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Socio-Theoretically Based Legal Science and Critical Legal Studies: Points of Contract and Divergencies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2019

Christian Joerges

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Where do American and German critiques of their respective “mainstream” legal traditions converge, and where do they diverge? When can the convergences be interpreted as common learning experiences with modern law, as insights into the futility of critical efforts, as indications for their correction? Which divergences are due to differences between the legal cultures and philosophical traditions? Where are they reactions to more specific socio-political constellations and particular structurings of the respective academic systems? From which projects can the “other side” gain new insights, or perhaps entirely new perspectives? Such questions inevitably arise from a volume devoted to German and American critical and socio-theoretical contributions to the discussion of legal theoretical fundamentals. Yet they demand too much from an individual author (at least this one), and their enumeration is intended to make clear the sort of difficulties they occasion and suggest how they might be fruitfully dealt with.

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Articles
Information
German Law Journal , Volume 12 , Issue 1: Critical Legal Thought: An American-German Debate—Republication [with a new Introduction] Twenty-Five Years Later — , 01 January 2011 , pp. 554 - 598
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Copyright © 2011 by German Law Journal GbR 

References

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37 Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication, id., 1687-1690.Google Scholar

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48 One frequently encounters this reproach: Peter Goodrich, Law and Modernity, 49 The Modern Law Review (The Modern L. Rev.) 545, 548 (1986) (“superficial ecclecticism”); Hunt, supra, note 42, 3 (“jumbled, incoherent eclecticism”); Koen Raes, Van juridisch relisme tot kritische rechtstheorie. The Critical Legal Studies Movement in de verenigde staten, 777, 780 (1987) (“ongestoord ecclecticisme”). Nevertheless: the censure of Kennedy is really directed at theoretical traditions, which no analysis of modern law could simply “transpose”, and the confession that the confrontation with those traditions has left its traces behind says little about the qualities of the product that emerges from that confrontation.Google Scholar

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93 This is the leitmotif of the critique on the “ordoliberal” theory of the interdependence of (competitive) “economic constitution” and (democratic) “state constitution”; (see Rudolph Wiethölter, Privatrecht als Gesellschaftstheorie?, Festschrift für Ludwig Raiser, 645 (1974); Hart, Dieter, Zur Instrumentierung des Wirtschaftsrechts am Beispiel der Wirtschaftsverfassung, 140 Zeitschrift für das gesamte Handelsrecht und Wirtschaftsrecht (ZHR) 31 (1976); Gotthold, Jürgen, Neuere Entwicklungen der Wettbewerbsrechtstheorie, 145 ZHR 286 (1981). - The term “ordoliberal” is untranslatable, but for its legal conception there are several American equivalents: The ordoliberal theory can be characterized as an attempt to lay claim to the Basic Law for a legal defense of the liberal model against social state transformations, as a “freezing into the legal system (of) the whole structure of laissez-faire” as Kennedy ascertained for the US in the late classical period (Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication, supra, note 36, 1733-1756). - In Friedrich August von Hayek, Der Weg zur Knechtschaft (The Road to Serfdom, 1944), Erlenbach-Zürich 1952; Die Verfassung der Freiheit (The Constitution of Liberty, 1960), (1971), American neoliberals and German ordoliberals of the “second generation” have a common theoretical legacy.Google Scholar

94 Wiethölter, Rudolph, Wirtschaftsrecht, in: Görlitz, supra, note 16, 531, 532.Google Scholar

95 Hart, Dieter, Vom bürgerlichen Recht zur politischen Verwaltung, 274 (1974).Google Scholar

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97 See already Jürgen Habermas, Legitimationsprobleme im Spätkapitalismus, supra, note 81, 9, and then in Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, supra, note 18 (Vol. 1 Handlungsrationalität und gesellschaftliche Rationalisierung), 332, Vol. 2, 229 and above all 487.Google Scholar

98 Habermas, Jürgen, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, supra, note 18, Vol. 2, 536.Google Scholar

99 Habermas, Jürgen, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, supra, note 18, 571, 510.Google Scholar

100 Habermas, Jürgen, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, supra, note 18, 514 (emphasis in original).Google Scholar

101 Habermas, Jürgen, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, supra, note 18, 539 (emphasis in original).Google Scholar

102 See Wiethölter, supra, note 13, 30.Google Scholar

103 See, supra, 2 at note 93.Google Scholar

104 See, infra, C I 1.Google Scholar

105 See, supra, A II 1; Unger's liberalism critique belongs to the repertoire of the CLS-movement, but not, characteristically, his later examinations, such as the one drawn on here.Google Scholar

