Critical Legal Studies, Critical Race Theory, and Reasonableness Standards

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the doctrinal definitions, theoretical concepts, and key distinctions from the lecture on Critical Legal Studies, Critical Race Theory, Feminist Jurisprudence, and self-defense standards.

Critical Legal Studies (CLS)

A legal academic movement originating among law school professors in the 1970s asserting that the law is not objective, determinate, or politically neutral, but rather a construct of those in power to retain power and reinforce existing power structures.

Deconstructionism

An analytical methodology within CLS that pulls legal arguments apart to expose internal contradictions, incoherence, and hidden power dynamics.

"Realism on Steroids"

The professor's characterization of Critical Legal Studies and its offshoots, signifying an intensified realist critique pointed directly at specific power structures and disadvantaged groups.

"Trashing" (Kelman)

Mark Kelman's term for the deconstructive technique of taking specific arguments very seriously on their own terms, discovering that they are actually foolish, and exposing their internally contradictory and coherent chaos.

Illegitimate Hierarchy

The entrenched power imbalance that Critical Legal Studies seeks to call out and dismantle to bring greater equality and power to disenfranchised groups.

Traditional Legal Formalism

A jurisprudential theory premised on the belief that law consists of neutral, coherent, and objective rules that can be applied mechanically to produce just and determinate outcomes.

Law and Economics

An approach that evaluates legal rules and policy dilemmas as optimization problems resolved through incentive structures, market efficiency, and cost-benefit equations.

Standard Legal Argument (Kelman)

Legal discourse characterized by Mark Kelman as "vague, not empirical, windbag rhetoric" and "patently unstable babble" employed to disguise subjective political choices.

Technical Fog / Mystification

The deliberate deployment of specialized, complex legal terminology and classroom intimidation to make initiates "bow, scrape, and believe themselves deeply unfit and inferior" while obscuring actual societal concerns.

Debunking / Deconstruction (CLS Objective)

An explicit effort to level and reintegrate communities along egalitarian lines rather than rationalize and legitimize existing distributions of wealth and power.

Critical Race Theory (CRT)

A theoretical offshoot of CLS developed between the 1970s and 1990s that rejects neutrality and objectivity, demonstrates how white supremacy and racism are systemic to American institutions, and works for the liberation of oppressed people.

Endemic / Systemic Racism (Mutua)

A core CRT principle establishing that racism is ordinary, institutionalized, and pervasive throughout American law and society rather than an anomalous or aberrational occurrence.

Critique of Colorblindness

The CRT position asserting that while formal race neutrality was once progressive, modern rigid colorblindness operates as an implicit bias that conceals ongoing subordination and locks in historical racial advantages.

Tort Measure of Damages

A backward-looking remedial standard aimed at restoring the injured party to the position occupied prior to the tortious injury (status quo ante or making the plaintiff whole).

Contract Expectation Damages

A forward-looking remedial standard that gives the injured party the benefit of the bargain by placing them in the position they would have occupied had the contract been fully performed.

Hawkins v. McGee

The 1929 New Hampshire "Hairy Hand Case" establishing that breach of a physician's express warranty to provide a "100% good hand" entitles the plaintiff to expectation damages measured by the difference between the value of the promised hand and the actual defective hand delivered.

Trial Management and Race (Cynthia Lee)

The principle that "you can't erase race during the trial," showing that colorblind trial efforts and judicial avoidance of race heighten salience, obscure relevant context, and disadvantage fair adjudication.

"Reasonable Woman" Standard

A context-sensitive standard adopted in sexual harassment cases to assess reasonableness from the perspective of female lived experiences rather than an ostensibly universal, male-centric "reasonable person" benchmark.

"Retreat to the Wall"

The historical English common law self-defense requirement mandating that an individual must retreat as far as possible before using defensive force.

American Rule (Self-Defense)

A self-defense doctrine allowing an individual under an imminent threat to stand their ground and respond with necessary force without an initial duty to retreat.

Imminent Danger vs. Immediately Necessary

Two competing self-defense standards: imminent danger requires a strictly temporal, immediate physical threat, whereas immediate necessity allows a broader, context-sensitive assessment of necessity when escape from ongoing abuse is otherwise impossible.

Invisible Biases (Ragodsky)

Unacknowledged systemic assumptions embedded within Fourth Amendment reasonableness standards that omit women's perspectives and require re-examination through a feminist lens.

Battered Woman Syndrome Evidence

Expert testimony introduced in self-defense cases involving battered individuals to explain threat perception and psychological context, clarifying to the jury what imminence and necessity mean in circumstances of domestic abuse.