁴ On the history and modern forms of irony, see Vladimir Jankelevitch, L'Ironie (1964).Google Scholar

¹⁵ This image of a postmodern, not automatically constructive, irony goes back above all to Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1973), and Milan Kundera, Das Buch Vom Lachen Und Vom Vergessen 85 (Franz Peter Kunzel transl., 1980) (translated in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting 77-115 (Michael Henry Heim transl., 1980)). The demarcation from cynicism follows 1 Peter Sloterdijk, Kritik Der Zynischen Vernunft 37 (1983) (translated in Critique of Cynical Reason (Michael Eldred transl., 1987)).Google Scholar

¹⁶ See, infra, Part D (notes 39-52 and accompanying text).Google Scholar

¹⁷ By “mediatization,” I mean the transformation of language into a medium that tends increasingly to make available and disposable not the world but rather the subjects who utilize the signs of language for constructive purposes.Google Scholar

¹⁸ This very compressed sketch of the modern world view is derived from Jurgen Habermas, Der Philosophische Diskurs Der Moderne: Zwolf Vorlesungen (1985) (translated in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures (Frederick Lawrence transl., 1987)); Heidegger, Martin, Die Zeit des Weltbildes, in 5 Gesamtausgabe (Holzwege) 75 (1977); Horkheimer, Max & Adorno, Theodor W., Dialektik Der Aufklarung 9 (1986) (translated in Dialectic of Enlightenment (John Cumming transl., 1986)); Kant, supra, note 8; and Rorty, Richard, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature 129 (1979).Google Scholar

¹⁹ The revisions or critiques of “classical” reason have been examined in Habermas, supra, note 18; Wellmer, Albrecht, Zur Dialektik von Moderne und Postmoderne Vernunftkritik Nach Addorno 70 (1985); and concisely in a brief essay by Benhabib, Seyla, Kritik des “postmodernen Wissens” – eine Auseinandersetzung mit Jean-Francois Lyotard, in Postmoderne - Zeichen Eines Kulturellen Wandels 103 (Huyssen, Andreas & Scherpe, Klaus eds., 1986) [hereinafter Postmoderne]. Google Scholar

²⁰ The otherwise admittedly problematic subsumption of such diverse critical positions as those of Nietzsche, Marx, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Foucault under the rubric of a “sociologically and psychologically informed critique” is due only to my emphasis on the construction problematic.Google Scholar

²¹ Jurgen Habermas, Theorie Des Kommunikativen Handelns (1981) (translated in The Theory of Communicative Action (Thomas McCarthy transl., 1984); see also, Jurgen Habermas, Vorstudien und Erganzungen Zur Theorie Des Kommunikativen Handelns 571 (1984); Habermas, Jurgen, Zur Rekonstruktion Des Historischen Materialismus 9, 144 (1976).Google Scholar

²² Habermas, supra, note 18.Google Scholar

²³ See, infra, Section D (notes 39-52 and accompanying text).Google Scholar

²⁴ Juridification strikes one as an almost postmodern phenomenon, or, at any rate, as a wrong turn in modern legal development. Yet, it is not always clear in following the juridification debate, which has wide ramifications, just what exactly is at issue. Humanistic motifs (such as alienation) are combined with critiques of rationality (such as social expropriation, colonization) and technical legal objections (such as norm uncertainty, implementation deficits). Sometimes the quantity, sometimes the quality, of the law is rebuked. Also, always lurking in the background is a rarely explicated conception of a “correct” law. An excellent analysis of the juridification literature, with many useful references, is presented in Gunther Teubner, Verrechtlichung — Begriffe, Merkmale, Grenzen, Auswege, in Verrechtlichung von Wirtschaft, Arbeit, und Sozialer Solidaritat 298 (Kubler, Friedrich ed., 1984) [hereinafter Verrechtlichung]. See also Dilemmas of Law in the Welfare State (Teubner, Gunther ed., 1986), and Verrechtlichung und Verdrangung: Die Burokratie und Ihre Klientel (Funk, Albrecht & Heinz Gerhard Haupt Wolf-Dieter Narr & Falco Werkentin eds., 1984).Google Scholar

