Legal Systems Orthodoxy

The established, institutionalized set of beliefs about law that dominate legal education, practice, and discourse—the often-unexamined assumptions that law is neutral, that courts are independent, that legal reasoning is distinct from politics, that rights protect freedom, that the rule of law is inherently good, and that current legal arrangements are fundamentally just. Legal systems orthodoxy includes specific commitments: that judges apply law rather than make it, that legal procedures ensure fairness, that legal rights empower the powerless, that the adversarial system produces truth, that legal evolution is progress. Like all orthodoxies, it provides a framework for legal understanding, but it functions as ideology—making legal arrangements seem natural and just, obscuring how law serves power, and delegitimizing critiques of law's role in maintaining inequality. Legal systems orthodoxy determines what legal arguments are considered "sound," what legal arrangements are "just," and who counts as a "serious" legal thinker versus a radical critic.

Example: "She suggested that law might systematically serve ruling class interests—and was dismissed as 'not understanding how law works.' Legal systems orthodoxy doesn't allow questioning of law's neutrality; it's treated as axiomatic rather than contestable."

by Dumu The Void March 17, 2026