Life Beyond Law: Rethinking the Return to Origins

Critical legal theorists typically have a complicated relationship with the law. Often dysfunctional, sometimes painful, it can be a difficult marriage. Whilst such theorists show a persistent and unconditional scepticism and cynicism over the pretensions of law, nevertheless it is the lens through which we think, and usually what we also spend copious time teaching. It is therefore worthy to question whether this relation is one born out of pragmatic necessity, or out of a desire of law: a law free of failure, miscarriage and exploitation. Are we critics because we hate law, or because we love it? This is not something I will attempt to answer, but it points us towards an important issue for critical legal theory, especially in the present context in which the methods and subjects of legal critique have greatly furcated and multiplied since the CLS of thirty years ago. It is a matter that addresses the questions we ask, and the answers we seek. What, if anything, do we want from law?