Categorical community

The communitarian alternative to atomistic individualism in legal theory re produces the very error it assails in liberal individualism. Professor Dani el R. Ortiz argues that the poststructuralist critique of the sovereign sub ject as appropriated by communitarian legal theories has been only half-app lied-used as the founding premise for the attack on the "metaphysical indiv idualism" of liberal legal theory but neglected in the elaboration of the c ommunitarian alternative. In asserting that alternative, these theorists en vision monolithic and discrete communities as the foundation of social anal ysis and in so doing counter the anti-foundationalist premises of their the oretical projects. This problem, which Professor Ortiz terms "categorical c ommunity," is analyzed in the works of leading scholars of several movement s. Duncan Kennedy's treatment of community in Critical Legal Studies, Ronal d Dworkin's effort to reconcile communitarianism and liberalism, and Robin West's theory of relational feminism. Further, Professor Ortiz uses the con flict between categorical community and metaphysical individualism as the b asis for a new analysis of the sameness/difference debate in feminist legal theory. Professor Ortiz urges a view of social identity that is more compl ex and attends to the multiplicity intersectionality, and instability of th e individual's relationship to the community.