Deconstructing the Law: The Politics of Law

Abstract

In recent years progressive critique of the legal enterprise has derived from two principle sources: the legal realist and Marxian traditions. Succinctly expressed, these traditions have rejected the law's claim to objectivity. The legal realists have argued that legal decision-making involves not formal, deductive logic but subjective choice; any legal choice made is never logically compelled. In the Marxian tradition the objection has been not so much that the law is imbued with values, but that the distribution of legal outcomes is skewed to particular values, particular interests; the law reflects dominant economic interests.