A Political Economy of Contemporary Legality

To appear in Poul Fritz Kjaer, ed., The Law of Political Economy: Transformations of the Function of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2019)

50 Pages Posted: 5 Mar 2019

Date Written: February 06, 2019

Abstract

The chapter starts with an observation: contemporary elite jurists pursue, vis-à-vis one another, a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’, meaning that they work to uncover hidden ideological motives behind the ‘wrong’ legal arguments of their opponents, while affirming their own right answers allegedly innocent of ideology. The rise of the hermeneutic of suspicion is a striking manifestations of the contemporary transformation of the relationship between legal elites and political/economic elites. This transformation accompanies and corresponds to the progressive juridification, judicialization and finally constitionalization of the contemporary social order.

Suggested Citation

Kennedy, Duncan, A Political Economy of Contemporary Legality (February 06, 2019). To appear in Poul Fritz Kjaer, ed., The Law of Political Economy: Transformations of the Function of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2019), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3334107

Duncan Kennedy (Contact Author)

Harvard Law School ( email )

1575 Massachusetts
L333
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States
617-495-4619 (Phone)

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