In this episode, we’re bringing you the second portion of another interview with Duncan Kennedy. Here, Craig Orbelian and Duncan discuss Duncan’s 1983 work “Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy: A Polemic Against the System.”

In it, Kennedy critiques the various ways the American legal education system contributes to and reinforces gender, socioeconomic, and racial hierarchies. Kennedy touches upon ideas such as:

• The impacts of radical law student activist groups that organized against administrative bodies and the broader institutions as a whole in the 1970s/1980s.
• Potential contributors that spurred a generational deradicalization of those leftist student activist coalitions in recent years. 
• How CLS scholars and other cultural critics’ critiques of law school classrooms contributed to reforms in the repressive hierarchies found in these spaces. 
• What it has looked like to shift away from the more traditionally brutal pedagogical regime towards a more liberal, softer style of teaching. 
• And finally, among other things, Kennedy considers and discusses law professors’ techniques aimed at combating the gunner hierarchy and some of the drawbacks of these approaches, resistance as a habit and not just an activity, and what is meant by CLS members acting in their own interests. 

For more information and links on this episode and The Critical Legal Theory Podcast, visit our webpage.

Visit the Systemic Justice Project website at systemicjustice.org

In this episode, we’re bringing you the first portion of another interview with Duncan Kennedy. Here, Craig Orbelian and Duncan discuss Duncan’s 1981 Root Room lecture which formed the basis of  his essay “Rebels From Principle.”

In the written piece and the talk, Duncan attempted to deconstruct the psychic dichotomy, prevalent among many leftist and left-leaning law students, that one could either enter a career in public interest work, or entirely abandon one’s values to achieve wealth and conventional “success” at a morally corrupting corporate law firm. He suggested the options did not have to be so black and white – and rebellion is possible in any context. “Sly resistance,” as he termed it, obviously wouldn’t do anything to change the systemic entrenchment of corporate power – rather, sly resistance within the law firm offered a way to “​​deal with” the perhaps unresolvable psychic situation of being enmeshed in something you perceive as profoundly illegitimate. Craig and Duncan explore, and respond to, a few of the many wide-reaching critiques provoked by the Root Room talk and related essay.

Visit the podcast webpage (containing links and other materials) here.

Visit the Systemic Justice Project website at systemicjustice.org

In this episode, you’ll hear the second part of an interview with Duncan Kennedy by Rio Pierce. In this part, Kennedy delves into his family’s personal history and his own early, formative educational and professional life experiences. He touches on ideas like: 

•  His mother's commitment to living an Upper Bohemian lifestyle, especially in contrast with her family’s proud, upper-middle class background.
• The impacts of the third and fourth social work movements on his father’s parents work as social workers in Chicago
• How his early educational years at Shady Hill and Andover informed his burgeoning curiosities and identity
• The role his ideologically complex post-secondary experiences at Harvard College and Yale Law School played in shaping his intellectual development 
• What it meant to be a Cold War Liberal; his perspective on the Vietnam War and avoiding the draft; and his time spent working for the CIA between college and law school. 

Visit the Systemic Justice Project website at systemicjustice.org