This contribution investigates the tension between critical approaches to legal scholarship and doctrinalism, arguing that there is a risk of weak capacity for power analysis where a rejection of doctrinalism implies a rejection of doctrinal sources of law as a field of study. It highlights how some commonplace dichotomies shaping discussions around doctrinalism shroud the power of doctrinalism. These are a dichotomy between internal and external analysis, between practice and theory, and between description and normativity. The contribution argues for rejecting these dichotomies as a way towards better performing power analysis of doctrinal sources. It discusses three strategies to perform power analysis of the law: finding the problematization in law, historicization, and analysis of outcomes at the group level. They each operate to create breaks with some of the typical assumptions in doctrinal analysis. The strategies may all be combined to create diverse ways of analyzing the power wielded through doctrinalism.