A Defence of Scholarly Activism

Abstract

This article offers a defence of ‘activism’ by constitutional scholars in the face of critiques that cast activist scholarship as unscholarly or subject to systemic distorting pressures. It seeks, first, to frame the inquiry as one about ‘role morality’, which is in turn closely related to the nature of academic inquiry in law. Second, relying upon a plural notion of the nature of academic inquiry within law, it shows that scholarly activism poses no special challenge to scholarly integrity. Finally, the article argues that an activist motivation has plausible epistemic benefits for scholarship that critics of scholar-activists overlook.