The contemporary Critical Legal Research (CLR) project exhibits much diverse and vital thought. However, this Essay draws, in particular, on CLR strains in the explicit Marxist- and socialist-steeped traditions. Such a CLR framework posits that a transformative approach to the legal and broader socio-legal research and analysis regime—i.e., as operationalized through praxis modes like CLR-influenced “radical cause lawyering”—can help achieve true systemic re-formations beyond the white patriarchal capitalist paradigm, as necessarily coordinated from local to global scales.

Part I of this Essay outlines the tenets of such a CLR framework. Thereafter, Part II introduces the concept of “non-reformist reforms,” which unlike traditional reforms, are explicitly designed to help transcend the hegemonic liberal capitalist paradigm while simultaneously building the “people power” required for such genuinely emancipatory transformations of the ecological political economy. Part II next puts forth an exploration of how CLR-influenced radical cause lawyering could support such non-reformist reforms through theory, practice, and praxis—and concludes by utilizing an ecosocialist-influenced Green New Deal as a concrete illustration of potential CLR-supported non-reformist reforms in action.