Critical Legal Thinking

Radicalizing Women’s Rights Internationally

by Tanya Monforte • 19 October 2017

The recent “burqa bans” in Austria and Quebec appear to be troubling legal manifestations of the rising tide of Islamaphobia in Europe and North America. The news coverage of the bans coincided for me with a bout of reflexive angst regarding the recent publication of an article on Shari’a based reservations to CEDAW. I wrote the article years ago while working in women’s rights as a non-Muslim in Egypt and having to struggle with problems of the intersection of international law and religion. The desire to further crystallize assumptions behind my approach and articulate the politics of my position prompted this reflection. My feminist approach aims at the perpetually shifting mark of solidarity with women across borders and in very…

by Margot E Salomon • 18 October 2017

In a 2013 contribution aimed at influencing the post-2015 development agenda, seventeen UN Special Rapporteurs recommended that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) should include a goal on the provision of social protection floors. In April 2015 the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR or the Committee) issued a Statement on ‘Social protection floors: an essential element of the right to social security and of the sustainable development goals’. In September 2015 the SDGs were adopted by the General Assembly with the first Goal to ‘End poverty in all its forms everywhere’. Among the key SDG tools to achieve that noble objective is the target to ‘Implement nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including floors,…

by Russel Rickford • 2 October 2017

This post is an amended version of remarks read at a rally organized by Cornell University’s Black Students United (BSU) on September 23, 2016. Students gathered to protest the recent police shootings of Tyree King, Terence Crutcher, and Keith Lamont Scott. It is reposted here with the kind permission of Black Perspectives. Sisters and brothers: I’m delighted that you are mobilizing. Your demonstration reflects your recognition that the escalating crisis of racial terrorism requires a firm and uncompromising response. Your protest in the face of daily atrocities is a sign of your humanity and your determination to live in peace, freedom, and dignity. But as we demonstrate, we must take pains to avoid certain tactical and programmatic errors that often plague progressive protest…

by Boaventura de Sousa Santos • 28 September 2017

How a Left position regarding the Catalonia referendum on 1 Oct 2017 could present itself juridically and politically The Catalonia referendum this Sunday will become part of the history of Europe, possibly for the worst of reasons. I will not discuss here the substantive questions, which can be interpreted as being historical, territorial, respecting internal colonialism or self-determination. These are the most important questions, without which it is impossible to understand the current situation. My opinion on them is unassuming. Actually, many will consider my opinion irrelevant for, being Portuguese, I do tend to feel particularly solidary with Catalonia. In the same year that Portugal got rid of the Phillipes (1640) Catalonia failed the same objective. Of course, Portugal was…

by Matthew McManus • 26 September 2017

There is a considerable debate about the value of Marx’s earlier philosophical works relative to his mature period writing the three volumes of Capital. Some believe that they are of great importance for understanding Marx, while others such as Althusser[1] famously believed that the early works were mere preparation for presenting the full science of history and philosophy of dialectical materialism in the great work. I fall squarely into the first camp. While Capital is undoubtedly Marx’s masterpiece, there is a great deal in it that remains ambiguous and not always spelled out. This is particularly true of Marx’s philosophical methodology. Capital is the masterpiece of dialectical materialism, and yet there is very little written about that in its pages. Part…

by Kevin Jon Heller • 6 September 2017

[This letter was sent to the editors of the Journal of the History of International Law on 29 August 2017 and published at Opinio Juris. It is republished here with permission.] Dear Editors, We are writing to express our grave concern about the publication of an article entitled ‘The Forgotten Genocide in Colonial America: Reexamining the 1622 Jamestown Massacre within the Framework of the UN Genocide Convention’ in the latest issue of the Journal of the History of International Law. We find the decision to publish this article strange to understand to the extent that it combines dubious anachronisms and legal framings, problematic application of legal doctrine, selective presentation of facts and quotations, and outright contradictions and falsehoods. Notably, it is…