²⁵ Adorno, Theodor W., Negative Dialektik 302 (1966).Google Scholar

²⁶ U.K. Preuss, Die Internalisierungdessubjekts: Zur Kritik Der Funktionsweise Des Subjektiven Rechts 330 (1979).Google Scholar

²⁷ Rarely does a work deserve the commendation “paradigmatic,” but it undoubtedly applies to the seminal study of Josef Esser, Vorverstandnis und Methodenwahl in Der Rechtsfindung (1970).Google Scholar

²⁸ In the theories of legislation and judicial decisionmaking, one finds historical and sociological foundations competing in a rather unmediated way with the search for a priori-istic foundations of law. See, e.g., Rechtsprechungslehre (Achterberg, Norbert ed., 1986); and Achterberg, Norbert, Die Bedeutung der Gesetzgebungslehre fur die Entwicklung einer allgemeinen Regelungstheorie, Zeitschrift Fur Das Gesamte Genossenschaftswesen [ZFG] 221 (1986).Google Scholar

²⁹ The contributions to Postmoderne, supra, note 19, offer a discriminating and mostly non-partisan introduction to postmodernism that is very worthwhile. Those interested in getting to know some of the “classics” of postmodernism should look at Ihab Hassan, The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Concept of Postmodernism 259 (2d ed. 1982); Lytotard, Jean-Francois, La Condition Postmoderne: Rapport Sur Le Savoir (1979) (translated in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Geoff Bennington & Brian Massumi trans., 1984)); Venturi, Robert, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture (1977). On the critique of logocentrism as the domination of reason over all otherness, on the domination of language (that is, the concept) over writing, and on the critique of phallogo-centrism as the tyranny of masculine signifiers, see Jacques Derrida, Grammatologie (1974) (translated in Of Grammatology (Gayatri Spivak transl., 1976)); and Derrida, Jacques, Die Stimme und Das Phänomen (Jochen Hörisch transl., 1979); see also Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction 43, 89 (1982) (a particularly sympathetic presentation of “theory and critique after structuralism”).Google Scholar

For a critique of postmodernism, see Burghart Schmidt, Postmoderne - Strategien Des Vergessens (1986); Benhabib, supra, note 19; Habermas, Jurgen, Modernity versus Postmodernity, 8 New German Critique 3 (1981); and Honneth, Axel, Der Affekt gegen das Allgemeine: Zu Lyotards Konzept der Postmoderne, 38 Merkur 893 (1984).Google Scholar

³⁰ The positions of Jurgen Habermas and Jean-Francois Lyotard illustrate the initially “frontal” standoff. See Habermas, supra, note 29; and Lyotard, Jean-Francois, Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist postmodern?, 4 Tumult 131 (1982); see also Jay, Habermas and Modernism, 4 Praxis International 1(1984); Rorty, Habermas and Lyotard on Post-Modernity, 4 Praxis International 32 (1984).Google Scholar

³¹ On the levels of deconstruction, see Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference (Alan Bass transl., 1978). Derrida's Of Grammatology, supra, note 29, could be read as a primer, albeit a sometimes difficult one, on deconstruction.Google Scholar

³² A visit to the exhibition “Vision der Moderne — Das Prinzip Konstruktion” in the Frankfurt Architekturmuseum prompted me to use the construction metaphor and to, cautiously, analogize architectonic and legal-theoretical constructive labors. See Vision Der Moderne: Das Prinzip Konstruktion (Klotz, Heinrich ed., 1986) (exhibition catalogue).Google Scholar

The architectonic form of the Frankfurt Museum fur Kunsthandwerk strengthened my intuition that it might be possible to combine seriousness and irony, construction and deconstruction. On the language of postmodern architecture, see Venturi, supra, note 29, and the clear – if somewhat dramatic – introduction in Charles Jencks, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture 7-8 (1984) (“[P]ost-modern’ is not the most happy expression… . It is evasive, fashionable and worst of all negative – like defining women as ‘non-men.'”).Google Scholar

