Socio-Economics as way of understanding law-related economic issues and as a paradigm for the organization and allocation of assets, resources, responsibilities, and opportunities, generally has been viewed by critical scholars as a “kinder, gentler” version of the neoclassical economic paradigm, a characterization that is not necessarily complimentary. However, socio-economics and critical legal studies, critical race theory, LatCrit theory, feminist legal theory and queer theory share many of the same concerns about the distributive consequences of mainstream economic theory, and all of these approaches aspire to the goals of protecting human dignity and promoting economic justice. This panel will offer a preliminary examination of the areas of commonality and conflict between socio-economics and the critical schools.