Mediocre intellects trying to make up for intellectual deficiencies

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20729

 

Fume. Fuss.

I have elsewhere fulminated over "Critical Legal Studies", a Marxist fantasy approach to jurisprudence that has unfortunately taken root in some of our "best" law schools. It's the same basic, doctrinaire view.

It is much easier for me to accept even so right wing and religious an approach to legal education as Oak Brook's than to buy into this horseshit. At least the Religious Right in legal education evidences a certain amount of intellectual honesty and discipline not to mention representing a genuine historical school of thought.

 

Re: Fume. Fuss.

Is Marxism NOT:
A: genuinely historical?
B: a genuine school?
C: genuine thought?

 

This freedom of speech thing hasn't really caught on.

 

I know what you mean

Linked from the article above:

http://www.thefire.org/index.php/article/6627.html

 

Marx had little to say about law per se. Lenin (who actually KNEW quite a bit about law) established the system of socialist jurisprudence as a temporary (hah!) measure to meet the legal needs of soviet citizenry. The need, of course, never disappeared.

My objection to critical legal studies is not that there is no place in jurisprudence for studying Marxism. My objection is that these "scholars" BEGIN with the lie that the law serves ONLY as a vehicle for oppression and make their kneejerk condemnations from there.

Not only is there NO evidence to show that law, as a Marxist construct, is ALWAYS an instrument of oppression, there is ample evidence in history to demonstrate the precise opposite. LAWLESS societies are oppressive societies not law observing ones.

This is all tied up with the Marxist rejection of (small "L") liberalism. These "scholars, however, not only reject any argument or evidence that tends to show that law is a social leveler and a guardian of the poor against the powerful, they offer precisely NOTHING to replace it. It is VERY sloppy thinking, IMHO. Besides, it is...shall we say, "unseemly"? for these most privileged of hothouse professors to, one the ONE hand accept their large salaries and virtual unaccountability from the hands of the wealthy and powerful, and on the OTHER hand work to undercut the very legal and social order that buys them their perfume.

Even LENIN knew that he had to have law! At its height, the University of Moscow was said to contain one of the ten best law schools in the WORLD.

It is true that a law based society is far less likely to undergo violent revolution than a pure totalitarian one, whether extreme Left or extreme Right. That is the CLS' REAL objection of liberal democracy and the rule of law...these things render the revolution and dictatorship of the proletariate a practical impossibility.

Another serious reason these "scholars" hate liberal democracy is that we deal in individual, but not collective rights. Think about that; an individual worker has a right to a safe workplace and to engage in political activities but "workers" as a WHOLE do not have collective rights. Literally, in our system, there ARE NO classes in the Marxist sense.

As an aside, this is one of Chief Justice Robert's doubts about affirmative action...affirmative action created collective political rights in a class of Americans not enjoyed by individuals that are not members of that particular racial class. I agree with him.