The Empire Strikes Back: Outsiders and the Struggle over Legal Education
Once dismissed as plodding and superfluous, legal scholarship is increasingly challenging the liberal white male establishment that currently dominates legal education and practice. The most significant development since the emergence of the casebook, at the turn of the century, this trend has unleashed a fierce political struggle. At stake is nothing less than the entire enterprise of law and education, and thus a powerful platform from which to shape society.\ The result, here vividly...
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Once dismissed as plodding and superfluous, legal scholarship is increasingly challenging the liberal white male establishment that currently dominates legal education and practice. The most significant development since the emergence of the casebook, at the turn of the century, this trend has unleashed a fierce political struggle. At stake is nothing less than the entire enterprise of law and education, and thus a powerful platform from which to shape society. The result, here vividly recounted by Arthur Austin, has been an uncompromising, take-no-prisoners fight for dominance. The challenge comes from Outsiders, a collection of feminists, critical race theorists, and critical legal studies scholars who rely on unconventional methods such as storytelling to give voice to the underrepresented. In the other, demographically larger camp resides the monolithic Empire, consisting of traditionalists who, having developed an effective form of scholarship, now circle the wagons against the outsider heathens. Neither partisan nor objective, Austin is both respectful and critical of each faction. The Empire, he believes, is imperious, closed-minded, and self-perpetuating; the Outsiders are too often paranoid, anti-pragmatic, and overly tolerant of fringe work. Is the new scholarship a vacuous, overpoliticized, soon-to-be-vanquished trend or the harbinger of an important new paradigm? Is reconciliation possible? Anyone with a vested interest in the answer to these questions, and in the future of law, cannot afford to miss Arthur Austin's invaluable volume.Arthur Austin is the Edgar A. Hahn Professor of Jurisprudence at Case Western Reserve University. Booknews Austin (jurisprudence, Case Western Reserve University) addresses the fight for dominance between legal scholarship and the liberal white male establishment that currently dominates legal education and practice. He describes the struggle between the sometimes paranoid and antipragmatic "outsiders" (feminists, critical race theorists, and critical legal studies scholars) and the demographically larger camp of traditionalists which he believes to be imperious, closed-minded, and self-perpetuating. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
AcknowledgmentsNote to the Reader1The Outsiders vs. the Empire12The Empire143Empire Scholarship: What Are They Protecting?334The Greening of Faculty, Students, and Law Review635"CLS Is Dead As a Doornail"836Critical Race Scholarship1127Can Voice and Truth Coexist?1348The Abyss of Legal Scholarship1569Comments and Conclusions179Bibliography201Index209About the Author215
\ BooknewsAustin (jurisprudence, Case Western Reserve University) addresses the fight for dominance between legal scholarship and the liberal white male establishment that currently dominates legal education and practice. He describes the struggle between the sometimes paranoid and antipragmatic "outsiders" (feminists, critical race theorists, and critical legal studies scholars) and the demographically larger camp of traditionalists which he believes to be imperious, closed-minded, and self-perpetuating. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.\ \