³³ References in Andreas Huyssen, Postmoderne — eine amerikanische Internationale?, in Postmoderne (note 19), 13-44; and Leitch, Vincent, Deconstructive Criticism: An Advanced Introduction (1983).Google Scholar

³⁴ Jean-Francois Lyotard, Das Patchwork Der Minderheiten (1977).Google Scholar

³⁵ The Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method (Rorty, Richard ed., 1967).Google Scholar

³⁶ Habermas (note 18), 306; Foucault (note 15), 372.Google Scholar

³⁷ The French anti-“master thinkers” – R. Barthes, G. Deleuze, J. Derrida, J. Kristeva, J.F. Lyotard, and L. Irigaray – usually are considered to be “post-structuralists.” Helpful, but demanding, introductions to the post-structuralists are offered by Culler, supra, note 29, and Leitch, supra, note 33.Google Scholar

For a critique of the poststructuralist leveling of the genre distinction between literature and literary criticism, see Habermas (note 18), 224. Most recently, the deconstructors have been forced to attend their own deconstruction, this time from a feminist perspective. See Alice Jardine, Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity (1985); Gallop, Jane, The Daughter's Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis (1982); Feminism as Critique: On the Politics of Gender (Benhabib, Seyla & Cornell, Drucilla eds., 1986).Google Scholar

³⁸ Huyssen, Andreas, Postmoderne — eine amerikanische Internationale?, in Postmoderne (note 19), 38.Google Scholar

³⁹ For an exposition of Niklas Luhmann's systems theory, see Luhmann, Niklas, Soziale Systeme: Grundiss Einer Allegemein Theorie (1984) [hereinafter Soziale Systeme]. For Luhmann's most recent statement of his theory, which addresses recent criticism, see Law as a Social System, 83 Northwestern University Law Review 136 (1989).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ See Wolfgang Kersting, Wohlgeordenete Freiheit: Immanuel Kants Rects Und Staatsphilosophie (1984).Google Scholar

⁴¹ Habermas (note 18), 374, 379. For a critical commentary, see Martin Seel, Eine zweite Moderne?, 40 Merkur 245 (1986).Google Scholar

⁴² Habermas, supra, note 18.Google Scholar

⁴³ The normative structure of reality has been demonstrated by ethnomethodological research for everyday, understanding-oriented action. According to this research, every aspect of our communicative behavior is saturated with normative expectations and with imputations of normative correctness.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ See Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (1981); and Turnbull, Colin, The Forest People (1961). These works demonstrate how, for “primitive” and class societies, collective consciousness is organized around the perception of dangers threatening the survival of the group.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Even great minds are not immune to this sort of misjudgment: “We read with some surprise that Engels, after the Franco-Prussian War, believed that weapons have now reached such a degree of perfection that further progress of a radical nature is no longer possible.” Hannah Arendt, Macht und Gewalt 7 (1985) (citing Friedrich Engels, Herrn Eugen Duhrings Umwalzung Der Wissenschaft(1878)).Google Scholar

⁴⁶ A “Super-GAU” is an abbreviation for gropter anzunehmender Unfall, or a nuclear accident beyond scientific control such as that which occurred at Chernobyl.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ The “residual risk” philosophy under the guidance of “practical reason” was first developed by the German Federal Constitutional Court in the 1978 Kalkar decision (49 BVerfGE 89), which effectively imposed on the citizenry as “socially acceptable burdens … all uncertainties transcending this threshold of practical reason.” Id., 143. In the Kalkar decision, the court reviewed the constitutionality of the West German Atomic Energy Statute, see, Infra, note 48, to specify the safety standards for nuclear reactors such as that near the town of Kalkar. In doing so, the court considerably relaxed the constitutional protections for life and health that had received nearly the status of an absolute rule in its abortion decision. See 39 BVerfGE 1, 43 (25 February 1975).Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Gesetz uber die friedliche Verwendung der Kernenergie und den Schutz gegen ihre Gefahren (Atomgesetz), Federal Gazette - Bundesgesetzblatt (BGBl.) I, 3053 (31 October 1976).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Atomgesetz, §§ 3; 4; 9.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Atomgesetz, §§ 7 II Nr. 3; 9 II Nr. 3.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Derrida (note 8), 91.Google Scholar

