CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
Prefigurative Law Reform: Creating a New Research Methodology of Radical Change
Image by Noah Purifoy | http://www.noahpurifoy.com/joshua-tree-outdoor-museum Prefigurative politics and law have long been seen as opposing phenomena – one a grassroots radical practice that embodies sought-after norms (horizontality, social justice, and ecology, for instance); the other an institutional structure that is typically hierarchical and backed by force. Yet, there is a growing interest in the relationship between the two. In this short piece, I want to consider a specific form of prefigurative law – the imaginary law reform proposal. This is an experimental research method, I have been working with over the past 5 years, inspired by critical legal roleplaying – including the simulated progressive judgment-writing of feminist and other radical judgment projects. See, for instance, the current Anthropocene Judgment Project, producing anticipatory judgments for the ecological crises of the future. Crafting a law reform proposal can be prefigurative in...
ARTICLES
Prefigurative Law Reform: Creating a New Research Methodology of Radical Change
Image by Noah Purifoy | http://www.noahpurifoy.com/joshua-tree-outdoor-museum Prefigurative politics and law have long been seen as opposing phenomena – one a grassroots radical practice that embodies sought-after norms (horizontality, social justice, and...
‘Biology trumps identity’: Law as the Ultimate Arbiter of Truth?
Over the last decade there has been a marked increase in (public, legal etc.) challenges to the language of “identity” and “self-identifcation” primarily in the context of gender, but now noticeably also around other categories including race and disability. The...
We do this for each other
It’s a tip, a trickle. I’ve read international law and international relations in three institutions and three countries. In each, I’ve twisted and turned, tripped and fallen willingly into rabbit holes and inexplicable complexities. People wrapped in clothes that...
Critical Phenomenology as a Good Friend
Aspiration concept and ambition idea as a chopped trunk casting a shadow of a tree as an achievement recovery and hope for futur success symbol in a 3D illustration style. When people ask me ‘why phenomenology?’ I usually point to emerging research in psychology and...
The Residual as Method: Thinking on the Margins of the Interview
“Recording No. 1: 21st January 2022 (00:01-00:31) [Note to self: We are eating peanuts in his veranda (!)]” This is how the transcript of my interview with a key activist of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), the most popular (but much maligned) social and civil...
The Canon as Method, or, the Strange Joy of Footnotes
Footnotes are routinely associated with boredom and annoyance—even dread, if the matching of a journal’s style requirements adds dozens of footnotes to retool to our already overfilled plates. Sure, we are aware of the importance of rigorous citation, its necessity...
Please Mind the Gap: A Venn Diagram Story of Method in International Law
Working in international law as government lawyers for many years, method was not a day-to-day concern for us. Although we dealt daily in the ‘sources’ of international law, the question of ‘method’ was not part of the picture. The day-to-day job of a government...
In which I posit you as a legal methodology agony aunt
This is a cry for help! Specifically, it is a cry for legal methodological help. So if you are good on this stuff please read on and maybe get in touch. In order to explain my problem, I need to fill you in on some background. I came to legal scholarship...
Dance Me to the End of Law: Art, Justice, Improvisation
https://player.vimeo.com/video/446988530?h=e59ce0d8f2" At its core, improvisation demands an ongoing interaction with shifting tight places, whether created by power relations, social norms, aesthetic traditions, or physical technique. Improvised dance literally...
Art as Legal Method
Initially, our project was an experiment. What would happen if an artist created a visual response to a piece of legal scholarship that criticised how law regulates public spaces? What insights into art, law and justice might be generated? What started as an art...
Orienting oneself in the archive
"Let us then make up our minds to go forward untrammelled by the narrow and transient interests of nationalism in civil aviation towards the wider and more lasting goal of international welfare. If this Assembly achieves no more than to inculcate a lasting devotion to...
How to Stop A University: The Case for Indefinite Strike Action
Zara Dinnen and James Eastwood, Co-Chairs of the Queen Mary UCU Branch, contribute to the discussion within the union about possible next steps. Their views are expressed in a personal capacity. You might be reading this with a range of emotions. You have recently...
Staying in Shape: Writing, Questions, Method
The way one asks a question affects the way one is able to respond. This seems to be a truism. It also means that the way one shapes a question to turn it into the magical scholarly formula – a research question – is something that both enables and constrains...
In Praise of Flowers and Pebbles, or Why We Push Back Against Methodology
Views From a PhD Student Imagine for a moment that you are planning a walk through a well-known, popular forest. It has clear trails marked by those who went before. You could, perhaps, rigidly plan out in advance which trails you will follow. Or you could approach...
Collaging and Frottage as Legal Methodology
Stolk/Vos, Sag der Welt dass kein Krieg mehr ist, 2022, mixed paper materials, 50 x 70 cm Collaging as methodology of legal research entails co-constructed research through collective, multisensory practices of data collection. This methodology is anchored in the...
PURE VIBES
I write this blog as a Global South student and practitioner of international law. My education in the subjects of Legal Methods and International Law began at an Indian law school, amidst an ocean of monotony. Understandably, neither subject stirred any enthusiasm....
The Story of Your Nose or Why (International) Law and Linguistics is Fun
By now, the professor was shaking his head so hard I started to fear it might fall off. I was at an important international law conference in 2014, co-presenting our international law and linguistics research for the first time with my co-author from linguistics. As...
The (Dis)Entanglement of Method, Methodology and Epistemology
Sandra Harding (1987) did not believe feminists should focus too much of their discussion on methodology, but instead focus on the ‘good’ research that was being done. Harding’s position does not stem from any coyness towards the methodological ‘achievements’ made by...
The ‘Joy’ of Methodology
The soul-crushing mind-numbing gut-wrenching heart-breaking “joy” of methodology. I was never taught me-tho-do-lo-gy. Whatever that is. Isn’t the method just 1. Idea, 2. Struggle, 3. Word vomit? That’s how I do it. I wonder, what if? What if I want to be inspired by...
The Joy of Methodology: A Blog Carnival
For many researchers, methodology and joy don’t belong in the same sentence. Legal researchers in particular often seem to place methods-talk somewhere between irritating impediment and unbridgeable chasm. Some of these anxieties are well founded: law school legal...
Brazil: Warning to Democratic Navigation
On the 8th of this month, a week after the inauguration of President Lula da Silva, an event took place in Brasília that only took by surprise those who did not want to know, or had no way of knowing, about its widely disseminated preparation on social networks. The...
