Legal Form, COVID and the Political: Notes Towards a Critique of the Corpus Iuris Pandemici

The scholarly analysis and critique of law always take place under circumstances of scarcity of academic resources. At any given moment, the number of academic jurists mastering a given legal system and being capable of analysing and critiquing it at a professional scientific level is limited. The pandemic of COVID-19 only exacerbated this phenomenon, exposing the importance of making methodological and paradigmatic choices. What critical legal theory teaches us is that the choice of method and approach to the analysis and critique of legal materials is not politically neutral. Asking about the political goals and choices behind solutions adopted by legislators, ministers, civil servants, law enforcement officers, and judges, and about the actual interests impacted by their decisions is much more important and topical in these difficult times. A sociologically oriented critical legal theory can provide the necessary tools for such an analysis of the corpus iuris pandemici.

Intellectual Property and Critical Theories

This chapter briefly summarizes the impact of critical theoretical methods on intellectual property (IP) scholarship. It speculates that the influence of critical legal theory on IP is greater than typically acknowledged or understood, and draws on scholarly examples at the juncture of critical and liberal theories to make this point.

Latina and Latino Critical Legal Theory: LatCrit Theory, Praxis and Community.

LatCrit theory is a relatively recent genre of critical “outsider jurisprudence” – a category of contemporary scholarship including critical legal studies, feminist legal theory, critical race theory, critical race feminism, Asian American legal scholarship and queer theory. This paper overviews LatCrit’s foundational propositions, key contributions, and ongoing efforts to cultivate new generations of ethical advocates who can systemically analyze the sociolegal conditions that engender injustice and intervene strategically to help create enduring sociolegal, and cultural, change. The paper organizes this conversation highlighting Latcrit’s theory, community and praxis.

1. What’s it all about?

This introductory chapter sets out the book’s scope and primary goals, and outlines some useful works on jurisprudence recommended by instructors in American law schools. It explains the central concerns of the subjects, distinguishing between descriptive legal theory, normative legal theory, and critical legal theory, and describes Lon Fuller’s entertaining hypothetical ‘Case of the Speluncean Explorers’, a popular launching pad for the comprehension of legal ideas. The important concept of the rule of law is discussed and analysed. There is an extended account of the controversial question of whether judicial review is undemocratic. The chapter concludes with an explanation of the point of legal theory.

13. Critical legal theory

Critical legal theory rejects what is generally regarded as the natural order of things, be it the free market (in the case of Critical Legal Studies), ‘meta-narratives’ (postmodernism), the conception of ‘race’ (Critical Race Theory), and patriarchy (in the case of feminist jurisprudence). Critical legal theorists share a profound scepticism about many of the questions that have long been regarded as at the core of legal theory. This chapter touches on the first three of these movements. It first discusses the development of critical legal studies and then turns to postmodern legal theory, considering the views of Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas. It then outlines the principal claims of Critical Race Theory (CRT), and considers the relationships between CRT and feminist theory and CRT and postmodernism.

Manifestations and Arguments

While the term “legal pluralism’ literally denotes a plurality of legal orders, it is their plurality of and the distinguishing features between them, which continues to make the subject matter a very charged and hotly debated one. Seen through the lens of legal sociology and anthropology, the plurality of coexisting, normative orders appears, above all, as a matter of description, as a fact of social ordering. Meanwhile, as some of these normative systems are being claimed as being “law,” while others are associated with nonlegal forms of social order, such as customary, traditional, or indigenous norms as well as, perhaps, sector-specific rules of professional or industry conduct, the categories used to draw the lines between legal and nonlegal norms become in themselves highly contentious. The chapter argues that to neglect the fundamental distinction between legal pluralism as “manifestation” and as “argument” perpetuates a troubling inability on the part of positivist and analytical legal theory to engage with law’s inherent instability. Especially at a time, where the actors, norms, and processes that together constitute and shape emerging transnational regulatory regimes are located and operating both within and beyond the state as the purportedly singularly competent authority of law creation and enforcement, the deconstruction of “legal pluralism” as “nonlaw” and threat to the state can serve as the foundation for a new, critical legal theory.

