Mignanelli, Nicholas, Legal Research and Its Discontents: A Bibliographic Essay on Critical Approaches to Legal Research (January 13, 2022). 113 Law Library Journal 101 (2021), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4007705 – “What is Critical Legal Research? What is “critical” about critical legal information literacy? What is a critical law librarian, and what must one do to be one? This bibliographic essay attempts to answer these questions in the course of providing a comprehensive introduction to the history, literature, and practices found at the intersection of critical legal theory and legal research.”

In recent years, library scholars have used critical theory to reevaluate the concepts that lie at the heart of their field. In law librarianship, however, the practice of applying the insights of critical legal theory to the legal research process is more than
three decades old. The law librarians and legal scholars undertaking this work-what Nicholas Stump calls “Critical Legal Research” (CLR)’-seek to expose how external power structures shape the organization of legal information and embed biases in the tools of legal information retrieval. Adherents of CLR (critical law librarians) develop and deploy methods and strategies designed to contend with the limitations that these power structures set on legal innovation, law reform, and, ultimately, human freedom.”