법학에서 비판의 역할 再考 ― 미국의 비판법학운동을 소재로 하여 ―

Today, our legal scholarship is facing an unprecedented phenomenon. As precedents accumulate, a phenomenon is observed in which legal scholarship follows the judiciary instead of maintaining a critical distance from it. Due to this subordination of legal scholarship to precedents, which is called precedent positivism, legal scholarship loses its critical function and is implicitly involved in the reproduction of mainstream regime. It can be said that it is unavoidable for those who study law to examine the nature and method of their intellectual work. In this regard, this study explored the legitimate role of critique in legal scholarship by taking reference to the methodological debates that appeared inside and outside the Critical Legal Studies Movement. The composition of this article is as follows. Firstly, the emergence and decline of the Movement, its key themes, and methodologies are examined. (Ⅱ) Secondly, the critiques of the academic methodology raised inside and outside the Movement are reviewed. (Ⅲ) Finally, the necessity of reflection on academic methodology, the performance of internal critique, escape from judiciary-centered legal scholarship, and reunification of legal studies and social theory are suggested as a methodology of critical legal scholarship. (Ⅳ)