“Duncan Kennedy’s story about the history of legal theory is very procrustean, as he acknowledges, and very focused on specifically legal history. Is this a problem for his theory?”

Yes.

” Does he get big parts of the story wrong”
No.

Though, I disagree with his account of what he calls CLT – I must read Morton Horwitz on that point.

I do agree with the rest of his historical account, roughly; his views don’t have to be “procrustean” or phenomenological and I’ve said that to him.

I don’t agree with his epistemology: laws are not indeterminate, or at least don’t have to be.

Probably I will wind up helping him refine his theory to make it more accurate.

“out of an excessive concern with law professors and judges, rather than broader economic conditions?”

That’s basically my view, he pays very close attention to scholars and not enough to economic and military facts on the ground. Though together with Horwitz, who seemed to have been his mentor, that critique fades, because Horwitz seems very much concerned with facts and footnoting them.

” Or is his a self-contained story that supplements and enriches historical narratives about economics or social history?”

His theory isn’t self contained but when juxtaposed with other better founded theories becomes potentially unstoppable.

Basically, he regards things I take seriously as convenient fictions, and that fact makes it harder for me to take him seriously.

This really is the critique of cls, that it didn’t get taken seriously due to making esoteric and outrageous claims. And the world’s poor and oppressed and exploited all deserve much better than that. Progressive jurists must make credible arguments that win both within the system and to change the system. In that sense, at least, Kennedy is being outpaced by MacKinnon.