ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to introduce the reader to some of the most prominent contemporary perspectives on mainstream legal reasoning, particularly those that have been a force in legal education for at least a couple of decades and thus seem most likely to have a long-term impact. The beginning of the contemporary law and economics school is often traced to an article written in 1960 by Professor Ronald Coase of the University of Chicago. While law and economics theory is a principal heir to the constructive, social scientific strand of legal realism, the modern successor to its critical strand and the keeper of its progressive political flame was a movement called critical legal studies (CLS). Critical race theory emerged in the late 1980s as a distinct movement when some in the critical legal studies movement came to believe that the movement, dominated by white males, was insufficiently interested in issues of race.
