Where the Action Is: Critical Legal Studies and Empiricism

Legal Studies (CLS), a scholarly project of recent vintage, has attracted wide interest. But the nature of the project is not fully understood, and the implications of a Critical approach to legal studies have not been fully realized even by those who participate in the movement. The ideas upon which CLS rests-notions about relationships among the ideas we hold about law and society, the structures of social life we are engaged in, and the actions we take-present a challenge to current legal scholarship as well as to the organization of American society. These ideas derive from a variety of sources in legal and social theory, and not all of them are fully worked out or easily understood. This essay is an effort to clarify some of these ideas and to draw out some of their implications for research on the history, meaning, and impact of law.