Implikasi Undang-Undang Penyiaran Terhadap Pertumbuhan Lembaga Penyiaran di Propinsi Kepulauan Riau

The growth of broadcasting stations (LP) studied in this thesis is the growth of existing station in Riau Islands Province (Kepri) after officially established of Law Republic of Indonesia Number 32 of 2002 concerning Broadcasting, which in the broadcast legislation looks more leads to liberalism is loaded with privatization that provides opportunities for offenders efforts to expand its business in the broadcasting industry, including in the Kepri. Legal theories used by researchers is a critical legal theory and legal theory flow Critical Legal studies(CLS). This study was conducted to showed that law Broadcasting Act, Article 13 paragraph (1) and (2) has been split into Public Broadcasting Stations (LPP), Private Broadcasting Stations (LPS), Community Broadcasting Stations (LPK) and Subscription Broadcasting Station (LPB). Base to The Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI) of Kepri, the numbers of broadcasting stations listed till 2014 (television and radio services) is 0 LPP, 55 LPS, 23 LPB and 2 LPK. Of these known 69% of the total number of LP in Kepri is LPS. According to critical theory, democracy has influenced the policy direction of the holders of power (broadcasting law) to the interests of capital, and this is in line with the flow of Critical Legal Studies, which states that all regulations set by the government is closely linked to the ideology espoused by the government, so this theory argues that the legal and political (broadcasting legislation) are not in the neutral position. For the current broadcasters to benefit from more focused on improving the public thinks.

Polish Jurisprudence in the 20th Century: A General Overview

The present paper provides a general overview of the sources of inspiration and main currents in Polish jurisprudence in the 20th century, especially in the post-War and contemporary period. The paper notes that the main sources of inspiration in the early 20th century included Leon Petrażycki, Bronisław Wróblewski, Czesław Znamie-rowski and Jerzy Lande, who exerted a great influence on the first generation of Polish post-War legal theorists. The Lvov-Warsaw school of analytical philosophy also had a huge impact on Polish jurisprudence, as the school to a large extent determined the research questions posed by Polish legal theorists. Indeed, analytical legal theory can be said to have dominated Polish jurisprudence from the 1950s up to the end of the 1980s. After 1989, a broad current of new philosophical approaches to jurisprudence emerged, including legal hermeneutics and philosophies of interpretation, legal ethics, postmodern and critical legal theory, the phenomenology of law as well as an original Polish achievement – the legal theory of ‘juriscentrism’.

Artur Kozak’s Juriscentrist Concept of Law: a Central European Innovation in Legal Theory

Artur Kozak (1960–2009) was one of the most original and innovative philosophers of law to emerge from the so-called ‘middle generation’ of Polish post-War jurisprudence. Kozak’s principal achievement was to break away from the analytical paradigm of legal theory, dominant in the in Poland at the time, and engage legal theory in a fruitful dialogue with contemporary sociology and philosophy, including such currents as social constructionism or postmodernism. To name his original theoretical project, Kozak coined a new term – ‘juriscentrism’ (juryscentryzm), consciously evoking Richard Rorty’s concept of ethnocentrism. Juriscentrist legal theory was mainly focused on providing legitimacy for the newly gained power of the legal community in a post-socialist society, but its theoretical resonance is universal. Kozak’s premature death made it impossible to complete the theoretical project of juriscentrism, nonetheless he managed to elaborate its main tenets, including the concept of juristic discretional power and a juriscentrist concept of law. Kozak’s legacy in contemporary Polish legal theory is particularly visible in Wrocław, where not only the post-analytical paradigm in Poland is the strongest, but also the first Polish school of critical legal theory has recently emerged.