More than three decades ago, Robert Gordon used the Vokes v. Arthur Murray case — a case in which the plaintiff, who had been subject to a range of manipulative and arguably dishonest sales tactics, sought to rescind a series of contracts that bound her to purchase a preposterous amount of dance lessons — to explain the pedagogical practices associated with one of the dominant progressive movements in legal academia at the time, the Critical Legal Studies (CLS) movement. 

In this Article, I revisit Vokes, exploring how a 21st century progressive student might profitably approach the case. I discuss some of the straightforward doctrinal puzzles the case raises and offer some observations on why a progressive student should care about analyzing these doctrinal issues. I revisit the CLS approach, highlighting its virtues while expressing skepticism about Gordon’s claim that the CLS analysis would “unfreeze legal reality” — countering the tendency of both judicial discourse and law school pedagogy to make existing hierarchy and subordination seem inevitable. Finally, I note the importance of recognizing that the case is not merely a case about the exploitation of an abstract, unsituated consumer facing an equally abstract aggressive salesperson but a case about gender. As such, I reflect on a familiar question — will increased protectiveness towards vulnerable women help or hurt women generally? — and consider a less familiar one — can we understand the problems that Vokes herself faced without understanding that she might not seek any truly self-regarding ends but simply identify herself, as many women are socialized to do, as someone whose only social role is to elicit something like sexual desire in men?