(En)racing Law and Society

Abstract

One of the sharpest critiques of law and society scholarship in recent years has come from scholars who say that law and society scholarship fails to appropriately address the issue of race. The criticism is not just that scholars do not pay sufficient attention to ideas of racial inequality or the concept of race, but rather that when racial issues are addressed, it is often in a manner that fails to move forward our understanding of how race operates.

In this essay, I consider several "race crit" critiques of the use of race in law and society scholarship, and I use these critiques as a gauge to evaluate Kitty Calavita’s exploration of race in her text, Invitation to Law and Society. Then, stepping beyond Invitation, I suggest a little-used mode of analysis that would provide great explanatory power to law and society scholarship when it touches on racial issues.

Keywords: law and society, race