Event Highlights: Critiquing the Mainstream Legal Academy
This virtual transatlantic conversation with Duncan Kennedy, Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence, Emeritus, at Harvard Law School – Critiquing the Mainstream Legal Academy – took place on Thursday, March 11, 2021. The topic of discussion wa an article in progress by Kennedy appropriating Ricardo and Marx as progenitors of one of the contemporary CLS approaches to law and political economy. The interlocutors included Marija Bartl, Professor of Transnational Private Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Amsterdam; Poul Kjær, Professor at the Department of Business and Politics, Copenhagen Business School; Joana Mendes, Professor of Comparative Administrative Law at the University of Luxembourg; Agustín José Menéndez, Lecturer at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain; and Harm Schepel, Professor of Economic Law and Director of Law Programs at BSIS, University of Kent. The conversation was moderated by Daniela Caruso, Jean Monnet Chair, Professor of Law, and Director of the Center for the Study of Europe.
Duncan Kennedy was a founding member of the Critical Legal Studies movement. After completing a clerkship with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, Kennedy joined the Harvard Law School faculty in 1971 as an Assistant Professor, becoming a full Professor in 1976. He has taught contracts, torts, property, trusts, the history of legal thought, low income housing law and policy, Israel/Palestine legal issues, the globalization of law and legal thought, and the politics of private law.