The Critical Legal Conference (CLC) is an annual critical legal theory conference which gathers a community of critical legal theoreticians and activists. Along with the
Conference on Critical Legal Studies in America, and
Critique du Droit in France it contributed to the formation of critical legal theory as a movement and field. The conference is based in the UK but it has also been held in India, Finland and Ireland. It is associated with the
critical legal studies
Critical legal studies (CLS) is a school of critical theory that developed in the United States during the 1970s.Alan Hunt, "The Theory of Critical Legal Studies," Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1986): 1-45, esp. 1, 5. Se DOI, 10.1 ...
(CLS) movement and loosely associated with the journal
Law & Critique.
Despite the putative association with American CLS,
Costas Douzinas Costas Douzinas ( el, Κώστας Δουζίνας; born 1951) is a professor of law, a founder of the Birkbeck School of Law and the Department of Law of the University of Cyprus, the founding director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities ...
, who has been closely involved with the British CLC from its outset, has argued that their ethos are very different. American CLS was intellectually focused on the "critique of the judicial institutions and reasoning" while its politics "were largely exhausted in the intrigue of the academy and the endless search for media exposure".
[ Originally published in ] If, on the one hand, American CLS was a "political movement with little politics",
e British Critical Legal Conference (CLC), on the other hand, is an intellectual movement with lots of politics. The annual CLC started in 1984 and has taken place without interruption ever since. In all these years of operation no officers or posts, chairmen and secretaries, committees or delegates were created. There is no organization. The conference was and remains just that: a conference and an umbrella name. We could call the CLC ‘a community always to come’, a broad church that exists for three days once every year in its gathering and ceases existing once it is over. Every September the place for the next conference is decided and people bid their good-byes for another year, leaving it to the next organiser to put together the programme. No honour, power or position attaches to the conference, no promotion preferment or move to better posts follows organisation or participation. There is only an annual conference and people who turn out every year because they love ideas and they are concerned about the role of law in society and their own role within the institution. Over the years, these conferences introduced themes, schools of thought and movements unknown or dismissed by legal scholarship. Western Marxism, postmodernism and deconstruction were the main theoretical influences of the early conferences but soon the new radicalism of race, gender, queer and post-colonial theory were introduced in the legal academy through the CLC. Indeed these conferences were the only academic venues in which such themes were discussed for many years before they became respectable and entered, albeit marginally, mainstream academia.
The Critical Legal Conference was established in 1984 and its first annual meeting was held at the University of Kent in 1986.
Alan Hunt was the founding chair of the Critical Legal Conference.
[J. Stuart Russell, The Critical Legal Studies Challenge to Contemporary Mainstream Legal Philosophy, 18 Ottawa L. Rev. 1 (1986)]
See also
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Philosophy of law
Philosophy of law is a branch of philosophy that examines the nature of law and law's relationship to other systems of norms, especially ethics and political philosophy. It asks questions like "What is law?", "What are the criteria for legal val ...
External links
Critical Legal Conference 2018The Open University
The Open University (OU) is a British Public university, public research university and the largest university in the United Kingdom by List of universities in the United Kingdom by enrolment, number of students. The majority of the OU's underg ...
Critical Legal Conference 2017University of Warwick
, mottoeng = Mind moves matter
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Critical Legal Conference 2016University of Kent
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, mottoeng = Literal translation: 'Whom to serve is to reign'(Book of Common Prayer translation: 'whose service is perfect freedom')Graham Martin, ''From Vision to Reality: the Making of the University of Kent at Canterbury'' ...
Critical Legal Conference 2013Queen's University Belfast
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Critical Legal Conference 2012Royal Institute of Technology
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Critical Legal Conference 2011Aberystwyth University
Aberystwyth University ( cy, Prifysgol Aberystwyth) is a Public university, public Research university, research university in Aberystwyth, Wales. Aberystwyth was a founding member institution of the former federal University of Wales. The universi ...
Critical Legal Conference 2010Utrecht University
Utrecht University (UU; nl, Universiteit Utrecht, formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2018, it had an enrollm ...
Critical Legal Conference 2009University of Leicester
, mottoeng = So that they may have life
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, endowment = £20.0 million
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Critical Legal Conference 2008University of Glasgow
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Critical Legal Thinking
References
Legal conferences
Critical legal studies
Recurring events established in 1986