ABSTRACT
Writing about a 'critical legal method' with which to address the question of lay participation in law proves to be problematic for a number of different reasons. Habermas' notion of critical research as self-reflection with an emancipatory objective comes already close to the political connotations with which we associate the word today. The somewhat illusory idea of a coherent 'critical legal method' is reinforced by the notion that there is a 'movement' behind it. It would be difficult to overestimate the influence of neo-Kantian philosophy in the German tradition of legal positivism. The critics of traditional legal approaches may not wish to engage with Kelsen's pure theory because, even if he was a socialist who openly sympathised with the women's rights movement and psychoanalysis in pre-war Vienna, his special brand of legal positivism apparently has preciously little to say about the social and political concerns that usually animate the critical research of law.
