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The Outsiders vs. the Empire The Players: Empire, Crits, Feminists, and CRT The Empire is composed of academic traditionalists—the Kingsfields of legal education.The dominant theme dates to 1870 when Christopher Columbus Langdell introduced the casebook method to Harvard Law School. Since then,the study of law has been conducted according to the scientific model, which relies on rigid analysis to lead the student inevitably to neutral judgments . Scholarship adheres to the doctrinal method that informs decision makers and colleagues with objective analysis of legal problems.Until the appearance of the Outsider movement, the Empire had never been seriously challenged. Now it faces extinction. According to conventional wisdom, the prevalence of back-stabbing in academics is due to the triviality of the rewards. Fights over curriculum changes,word processors,or tenure for a protégé are what academics call real politics.The Outsiders vs. the Empire is not trivial law school politics. Over the past decade legal education has exploded with vicious trashing, incendiary fax exchanges,and the return of the abuse tactics of the 1960s.This is not an academic sideshow; at issue is a brute power conflict over control of legal education and the future of the legal system. On one side stands the Empire, composed mostly of Liberal white males. Joining them is a small group of females and minorities who share the Empire ’s commitment to the Liberal tradition.The Empire is the Establishment. Challenging them is a coalition of three groups; the Crits of Critical Legal Studies, Feminists, and Critical Race Theorists (CRT).They are the Outsiders who accuse the Empire of refusing to acknowledge the unique contributions of their cultures and scholarship. The Crits initiated the revolution.They defiantly threw down the gauntlet by attacking core Liberal values and by listing various Liberal atrocities committed against everyone from law students to minorities. Instead of benevolent protectors of the public trust, the Liberals were profiled as elitist 1 1 oppressors who twisted the legal system to aggrandize power.To the Empire, the Crits were snot-nosed ingrates, nothing more than leftist rabble-rousers. Law school Jerry Rubinses. Harvard Professor (now Dean) Robert Clark called the Crits“Huns”whose sole objective was“the ritual slaying of the elders .” Young, bright, with egos to match, the Crits saw law as the gateway to power, which had been exploited by the Empire to engage in class oppression .The ostensible objectivity of the legal system protects a market system that marginalizes the underclass, particularly minorities and women. Laws, decisions, and regulations are indeterminate, full of choices and options that are denied the oppressed.The solution: topple the Establishment, break up the monopoly on objectivity, and institute communitarianism. The first strike was aimed at the perceived source of the corruption—the law schools. While the appearance of females in classes was still a novelty in the 1970s, by the 1980s it had become a tidal wave.With the substantial increase in population ,feminists began to assert themselves,influencing administration,curriculum , and scholarship.Two of the most influential feminists, Carol Gilligan and Catharine MacKinnon, produced new—and differing—perspectives on the new feminism. In developing the thesis that women and men “speak” in “different voices,” Gilligan provided a persuasive justification for a distinct feminist ideology.The voice argument was to be borrowed by the Crits and the Critical Race Theorists. MacKinnon, a law professor, gained a national reputation for her antipornography campaign and for her writing on sex as a form of male oppression. Gilligan’s argument “infuriates” MacKinnon , who argues that male oppression is the sole reason women speak in a different voice. So long as man’s “foot is on her throat,” no woman can be part of the power equation. Feminists argue that the Empire’s exclusive reliance on the analytical and objective problem-solving model excludes the female voice of empathy and nurturing.They counter this form of oppression with highly subjective critical scholarship designed to dismantle the white male hegemony of antiwomen canons. They are the Gangsta rappers of legal education.They titillate, provoke, and censure the canons of the Empire. Deans shudder when a CRT person makes an appointment for a “visit.” Deans have reason to blink; CRT is the most energetic and focused wing of the Outsider movement.They describe themselves as a “people of color” institution—a collective designation that includes everyone except white males. 2 | The Outsiders vs. the Empire [13.58.112...

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