University of Miami Law School University of Miami School of Law Institutional Repository Articles Faculty and Deans 2006 Latcrit X Afterword: Beyond the First Decade: A Forward-looking History of Latcrit Theory, Community and Praxis Berta Hernandez-Truyol University of Florida College of Law Angela Harris University of California at Berkeley School of Law Francisco Valdes University of Miami School of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at:https://repository.law.miami.edu/fac_articles Part of theLaw Commons Recommended Citation Berta Hernandez-Truyol, Angela Harris, and Francisco Valdes,Latcrit X Afterword: Beyond the First Decade: A Forward-looking History of Latcrit Theory, Community and Praxis, 26Chicano-Latino L. Rev.237 (2006). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty and Deans at University of Miami School of Law Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of University of Miami School of Law Institutional Repository. For more information, please [email protected]. AFTERWORD LATCRIT X AFTERWORD: BEYOND THE FIRST DECADE: A FORWARD-LOOKING HISTORY OF LATCRIT THEORY, COMMUNITY AND PRAXIS* TABLE/OUTLINE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .............................................. 238 I. A BRIEF HISTORY OF LATCRIT PRECURSORS ...... 241 A. Intellectual and Political Sources of LatCrit/ C RT ........................................... 241 1. Intellectual Sources of LatCrit ............. 241 2. Political Sources of LatCrit ................ 248 II. "LATCRIT": FROM CONCEPT TO PRACTICE ........ 252 A. Origins: Background Experience and Social C ontext ......................................... 253 B. The First Decade: Learning From Experience . 257 C. LatCrit Contributions: Five Highlights ......... 260 D. The Annual Conferences: From LCI to LCX.. 268 E. Collective Personal Praxis and the LatCrit Portfolio of Projects ........................... 269 F. Community Building: Individuals, Coalitions and Institutions ................................ 272 G. The Commitment to Outsider Discourse and Critical Education ............................. 275 H. Productive Tensions, Shortcomings and Setbacks ....................................... 278 III. INTERNATIONALISM IN AND THROUGH LATCRIT THEORY .............................................. 282 IV. IDENTITY AND ECONOMICS IN LATCRIT THEORY: TOWARD A SECOND DECADE ...................... 287 A. Law and Economics and Critical Theory: Toward a Convergence ........................ 287 * Professor Berta Hernindez-Truyol, University of Florida College of Law, Professor Angela Harris, University of California at Berkeley School of Law, and Prof. Francisco Vald6s, University of Miami School of Law. CHICANAIO-LATINA/O LAW REVIEW [Vol. 26:237 CONCLUSION .............................................. 296 INTRODUCTION During the past ten years, the LatCrit community of schol- ars, students, and social activists has produced twenty law review symposia,' including this one.2 During this time, we also have 1. See Colloquium, Representing Latinalo Communities: Critical Race Theory and Praxis, 9 LA RAZA L.J. 1 (1996) (publishing the papers of the pre-LatCrit collo- quium, held in 1995 in San Juan, Puerto Rico, at which the "LatCrit" name was conceived); Symposium, LatCrit Theory: Naming and Launching a New Discourse of Critical Legal Scholarship, 2 HARV. LATINO L. REV. 1 (1997) (LatCrit I); Collo- quium, InternationalL aw, Human Rights and LatCrit Theory, 28 U. MIAMI INTER- AM. L. REV. 177 (1997) (publishing the proceedings of the first LatCrit colloquium focused on international law); Symposium, Difference, Solidarity and Law: Building Latina/o Communities Through LatCrit Theory, 19 CHICANO-LATINO L. REV. 1 (1998) (LatCrit II); Symposium, ComparativeL atinas/os: Identity, Law and Policy in LatCrit Theory, 53 U. MIAMI L. REV. 575 (1999) (LatCrit III); Symposium, Rotating Centers, Expanding Frontiers: LatCrit Theory and Marginal Intersections, 33 U.C. DAVIS L. REV. 751 (2000) (LatCrit IV); Colloquium, Spain, The Americas and La- tino/as: Internationala nd Comparative Law in Triangular Perspective, 9 U. MIAMI INT'L. & COMP. L. REV. 1 (2000-01) (publishing the proceedings of the second and third International and Comparative Law Colloquia (ICC), held during 1998 and 1999 in Malaga, Spain); Symposium, Class in LatCrit: Theory and Praxis in a World of Economic Inequality, 78 DENY. U. L. REV. 467 (2001) (LatCrit V); Symposium, Latinas/os and the Americas: Centering North-South Frameworks in LatCrit Theory, 55 FLA. L. REV. 1 (2003), 54 RUTGERS L. REV. 803 (2002) (LatCrit VI); Symposium, Coalitional Theory and Praxis:S ocial Justice Movements and LatCrit Community, 13 LA RAZA L.J. 113 (2002), 81 OR. L. REV. 595 (2003) (LatCrit VII); Symposium, International and Comparative Law in LatCrit Theory: Perspectivesf rom the South, 38 REV. JURIDICA U. INTER-AM. P.R. 7 (2003) (publishing the Spanish-language papers from the 2003 ICC in Buenos Aires, Argentina); Symposium, City and the Citizen: Operations of Power, Strategies of Resistance, 52 CLEV. ST. L. REV. 1 (2004) (LatCrit VIII); Symposium, Law, Culture, and Society: LatCrit Theory and Transdis- ciplinary Approaches, 16 FLA. J. INT'L L. 539 (2004) (publishing the papers of the first South-North Exchange (SNX), held during 2003 in San Juan, and the fifth ICC, held that same year in Buenos Aires); Symposium, Countering Kulturkampf Politics Through Critique and Justice Pedagogy, 50 VILL. L. REV. 749 (2005), 35 SETON HALL L. REV. 1155 (2005) (LatCrit IX); Symposium, Law, Culture and Indigenous People: Comparative and Critical Perspectives, 17 FLA. J. INT'L L. 603 (2005) (pub- lishing the papers of the second and third SNXs, held during 2004 and 2005, in San Juan); Symposium, Constitutionalism and the Global South: Mapping the Politics of Law, 14 GRIFITHn L. REV. 2 (2005) (publishing the papers of the sixth ICC, held during 2004 in Capetown, South Africa and the third SNX, held in San Juan); Sym- posium, Free-Market Fundamentalismsa nd LatCrit Theory, 5 SEATTLE J. Soc. JUST. 2 (forthcoming 2007) (publishing the papers of the fourth SNX, held in 2006 in Bo- goti, Colombia). In addition to these event-based publications, two joint LatCrit symposia have been published during this time. See Joint Symposium, LatCrit The- ory: Latinas/os and the Law, 85 CAL. L. REV. 1087 (1997), 10 LA RAZA L.J. 1 (1998); Joint Symposium, Culture, Language, Sexuality and Law: LatCrit Theory and the Construction of the Nation, 5 MICH. J. RACE & L. 787 (2000), 33 U. MICH. J. L. REFORM 203 (2000). Information on LatCrit theory, including the full text of most of the LatCrit symposia based on our Annual Conferences, ICCs, and SNXs can be obtained at the LatCrit website, available at http://www.latcrit.org (last visited Oct. 22, 2006). 2. This symposium, like most LatCrit symposia, is presented in the form of "clusters" of essays organized around substantive themes, with a Foreword and an Afterword serving as bookends for the volume. These clusters consist of essays that 2006] LATCRIT X AFTERWORD launched a variety of academic and educational community projects designed to promote anti-subordination consciousness and action within, and from, the legal academy of the United States. From the Student Scholar Program (SSP) and Critical Global Classroom (CGC) to the South-North Exchange on The- ory, Culture, and Law (SNX) and the International and Compar- ative Law Colloquium (ICC), the LatCrit "portfolio of projects" constitutes the concrete forms of "collective personal praxis" that has become a LatCrit hallmark during this past decade.3 During this time, we have grappled with "productive tensions," as well as with our collective limitations and personal shortcomings, as we have continued the struggle to advance critical outsider jurispru- dence as a viable alternative both to mainstream complacency and to reactionary backlash in the ongoing quest for social justice in and beyond the United States. In striking the closing note of the first decade, this Afterword therefore offers a forward-look- ing account of this moment in the history of a project, a jurispru- dential experiment that remains always under construction.4 As this brief account indicates, we view LatCrit theory, com- munity and praxis as an effort, both to interject "Latinas/os" into the ongoing development of critical approaches to law and pol- icy,5 as well as to expand and advance the growing field of critical outsider jurisprudence initiated in previous years by our prede- cessors.6 In doing so, we have sought to interrogate the multiple conform to the Symposium Submission Guidelines, which request that authors limit their texts and footnoting. The Symposium Submission Guidelines are posted on the LatCrit website, available at www.latcrit.org (last visited Oct. 22, 2006), for easy ref- erence. For the Symposium, LatCrit Theory: Economic In/Justice, click on LatCrit Annual Conferences. For a complete listing of the LatCrit symposia, see supra note 1 or visit the LatCrit website at www.latcrit.org; for additional discussion of the Lat- Crit symposia, see also infra notes 70-79 and accompanying text. 3. The LatCrit Portfolio of Projects ("Portfolio") is the collection of commu- nity projects undertaken collectively by LatCrit scholars and partner groups or insti- tutions. Projects are included or removed from the Portfolio from time to time based on community resources and circumstances. More information on the projects cur- rently and previously in the Portfolio is presented at the LatCrit website, www.lat- crit.org (last visited Oct. 22, 2006); for additional discussion of the LatCrit Portfolio of Projects, see also infra notes 125-27 and accompanying text. 4. As we have previously written, the LatCrit enterprise is a fluid, ongoing convergence of efforts by diversely situated scholars and activists. For a sample of readings on "LatCrit" as a jurisprudential experiment, see infra note 88 and sources cited therein. 