⁵² On the post-apocalyptic quality of our era. Id., 129.Google Scholar

⁵³ These cursory objections, which are rather inadequate in proportion to Luhmann's voluminous theoretical oeuvre, are based on a consideration of some of his works. See Niklas Luhmann, Ausdifferenzierung Des Rechts (1981) (translated in The Differentiation of Society (Stephen Holmes & Charles Larmore trans., 1982)); Legitimation Durch Verfahren, ch. II (1975); Soziale Systeme, supra, note 39; Okologische Kommunikation (1986); and Luhmann, Niklas, Einige Probleme mit “reflexivem Recht,” 6 Zeitschrift Fur Rechtssoziologie (Zfrsoz) 1 (1985). I focus my critique on the system-theoretical rededication of the rationalistic construction project as a modernism curbed by no normative principles. Systemtheoretical theories conceive of such things as society, law, politics, economy, and science as functionally differentiated “systems.”Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Scarcely less productive than Niklas Luhmann, the project director of General Systems Theory, is Gunther Teubner, the father of “reflexive law.” For his most important contributions to an allegedly postmodern legal literature, see Teubner, Reflexives Recht, 68 Archiv Fur Rechts- Und Sozialphilosophie [ARSP] 13 (1982); The Transformation of Law in the Welfare State and After Legal Instrumentalism? Strategic Models of Post-Regulatory Law, in Dilemmas of Law in the Welfare State (note 24), 3, 299; Verrechtlichung, supra, note 24; Gesellschaftsordnung durch Gesetzgebungslarm? Autopoietische Geschlossenheit als Problem fur die Rechtsetzung (1985) (unpublished manuscript); see also Gunther Teubner & Helmut Willke, Kontext und Autonomie: Gesellschaftliche Selbststeuerung durch reflexives Recht, 5 ZFRSOZ 4 (1984). But see Ingeborg Maus, Perspektiven “reflexiven Rechts” im Kontext gegenwartigen Deregulierungstendenzen, 19 Kritische Justiz 390 (1986) (critical of Teubner); Munch, Richard, Die sprachlose Systemtheorie: System differenzierung, reflexives Recht, reflexives Recht, reflexive Selbststeuerung und Integration durch Indifferenz 6 ZFRSOZ 20 (1985) (same); Nahamowitz, Richard, “Reflexives Recht:” Das unmogliche Ideal eines post-interventionistischen Steuerungskonzepts 6 ZFRSOZ 29 (1985) (same).Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Luhmann, Soziale Systeme (note 39), 638, 645.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ It seems likely that the binary coding is loosened by the introduction of a “rejection value.” See Luhmann, Die Codierung des Rechtsystems, 17 Rechtstheorie 171 (1986).Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Luhmann, Einige Probleme mit “reflexivem Recht,”, supra, note 53.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ Humberto Maturana & Francisco Varela, Der Baum Der Erkenntnis (1987).Google Scholar

⁵⁹ Particularly intended here is Karl-Heinz Ladeur, who distinguishes himself from Luhmann and the “later” Teubner by combining democratic-theoretical intentions with his legal theory, while nevertheless rejecting conceptions of identity. See, in particular, Karl-Heinz Ladeur, Voruberlegungen Zu Einer Ökologischen Verfassunstheorie, Demokratie und 285 (1984); Ein Vorschlag zur dogmatischen Neukinstruktion des Grundrechts aus Art. 8 GG Recht auf “Ordnungsstorung”, 2 Kritische Justiz 150 (1987); Vom Gesetzesvollzug zur strategischen Rechtsfortbildung, 4 Leviathan 339 (1979).Google Scholar

