What would a just legal system even look like in a socialist society? It seems like the legal system under capitalism still holds on to a lot of weird feudal stuff, so it’s kind of hard for me to get my head around what would come after this, if we completely destroyed the bourgeois legal system.
I have no education in law and it all seems intentionally opaque, so I feel like I can’t even begin to imagine an alternative.
Yep, and this is a big reason why I think the US is gonna collapse or balkanize or something in the coming years. Whether you're talking a nation or like, bacteria... organisms that can adapt and change are the ones that survive. American government, culture, society... it's all just so massively sclerotic and inflexible. Completely uninnovative and unable to handle even relatively straightforward challenges like COVID-19 (straightforward in that the solution to slowing it down is well known, we just don't want to do it). The country will allow itself to collapse before they even consider something smart like doing away with the Senate.
Going further down the rabbit hole, also think about who we call "legal scholars" nowadays; the real good ones all died out in the 40's and 50's like the economists. They don't, like, study laws as an abstract concept anymore. Here's a (1987) paper I skimmed written by Mark Tushnet of Georgetown that makes a similar observation. They study the laws we currently have in place and how best to bend them to their political advantage. Just like in any other serious area of discussion, the window of available "legal studies" is shuttered to what we already have in place with a degree or two of leeway on either side.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator