ABSTRACT
Ideology critique has been a major theme of socio-legal studies for the past twenty years. It has also been one of the central themes of critical legal studies throughout its existence. A formidable threshold problem for ideology critique is that there is scant agreement upon the concept itself, on what "legal ideology" means, or on how it can or should be formulated for the purposes of social scientific application. The multitude of definitions of ideology in general, and legal ideology in particular, can be divided roughly into two basic versions: the pejorative version and the neutral version. The neutral version avoids the negative connotations attached to the pejorative version. Many practitioners and advocates of ideology critique identify themselves with interpretivism, holism, and social constructionism which are perhaps the leading complex of views in social science epistemology and ontology today. Many socio-legal scholars who engage in ideology critique deny the fact/value distinction.
