Room for Manoeuver: Toward a Theory of Practice in Critical Legal Studies

Abstract

Critical legal studies has drawn criticism for its supposed theoretical inadequacy. James Boyle suggests that critical legal scholarship is characterized by a tension between structural and subjective poles. The idea that social theory must oscillate between structure and subjectivity is misconceived and as a dichotomy, must be rejected. Legal scholars need to radically reconsider understandings of both in order to fully appreciate the complex relationship between them. The structural and subjective need not be extricated, but rather redefined so that their oppositions no longer consume the dominant debates in social theory. An interdisciplinary “practice theory,” later defined in the article, contributes in reinserting agency and practice into critical legal scholarship while providing new conceptual resources to think about legal activity as a product of social agents acting in socially constructed worlds.

Keywords: Critical legal studies, Social theory