In several chapters and comments, this conclusion appears to be based on a very selective reading of ideas from these works that are interpreted from a modernist perspective. This perspective largely ignores the postmodern influences on critical legal theories. Law, from this perspective, plays an important role in perpetuating hierarchy, inequality, and oppression. Such change, for many of the new critics, will come about locally as spaces for resistance to dominant ideologies are identified and exploited. It is a discussion of these crucial strains of recent critical legal theories, strains approaching law as part of a cultural and ideological critique, that is missing from most of the analyses in this collection.
Reason is just another code word for the views of the privileged.
The Enlightenment itself merely replaced one socially constructed view of reality with another, mistaking power for knowledge. In sum, this book's general inattention to postmodern theory's influences on much recent critical theory weakens the overall effort. It may be the case that one could find ideas in postmodern strains of critical legal theory emerging from or consistent with liberalism, rather than challenging it. But, by and large, chapters in this volume do not evaluate or criticize these important strains in current critical work. Oxford University Press.