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."
