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ABSTRACT
Liberal egalitarian jurisprudence and critical legal studies have often been at odds, despite sharing a core of set of political and analytical commitments. This paper makes the case for their conciliation in the 21st century on the basis that both traditions have much to offer one another. Liberal egalitarians offer the theoretical tools for developing an egalitarian normative approach to law, and critical legal theorists offer a vital realism about power.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 See Roberto Unger, Knowledge and Politics (The Free Press 1973).
2 See Duncan Kennedy, ‘Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication’ (1976) 89 Havard Law Review.
3 See Pierre Schlagg, ‘The Empty Circles of Liberal Justification’ (1997) 96 Michigan Law Review.
4 For a classic text in this vein see Michael Mandel, The Charter of Rights and the Legalization of Politics in Canada (Thomspson Educational Publishing 1994).
5 See the long sections criticizing Marx’s teleological dialectics in Roberto Unger, Politics Volume One: False Necessity (Verso Press 2004).
6 Duncan Kennedy, A Critique of Adjudication (Fin De Siècle) (Harvard University Press 1997).
7 See for example Antony Anghie, ‘Francisco de Vittoria and the Colonial Origins of International Law’ (1996) 5 Social & Legal Studies.
8 Patricia Ewick and Susan Silbey, The Common Place of Law: Stories From Everyday Life (University of Chicago Press 1998).
9 See Catherine Mackinnon, Towards a Feminist Theory of the State (Harvard University Press 1989).
10 Many of the technical debates amongst liberal theorists concern just exactly what kind of equality we should aspire to. Is it equality of resources, well-being, or capabilities? These are debates the critical left all too often ignores in lieu of trying to out-promise one another circa hagiographic rhetoric about ever more radical kinds of equality that are to emerge so long as we don’t specify what we mean. This is frustrating, since what kind of equality we want to achieve is a very fine grained issue that also connects intrinsically to the forms of political agitation we should engage in and what policies ought to be endorsed. Despite the crucial nature of these questions, I won’t take them up here. See instead Matthew McManus, ‘A Critical Legal Conception of Human Dignity’ (2019) Journal of Human Rights.
11 See Andrew Petter, The Politics of the Charter: The Illusive Promise of Constitutional Rights (The University of Toronto Press 2010).
12 See the undoubtedly funny Allan Hutchinson, ‘Indiana Dworkin and Law’s Empire’ (1987) 96 The Yale Law Journal.
13 See Mark G Kelman, ‘Trashing’ (1984) 36 Stanford Law Review.
14 Allan Hutchinson, ‘Indiana Dworkin and Law’s Empire’ (1987) 96 The Yale Law Journal 637–8.
15 See Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Duke University Press 2003).
16 CB MacPherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford University Press 2011) 3.
17 ibid 256.
18 On this extension of MacPherson’s reasoning, see Frank Cunningham, The Political Thought of C.B MacPherson: Contemporary Applications (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019).
19 Catherine MacKinnon, Towards a Feminist Theory of the State (Harvard University Press 1989).
20 For an especially damning take on Sinophobia in a Canadian context see Constance Backhouse, Colour-Coded: A Legal History of Racism in Canada (University of Toronto Press 1999).
21 For a good example of such a critique see Domenico Losurdo, Liberalism: A Counter-History (Verso Press 2014). It is important to note that even Losurdo stresses the historical accomplishments of liberalism even as he offers critical analysis.
22 See Helen McCabe, John Stuart Mill: Socialist (McGill-Queen’s University Press 2021).
23 See JS Mill, Socialism (East India Publishing Company 2020) 22–4.
24 For someone like David Dyzenhaus, the answer to ‘how far’ was ‘not very much at all.’ He is very critical of the limitations to Rawls’ egalitarian ambitions. See David Dyzenhaus ‘Liberalism After the Fall: Schmitt, Rawls, and the Problem of Justification’ (1996) 22 Philosophy & Social Criticism. As mentioned critical legal theorists like Allan Hutchinson had similar views about the transformative potential in Dworkin’s work. On the other hand recent scholarship by authors like William Edmundson suggests the liberal egalitarians were far more ambitious than many assume, even going so far as to endorse a kind of ‘liberal socialism.’ See William A Edmundson, John Rawls: Reticent Socialist (Cambridge University Press 2017).
25 See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice: Original Edition (Harvard University Press 1971) 19.
26 See Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Harvard University Press 2002) 1–3.
27 See Ronald Dworkin, Is Democracy Possible Here?: Principles for a New Political Debate (Princeton University Press 2006) 9–10.
28 See Catherine Audard, John Rawls (McGill-Queen’s University Press 2007) 60–64.
29 See Tony Smith, Beyond Liberal Egalitarianism: Marx and Normative Social Theory in the Twenty-First Century (Haymarket Books 2017) 54–55.
30 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice: Original Edition (Harvard University Press 1971) 118–119.
31 For a classic take see HLA Hart, ‘Between Utility and Rights’ (1979) 79 Columbia Law Review 9.
32 See John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2001).
33 ibid
34 See Salman Khurshid and Lokendra Malik and Veronica Rodrigues-Blanco, Dignity in the Legal and Political Philosophy of Ronald Dworkin (Oxford University Press 2018).
35 Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Harvard University Press 2002) 66–7.