5. See infra notes 8-36 and accompanying text on LatCrit and its precursors. 6. The term "outsider jurisprudence" was first used by Mari J. Matsuda. See Mari J. Matsuda, Public Response to Racist Speech: Considering the Victim's Story, 87 MICH. L. REV. 2320, 2323 (1989). Here, the term is preceded with "critical" to emphasize this key feature of the body of work to which LatCrit theory belongs. LatCrit theory is one strand in critical outsider jurisprudence, along with critical race theory, critical race feminism, Asian American scholarship, and Queer legal theory. The birth and growth of outsider jurisprudence have been punctuated by various ruptures, perhaps most notably the rupture with critical legal studies that gave way to the emergence of critical race theory. For a collection of works that recount those CHICANAIO-LATINAIO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 26:237 internal diversities that characterize Latinas/os in this country and across national borders, as well as the interplay of those and similar diversities within and across other social/national/regional groups subordinated by law and policy. With this experiment, we have sought not only to create a "safe space" for critical outsider jurisprudence and its incubation, but we also have endeavored to conceive and promote critical approaches to formal legal educa- tion that might help reform the structure of the status quo. This ongoing effort at "collective personal praxis" of course is in- tended both as a collective act of subversion against, and of resis- tance to, the dominant norms and practices of formal legal education in the United States today. Thus, a key point to under- standing the LatCrit experiment and its aspirations is that the annual conferences and other projects in our portfolio are con- ceptualized and conducted not only as welcome respites, append- ages or punctuation points in an otherwise atomized process of producing and disseminating knowledge, but as an entirely dif- ferent and coherent framework for this production and dissemination. Despite our best efforts, we have encountered dashed hopes and failed expectations, sometimes based on real and sometimes based on imagined misunderstandings or disagreements. To meet the challenges that enable a critical transcending of difference and a mutual cultivation of critical communities and coalitions, we have consciously employed the annual conferences and the entire LatCrit Portfolio of Projects as a vehicle to make commu- nity-building, coalition-building and institution-building, integral to critical outsider jurisprudence. Standing now at the bridge be- tween the first and second decade of this fragile enterprise, it events, see Symposium, Minority Critiques of the Critical Legal Studies Movement, 22 HARV. C.R.-C.L. L. REV. 297 (1987); see also Symposium, Critical Legal Studies, 36 STAN. L. REV. 1 (1984) (describing and presenting critical legal studies). In turn, similarly conflicted experiences marked the critical race theory workshops that fol- lowed that early rupture. See, e.g., Stephanie L. Phillips, The Convergence of the Critical Race Theory Workshop with LatCrit Theory: A History, 53 U. MIAMI L. REV. 1247 (1999) (describing the early workshops); Francisco Valdds, Afterword- Theorizing "OutCrit" Theories: CoalitionalM ethod and ComparativeJ urisprudential Experience -RaceCrits, QueerCritsa nd LatCrits, 53 U. MIAMI L. REV. 1265, 1288-91 (1999) [hereinafter Theorizing OutCrit Theories] (describing the later workshops). Of course, similar dynamics also have surfaced with feminist legal theory. See, e.g., Catharine A. MacKinnon, Keeping it Real: On Anti- "Essentialism" in CROSSROADS, DIRECTIONS AND A NEW CRITICAL RACE THEORY 71 (Francisco Valdds, et. al eds., 2002); Catharine A. MacKinnon, From Practice To Theory, or What Is a White Wo- man Anyway?, 4 YALE J. L. & FEMINISM 13 (1991) (responding to controversies about race and gender within feminist legal theory); Leti Volpp, Feminism Versus Multiculturalism, 101 COLUM. L. REV. 1181 (2001). As this account confirms, LatCrit conferences and discourses have not been immune to this phenomenon. See also Vald6s, Theorizing OutCrit Theories, supra note 6, at 1308-11 (recounting "conten- tious engagements" at various LatCrit conferences, including the first one). 