In 1976, a new leftist movement was spawned: it was called Critical Legal Studies (CLS). It would later morph into Critical Race Theory (CRT). CLS could be described as “critical theory applied to American law.” The idea was to “improve” the “broken, ineffective and racist” legal system to better aid racial minorities, the poor, etc.
CLS began as a series of conversations between Morton Horwitz, a Jewish law professor at Harvard University, and Duncan Kennedy, a non-Jewish law professor, also at Harvard [1]. As their new ideology took shape, more academics became involved with it. Soon, a CLS conference was planned. Roughly 25 academics were invited to the conference, which was held at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in March 1977. Of the academics who were invited to the conference, some were Marxists and some were not, some were law professors, some were sociologists and political scientists, and roughly 80% of those academics were Jews.
One of the professors invited to the conference was a Jewish law professor, Alan D. Freeman. He would play a key role in both CLS and CRT [2]. More on him later.
The CLS movement was a rather loose one. It had no actual “leader.” It was “a network not an organization” according to Kennedy. The movement began to evaporate circa 1986 due to ideological differences between the “more radical” and “less radical” members and also due to Blacks accusing CLS of being “racist” since so many of the CLS people were “White” (apparently, the Blacks didn’t grasp the fact that the “Whites” in CLS were mostly Jews).
CRT
The CRT movement began where CLS left off; it might be called “Phase II” of CLS. It began circa 1989 and it was a smaller collection of people (at least at first) and was more focused on race, and was more confrontational in style. The most well-known of the CRT members were Alan D. Freeman (1943-1995), a Jewish law professor at the University of Buffalo, and Derrick Bell (1930-2011), a Black law professor at Harvard. Another well-known CRT man is Richard Delgado, a law professor at the University of Alabama. Bell seemed to be an Affirmative Action quota hire. Bell quit Harvard in 1990 due to his belief that Harvard was “racist” for not hiring more Blacks [3].
CRT boldly, and wrongly, claimed that, despite the Civil Rights movement in America, Blacks and other minorities were still victimized daily by evil White racism, despite there being plenty of federal laws preventing such racism. The CRT people were radical, and they believed what they wanted to believe, for completely political or racial reasons.
CRT basically amounts to the idea that “America is inherently evil due to widespread, daily White racism against non-Whites and so it must be completely rebuilt (“radically, structurally transformed”) in order to make it safe for Blacks and other poor, innocent, helpless minorities.” Perhaps the CRT people aren’t aware of the fact that there are Black millionaires and Black congressmen in America today? Indeed, if a Black man can’t succeed in America, he can’t succeed anywhere! CRT’s viewpoint is merely angry radicalism and get-evenism. Most Blacks don’t experience daily racism and in fact, if the Blacks would just shut up and stop bitching about imaginary racism 24/7 then they might discover that America is a great place.
As far as I can tell, Freeman was the most intellectual of all the CRT people. Freeman also seemed to be the only person who was involved with both CLS and CRT. The others were either in one camp or the other camp. Not both.
CRT sputtered along quietly until circa 2010 when suddenly it became “a thing” in the public schools and universities [4][5].
Furthermore, as of circa 1993, it looks like the situation is, “Jews invented CLS/CRT but then it was stolen from them by pushy, angry Blacks.”
Here’s a key takeaway about CLS/CRT: Jews will politicize everything in the West if allowed to. They’ll politicize dogs, potato chips, trees, sand and air if allowed to do so. Law should not be political. Law should be based on the question, “is this, or is this not, constitutional?” (most of the time these days, it’s not; indeed, since about 1964 U.S. law has been a sick joke and has not been based on the U.S. constitution, as it should be. A great example is Roe v. Wade [1973]).
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[1] “A Conversation with Duncan Kennedy” by Tor Krever, Carl Lisberger, Max Utzschneider; criticallegalthinking.com; 17 Nov 2015.
[2] “Alan Freeman represents the writer that virtually all persons identify as the leading spokesman for the CLS response to racism. In fact, his article Legitimizing Racial Discrimination Through Antidiscrimination Law: A Critical Review of Supreme Court Doctrine, stands out as one of the finest examples of the CLS scholarship, and probably has had the greatest influence in winning what attention the CLSM has gained from persons of color.” — law review article “The Critical Legal Studies Movement and Racism: Useful Analytics and Guides for Social Action or an Irrelevant Modern Legal Scepticism and Solipsism?” at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, Vol. 13, Iss. 4, Article 3, 1987. Freeman acknowledged his Jewish roots in an article in 1989: “Jews can celebrate their diversity and their tradition without being hysterical apologists for the existing order. We need not all follow the lead of those like Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, the paradigm of assimilationist success…” — Alan Freeman and Betty Mensch, “Current Debate: Affirmative Action: The Misplaced Self-Delusion of Some Jewish Males”; Tikkun, Jan. 1989. First published in Tikkun, but also in Digital Commons @ University at Buffalo School of Law, 1-1-1989.
[3] “In 1971, Bell became the first Black professor to receive tenure at Harvard Law School.” The Wall Street Journal, June 2021.
[4] “Critical race theory also informs the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United States’ national narrative.” It is now taught in thousands of public school classrooms across the country.” — article “The Moment in 1986 When Critical Race Theory Ousted the Civil Rights Movement” by Eric Felten, July 2021, nas.org.
[5] Some further possible resources, re: the history of CLS/CRT: David Trubek, Mark Tushnet, Roberto Unger, Peter Gabel, Mark Kelman, Gary Peller, Jay Fineman, Rand Rosenblatt and others who were there in the early years of CLS/CRT. See also Antonio Gramsci, Herbert Marcuse, Jean-Paul Sartre, Michel Foucault.
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