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The Public/Private Distinction: Approaches to the Critique of Legal Ideology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Gerald Turkel
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Abstract

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This article reconstructs Marx's approaches to the critique of the public/private distinction in law and analyzes contemporary approaches to public/private distinctions in legal studies. Specifically, I focus on three approaches to critiquing the public/private distinction as legal ideology. These approaches are identified in works by Balbus, Klare, and Kennedy. They have affinities with Marx's analyses and demonstrate the incoherence, mystification, and consequences of public/private distinctions in legal discourse and practice. The article demonstrates that the ideological critique of the public/private distinction is characterized by alternative methods and substantive issues. These approaches, I argue, differ because they are concerned with distinctive objectives of inquiry, different arenas of social action, and have distinct purposes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 22 , Issue 4: Special Issue: Law and Ideology , 1988 , pp. 801 - 823
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

I thank Christine Harrington, Brinkley Messick, and other members of the Amherst Seminar for their comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article. I am especially grateful to Christine Harrington. Her generous, detailed, and thoughtful comments have helped me to clarify and to develop my thinking on the issues discussed in this article.

References

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