Empire Strikes Back: Outsiders and the Struggle Over Legal Education

Once dismissed as plodding and superfluous, legal scholarship is increasingly challenging the liberal white male establishment that currently dominates legal education and practice. The result, here vividly recounted by Arthur Austin, has been an uncompromising, take-no-prisoners fight for dominance. The challenge comes from "outsiders, " a collection of feminists, critical race theorists, and critical legal studies scholars who rely on unconventional methods such as storytelling to give voice to the underrepresented. In the other, demographically larger camp resides the monolithic Empire, consisting of traditionalists who, having developed an effective form of scholarship, now circle the wagons against the outsider heathens. Neither partisan nor objective, Austin is both respectful and critical of each faction.