Duncan Kennedy

For American luger, see Duncan Kennedy (luger).

Duncan Kennedy

Full name	Duncan Kennedy
Born	1942 (age 68–69) Washington, D.C.
Era	20th-century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Critical Theory
Main interests	Legal philosophy
Notable ideas	Critical Legal Studies movement

Duncan Kennedy (b. 1942 in Washington D.C.) is the Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence at Harvard Law School and a founder of critical legal studies as movement and school of thought. Kennedy has been a member of the ACLU since 1967. According to his own testimony, he has never forgotten to pay his dues.^[1]

Education and early career

Kennedy received an A.B. from Harvard College in 1964 and then worked for two years in the CIA operation that controlled the National Student Association.^[2] In 1966 he rejected his "cold war liberalism."^[3] He quit the CIA^[4] and in 1970 earned an LL.B. from Yale Law School. After completing a clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, Kennedy joined the Harvard Law School faculty, becoming a full professor in 1976. In March 2010 he received an Honoris Causa (honorary degree) Ph.D. title from University of Los Andes (Colombia)

Academic work and influence

In 1977, together with Karl Klare, Mark Kelman, Roberto Unger, and other scholars, Kennedy established the Critical Legal Studies movement. Outside legal academia, he is mostly known for his monograph Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy*[1], famous for its trenchant critique of American legal education.

Bibliography

• A Critique of Adjudication [fin de siecle], (Harvard University Press, 1997)
• Sexy Dressing, etc., (Harvard University Press, 1993)
• "Freedom and Constraint in Adjudication: A Critical Phenomenology," 36 Journal of Legal Education 518 (1986)
• "Form and Substance in Private Law Adjudication," 89 Harvard Law Review 1685 (1976)
• "A Semiotics of Critique," 22 Cardozo Law Review 1147 (2001)
• "Thoughts on Coherence, Social Values and National Tradition in Private Law," in Hesselink, ed., The Politics of a European Civil Code (Kluwer Law International, Amsterdam, 2006)

See also

• Critical legal studies
• Indeterminacy debate in legal theory
• List of deconstructionists

Notes

1. ^ Duncan Kennedy, Harvard Law School Lecture, "Globalization of Legal Ideas and Ideology," April 14, 2011.
2. ^ See Duncan Kennedy, Symposium: Afterword, A Semiotics of Critique, 22 Cardozo L. Rev. 1147, 1166-67 (2001).
3. ^ Id. at 1167.
4. ^ Id.

External links

• Duncan Kennedy's Personal Website
• Duncan Kennedy's Harvard Law School Home Page
• Duncan Kennedy debates Noah Feldman in March 2008 at Harvard Law School, as part of a series on "Confronting Empire"
• Duncan Kennedy at the University of the Andes, lecture on law and economics

Persondata
Name	Kennedy, Duncan
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1942
Place of birth	Washington, D.C.
Date of death
Place of death