ABSTRACT
In this chapter we will be looking at some key aspects of the conflict between traditional legal theory and its more radical critics in recent decades. These disputes originate in the wider world of philosophical, cultural and political controversies that flared up in the last quarter of the twentieth century, and can only be understood against that backdrop. Unlike those dealt with in earlier chapters, the most representative and influential of the new theories are deeply confrontational in the sense that their explicit aim is to destabilise and overthrow a traditional approach to legal thinking in its entirety, rather than propose modifications of prevailing images of law. At the same time, it seeks to refocus legal studies on addressing fundamental questions of social justice. Despite this apparent breach with the established traditions, however, it is still the perennial question of justice, what it means and how it relates to law, that stands at the centre of these controversies. Socialist, feminist and race theory critics of law, for example, are concerned with the injustice towards subordinate social classes, repressed women and ethnic minorities, injustices that are argued to be perpetuated by legal institutions and reinforced by legal theory. At the same time, however, much of the criticism aims to undermine the very notion of justice, to expose it as an ideological façade, the function of which is to conceal the essentially oppressive nature of law. This tension – between the urge to broaden the basis of justice and at the same time to denounce justice as a fraud – runs right through the arguments for and against the new criticism.
