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58 UC Davis L. Rev. Online 1 (2024-2025)

handle is hein.journals/usdlro58 and id is 1 raw text is: UC DAVIs LAW REVIEW ONLINE Confronting Vokes: One Possible Guide for Progressive Law Students Mark Kelman* More than three decades ago, Robert Gordon used the Vokes v. Arthur Murray case - a case in which the plaintiff; who had been subject to a range of manipulative and arguably dishonest sales tactics, sought to rescind a series of contracts that bound her to purchase a preposterous amount of dance lessons - to explain the pedagogical practices associated with one of the dominant progressive movements in legal academia at the time, the Critical Legal Studies (CLS) movement. In this Article, I revisit Vokes, exploring how a 21st century progressive student might profitably approach the case. I discuss some of the straightforward doctrinal puzzles the case raises and offer some observations on why a progressive student should care about analyzing these doctrinal issues. I revisit the CLS approach, highlighting its virtues while expressing skepticism about Gordon's claim that the CLS analysis would unfreeze legal reality - countering the tendency of both judicial discourse and law school Copyright © 2024 Mark Kelman. James C. Gaither Professor of Law and Vice Dean Stanford Law School. Thanks above all to Bob Gordon and to Anna Bostwick and others in the American Constitution Society at Stanford who urged me to give the talk on which this essay is based, a talk designed to help progressive students reflect on how they might want to approach their first year doctrinal courses. 1

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