The Critical Legal Studies Movement - by Roberto Mangabeira Unger (Paperback)

About the Book

"The civil rights and feminist movements of the sixties did not leave legal theory untouched. Over the following two decades, the critical legal studies movement--led by the Brazilian philosopher, social theorist and politician Roberto Unger--sought to transform traditional views of law and legal doctrine, revealing the hidden interests and class dominations in prevailing legal frameworks. It remains highly influential, having spawned more recent movements, including feminist legal studies and critical race theory. The Critical Legal Studies Movement develops its major ideas, showing how laws and legal discourse hide the social inequalities and political biases that so interest philosophy and revolutionary politics"--

Book Synopsis

Critical legal studies is the most important development in progressive thinking about law of the past half century. It has inspired the practice of legal analysis as institutional imagination, exploring, with the materials of the law, alternatives for society. The Critical Legal Studies Movement was written as the manifesto of the movement by its central figure. This new edition includes a revised version of the original text, preceded by an extended essay in which its author discusses what is happening now and what should happen next in legal thought.

Review Quotes

"A restless visionary."
--New York Times

"A philosophical mind out of the Third World turning the tables to become a synoptist and seer of the First."
--Perry Anderson

"One of the few living philosophers whose thinking has the range of the great philosophers of the past."
--Lee Smolin, Times Higher Education Supplement

"An ambitious and impressive undertaking ... A carefully crafted statement with ideas interlocked like a chain-link fence that stretches as far as the eye can see."
--New York Times Book Review

About the Author

Roberto Mangabeira Unger is one of the leading philosophers, political thinkers, and legal theorists in the world today. Verso publishes his social theory books, False Necessity, Social Theory: Its Situation and Its Task, and Plasticity into Power; his programmatic writings, Democracy Realized and The Left Alternative; and his other major work in legal theory, What Should Legal Analysis Become?