CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL

CONOR GEARTY
With greatness sadness we heard of the untimely and sudden death of Conor Gearty at the age of 67. Conor was the professor of human rights law at the LSE. He was born in Ireland and this led to his lifelong interest in terrorism, state crimes, violations of human rights and social justice. He was a leading scholarly voice on the abuses of anti-terrorism law, publishing Liberty and Security (2013) and Homeland Insecurity: The Rise and Rise of Anti-Terrorism Law (2024). Conor was a towering intellect and a wonderful human being. Open, kind, full of Gaelic joie de vivre, he was liked by everyone who met him. His many students speak of his kindness and generosity, he was a model academic and scholar. I was lucky to have a long, close and productive relationship with Conor. Conor was a prolific and elegant author. His books include among many others Can Human Rights Survive? (2006); Principles of Human Rights Adjudication (2004); and On Fantasy Island. Britain, Europe, and Human Rights...
ARTICLES
CONOR GEARTY
With greatness sadness we heard of the untimely and sudden death of Conor Gearty at the age of 67. Conor was the professor of human rights law at the LSE. He was born in Ireland and this led to his lifelong interest in terrorism, state crimes, violations of human...
From Hyper-Chaos to the Irreversible
My philosophical project of radical democracy stands on two foundational intertwined discoveries that offer a firm ontological grounding of power.[i] 1. The world is radically contingent but is simulated by a world that presents itself...
The Architecture of Inequality: What Apartheid Teaches About Qualified Immunity
Oppression does not arrive wearing a hood; it arrives stamped, filed, and countersigned. What looks like order—forms, doctrines, jurisdiction—can be a choreography of domination. Fanon taught that colonial violence is not only the blow of the baton but the quiet...
The Outframe: How International Law’s Core Excludes Its Margins
International law is frequently represented as universal, neutral, and inclusive; however, from its inception, it has been influenced by, and primarily serves, a limited group of states historically categorised as "civilised.” This hierarchy is subtly embedded in...
Reclaiming the Ground: Lawful Expropriation and Land Justice in South Africa
Colonialism rarely dies; it mutates. Its uniforms change—from khaki to suits, from passbooks to policy papers—but the arrangement it protects remains the same: some live on the land, others live off it. Post-apartheid South Africa knows this intimately. Political...
Speed Limit: What does it mean to regulate AI?
Elena Esposito argues that artificial intelligence is misnamed and that a more accurate descriptor would be ‘artificial communication’.[1] Here, communication is closely connected to the idea of being informed: a communication is pertinent to the extent...
On the relationship between trans politics and disability
In the aftermath of the decision in For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers [2025] USCK 16, many disabled people sought to give practical solidarity to trans people. Disabled activists offered to share their RADAR keys with trans friends. Articles...
No Hearing, No Harm? Rethinking Jurisdiction and Protection in UAE v Sudan
On 5 May 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) removed the case of UAE v Sudan from its docket, declaring it “manifest” that it lacked jurisdiction under Article IX of the Genocide Convention (Order, para 14). Sudan alleged that...
How to Reanimate Rotting Brains in the Age of AI
As artificial intelligence (AI) seeps into our daily lives, its impact on our thinking capacities is becoming increasingly clear. AI is replacing our jobs, increasing government and corporate surveillance, and luring vulnerable internet users into rabbit holes of...
Reflections on the Proscription of Palestine Action
VX Photo/ Vudi Xhymshiti Remember that we are living, writing, waking up, sleeping, lamenting, breathing, resisting, and working amid an acceleration of Israel’s 75-year settler colonial project (underwritten by the US and Europe), or what we have come to...
Resisting Neocolonial Genocidal Hyperreality: A Middle Eastern Voice
Amidst the intellectual and political tumult surrounding the genocide of the Palestinian people, this essay seeks to foreground and amplify a marginalised voice. We aim to intervene in ongoing debates within academia and the wider public in the Global North, which...
In the Crack, a Method: Hope, Utopia, and the Critique of International Law
The rhetoric around the complete erosion of international law has recently proliferated mainstream political discourse and scholarship. But, surprisingly the current state of the international legal order or its lack thereof is not unprecedented. Trump’s...
CfP: Feminist Approaches to International Law in Times of Atrocity, Anthropocene and Authoritarian Capitalism
In a Declaration appended to the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) Advisory Opinion concerning the Occupied Palestinian Territories in 2024, Judge Hilary Charlesworth drew attention to the discriminatory effects of Israel’s policies on Palestinian women and...
Illegality and Law-full-ness
A week before the 13th Berlin Biennale’s opening in June 2025, a social media account took to criticizing Biennale curator Zasha Colah’s contention, made in a recently published interview, that “there is no censorship in Germany”.[1] The social media response was...
CfP: Critical Legal Conference – Exeter
The Call for Papers for this year's CLC will remain open until the 31st of July. Please read the full description below. If you would like to participate – send short abstract of your proposed paper to the stream organisers (as mentioned under their stream heading)....
Israel’s Military Aggression against Iran: Some preliminary reflections
We are excited to have the following piece by Iranian theorist Parviz Sedaghat,[1] translated into English by Leila Faghfouri Azar and first published in Farsi in pecritique.com. 1)Israel’s military attack against Iran started in the early hours of Friday June 13 by...
Humiliation by Design: The Legal Aesthetics of Marginalisation
In liberal democracies, we are often told that law is blind to appearance. Yet, the opposite is often true. Public law and policy repeatedly mobilise aesthetic categories—such as decorum, decency, and ugliness—to judge who belongs in public spaces and...
The Critique of Trump’s Lawlessness Misses the Point
The Trump administration has felt like a nonstop emergency: bigoted attacks on trans people, immigrants, and civil rights in the name of a war on so-called wokeness; the rollback of environmental and public health monitoring; attacks on public employees and the labor...
Native Title and the Juridical Field: Bourdieu in Australia
The 1992 Mabo v Queensland (No 2) decision marked a watershed in Australian legal history, as the High Court formally rejected the doctrine of terra nullius and acknowledged the existence of native title. But legal revolutions are rarely what they seem. This...
The Politics of Vision, Targeting, and Palestine
‘The whole history of Palestinian struggle has to do with the desire to be visible.’ Edward Said On the evening of March 3rd, 1991, Rodney King, a 25-year-old Black American, was pulled over by LAPD officers after a high-speed chase. What followed was recorded by...
Tony Blair Will Not Save Us from Climate Hysteria
A resident holds a sign warning passers-by to slow down to reduce wakes that exacerbate flooded streets in a suburb of Houston, Texas, as U.S Border Patrol riverine agents evacuate residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey August 30, 2017. U.S. Customs and Border...