20061 LATCRIT X AFTERWORD seems plain that we have much to celebrate, as a well as much to do. Part I of this Afterword sketches an overview of the jurispru- dential and intellectual precursors that have influenced the emer- gence and development of LatCrit theory during this past decade. Part II turns squarely to the origins and the efforts of this enterprise, as we have endeavored to articulate the LatCrit sub- ject position in socially relevant ways. Part III explains the spe- cial emphasis on internationalism manifest both in our symposia and more broadly in our portfolio of projects. Part IV then con- cludes with an outline of some key points that might help to in- form our second-decade agenda. In presenting our account of this collective endeavor, we hope both to explain the vision that has guided our work thus far, as well as to welcome critical and self-critical rejoinders that might help present a more complete picture of this complex undertaking. I. A BRIEF HISTORY OF LATCRIT PRECURSORS A. Intellectual and Political Sources of LatCrit/CRT Although programmatically LatCrit is very different from critical race theory (as Part B will explain in more detail), LatCrit and critical race theory share an intellectual history. In this sec- tion, we offer a genealogy of critical race theory/LatCrit. Other histories, of course, can and should be told.7 1. Intellectual Sources of LatCrit/CRT Three intellectual movements have been central sources for LatCrit/CRT: American Legal Realism, Critical Legal Studies, and U.S. Third World feminism. American Legal Realism Laura Kalman observes, "When law professors write history, they mark legal realism as the jurisprudential divide between the old order and modernity.''8 At least two features of American Legal Realism are important foundations for LatCrit/CRT: its radical skepticism about traditional legal discourse, and its desire to replace internal with external critique of that discourse. American Legal Realism had its heyday in the 1920s and 1930s, although there were precursors, such as Oliver Wendell 7. For example, see Kimberl6 Williams Crenshaw, The First Decade: Critical Reflections, or "A Foot in the Closing Door," 49 UCLA L. REV. 1343 (2002). 8. LAURA KALMAN, THE STRANGE CAREER OF LEGAL LIBERALISM 13 (1996). CHICANAIO-LATINAIO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 26:237 Holmes and Roscoe Pound, who wrote much earlier.9 Legal Re- alism was a rebellion mounted against the conventional legal dis- course of the time, which Jay Feinman and others have described as "formalism" or "the classic style"10 and which owed much to Christopher Columbus Langdell of Harvard Law School. Lang- dell's view, which came to dominate legal education, was that law should be analyzed from within. Careful attention to and critique of the reasoning of appellate judges, based on knowledge of doc- trine and principles of logic and coherence, constituted the proper method for analysis.11 Legal Realists violently rejected this idea. Realism took the position, first, that the best way to understand the law and the legal system was not to take an internal perspective, but an exter- nal perspective. They were interested in bringing the tools of the social sciences to bear on the law, and they were interested in the law as policymakers, not as craftsmen. Second, the Legal Realists argued that the standard terms and concepts legal insiders, espe- cially appellate judges, used to think about the law were not only not helpful, but actually harmful to the project of trying to under- stand how law actually operated. For the Realists, classical legal thought "ignored the indeterminacy of law and the role of idio- syncrasy in explaining judicial decisions. '12 One famous Realist phrase describing the jurisprudence of the time was "transcen- dental nonsense. '13 "A judicial decision is a social event," argued Felix Cohen. "Law is a social process, a complex of human activi- ties, and an adequate legal science must deal with human activity, 9. Holmes, Pound, and Benjamin Cardozo are generally associated with a school known as "Sociological Jurisprudence." Thomas Grey describes these jurists as "Progressives," and notes that they all distanced themselves from Langdell's em- phasis on formal logic. Grey observes that Pound and Cardozo were the most important of the many jurists who followed Holmes in see- ing law as an instrument for the conscious pursuit of social welfare, an in- strument whose master term was policy rather than principle, whose master institution was the legislature rather than the courts, and whose servants should devote themselves to social engineering rather than doctrinal geom- etry. Thomas C. Grey, Modern American Legal Thought, 106 YALE L.J. 493, 498 (1996) (book review). For other resources on American Legal Realism, see generally NEIL DUXBURY, PATTERNS OF AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE (1995); Brian Leiter, American Legal Re- alism, in THE BLACKWELL GUIDE TO PHILOSOPHY OF LAW AND LEGAL THEORY 50- 66 (W. Edmundson & M. Golding, eds., 2003). 