Introduction Law and Critique in Central Europe: Laying the Cornerstone

The emergence of critical legal scholarship Central Europe produces an effective break with the prevailing post ideological consensus specific to the continental tradition of treating law as (written) law and nothing beyond. From this vantage point it defines itself as a contrarian movement which opposes not only a strong tradition of legal formalism inherited from the French and Austrian schools of ‘exegesis’ as well as the formalist German ‘conceptual jurisprudence’ (Begriffsjurisprudenz) — significantly strengthened during the period of actually existing socialism — but also mainstream ‘soft positivism,’ which still insists on law’s autonomy and rationality. The strong component of ultra-formalism can even be said to form an objet petit a differentiating the Central European periphery from the Western European centre, perhaps even warranting the existence of a ‘Central European legal family’ alongside the conventionally accepted Romanic, Germanic, Common Law, and Scandinavian ones in Europe. Legal critique in Central Europe also expresses an alternative gesture of renewing links to a tradition of critique well rooted in the Central European ethos and cultural heritage. Caught within the dynamics of the global present, legal cultures of Central Europe cannot escape law’s recent history of contestation and intellectual struggle. The praxis of legal critique in the Central European context defines itself as ecclectic and resolute in the struggle for voicing its disapproval of the legal and political status quo.