Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left

Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left

http://www.legalleft.org/

Publisher: Harvard Law School

Unbound is an online journal of the legal left at Harvard Law School—  
and also the community of left-affiliated students, professors, and  
practitioners who publish it.

Like many on the legal left, we feel a bit homeless. Others have  
built substantial "progressive" organizations and law reviews that  
support, channel, and house their political and intellectual  
endeavors. While we often sympathize with and participate in activist  
projects that advance economic redistribution, human rights, and  
racial, gender and sexual equality, we are unsatisfied with the  
constraining language of liberalism within which such projects tend  
to operate. We'd like something spicier and more satisfying, a place  
where we can refine our ideas without having to justify our existence  
to unsympathetic critics.

In today's legal world, conservatives have convinced many that legal  
decisions must be made on the basis of "original understanding" or  
"economic efficiency," terms which are not facially invalid but which  
often mask more nefarious goals. The growing dominance of the right  
challenges us to reinvent the left. Furthermore, we suspect that deep  
discursive patterns and practices in the law create and maintain  
oppressions, and that our projects within the current legal framework  
may merely shift the sands a bit. By eliminating one form of  
oppression, we may create another.

Therefore, Unbound seeks to begin a redefinition project, staking out  
a place for left legal intellectual discussion and formulating a new  
set of ideas for a new century. Two decades after the birth of  
Critical Legal Studies, there is an urgent need for new politics  
based upon and interacting with new theory. This discussion must  
include both systemic critique and productive self-interrogation,  
both of which we plan to promote in Unbound.

Unbound seeks to undo the traditional hierarchies of the student- 
edited legal journal. To that end, writers are responsible for their  
own citations, and student editors will provide substantive feedback  
on the arguments made. We're interested in intellectual interaction—  
not housekeeping for authors. We welcome submissions in a wide  
variety of forms, from relatively traditional law review articles to  
shorter essays and even personal narratives of legal experience. The  
tone can be personal and reflective, cool and analytical, heated and  
polemical, or whatever else serves your purposes.

Email: unbound@law.harvard.edu

Unbound is available free of charge as an Open Access journal on the 
Internet.

Current Issue: Volume 1 Spring 2005

Date: 14 July 2005