Critical Legal Histories Revisited”
A Response
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12177544 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robert W Gordon (Yale University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 37 |
| Issue | 01 |
| Pages | 200-215 |
| Publication date | 2012-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Law & Social Inquiry (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0897-6546 • E-ISSN: 1747-4469 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1747-4469.2012.01302.x |
| OpenAlex | W1597521974 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 25 |
The author responds to comments reappraising “Critical Legal Histories” (CLH) (1984). CLH critiqued “evolutionary functionalism,” the idea that law is a functional response to a typical modernizing process. CLH argued that “society” was partly constituted of legal elements and that law was too indeterminate to have reliably regular functional effects. CLH has been misinterpreted as calling for a return to internal histories of “mandarin” doctrine: all it said was that some doctrinal histories were valuable, without privileging them. This response clarifies that the relations of law to society and social change, and of high-level official law to everyday local law are distinct issues. CLH is mostly moot today, since social-legal historians have incorporated its insight that legal concepts are embedded in everyday social practice. But other fields have revived deterministic Whiggish accounts of progressive development and of law functional to it—to which CLH's critique still seems relevant
Critical legal studies · Doctrine · Epistemology · Functionalism (philosophy of mind · Legal doctrine · Legal history · Legal profession · Legal realism · Political science · Sociology · Historical Economic and Legal Thought · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Philosophy
The transformation of American law, 1780-1860
A guide to critical legal studies
Evolution and society
Law, Labor, and Ideology in the Early American Republic
Why Is the Common Law Efficient?
Legal Regime and Contractual Flexibility
The Great Divergence
Max Weber on Law and the Rise of Capitalism
New South-New Law
Property Law, Expropriation, and Resource Allocation by Government
New South
The New Law and Economic Development
The Rule of Law
The Dead Hand and the Law of Trusts in the Nineteenth Century
Branches without Roots
Industrializing English Law
Main Currents in Sociological Thought
The Comedy of the Commons
Labor's Constitution of Freedom
In the Shadow of Marriage
Coercion and Distribution in a Supposedly Non-Coercive State
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2025 (10) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |