Prof Michael Wilkinson

This course is available on the LLM (extended part-time), LLM (full-time) and University of Pennsylvania Law School LLM Visiting Students. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

In this course we will examine critical theory and its application and relation to law. The nature of critique varies, but central to critical theories are issues of power, and specifically, inequalities of power and how they shape society. Also central are issues of law’s relationship to social and political change. Critical theory diagnoses modern society and offers evaluation of the causes of things, but it also offers various remedies, both reformist and revolutionary in nature. It is therefore both explanatory and normative in perspective.

The course will tackle classical critical theory as it has developed since the work of Karl Marx, and will include 20th century critical theory associated with the ‘Frankfurt school’, and more contemporary strands of critical theory, such as those associated with Black Marxism, Critical Legal Studies, and Law and Political Economy. We will also look at theories of the relationship between law and politics and law and democracy, and current challenges to law and the state coming from environmental movements and global concerns.

Topics include:

• Introduction to Critical Theory

• Enlightenment and Critical Theory

• Classical Marxism 

• Contemporary Marxisms

• Frankfurt School Critical Theory

• Critical Legal Studies 

• Law and Politics

• Law and Democracy

• Law and Political Economy

• Environmentalism

20 hours of seminars in the WT. 2 hours of seminars in the ST.

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the WT.

An introductory text to critical theory is Raymond Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory (CUP 1981).

We will be looking at excerpts from some of the following texts:

• Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Penguin, 2002),
• Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Penguin 1958),
• Jurgen Habermas, Towards a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (MIT,1992),
• Nancy Fraser, ‘Behind Marx’s Hidden Abode’ (New Left Review, 2014),
• Samir Amin, Eurocentrism (Monthly Review Press, 2010).

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours and 30 minutes, reading time: 1 minute) in the spring exam period.