Costas Douzinas

COSTAS DOUZINAS is a Member of the Hellenic Parliament, a Professor of Law and the Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London. His recent books include The Meaning of Human Rights (co-edited with Conor Gearty, CUP, 2014), The Cambridge Companion to Human Rights Law (co-edited with Conor Gearty, CUP, 2013), Philosophy and Resistance in the Crisis: Greece and the Future of Europe (Polity, 2013), The Idea of Communism (co-edited with Slavoj Žižek, Verso, 2012), and New Critical Legal Thinking: Law and the Political (co-edited with Matthew Stone and Illan rua Wall, Birkbeck Law Press/Routledge, 2012). Douzinas has served as an editor for Law & Critique, his books have been translated into thirteen languages, and he has written extensively for The Guardian, OpenDemocracy, and other global publications.
A Short History of Just War

A Short History of Just War

Roman Priest (Louvre Museum, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons) Reading British newspapers' commentary on the Ukraine war gives a sense of deja vue. We have a return of the ‘West’, of the ‘Free World’, of the exreme demonisation of the opponent. Commentators are...

Alan Hunt, intellectual, academic, radical

Alan Hunt, intellectual, academic, radical

alan hunt, intellectual, academic, radical I met Alan in the summer of 1979 at the Communist University in London. The University, partly Alan’s idea, was a week-long series of lessons organised around the main academic disciplines. I was carrying out my doctoral...

The Redress of Politics

The Redress of Politics

Emilios Christodoulidis, The Redress of Law: Globalisation, Constitutionalism and Market Capture (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Page reference in brackets refer to the book. The Redress of Law is a major achievement. Major in every sense. It is large, a...

On a Recent Change of Tone in Politics and Law

On a Recent Change of Tone in Politics and Law

This is the foreword by Costas Douzinas to Law and Critique in Central Europe: Questioning the Past, Resisting the Present, eds. Rafał Manko, Cosmin Cercel, and Adam Sulikowski (Oxford: Counterpress 2016). I am writing this preface in the Chamber of Hellenic...

Human Rights for Martians

Human Rights for Martians

The human rights movement can be seen as the ongoing but failing struggle to close the gap between the abstract man of the Declarations and the empirical human being. Has it succeeded? Yes and no. 2015 and 2016 have been marked by the heart-breaking images of a moving...

Syriza: The Greek Spring

Syriza: The Greek Spring

According to an oft-repeated cliché, the recent Syriza victory has historic significance. Its place in history books as the first elected left government in Europe is assured. But its importance goes further. The Syriza victory is an important marker in three...