The Public/Private Distinction: Approaches to the Critique of Legal Ideology

Abstract

This article reconstructs Marx's approaches to the critique of the public/private distinction in law and analyzes contemporary approaches to public/private distinctions in legal studies. Specifically, I focus on three approaches to critiquing the public/private distinction as legal ideology. These approaches are identified in works by Balbus, Klare, and Kennedy. They have affinities with Marx's analyses and demonstrate the incoherence, mystification, and consequences of public/private distinctions in legal discourse and practice. The article demonstrates that the ideological critique of the public/private distinction is characterized by alternative methods and substantive issues. These approaches, I argue, differ because they are concerned with distinctive objectives of inquiry, different arenas of social action, and have distinct purposes.

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