ABSTRACT
Critical legal studies is more a concerted attack and assault on the legitimacy and authority of pedagogical strategies in law schools than a comprehensive announcement of what a credible and realizable new society and legal system would look like. This chapter describes the critical legal studies movement within the context of the larger crisis of purpose among intellectuals and academicians in contemporary American society. It examines the critical legal studies movement as a significant and insightful, though flawed, response to this crisis of purpose, and suggests how the critical legal studies movement can become a more effective prophetic force in the time. A Gramscian perspective is more easily enunciated than enacted, and the implicit Foucaultian orientation of most critical legal studies figures impedes such an enactment. The critical legal studies movement focuses on how the undeniable realities of class exploitation, racial subjugation, patriarchal domination and homo-phobic marginalization affect the making and enforcement of legal sanctions.
