The Law To Know

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Critical and social movements

Critical Race Theory

Race and racism are built into legal institutions: examine how neutral-looking law keeps inequality in place.

1980s to today · United States. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.

Read this first. This is a first map of a large subject. Each school is a family of views, and its thinkers often disagree with one another, so every summary simplifies. We describe each school in terms its own followers would accept and give the strongest criticism beside it. Read the original works before you cite anyone, and check your own course's reading list. This is general information, not legal advice.

What is law?

Law and legal reasoning are not race-neutral. Scholars use history, storytelling and the lived experience of people of colour to show how racial hierarchy can persist even where explicit discrimination is outlawed.

Law and morality

Law should be judged by whether it dismantles racial hierarchy.

Where does its authority come from?

Moral and historical critique of existing law.

How should judges decide?

Look at the effects of rules, not just their wording, and at the history that produced them.

The question it asks

Does formally equal law produce equal results?

Main criticism

Critics question its claims about neutrality and the use of narrative as evidence, and there is political controversy about how it is taught.

Legacy today

The idea of intersectionality, research on implicit bias, and work on policing and criminal justice.

Key thinkers

Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, Mari Matsuda, Patricia Williams.

Key works

  • Bell, Faces at the Bottom of the Well (1992)
  • Crenshaw, Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex (1989)
  • Williams, The Alchemy of Race and Rights (1991)

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Read further

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: philosophy of law (an overview). For the exact arguments, go to the original works above.

TheLawToKnow Tools’s guide to schools of legal thought is an educational overview. It is not legal advice. Report a mistake.