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63 U. Colo. L. Rev. 521 (1992)
Criminal Law, Crimonology, and the Small World of Legal Scholars

handle is hein.journals/ucollr63 and id is 537 raw text is: UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO LAW REVIEW Volume 63, Number 3 1992 A SYMPOSIUM ON LEGAL SCHOLARSHIP CRIMINAL LAW, CRIMINOLOGY, AND THE SMALL WORLD OF LEGAL SCHOLARS ROBERT WEISBERG* I. INTRODUCTION AND APOLOGY A. A Note on Postmodernism As several of the papers in this symposium suggest, legal scholar- ship is now being tested by the exacting and confusing demand of postmodernist thought. Many legal scholars note the demise of the modem notions of an identifiable human subject,' and doubt the power of social science to offer systematic or totalizing explanations of social phenomena, or the power of history to trace a truthful narra- tive, or the power of interpretation to objectively evaluate competing interpretations of texts.2 These scholars call for a legal scholarship that exhibits the dialectical, self-critical irony, respect for difference, and subversion of intra- or even inter-disciplinary explanation that we associate with postmodernism, or post-structuralism, or cultural stud- ies, or new historicism.3 In this regard, my remarks about criminal * Professor of Law, Stanford University. My thanks to Robert Gordon and Mark Kelman for comments on earlier drafts. Research for this paper was supported by the Stanford Legal Research Fund, made possible by a bequest from Ira S. Lillick and gifts from other friends of the Stanford Law School. 1. Pierre Schlag, The Problem of the Subject, 69 TEx. L. REV. 1627 (1991). 2. See generally Postmodernism and Law: A Symposium, 62 U. COLO. L. REV. 439 (1991). 3. For current purposes, these related and overlapping movements can be grouped. It would take a long (but finite) time to review and refute the argument that the grouping is simplistic. Some relevant

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