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Critical Legal Studies Records
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Held at: Princeton University Library: Public Policy Papers [Contact Us]
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Princeton University Library: Public Policy Papers. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
Critical Legal Studies was both a scholarly enterprise and a social movement within legal education, questioning the justice of law for people outside of existing power structures. The Critical Legal Studies Conference was held annually beginning in 1977 in Madison, Wisconsin.
The Public Policy Papers held within the Princeton University Library has embarked on a project to document the Critical Legal Studies (CLS) movement. These records represent the beginning of an initiative to collect material such as correspondence, memos, newsletters, meeting programs, posters, and other materials that document the emergence, growth, and activities of the movement in order to make them available for research.
Records include schedules of the annual Conference on CLS between 1977 and 1988, as well as the crit conference The Politics of Class in 1995; reading material for conferences; bound issues of the CLS newsletter published in Buffalo; and copies of papers written by CLS participants such as Gary Bellow, Gerald Frug, Alan Hyde, Duncan Kennedy, Al Katz, and Gary Young. The initial donation was received from Jay Feinman, and the records contain some of Feinman's remarks and material for organizing the seventh Conference on CLS at Rutgers University. A subsequent donation contains David Trubek's correspondence relating to CLS, and a donation from Peter Gabel contains photographs Gabel took at the CLS conference at the New College of California Law School in January, 1990.
Materials are arranged in the order in which they were received from the donors.
One box of records was donated by Jay Feinman in October 2018 (ML.2018.014); one folder of records by Rick Abel in October 2018 (ML.2018.017); and one folder of records by David M. Trubek in December 2018 (ML.2018.024). A box of photographs of the CLS conference in January, 1990 was donated by Peter Gabel in April, 2019 (ML.2019.010).
Correspondence, conference planning materials, and conference readings were donated by Mark Tushnet in 2020 (ML.2020.010).
Digitized recordings in this collection [identified by ML.2018.024] require mediated access through Mudd Library Public Services. Please contact reference staff via email to request access to these files.
This collection was processed by Phoebe Nobles in 2018 at the time of accessioning. Some materials were rehoused in archival folders and all materials were described in a finding aid.
Later additions were processed by Will Clements.
Duplicate copies of CLS newsletters were removed from the collection.
- Publisher
- Public Policy Papers
- Finding Aid Date
- 2018
- Access Restrictions
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Collection is open for research.
- Use Restrictions
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Single photocopies may be made for research purposes. For quotations that are fair use as defined under U. S. Copyright Law, no permission to cite or publish is required. For those few instances beyond fair use, any copyright vested in the donor has passed to Princeton University and researchers are free to move forward with use of materials without anything further from Mudd Library. For materials not created by the donor, where the copyright is not held by the University, researchers are responsible for determining who may hold the copyright and obtaining approval from them. In these instances, researchers do not need anything further from the Mudd Library to move forward with their use. If you have a question about who owns the copyright for an item, you may request clarification by contacting us through the Ask Us! form.
Collection Inventory
This series contains Critical Legal Studies conference newsletters, reading materials, papers, schedules, correspondence and clippings, as well as a recorded talk and photographs of a conference.
The materials are arranged in the order in which they were received from the donors.
Physical Description3 boxes
1 box
1 box
1 box
1 box
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1 box
Excerpt from "Property and Sovereignty," Gerald Frug; A Radical Critique of American Contract Law, Alan Hyde
Physical Description1 box
Studies in Boundary Theory, Al Katz; Turning Solutions into Problems: The Legal Aid Experience, Gary Bellow; The Market, Contract Law and Ideology, Gary Young; Justice and Capitalist Production: Marx and Bourgeois Ideology, Gary Young; Draft by Tom Heller
Physical Description1 box
Newsletters, schedules, lists of participants, general correspondence
Physical Description1 box
Material relating to organizing the conference at Rutgers
Physical Description1 box
1 box
1 box
1 box
1 box
1 box
1 box
1 box
1 box
Photographs Peter Gabel took at the January, 1990 Critical Legal Studies Conference at the New College of California School of Law in San Francisco.
Physical Description1 box
Photographs of a CLS trip to Poland and the Czech Republic in spring 1990. Peter Gabel wrote about the trip in "Left Meets East."
Physical Description1 box
Third Annual Conference at New College in San Francisco, CA. Poster with pre-registration coupons.
Physical Description1 box
1 items
1 folder
1 box
4 boxes