⁶⁰ “Order from noise” was first perceived in Heinz von Forster, Observing Systems (1981). It has since caused a furor among autopoieticists. See Luhmann, Okologische Kommunikation, (note 53), 128; and see, generally, Teubner, Gesellschaftsordnung durch Gesetzgebungslarm, supra, note 54.Google Scholar

⁶¹ Luhmann, Einige Probleme mit “reflexivem Recht,” supra, note 53.Google Scholar

⁶² Down by Law (Island Pictures 1986) (directed by Jim Jarmusch).Google Scholar

⁶³ The question of the “true” significance of the Critical Legal Studies movement can be answered neither once and for all nor exhaustively for the present moment. This is merely an intrinsic feature of movements. A sense of the thematic breadth and historical depth of CLS can be gathered from the bibliography published in 94 Yale Law Journal 461 (1984).Google Scholar

For essays that help place the first two generations of Crits, see The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique (Kairys, David ed., 1982); and Kelman, Mark, A Guide to Critical Legal Studies (1987).Google Scholar

The culture of dissent, in both theoretical and methodical respects, that makes up the fascination of CLS is reflected in various works, which — although demanding — also can be read as introductions to the movement. See Robert Gordon, Critical Legal Histories, 36 Stanford Law Review 57 (1984); Kennedy, David, Critical Theory, Structuralism, and Contemporary Scholarship, 21 New England Law Review 209 (1985/1986); Trubek, David M., Where the Action Is: Critical Legal Studies and Empiricism, Stanford Law Review 575 (1984); and Unger, Roberto Mangabeira, The Critical Legal Studies Movement, 96 Harvard Law Review 563 (1983). As a friendly yet critical observer, Andrew Altman sketches the legal-skeptical debate that was set off by the “Legal Realists” and reheated by CLS. See Andrew Altman, Legal Realism, Critical Legal Studies, and Dworkin, 15 Philosophy & Public Affairs 205 (1986). CLS meanwhile has become the honored, and scorned, object of at least these symposia. See A Symposium of Critical Legal Studies, 34 American University Law Review 929 (1985); 6 Cardozo Law Review 1013 (1985); and Critical Legal Studies Symposium, 36 Stanford Law Review 1 (1984). This is a sign that CLS may already belong to the institutionalized (post)modern – a suspicion shared by at least one of its “founding persons.” See Duncan Kennedy, Psycho-Social CLS: A Comment on the Cardozo Symposium, 6 Cardozo Law Review 1013, 1029 (1985).Google Scholar

⁶⁴ On the influence of extra-legal factors on judicial decisionmaking, see Max Radin, The Theory of Judicial Decision, Or How Judges Think, 11 American Bar Association Journal 357 (1925); on the indeterminacy of legal language, see Cohen, supra, note 12; on the logic of the precedent system, see Herman Oliphant, A Return to Stare Decisis, 14 American Bar Association Journal 71 (1928).Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Cohen, supra, note 12.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ “ Postrealism” serves as a collective label for the efforts, which were stimulated by the Realist critique, to renew the law through American legal scholarship. Essentially one can distinguish four strategies of modernization of legal dogmatics and judicial decision-making: politicization, economization, substantialization, and process orientation of the law.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Gerald Frug criticizes the legitimation models for bureaucracy in American administrative and business law with the aid of a Derridean deconstruction of the boundary between the “objective” and “subjective” factors, as these are separated – and also dogmatically controlled, according to the various model builders – in the respective models. See Gerald Frug, The Ideology of American Bureaucracy in American Law, 97 Harvard Law Review 1276 (1984).Google Scholar

⁶⁸ See, e.g., Kennedy, Duncan, Distributive and Paternalistic Motives in Contract and Tort Law, With Special Reference to Compulsory Terms and Unequal Bargaining Power, 41 Maryland Law Review 563 (1982); Singer, The Legal Rights Debate in Analytical Jurisprudence from Bentham to Hohfeld, 1982 Wisconsin Law Review 975 (1983). The listing of theoretical-methodical influences in a footnote at the start of an essay, if at all possible in footnote 1, is one of the more tedious earmarks of CLS critiques.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ See, infra, note 87 and accompanying text.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ See, e.g., The Veritas About Harvard, The Wall Street Journal, 3 September 1986, 26, col. 1; Mancusi, Peter, The Harvard Law School Feud, Boston Globe, 27 April 1986, 19; Lacayo, Richard, Critical Legal Times at Harvard, Time, 18 November 1985, 87. For further details and analysis, see Gerald Frug, McCarthyism and Critical Legal Studies, 22 Harvard Civil Right-Civil Liberties Review 665 (1987).Google Scholar

