Abstract: In his paper for this collection on the history of the Law and Modernization program at the Yale Law School and in several other papers, David Trubek "affectionately" attributes a role to me, as a sort of angel of destruction or a fox in the chicken coop, a "nightmare." This is exaggerated! I did, however, play a part in supporting the emergence from the program of legal academic projects–the Law and Society Association, the field of law and development and critical legal studies–that rejected some of the meliorist liberal Cold War assumptions of the program’s initial formulation. This paper describes the personal, political and intellectual trajectory that brought me, like many others of my generation of children of the 1950s liberal establishment, to redefine myself as a “radical."