Research On Unger’s Critical Theory Of Rule Of Law

Unger is a famous legal scholar and a spiritual leader of Critical Legal Studies Movement in America, He deconstructs the rule of law of liberalism, He believes that the rule of law is a product by accident in the process of development of human history,The objectivity, neutrality and certainty of the law doesn’t exist, Rule of law is not real and it is merely a tool which has the function of ideological rule, And Unger has also transcended Critical Legal Studies Movement, He built a grand ultra liberal theory framework. Although Unger’s theory received many critiques from scholars and his reasoning process and the accuracy of the theory are questionable, it is undeniable that Unger’s theory provides a new perspective for us to understand the rule of law in the West, He inspires us to make a critical review of the rule of law itself. This paper aims to make a systematic analysis of Unger’s thoughts of rule of law and make analysis of Unger’s argumentation process, by comparing Unger with other legal scholars and by pointing out the problems of Unger’s thoughts, I hope it can contribute to construction of rule of law in our country.This paper is divided into four sections: The first part introduces Unger’s life and his works, and briefly introduces the Critical Legal Studies Movement appears during the 1970 s to 1980 s. The second part elaborates Unger’s thoughts of rule of law, The deep structure paradox of liberalism is the philosophical foundation of Unger’s thoughts of rule of law, Through the classification of legal types and their corresponding social forms, Unger tries to prove that the rule of law is the occasional phenomenon in the process of development of human history, The rise of welfare-cooperation states in post-liberal society disintegrates the publicity, substantiality,universality and autonomy of law, The rule of law is not real, Law is merely the embodiment of the ideological functions of the ruling class, Unger’s view on the ideological function of law is affected by Western Marxism, Gramsci and Habermas isthe most representative. In the third part, In order to better understand Unger’s thoughts,I compare Unger’s thoughts of rule of law with Frank, Dworkin and Posner about the certainty, neutrality and objectivity of the law. The fourth part is a brief evaluation of Unger’s thoughts; I will point out the existing defects of Unger’s thoughts in the process of reasoning and his utopia tendency and his misunderstanding to China’s political legal problems.In Conclusion, I will summarizes the reasoning approach of Unger’s thoughts of rule of law and point out the practical significance, the limitations and the future research direction of this paper.