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Resistance, Reconstruction, and Romance in Legal Scholarship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Michael W. McCann
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Extract

It has become obligatory for leaders of professional associations to exhort colleagues to practice their craft in a socially responsible manner. But Joel Handler has issued a more controversial challenge in his 1992 presidential address to the Law and Society Association. He marries the idea of responsible legal scholarship to a recovery of faith in structuralist political analysis and transformative political vision.

Many in the association no doubt will find this proposed marriage undesirable for a variety of intellectual and political reasons" By contrast, I join those many who have found Handler's bold jeremiad provocative and important. Moreover, I share some of his particular concerns about the limitations of much contemporary legal study and political movement activity. At the same time, however, my research on legal mobilization by social movements has led me to draw differently the conceptual lines of both connection and division among the various trends that he identifies. The following comments aim to outline briefly some alternative, although often complementary, readings of these trends and their implications for scholarship. The discussion evolves from my most critical to my most supportive points.

Type
Comments on Presidential Address
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , 1992 , pp. 733 - 749
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by The Law and Society Association

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Footnotes

I am very grateful for comments on earlier drafts of this essay by Stuart Scheingold, Helena Silverstein, and Christine Di Stefano. Conversations with Nancy Hartsock and others in the political culture group at the University of Washington during the past several years have greatly influenced the development of many ideas advanced in this essay.

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