⁷¹ Paul D. Carrington, Of Law and The River, 34 Journal of Legal Education 222 (1984).Google Scholar

⁷² Id. Google Scholar

⁷³ Carrington refers exclusively to Unger's programmatic essay on CLS. Id. (citing Unger, supra, note 63). Reference should be made to Unger's books, which although influential in CLS hardly stand at its “center.” See Roberto Unger, Knowledge and Politics (1975); Law in Modern Society (1976); Passion: An Essay on Personality (1984); and Politics (1988). For a symposium on Unger's work, see also Roberto Unger's Politics: A Work in Constructive Social Theory, 81 Northwestern University Law Review 589 (1987).Google Scholar

⁷⁴ In the following characterizations of the CLS response, I rely generally on the contributions to debate in Of Law and the River, and Nihilism and Academic Freedom, 35 Journal of Legal Education 1 (1985).Google Scholar

⁷⁵ Kirchmann, Julius Von, Die Werthlosigkeit Der Jurisprudenzals Wissenschaft 22 (1848).Google Scholar

⁷⁶ See Unger, Roberto, Knowledge and Politics, supra, note 73; Passion, supra, note 73; Politics, supra, note 73. Step by step, Unger has fulfilled the program formulated in Knowledge and Politics. Passion presents his theory of personality, which is central for both the critique of liberalism and for the outline of a communitarian society. Politics presents a lengthy explanatory theory along with a more fully explored political vision. Unger calls his approach “supertheory,” which – for all his sympathy for CLS – is intended to distinguish himself from CLS's “ultratheory.”Google Scholar

⁷⁷ See, infra, notes 82-88 and accompanying text.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Dworkin, Ronald, Taking Rights Seriously (1977). Dworkin's efforts toward a renewal of law continue in A Matter of Principle (1985) and Law's Empire (1986). In Law's Empire, Dworkin explicitly defends the moral coherence and integrity of law against radical skepticism (meaning CLS), which he takes seriously, discusses somewhat selectively and rejects as a misguided critique of the law. See Ronald Dworkin, Law's Empire (note 78), 271.Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Trubek, David, Taking Rights Lightly (1984) (unpublished manuscript from lecture sponsored by the New School for Social Research and the Cardozo School of Law).Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Mark Kelman, , Trashing, 36 Stanford Law Review 293 (1984). As a demonstration of the trashing styles, or of the various methods of contradiction, see Duncan Kennedy, The Structure of Blackstone's Commentaries, 28 Buffalo Law Review 205 (1979). Kennedy's article is a “classic” of the first CLS generation, thanks to its formulation and analysis of the “fundamental contradiction:” “that relations with others are both necessary to and incompatible with our freedom.” Id., 213. See also Morton Horowitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 (1979) (reconstructing, with the help of functionalist analysis, the “political tilt” of supposedly neutral legal materials); Klare, Karl, Judicial Deradicalization of the Wagner Act and the Origins of Modern Legal Consciousness 1937-1941, 62 Minnesota Law Review 265 (1978) (like Horwitz, operating within a critique of law informed by class theory); Gabel, Peter, Intention and Structure in Contractual Conditions: Outline of a Method for Critical Legal Theory, 61 Minnesota Law Review 601 (1977); and Gabel, Peter, The Phenomenology of Rights-Consciousness and the Fact of the Withdrawn Selves, 62 Texas Law Review 1563 (1984) (introducing the linguistic turn with his “critical phenomenology”).Google Scholar