106 Unger, supra, note 33.Google Scholar

107 Unger, supra, note 33, 193.Google Scholar

108 Unger, supra, note 33, 193–200.Google Scholar

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112 Gesellschaft, Wirtschaft und, supra, note 15, 502; see Unger, Roberto M., The Critical Legal Studies Movement, 96 Harv. L. Rev. 561, 571 (1983).Google Scholar

113 Unger, supra, note 33, 246 (a “program of institutional reconstruction”, Unger, supra, note 112, 601).Google Scholar

114 Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication, supra, note 36, 1733–1737.Google Scholar

115 Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication, supra, note 36, 1738.Google Scholar

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118 “The opposed rhetorical modes lawyers use, reflect a deeper level of contradiction. At this deeper level, we are divided, among ourselves and also within ourselves, between irreconcilable visions of humanity and society …” (Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication, supra, note 36, 1685). Even after his retraction of the “fundamental contradiction” (note 46), Kennedy repeated this thesis. Freedom and Constraint in Adjudication: A Critical Phenomenology (note 46), describes a judge who wants to bring his “progressive” attitudes into effect, and in so doing immerses himself in the messages of the legal texts, contemplates his entanglements in role constraints and networks of expectation and ultimately, no longer secure in his original intuitions, helplessly falls by the wayside.Google Scholar

119 See, e.g., Charles M. Yablon, The Indeterminacy of the Law: Critical Legal Studies and the Problem of Legal Explanation, 6 Cardozo Law Review 917 (1985); but see Singer, Joseph W., The Player and the Cards: Nihilism and Legal Theory, 94 Yale L. J. 1, 20 (1984).Google Scholar

120 See Solum, Lawrence B., On the Indeterminacy Crisis: Critiquing Critical Dogma, 54 University of Chicago Law Review 462 (1987); Hegland, Kennedy, Goodbye to Deconstruction, 58 So. CAL. L. REV. 1203 (1985).Google Scholar

121 Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication, supra, note 36, 1745.Google Scholar

122 Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication, supra, note 36, 1776.Google Scholar

123 Kennedy, Duncan, Distributive and Paternalistic Motives in Contract and Tort Law, with Special Reference to Compulsory Terms and Unequal Bargaining Power, 41 Maryland Law Review 563, 638-649 (1982).Google Scholar

124 See the analyses of the “constructive” elements of Legal Realism in Peller, supra, note 62, 2019-2064, as well as Balkin, supra, note 62, 770–772.Google Scholar

125 Frug, supra, note 62, 1276. - Frug's classificaltion of group law doctrines to particular “bureaucracy models” corresponds exactly to the type of German analyses discussed supra in I 2.Google Scholar

126 Even here there are agreements: the affinities between the formalist model of bureaucracy and the market mechanisms for the control of managers discovered by representatives of economic analysis would be expressed by German authors through the qualification of the Chicago School as a specific variant of the “materialization” of formal law.Google Scholar

127 Frug, supra, note 125, 1296, 1386.Google Scholar

128 Frug, supra, note 62, 1382.Google Scholar

129 Frug, supra, note 62, 1360.Google Scholar

130 Dalton, supra, note 62.Google Scholar

131 Brüggemeier, supra, note 12, 1006, 1007.Google Scholar

132 See, supra, I 2.Google Scholar

133 Dalton, supra, note 62, 1012.Google Scholar

134 Dalton, supra, note 62, 1029.Google Scholar

135 See, supra, I 2 and 3.Google Scholar

136 Dalton, supra, note 62, 1014.Google Scholar

137 Dalton, supra, note 62, 1000; on the perspectives of this argumentation see, infra, C II 3.Google Scholar

138 See Heller, Thomas C., A Brief Rejoinder to the Discussion of the CCLS, 1 Zeitschrift für Rechtssoziologie (ZfRSoz) 126 (1980); Schlegel, John H., Notes Toward an Intimate, Optionated, and Affectionate History of the Conference on Critical Legal Studies, 36 Stan. L. Rev. 391 (1984); Mark Kelman, A Guide to Critical Legal Studies, 1-14 (1987).Google Scholar

139 Windscheid, Bernhard, Die Aufgaben der Rechtswissenschaft (Leipziger Rektoratsrede of 31. October 1884), in Bernhard Windscheid, Gesammelte Reden und Abhandlungen, 100, 112 (Oertmann, Paul ed., 1904).Google Scholar

140 I.e.: the approaches which are discussed in this volume but which in their overall importance remain most likely marginal.Google Scholar

