New Directions in Citizen Justice and Radical Social Change

The law-psychology movement emerged in the 1960s with a steadfast commitment to humanizing the law and legal decision making, guided by psychological values and insights. Many observers note that the movement has mostly failed to meet its objectives, unable to produce social change in any radical or otherwise substantial way. One explanation for these disappointing results is that no systematic and thorough attempt has been made to explain what the radical agenda embodies, especially in relation to identifying its core assumptions. Relying on several insights as developed within critical (criminological) theory and as appropriated by radical law-psychology scholars, this chapter describes five, cutting-edge approaches to contemporary psycholegal inquiry. These include the perspectives of: (1) political economy; (2) feminist jurisprudence; (3) anarchism; (4) postmodernism; and (5) chaology. Individually, these orientations provide a clearer portrait of what radical scholarship in the academy has come to represent. Collectively, these approaches suggest a new and much needed direction in law-psychology research, especially in relation to advancing the aims of justice in the legal sphere.