Institutional experimentalism as antithesis to the conservatism of legal criticism

Abstract

The article takes into consideration the premise that the movement of legal criticism (or critical theories of Law), as described by Leonel Severo Rocha, Luis Alberto Warat and Guilherme Roman Borges, has two main deficiencies: first, that, despite linking itself expressly to an emancipatory ethics, it cultivated, on the contrary, a politically and legally conservative discourse; and, second, the movement failed to produce a program or institutional apparatus designed to realize that ethic. Based on these propositions, the article argues that the institutional and democratic experimentalism, theory developed by Roberto Mangabeira Unger, an author commonly associated with that broad movement, offers strategies that address the aforementioned deficiencies, solving them. This is because experimentalism comprises a set of institutional tools that have, as their objective, the realization of an emancipation ideal. The theory also reinforces the need for institutions and the ideals that inform them to be subjected to a heightened degree of revisibility. Therefore, the article concludes that institutional experimentalism simultaneously opposes the conservative tendency of legal criticism and gives the ideal of emancipation the practical tools it needs. The study carried out, which is based on a bibliographic review, is predominantly analytical and its conclusion is deductively drawn from the comparison made between the theoretical precepts that constitute its object.