141 GÜNTHER, KLAUS, DER SINN FÜR ANGEMESSENHEIT. ANWENDUNGSDISKURSE IN RECHT UND MORAL (1988).Google Scholar

142 See particularly Habermas, Jürgen, Diskursethik - Notizen zu einem Begründungsprogramm, in JÜRGEN HABERMAS, MORALBEWUßTSEIN UND KOMMUNIKATIVES HANDELN, 53, 127 (1983).Google Scholar

143 HABERMAS, id., 75.Google Scholar

144 Günther, supra, note 141, 117; see on the following already Klaus Günther, Materialisierung als Rekontextualisierung des Formalrechts, Typescript (1984); Preliminary Considerations to a Theory of Procedural Application, in Workshop zu Konzepten des postinterventionistischen Rechts, 74 (Brüggemeier, Gert & Joerges, Christian eds., 1984); Günther, Klaus, The Core of Moral Universalism in Modern Law, Typescript (1984).Google Scholar

145 See on this Kennedy, supra, note 35, whose critique of liberal law application doctrines concentrates on the idea that the substantive content of rules could be brought to effect through their “application” in concrete conflicts.Google Scholar

146 See, supra, B I 3.Google Scholar

147 Günther, supra, note 144, 21.Google Scholar

148 Günther, supra, note 141, 473.Google Scholar

149 See Wiethölter, supra, note 13, 45 (German version), 235 (English version).Google Scholar

150 See Joerges, Christian, Quality Regulation in Consumer Goods Markets: Theoretical Concepts and Practical Examples, in Contract and Organisation. Legal Analysis in the Light of Economic and Social Theory, 142 (Daintith, Terence & Gunther. Teubner eds., 1986) - Anyone who considers such examples will probably estimate the chances of Dworkin's Hercules to bring the principles of relevant law into a coherent connection (Ronald Dworkin, Law's Empire, 165, 176, 313 (1986)) more skeptically than Günther does (Günther, supra, note 141, 483). -Dworkin reacts to the radical skepticism of the CLS-movement's indeterminacy thesis (supra B II 2 and 3 as well as C II 2 and 3) with a sort of burden of proof rule: “The internal skeptic must show that the flawed and contradictory account is the only one available” (Dworkin, id., 274). This answer meets the assertion that there are absolutely no successful examples for the legal treatment of colliding interests and principles. On the other hand, recalling that Hercules failed on Earth, one may demand that legal theory must systematically consider the practical-political limits of its normative ideas.Google Scholar

151 See Habermas, Jürgen & Luhmann, Niklas, Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie - Was leistet die Systemforschung? (1971).Google Scholar

152 Just compare the programmatic Mitteilung der Herausgeber: Zum ersten Heft der Zeitschrift für Rechtssoziologie, ZfRSoz 1 (1980), with issues from the last few years of that journal.Google Scholar

153 See Klaus F. Röhl, Rechtssoziologie, 61, 62 (1987); Lautmann, Rüdiger & Meuser, Michael, Verwendungen der Soziologie in Handlungswissenschaften am Beispiel von Pädagogik und Jurisprudenz, ZfSS 685, 697 (1986).Google Scholar

154 This critique too has an almost twenty year tradition: see Jörg Münstermann, Zur Rechtstheorie Niklas Luhmanns, Kritische Justiz (KJ) 325 (1969), and for a recent example Niklaus Dimmel & Alfred J. Noll, Autopoiesis und Selbstreferentialität als “postmoderne Rechtstheorie” - Die neue reine Rechtsleere, Demokratie und Recht (DuR) 379 (1988).Google Scholar

155 Gunther Teubner protested against taking over this function and at the same time refused to give off the relevant signals; see Gunther Teubner, Social Order from Legislative Noise? Autopoietic Closure as a Problem for Legal Regulation, 5-6 (1985).Google Scholar

156 See Teubner, Gunther, And God Laughed… . Indeterminacy, Self-Reference and Paradox in Law, supra in this volume. From the writings of Niklas Luhmann, see above all: Die Rückgabe des zwölften Kamels. Zum Sinn einer soziologischen Analyse des Rechts, 22, Typescript (1984).Google Scholar

157 Teubner, supra, note 96; Wiethölter, supra, note 13, 91.Google Scholar

158 Episodenverknüpfung: Zur Steigerung von Selbstreferenz im Recht, in Theorie als Passion. Niklas Luhmann zum 60. Geburtstag, 423, 437 (Dirk Baecker et al. eds., 1987).Google Scholar

159 Episodenverknüpfung: Zur Steigerung von Selbstreferenz im Recht, id., 442.Google Scholar

160 See Luhmann, Niklas, Closure and Openness: On Reality in the World of Law, in Autopoietic Law: A New Approach to Law and Society, 335, 337 (Teubner, Gunter ed., 1988).Google Scholar

