LibGuides: Multicultural and Gender Studies (MCGS): Critical Legal Research

Critical Research in Law

What is Critical Legal Research?

Critical Legal Research or Critical Legal Studies is a theoretical framework which asserts that the law is necessarily intertwined with social issues, particularly stating that the law has inherent social biases.

Cornell Legal Information Institute

Critical Legal Consciousness in Action
"In particular, I contend that if we look to what lawyers are doing in practice, we see a more optimistic picture of legal activism than is generally presented in the literature, one in which lawyers and their allies are quite thoughtful in their power analysis of legal strategies and skillful in their navigation of the shoals of cooptation...."
Critical Legal Studies Movement
A self-conscious group of legal scholars founded the Conference on Critical Legal Studies (CLS) in 1977. Most of them had been law students in the 1960s and early 1970s, and had been involved with the civil rights movement...

Questions to consider in Critical Legal Research Strategies

Who controls the creation/ availability of this information?
Whose voices are predominant in this space? Whose voices are excluded?
What are the shortcomings of traditional research practices that are predictive?
How might a reform-focused advocate conduct research differently? (Consider using this question where application of existing jurisprudence leads to an unjust result.)
How would someone working from a critical legal studies perspective view this research process or strategy?

Teaching Critical Information Literacy & Critical Legal Research