by Michaela Brangan • 25 August 2017

[M]any Trump supporters said they welcomed [Trump’s] visit as an opportunity to express their views.Tim Foley, an Army veteran who leads his own citizens’ border patrol in Arizona, showed his Glock handgun to a reporter, saying he and his comrades had come to Phoenix to ‘keep the peace.’ Ignorance is fueling the opposition to Trump,” Mr. Foley, 57, said in an interview outside the convention center alongside other members of his Arizona Border Recon, which he calls a nongovernmental organization. (Critics call it a militia.) ‘We’re the last line of defense. No one wants another Charlottesville.’ New York Times, August 22 2017 “Police Use Tear Gas on Crowds After Trump Rally” A petition submitted to the White House on August…

by Aoife O'Donoghue and Henry Jones • 24 August 2017

Over recent years there have been significant advances in scholarship on the history of international law. Critical histories, including feminist, Marxist and most productively Third World perspectives, shed fresh light on the history of the discipline and its political frame illuminating contemporary international law in important ways. Amongst the small pond of critical international lawyers, the question of historical methodology, and how to use history as a lawyer is the subject of intense debate, particularly the attendant methodological anxieties inherent to challenging dominant narratives. The Journal of the History of International Law is a key arena where this re-examination of the history of the discipline occurs. The Journal’s mission statement reads as follows: The Journal of the History of International…

by Gabriel Méndez Hincapíe • 16 August 2017

On an emerging phenomenon in the field of political affairs. On the Road to the Cybernetic World War Energy is essential for the production and movement of “things”. Using an assemblage of machines the industrial revolution exponentially increased the energy available to human society; however, such machinery required human supervision and control to attain its objectives. There are basically three “ideal types” of machines: those that convert matter from one form of matter to another; those that convert energy from one form of energy to another; and, those that exchange information. Cybernetics deals with the latter. In that sense, the Internet may be conceived of as an immense machine encompassing the breadth and length of the planet that has the real-time…

by Stephen Connelly • 5 August 2017

A catastrophe is only violent in its uncalled for appearing, and its coming is all around us in the smallest things. This year’s Critical Legal Conference takes place at Warwick under the title Catastrophe. This is not without reason, for it sees the notion of catastrophe returning to one of its theoretical homes. It was Warwick thinkers that coined the term ‘catastrophe theory’ for an assemblage of physico-mathematical techniques that explore ruptures, or jumps in behaviour as diverse as stretched elastic bands, ships at sea, human creativity, and stock market crashes. Led by Christopher Zeeman, from the mid-1960s a team which also included Ian Stewart and Tim Poston married practical applicability of the theory to its popularisation, and may be…

by Ricardo Sanín Restrepo • 3 August 2017

The original theory of the encryption of power was formulated by Gabriel Méndez-Hincapíe and I in an article published in Spanish in 2012. In the following years, several panels regarding the theory where held at the Critical Legal Conference, in 2014 at the University of Sussex and in 2015 at the University of Wrocław, Poland, with another one organized by Enrique Prieto and Lina Cespedes coming up in this year´s conference at Warwick. The concept has also been debated amply in other forums such as the last three meetings of the Caribbean Philosophical Association, among others. In what follows I will procure a simple outline of the core meaning of ‘encryption of power’ that may shed light on its focus,…

by Siraj Izhar • 31 July 2017

In the unfolding drama of work in the digital age, new circumstance demands new language. Gig economy, on-demand work, sharing economy, precarious work, automation, zero-hour contracts, outsourcing, workfare. Whilst the entire stage set changes, the central character of the drama remains. The worker. If this indicates both a resilience yet a revisionism of the worker today, there is the need to probe the worker subject of the new economies through new ones. Thus here is the Workerant. Who is the workerant? The following are. The Uber taxi driver. The Deliveroo courier. The warehouse picker in an Amazon fulfilment centre. The handyman on Taskrabbit. The workerant is the human tethered to handsets, whose real life boss is an app. Whose labour…

by Connor O'Callaghan • 25 July 2017

A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language.” — Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks In 2013, Darlene Necan, a homeless First Nations woman from northern Ontario, Canada, began the construction of a modest one-room cabin on an off-reserve Saugeen territory in Savant Lake — land formerly occupied by her parents, and passed down through a verbal agreement recognized by the Anishinabek Nation. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, however, insisted the ‘Township of Savant Lake’ to be Crown land. Consequently, Necan faced potential charges of thousands of dollars when the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry considered her actions in breach of the Ontario Public Lands Act. Subsequently, the government…