161 Teubner, Gunther, Introduction to Autopoietic Law, in Autopoietic Law: A New Approach to Law and Society, 1, 2 (Teubner, Gunter ed., 1988); Luhmann would say: the assumptions which go into the reality constructions of the theory of autopoietic systems (id., 343).Google Scholar

162 See Teubner, supra, note 156, 32.Google Scholar

163 Klaus Günther sees corresponding difficulties as they here are asserted for the relation of legal theory and legal doctrine in the relationship between the “code” of the legal system and the environmental adaptations mediated via its “programmings” (Der Sinn für Angemessenheit, supra, note 141, 327).Google Scholar

164 Ladeur, Karl-Heinz, Abwägung - Ein neues Paradigma des Verwaltungsrechts. Von der Einheit der Rechtsordnung zum Rechtspluralismus, 121-184 (1984); see Ladeur, Karl-Heinz, Von der Gesetzesvollziehung zur strategischen Rechtsfortbildung, in Leviathan 332 (1979).Google Scholar

165 Abwägung - Ein neues Paradigma des Verwaltungsrechts. Von der Einheit der Rechtsordnung zum Rechtspluralismus, supra, note 164, 135, 149, 208.Google Scholar

166 Abwägung - Ein neues Paradigma des Verwaltungsrechts. Von der Einheit der Rechtsordnung zum Rechtspluralismus, supra, note 164, 153; on the situation in Germany in the Twenties and the National Socialist reaction see Karl-Heinz Ladeur, Sprachformationen und Rechtsparadigma. Eine modelltheoretische Skizze des deutschen Verwaltungsrechts im 20. Jahrhundert, in Wissenschaft und Recht der Verwaltung seit dem Ancien Regime. Europäische Ansichten (Ius Commune. Sonderheft 21), 189, 200 (Heyen, Erk Volkmar ed., 1984).Google Scholar

167 Ladeur, supra, note 164, 172, 214; see already Ladeur, Karl-Heinz, in Friedhelm Hase & Karl-Heinz Ladeur, Verfassungsgerichtsbarkeit und politisches System. Studien zum Rechtsstaatsproblem in Deutschland, 224 (1980).Google Scholar

168 E.g.: Jenseits von Regulierung und Ökonomisierung der Umwelt: Bearbeitung von Ungewissheit durch (selbst-)organisierte Lernfähigkeit - Eine Skizze, Zeitschrift für Umweltpolitik (ZfU) 1 (1987); Rundfunkverfassung für die “Informationsgesellschaft”? Selbstorganisation von “taste communities” als Alternative zum Markt und zur öffentlichrechtlichen Integration, in 31 Publizistik 147 (1986).Google Scholar

169 Ladeur, supra, note 164, 200, 221; see Ladeur, Karl-Heinz, Perspektiven einer post-modernen Rechtstheorie. Zur Auseinandersetzung mit Niklas Luhmanns Konzept der “Einheit des Rechtssystems”, in 16 Rechtstheorie 383, 422 (1985) (English version: Perspectives on a Post-Modern Theory of Law: A Critique of Niklas Luhmann, “The Unity of the Legal System”, in Autopoietic Law: A New Approach to Law and Society, 242, 272 (Teubner, Gunter ed., 1988)). Translated into more concrete contexts: Environmental law must orient itself towards the process-like transformations of its area of applicability (the environment subject to various burdens) and to take care of the coordination, subordination, and compatibilization of various actors and interests. Therefore environmental regulations (threshold values) should be determined in open commission procedures, in which all relevant disciplines and also the respective “founded” counter-positions can be articulated. The legal examination should then limit itself to the weighting of the factors, the establishment of a threshold value and the individual procedural steps, while the administration should be conceded a planning discretion (Karl-Heinz Ladeur, Zum planerischen Charakter der technischen Normen im Umweltrecht - Zugleich ein Beitrag zum Wyhl-Urteil des Bundesverwaltungsgerichts - Umwelt- und Planungsrecht (UPR) 253, 258 (1987)).Google Scholar

170 See the argumentation of Albrecht Wellmer, Zur Dialektik von Moderne und Postmoderne. Vernunftkritik nach Adorno, 106-107 (1985).Google Scholar

171 Gunther Teubner reacted to Ladeur's critique of reflexive law with “hearty greetings from chaos” (Anmerkungen zu Ladeurs Konzept des “strategischen Rechts”, in Workshop zu Konzepten des postinterventionistischen Rechts, 340, 346 (Brüggemeier, Gert & Joerges, Christian eds., 1984)).Google Scholar