The members of the second CLS generation distanced themselves from the “fundamental contradictions” that the first, more Marxist-oriented generation had discovered, and turned their attention — with a more structuralist methodological orientation – to the dichotomies built into law. See Gerald Frug, The City as a Legal Concept, 93 Harvard Law Review 1057 (1980) (examining the weakening boundary between the private and public spheres); Olsen, Frances, The Family and the Market: A Study of Ideology and Legal Reform, 96 Harvard Law Review 1497 (1983) (contrasting market and family-oriented images of the world).Google Scholar

In the third generation, finally, it is the deconstructive approaches that dominate. See Clare Dalton, An Essay in the Deconstruction of Contract Doctrine, 94 Yale Law Journal 997 (1985); Frug, Gerald, supra note 67; Kennedy, David, Spring Break, 63 Texas Law Review 1377 (1985); Hutchinson, Allan, From Cultural Construction to Historical Deconstruction, 94 Yale Law Journal 209 (1984).Google Scholar

From the feminist critique of the post-structuralist approaches, we can infer that the end of the line has not yet been reached, and that further CLS generations and styles of critique are to be expected. See Jardine, supra, note 37, and the contributions in Feminist Theory: A Critique of Ideology (Keohane, Nannerl & Michelle Rosaldo & Barbara Gelpi eds., 1982); Frug, Gerald, Re-Reading Contracts: A Feminist Analysis of a Contracts Casebook, 34 American University Law Review 1065 (1985); Olsen, Frances, Statutory Rape: A Feminist Critique of Rights Analysis, 63 Texas Law Review 387 (1984). For a different, and less skeptical, feminist critique of rights, see Martha Minow, Interpreting Rights: An Essay for Robert Cover, 96 Yale Law Journal 1860 (1987); and her impressive treatise Difference (1989) (forthcoming).Google Scholar

⁸¹ See Kennedy, David, supra, note 80; Mark Tushnet, An Essay on Rights, 62 Texas Law Review 1363 (1984).Google Scholar

⁸² For convincing arguments against the reproach of hostility to law, see James Boyle, The Politics of Reason: Critical Legal Theory and Local Social Thought, 133 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 685 (1985); and Singer, supra, note 10.Google Scholar

⁸³ The hermeneutic turn, as represented by the contributions to the Interpretation Symposium published in 58 Southern California Law Review (1985), is rather mercilessly dissected in David Kennedy, The Turn to Interpretation, 58 Southern California Law Review 251 (1985).Google Scholar

⁸⁴ On the nihilism charge, compare Singer, supra, note 9, who rejects it, with Owen Fiss, Objectivity and Interpretation, 34 Stanford Law Review 739 (1982), who raises it.Google Scholar

⁸⁵ KELMAN, Supra, note 8O.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ DWORKIN, Supra, note 78.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ On the political program and practice of CLS, see Duncan Kennedy, Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy: A Polemic Against the System (1983); Gabel, Peter & Harris, Paul, Building Power and Breaking Images: Critical Legal Theory and the Practice of Law, 11 New York University Review of Law & Social Change 369 (1982-83); Simon, William, Visions of Practice in Legal Thought, 36 Stanford Law Review 469 (1984).Google Scholar

⁸⁸ Duncan Kennedy (note 80), 1417.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ Id., 1420 and n.21 (referring to Derrida, Of Grammatology (note 29), 158.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ In an appendix to the article, Kennedy and Nathaniel Berman situate Spring Break within “contemporary legal scholarship.” In doing so, they elaborate on some of the methodological issues underlying the article, responding to the literature of critical legal scholarship and extending that scholarship's use of ideas from poststructuralist literary criticism and continental philosophy. See David Kennedy (note 80), 1417.Google Scholar

⁹¹ Foucault, supra, note 9. Those complaining of CLS's empirical, legal-sociological deficits, while themselves cultivating an all too positivistic relation to empiricism, might also take this point to heart. See, e.g., Klaus Röhl & Ralf Rogowski & Hubert Rottleuthner, Rezension eines Denkansatzes: Die Conference on Critical Legal Studies, ZFRSOZ 85 (1981).Google Scholar