The first few years in the development of critical legal studies (CLS) saw an ongoing discussion of an issue that was framed as "rationalism v. irrationalism". The labels, it now appears, were misleading, for the discussion can be better understood as concerning the utility - for purposes of orienting strategic action as well as of understanding the social order - of relatively large-scale social theories in the traditions of Marx and Weber. The distinctive contribution of CLS to leftist social

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... thought, and the embodiment of the fact that one side in the earlier discussion more or less prevailed, is its insistence that a leftist social and political theory does not need to be grounded in that sort of social theory.