10. See Jay M. Feinman, Un-Making Law: The ClassicalR evival in the Common Law, 28 SEATTLE U.L. REV. 1, 3-6 (2004) (describing the classical style in contract and tort legal discourse); see also Morton G. White, The Revolt Against Formalism in American Social Thought of the Twentieth Century, 8 J. OF THE HIST. OF IDEAS 131 (1947). 11. See generally Thomas C. Grey, Langdell's Orthodoxy, 45 U. PITT. L. REV. 1 (1983). 12. KALMAN, supra note 8, at 15. 13. Felix S. Cohen, Transcendental Nonsense and the FunctionalA pproach, 35 COLUM. L. REv. 809 (1935). 2006] LATCRIT X AFTERWORD with cause and effect, with the past and the future.' 4 An under- standing of the inner logic of the Rule Against Perpetuities, or the ability to criticize an appellate decision's use of precedent, was not sufficient. The Realists were scornful of the way that the myth of law as driven by its own internal requirements of logic and precedent led to misunderstandings about the true relationship between law and social policy. For example, Robert Hale and others criticized the public/private split that continues to haunt liberal legal the- ory. Hale argued that although "markets" are conceptualized as governed by "private" law and therefore as the site of free and uncoerced interchanges between bargaining entities (as opposed to the "public" world of state intervention), this private/public split is not only unhelpful to policy analysis, but actually obscures what is really going on. The fact is that markets are not "free" in the sense of being prior to state action; markets are a product of the state and the law to begin with. It is pure ideology to treat "private" law, then, as somehow inherently less coercive and less public than "public" law.15 What followed from this critique of formalist legal dis- course? Though the Realists were deeply skeptical about the value of case analysis, they had a great faith in the social sciences. They aimed to recast law as the object of scientific study by econ- omists, psychologists, and sociologists. In this way, Legal Realism was the source of the modern-day law and society movement, as well as modern law and economics. Legal Realism's corrosive skepticism about doctrinal analysis and its insistence that law is a product of society, and therefore politics, would be taken up gen- erations later by the Critical Legal Studies movement.16 What happened to Legal Realism itself? As a political move- ment, legal realism in the 1930s and 1940s dissolved under politi- cal attack. As World War II approached, Legal Realists were accused of being un-American and un-patriotic, even nihilistic and therefore complicit with Fascism.17 As an intellectual move- ment, however, Realism really did mark the transition to moder- 14. Id. at 844. 15. See, e.g., Robert L. Hale, Bargaining, Duress, and Economic Liberty, 43 COLUM. L. REV 603 (1943); Robert L. Hale, Coercion and Distributioni n a Suppos- edly Non-Coercive State, 38 POL. Sci. Q. 470 (1923). 16. For an analysis of the relationship between American Legal Realism and Critical Legal Studies, see Note, 'Round and 'Round the Bramble Bush: From Legal Realism to Critical Legal Scholarship, 95 HARV. L. REV. 1669 (1982). 17. See, e.g., Francis E. Lucey, S.J., Natural Law and American Legal Realism: Their Respective Contributionst o a Theory of Law in a Democratic Society, 30 GEo. L.J. 493, 512 (1942) (suggesting that the consequence of Legal Realism is that "phys- ical force or might makes right," and that this is "causing a Second World War"). 244 CHICANA/O-LATINAIO LAW REVIEW [Vol. 26:237 nity within jurisprudence. As it has been said, "We are all Realists now." Critical Legal Studies By the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, a new consensus had formed on law faculties about the role of law and the relationship between law and politics. According to the "Legal Process School," the reason why the United States political and legal system was a beacon of freedom for the rest of the world was because of its procedural solution to the dilemmas of liberalism. Unlike Communism or fascism, liberalism assumes that there is no one path to the good life; individuals may disa- gree about their most deeply held values. What enables liberals to live together despite these substantive disagreements is a shared commitment to process values. If we can identify and agree on decision making procedures, and if we have a shared commitment to neutrality and objectivity in decision making, the democratic process can survive even the absence of consensus about the good life, and can foster each individual's pursuit of happiness.18 Process theory cashed out, among other ways, as a preoccu- pation with constitutional law and its relationship to a demo- cratic society. Alexander Bickel's much-repeated phrase "the counter-majoritarian difficulty" expressed the sense that the judi- cial branch, though contemplated by the Constitution, neverthe- less risked illegitimacy to the extent that it thwarted the will of the people.' 