History has consistently lent its language to critical approaches to law. In contemporary critical legal studies however, this bond of engagement between law and history appears severely eroded. The words of history and the words of law seem to move further and further apart. With this special issue we are seeking to revive the dialogue between law and history. In doing so, we are not aiming to provide a better legal history, nor offer correctives to the historical development of legal theory or doctrine. Rather, our objective is to address legal scholarship’s ‘forgetfulness’ as to the critical possibilities history holds for law. So we are inviting papers that, broadly speaking, engage with history as a resource of critique for law – as a site of an alternative way of thinking about law. If thinking and writing historically about law necessary involves time, this act is also a form of ‘localising’ law. In acknowledging space and time as significant factors in the historical study of law, we would therefore particularly welcome papers exploring the relationship between time, space and the legal institution – the many ways in which the spatial and the temporal implicate law or are implicated by law. More specifically, questions that papers may wish to raise might include:

How do conceptualisations of space and time shape and organise the relationship between law, the political and/or the cultural? How are understandings of space and time constitutive of the stories of the origin of modernity’s legal order? And how do they form and inform the power and authority of law?

What sort of orders of time and space are embedded in law? What forms of thinking, acting and being in the world do they nurture? What kind of experience do they animate for the subject of law? What kind of expectations or potentials for new futures do they open up or foreclose? More specifically, how are gender and/or sexual difference inscribed in these temporal and spatial orders?

What forms of temporal and spatial narrative do culturally and historically contingent legal knowledge (law) engender, disseminate and hold to be true? In particular, how are western conceptions of space and time bound up with law’s self-narration and self-evaluation? And what sort of meanings and values do they attach to legal encounters with `self’, `other’, `nature’ and `culture’?

The AFLJ seeks to focus upon scholarly research using critical feminist approaches to law and justice, broadly conceived.  As a critical legal journal we publish research informed by critical theory, cultural and literary theory, jurisprudential, postcolonial and psychoanalytic approaches, amongst other critical research practices. Articles are usually limited to 8000 words, including footnotes. Prospective contributors are invited to discuss any proposed submissions with an Editor.

Deadline for Submissions

Manuscripts should be sent in electronic form to the Special Issue Editors, Maria Drakopoulou, University of Kent, M.Drakopoulou@kent.ac.uk or Julia Chryssostalis, University of Westminster, chryssj@westminster.ac.uk.  Earlier submissions are welcomed.

Refereeing of Articles

The Australian Feminist Law Journal referees all manuscripts submitted for publication and follows the double-blind refereeing procedure. Referees will be selected with expertise in the author’s area of scholarship. Authors are requested to place their name and affiliation on a separate page, and eliminate any self-identifying citation of one’s own work. This can be done by leaving such citations or reference material blank or otherwise referring to the work in a way which disguises the name of the author. The journal will not accept manuscripts for consideration which are already under consideration by another journal. The Australian Feminist Law Journal is published by the Socio-Legal Research Centre, Griffith University, Australia and is available in all major University libraries and online with Informit, Heinonline, Proquest and EBSCO. An electronic version of the journal style guide can be found on the AFLJ website: http://www.griffith.edu.au/criminology-law/australian-feminist-law-journal/contributor-guide/. Subscription enquiries: aflj@griffith.edu.au.

Special Issue Volume 38 (June 2013)

Special Issue Editors: Maria Drakopoulou and Julia Chryssostalis

Deadline for Submissions:  February 1, 2013