36 See Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Harvard University Press 2002).
37 See Ronald Dworkin, Justice for Hedgehogs (Harvard University Press 2010).
38 See John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2001) 138–40.
39 Duncan Kennedy, A Critique of Adjudication (Fin De Siècle) (Harvard University Press 1997) 128–9.
40 See Catherine MacKinnon. ‘The Liberal State.’ Printed in David Dyzenhaus, Sophia Reibetanz Moreau, and Arthur Ripstein, Law and Morality-Readings in Legal Philosophy: Third Edition (University of Toronto Press 2007) 270.
41 See Costas Douzinas, ‘Seven Theses on Human Rights (Desire)’ (2013) CLR. This echoes his more elaborated critique in Costas Douzinas, The End of Human Rights: Critical Thought at the Turn of the Century (Hart Publishing, 2000).
42 See Allan C. Hutchinson, Evolution and the Common Law (Cambridge University Press 2005) 70.
43 Martti Koskeniemmi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960 (Cambridge University Press 2001) 290.
44 Pierre Schlag, ‘The Empty Circles of Liberal Justification’ (1997) 96 Michigan Law Review.
45 See Andrew Petter, The Politics of the Charter: The Illusive Promise of Constitutional Rights (Toronto University Press 2010) 140.
46 John Rawls, ‘Reply to Habermas’ (1995) 92 The Journal of Philosophy.
47 See Ronald Dworkin, Law’s Empire (Harvard University Press 1986) 271–4.
48 See Allan Hutchinson, ‘Indiana Dworkin and Law’s Empire’ (1987) 96 The Yale Law Journal 639.
49 See David Dyzenhaus, ‘Liberalism After the Fall: Schmitt, Rawls, and the Problem of Justification’ (1996) 22 Philosophy & Social Criticism.
50 See Samuel Moyn, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2019).
51 See Ronald Dworkin, Law’s Empire (Harvard University Press 1986) and John Rawls, The Law of Peoples: With the ‘Idea of Public Reason Revisited” (Harvard University Press 2001).
52 For an expert deconstruction of these mythological conceits see Allan Hutchinson, Evolution and the Common Law (Cambridge University Press 2005).
53 Feminist theorists have been rightly curt on this point. See Catherine MacKinnon, Towards a Feminist Theory of the State (Harvard University Press 1989).
54 For a recent guide see Adam Cohen, Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court’s Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America (Penguin Press 2020).
55 See Samuel Moyn, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2019) 36.
56 See Roberto Unger, Politics Volume One: False Necessity (Verso Press 2004).
57 Even other liberal egalitarians like Amartya Sen have been critical on this point, accusing Rawls in particular of ‘transcendental institutionalism.’ Though he doesn’t use this Marxist language, the criticisms bear a lot of similarity to the critique of reification. See Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (Harvard University Press 2009) 10–11.
58 See Antony Anghie, ‘Francisco de Vittoria and the Colonial Origins of International Law’ (1996) 5 Social & Legal Studies and Martti Koskeniemmi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960 (Cambridge University Press 2001).
59 See Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (New York University Press 2017) and Charles Mills, The Racial Contract (Cornell University Press 1997).
60 For a take that addresses political economy and equality see Roberto Unger, Politics Volume One: False Necessity (Verso Press 2004) 541–3.
61 See Ronald Dworkin, Law’s Empire (Harvard University Press 1986) 271–4.
62 Some critical legal theorists agree. See Allan Hutchinson, ‘A Poetic Champion Composes: Unger (Not) On Ecology and Women’ (1990) 40 The University of Toronto Law Journal.
63 See Andrew Petter, The Politics of the Charter: The Illusive Promise of Constitutional Rights (The University of Toronto Press 2010) 118.
64 See Samuel Moyn, ‘The Court is Not Your Friend’ (2020) DM.
65 See John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2001) 137–8.
66 See David Dyzenhaus, ‘Liberalism After the Fall: Schmitt, Rawls, and the Problem of Justification’ (1996) 22 Philosophy & Social Criticism 6.
67 In my home country of Canada, this especially pertains to indigenous issues and inclusion. See Andrew Petter, The Politics of the Charter: The Illusive Promise of Constitutional Rights (The University of Toronto Press 2010) and James Tully, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in An Age of Diversity (Cambridge University Press 1995).
68 See Adam Cohen, Supreme Inequality: The Supreme Court’s Fifty-Year Battle for a More Unjust America (Penguin Press 2020).
69 Corey Robin has made this point in an American context several times. See Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism From Edmund Burke to Donald Trump (Oxford University Press 2017).
70 See Tony Smith, Beyond Liberal Egalitarianism: Marx and Normative Social Theory in the Twenty-First Century (Haymarket Books 2017) and Danielle S Allen, Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship Since Brown v Board of Education (University of Chicago Press 2004) and Helen McCabe, John Stuart Mill: Socialist (McGill-Queen’s University Press 2021) and William A Edmundson, John Rawls: Reticent Socialist (Cambridge University Press 2017).
71 See Charles W Mills, Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism (Oxford University Press 2017).
72 See Roberto Unger, Politics Volume One: False Necessity (Verso Press 2004).
73 See Kelman (n 13).
74 See especially Ronald Dworkin, ‘Objectivity and Truth: You’d Better Believe It’ (1996) 25 Philosophy & Public Affairs 6.
75 See Roberto Unger, The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (Harvard University Press 2007).