9 For Bickel, the solution was for courts to exercise the "passive virtues" of deciding cases on the narrowest grounds possible. Herbert Wechsler insisted that judicial review of majoritarian decisions was illegitimate unless based purely on ob- jectively derived "neutral principles. '20 More liberal process scholars, such as John Ely, argued that courts could use their counter-majoritarian power for good rather than evil; for Ely, judges interpreting the Constitution had a duty to keep the chan- nels of political decision making free of prejudice.21 For all the process scholars, recent Supreme Court decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education22 were deeply problematic, and high- 18. See generally EDWARD A. PURCELL, JR., THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRATIC THE- ORY: SCIENTIFIC NATURALISM AND THE PROBLEM OF VALUE (1973). 19. See ALEXANDER M. BICKEL, THE LEAST DANGEROUS BRANCH: THE SU- PREME COURT AT THE BAR OF POLITICS 16 (1962) ("The root difficulty is that judi- cial review is a counter-majoritarian force in our system."). 20. HERBERT WECHSLER, Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law, in PRINCIPLES, POLITICS, AND FUNDAMENTAL LAW 3 (1961). 21. JOHN HART ELY, DEMOCRACY AND DISTRUST: A THEORY OF JUDICIAL RE- VIEW (1980). 22. Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). 2006] LATCRIT X AFTERWORD lighted the need for courts to walk a fine line between aggression and deference in their dance with the other two branches of government. Just as American Legal Realism burst on the scene with a loud raspberry directed at Langdellian formalism, Critical Legal Studies (CLS) burst on the scene with a loud and rude critique of the Legal Process School.23 Sociologically, CLS was a product of the 1960s. Many of the main leaders of CLS were people who went to law school during that decade, and absorbed both skepti- cism about the Establishment and a belief in a better, more au- thentic way of relating to other human beings.24 Substantively, CLS was very much a product of American Legal Realism. Crits (as they called themselves) argued that legal doctrine is "indeter- minate"-although it looks as though legal principles decide cases, they really can be used to rationalize any outcome.25 Law is not distinct from politics, and that the two are separate is the big lie of legal reasoning.26 Like the Realists before them, the Crits ar- gued that legal doctrine was not only not helpful in figuring out why cases were decided they way they were; it was actually harm- ful. The Crits saw legal doctrine as a form of ideology, serving purposes of reification,m ystification, and legitimation. Legal con- cepts such as "crime" or "property" were reified to the extent that they were treated as things existing in the real, natural world instead of socio-legal artifacts. Legal concepts such as "crime" or "property" also served the purpose of mystification, insofar as these seemingly neat concepts obscured the messy social world of relations of power. Finally, legal doctrine as a whole served the legitimation process by making existing distributions of wealth and power seem natural, normal, and necessary. Mantras like "objectivity" and "neutrality" masked the fact that power rela- tions lay at the heart of law.27 23. For a comprehensive bibliography of CLS's works, see Duncan Kennedy & Karl E. Klare, A Bibliography of Critical Legal Studies, 94 YALE L.J. 461 (1984). 24. See generally Pierre Schlag, U.S. C.L.S., 10 L. & CRITIQUE 199 (1999). Schlag argues that for the Crits, critique was also psychologically and culturally mo- tivated: "remember, this is a time when you cannot trust anyone over thirty." Id. at 201. 25. See David M. Trubek, Where the Action Is: Critical Legal Studies and Empir- icism, 36 STAN. L. REV. 575, 578 (1984) ("doctrine neither provides a determinant answer to questions nor covers all conceivable situations."). For a more formal state- ment of this thesis, see MARK KELMAN, A GUIDE TO CRITICAL LEGAL STUDIES 15- 16 (1987). 26. See Peter Gabel, Founding Father Knows Best: A Response to Tushnet, 1 TIKKUN 41 ("The radical aim of this work [CLS] is not simply to show that all legal decisions are actually political decisions, but to undermine the legitimacy of 'legal reasoning' itself as a powerful symbol of cultural authority"). 27. See Robert W. Gordon, New Developments in Legal Theory, in THE POLIT- ICS OF LAW: A PROGRESSIVE CRITIQUE 413, 418-20 (David Kairys rev. ed., 1990) (explaining legal rights and legal reasoning in terms of Gramsci's concept of "he-