A more friendly interpretation of the concrete regulation proposals offered by Ladeur can point out that implicitly the flexibilization of law is constantly limited by considerations in which Klaus Günther would recognize suitability argumentations and the attractiveness of the universalibility principle.Google Scholar

172 See, supra, A III and B III.Google Scholar

173 See, on the liberalism critique: supra A II; and his analysis of post-classical legal developments, supra B II 1.Google Scholar

174 See Unger, supra, note 41; Law in Modern Society, supra, note 33; Roberto M. Unger, Passion. An Essay on Personality (1984); the three-volume opus Roberto M. Unger, Politics. a Work in Constructive Social Theory (1987) is still unavailable to me (April 1988). - From the still sparse secondary literature see Drucilla Cornell, Toward a Modern/Postmodern Reconstruction of Ethics, 133 U. Pa. L. Rev. 291, 327-358 (1985); Goodrich, Peter, Law and Modernity, 49 Modern Law Review 545 (1986); Duxbury, Neil T., Look Back in Unger: A Retrospective Appraisal of Law in Modern Society, 49 Modern Law Review 658 (1986); Collins, Hugh, Roberto Unger and the Critical Legal Studies Movement, 14 Journal of Law and Society 387 (1987).Google Scholar

175 Unger, supra, note 112.Google Scholar

176 Unger, supra, note 112, 582.Google Scholar

177 Unger, supra, note 112, 583–586.Google Scholar

178 Unger, supra, note 112, 586–602.Google Scholar

179 Unger, supra, note 112, 616–644. - Unger has picked up the habit of dispensing with footnotes. In light of the hypertrophy and the authoritarian gesture of this technique this may be a useful object lesson. But the consequence is that above all the argumentation with judicial developments (which for Unger have a particular significance) remain largely impenetrable even for interested foreign readers.Google Scholar

180 See, supra, A I 2 at note 91, and note 125.Google Scholar

181 See, supra, A I 1 at note 85.Google Scholar

182 See, supra, A II 2 at note 93 and A II 3.Google Scholar

183 See, supra, B II 1 at note 110.Google Scholar

184 Peteghem, Jan van, Critical legal studies: Deconstructie of romantisch kartesianisme?, 16 Rechtsfilosofie en Rechtstheorie 187, 189 (1987).Google Scholar

185 Kelman, Mark G., Trashing, 36 Stan. L. Rev. 293 (1984).Google Scholar

186 Kelman, id., 344.Google Scholar

187 Kelman, supra, note 185, 337.Google Scholar

188 Kelman, supra, note 185, 338-340; Here I can only make reference to the debate concerning empirical legal research connected with these reservations: see Munger, Frank & Seron, Carroll, Critical Legal Studies versus Critical Legal Theory: A Comment on Method, 6 Law & Policy 257 (1984); Whitford, William C., Lowered Horizons: Implementation Research in a Post-CLS World, Wisconsin Law Review (Wisc. L. Rev.) 755 (1986).Google Scholar

189 Kelman, supra, note 185, 323.Google Scholar

190 Kelman, supra, note 185, 321, 345.Google Scholar

191 Kelman, supra, note 185, 326.Google Scholar

192 Kelman, supra, note 185, 299; Kelman, supra, note 138, 5.Google Scholar

193 Kelman, supra, note 185, 321, note 68 refers above all to Alan D. Freeman, Truth and Mystification in Legal Scholarship, 90 Yale L. J. 1029, 1030 (1981): “The point of delegitimation is to expose possibilities more truly expressing reality, possibilities of fashioning a future that might at least partially realize a substantive notion of justice …”.Google Scholar

194 See, supra, A II 3 at note 58 and B II 3 at note 123; After the retraction of the “basic contradiction” (supra note 46) of course there still remain of these utopias only the authentic moments of spontaneous expressions of freedom (Gabel/Kennedy, supra, note 46, 43).Google Scholar

195 The Player and the Cards: Nihilism and Legal Theory, 94 Yale L. J. 1 (1984); see the critique of Stick, John, Can Nihilism be Pragmatic?, 100 Harv. L. Rev. 332 (1986).Google Scholar

196 See, supra, C II 3 at note 130.Google Scholar

197 Dalton, supra, note 62, 1010.Google Scholar

198 See, supra, B II 3 at note 135.Google Scholar

199 Dalton, supra, note 62, 1095.Google Scholar

200 See Klausa, Ekkehard & Klaus F. Röhl & Ralf Rogowski & Hubert Rottleuthner, Rezensionen eines Denkansatzes: Die Conference on Critical Legal Studies, 1 ZfRSoz 85 (1980), and the reply from Thomas C. Heller (Heller, supra, note 138).Google Scholar