To us legal scholars, immanent critique is a way to conduct a critique of the law 'in its own language'. The critique carried out is intrinsic as the reference point of the reflection is to be found within the practice. There is, however, a difference between a merely internal assessment legality and an immanent evaluation of legitimacy: an immanent critique performs a translation of social realities into the law. We reached a point where we agree that empirics are not enough to account for social realities; instead, we need two things: firstly, we are looking for a social theory able to conceptualise social relationships and conflicts; secondly, we need useful concepts, protocols of questioning, methodological 'moves' susceptible of performing changes in point of view, ways of reframing normative order to account for neglected experiences.
This workshop will host Professor Klaus Günther, whose work engages with both the theoretical and practical aspects of immanent critique. He holds the chair for legal theory at the Goethe Universität in Frankfurt, where critical theory has its German home. He is a representor of the third generation of the Frankfurt school. Klaus Günther is the author of a book titled The Sense of Appropriateness (parts of which are this month’s reading). Don’t be fooled, we are not talking soft-morals, but linguistic turns, critical hermeneutics and what to do with Habermas. We will start the discussion by a conversation on what appropriateness means, the implications of questioning the law’s adequacy and the potentials of critical theory in present context.