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15 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 195 (1987)
Unfreezing Legal Reality: Critical Approaches to Law

handle is hein.journals/flsulr15 and id is 209 raw text is: FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW .VOLUME 15 SUMMER 1987 NUMBER 2 UNFREEZING LEGAL REALITY: CRITICAL APPROACHES TO LAW ROBERT W. GORDON* Critical Legal Studies continues to flourish despite persistent criticism concerning its goals and aims. In the lecture repro- duced below, Professor Gordon demonstrates why such global criticism is not only harmless but irrevelant to the central mes- sage of the movement. Borrowing from the growing body of CLS scholarship, he illustrates, through example, that the most valu- able contributions of CLS are essentially local in nature. But these predominantly local critiques, he explains, can be readily extended to new areas in order to destory the seemingly neces- sary connection between the way our law is and the way it must be. A NEW way of talking about and practicing law has come on the scene in the last ten years: Critical Legal Studies, or CLS for short. I am particularly pleased by your invitation to speak on the subject because it demonstrates an intellectual curi- osity and generosity of spirit that have lately been in short supply in legal academia. A few people associated with CLS are, like my- self, comfortably tenured at good law schools, and are invited to give prestigious lectures on our modish heresies. But most of the people affiliated with CLS, or influenced by CLS ideas, or willing to take and discuss CLS seriously, are younger lawyers who have suddenly found themselves in desperately precarious situations. * Professor of Law, Stanford University. A.B., 1967, Harvard College; J.D., 1971, Harvard Law School. The first version of this essay was given as the Mason Ladd Memorial Lecture at the Florida State University College of Law in April 1985. I am very grateful to the Dean, faculty, and students of the College of Law and especially to Janet Bowman, Larry George, Lynne Henderson, Adam Hirsch, John Larson, Jack Van Doren, and Don Weidner for their hospitality and helpful comments. I tried out later versions of this essay on student audiences at the University of California at Berkeley (Boalt Hall) School of Law, Duke University Law School, and Wayne State University Law School. The comments and questions at those sessions helped me figure out how to revise this piece. Mark Kelman and Robert Weisberg made valuable comments on this draft.

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