Legal Literacy - Critical Legal Studies (CLS) is an approach in legal studies that rejects the view that law is neutral or objective. This school of thought highlights the aspects of power, social structure, and inequality that underlie the legal system.

By:Miftakhul Shodikin

Critical Legal Studies (CLS) is an approach in legal studies that emerged in the late 20th century and offers a critical perspective on the traditional legal system. CLS rejects the view that law is neutral or objective, and instead, delves into the aspects of power, social structure, and inequality that underlie the legal system.

This school of thought is suspicious of legal formalism, which only assesses legal rules technically without considering their social context.

The purpose of CLS is to delegitimize claims of truth, dismantle power and domination to form a just and equitable system, so that established legal doctrines can be reconstructed to reflect the existing pluralism of values.

CLS is more inclined to highlight social and economic dimensions by seeking to understand the impact of law on society as well as how law can be a tool of power used to perpetuate inequality.

Legal language is also an important focus, as CLS recognizes that language can influence the interpretation and application of law. Overall, Critical Legal Studies encourages critical questions about law and seeks to open insights into conflicts of interest, inequality, and power dynamics hidden within the legal system.

This approach has helped enrich discussions in legal science by highlighting the complexities and social consequences of legal policies and decisions.

In its view, CLS reveals that law is a variable that depends on political variables. This means that the CLS's thinking lies in the fact that law is politics, so CLS rejects and attacks the beliefs of positivists in legal science.

CLS criticizes the prevailing law for being politically biased and never neutral. The legal doctrines that have been formed so far are actually more biased towards those who have power, so it is concluded that the law is flawed from birth because it is formed through political “battles” that tend to be biased and subjective for the benefit of certain groups.

In addition, CLS exemplifies how the law is always “disturbed” by political and economic interests in legislators who are making a law.

According to CLS, in every formation of laws, there must be two interests that overshadow it, namely the interests of power relations and market relations (economy).

Therefore, the “color” of the law will depend on the political regime in power. If the political system is authoritarian in character, then the legal product is repressive.

Conversely, if the political system is democratic in character, then the legal product is responsive. That is why law is a variable that depends on political variables, in other words, legal products also depend on political products.

Behind the law and social order that appear on the surface as something neutral, in reality it is full of certain interests that are biased in culture, race, gender, and even economic interests.

The legal doctrines that have been formed so far are actually more biased towards those who have power, be it economic, political or military power. Therefore, in understanding legal issues, it must always be seen from the context of power-relations.

Furthermore, CLS does not believe in the neutrality of judges' decisions. Judges, as echoed by the school of legal realism, have also not been able to deliver justice because their decisions may not be objective due to being influenced by their life experiences.

CLS also has the characteristic of questioning theories, doctrines, or principles such as legal neutrality, legal autonomy, and the separation of law from politics. For example, CLS criticizes equality before the law (equality before the law).

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This principle is one that contains equality before the law from an idealism of the rule of law. But for CLS, this principle is suspicious because every law-making process is very elitist, so it often only benefits the elite and harms the lower strata. Legal equality will become something utopian.

*This article represents the personal opinion of the author and does not represent the views of the Literasi Hukum Indonesia editorial team.