by Salman Hussain • 21 July 2017

The liberal critique of the recent rise of populism reveals an uneasiness toward ‘unruly’ emotional crowds and their leaders’ anti-democratic postures – albeit these figures have captured political power through democratic means.[i] Trump, Le Pen, Modi, and Erdogan have indeed stirred nationalist emotions and collective energies in explosive directions. Erdogan’s purge of the Turkish state is just one of the recent examples of the potential of bloody nationalist effervescence, while Modi’s anti-Muslim rhetoric has rendered a new life to violent Hindu nationalism in India.[ii] Crowds were objects of scientific fascination and civic concern for the bourgeoisie in nineteenth century Europe, and researchers, like Gustave Le Bon, and later Sigmund Freud, closely studied them. Le Bon postulated that crowd possessed a…

by Ntina Tzouvala • 14 July 2017

Mr Macron has been nostalgic lately. First, he was nostalgic for the 18th century and hereditary rule asserting that the French people did not want to execute the king and that the revolution has left a (king-shaped) void at the heart of the Republic that only other paternal figures can fill. Then, Mr Macron was nostalgic for the 19th century. Responding to a question about the possibility of a Marshall Plan for Africa, the French President dismissed the idea purporting that, unlike Europe after 1945, Africa’s problem is ‘civilisational’ and, therefore, an intervention along the lines of the Marshall Plan would be a waste of billions that would not stabilise anything. Macron’s response is striking, and telling not only of…

by Emma Patchett • 12 July 2017

The Gypsy and Traveller community is obliged to have respect for a system which both marginalises and excludes them. On 5 July 2017, a community of Travellers pulled up to Preston Park in Brighton. The council and the police soon descended on them to inform them that they were ‘trespassing’, as the land was covered by a Public Space Protection Order [PSPO]. They were told that if they did not vacate the land they would be liable for fixed penalty notices, and were directed to another transit site using police powers under s.62 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. Introduced in 2014 under the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act, PSPOs enable councils to criminalise particular, non-criminal,…

by Matthew McManus • 29 June 2017

Alain Badiou is one of continental philosophy’s most original and creative minds. His politics can be understood as evading both the temptations of analytical political theory and post-modern skepticism through his metaphysics. According to Badiou, the multiplicity of Being guarantees that the old social totality will break down, and a new one will emerge through subjects who show fidelity to the truth of this radical event. In this way, he seeks to capture what is best in the classical Marxist (materialist) project as read through Althusser and others, while still leaving more room for subjectivity than orthodox Marxism would allow. This is a fine line to walk, and to his credit, Badiou often does so successfully. In many ways, his…

by Paddy McDaid • 16 June 2017

The chatter, comments, and headlines are clear: the perennial ‘Irish problem’ has returned to haunt the British stage. But what is there to hear in the silence that frames the chatter? To the surprise and unease of many in Britain the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has been thrust front-and-centre onto the political stage of their liberal democracy. While this appearance has elicited much comment and chatter amongst the good people of that liberal democracy, the real question perhaps should be, beyond this comment and chatter which will undoubtedly die down when the ‘coalition of chaos’ comes to its inevitable end, what does this appearance tell us about British society and politics at a more general level? In Britain, since the first mention…

by Bernard Keenan • 15 June 2017

As the Conservative Party’s majority evaporated in the early hours of 9th June 2017, the new parliamentary power of the DUP quickly came into focus. With Sinn Fein resolutely abstaining from taking their seats, the Democratic Unionist Party find themselves in a position to enter a formal coalition or, more likely, a confidence and supply agreement with the Tories. On the straightforward arithmetic, there is no reason that such an arrangement cannot last a full five-year fixed term. Politically, however, it seems impossible. For the immediate future, however, it suits both Labour and the Conservatives to let the dust settle, make necessary internal changes within their parties, and allow new political distinctions to emerge in particular with regards to Brexit…