CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
The Foundational Wrong of Law (Symposium)
Stephen Connelly There is an implicit assumption in jurisprudential reasoning that this reason, as form, is without inconsistency. Error is procedural: it results either from misrecognition of the ‘true’ law, from ignorance of the true facts, or from misapplication of the law to the facts. The practical syllogism is itself unassailable; what is wrong in the law is a failure to reason in accordance with its form. If an inconsistency (or antinomy) appears in a particular judg(e)ment as a result of ‘difficult’ facts or intuitively unjust laws, the inconsistency is a defect of the judge, not of practical legal reason itself. The judge is referred back to the law (literally in civilian systems), until the ‘apparent’ inconsistency is ironed out and the facts are made to cohere once more. The wrong of law, Kerruish argues [WL255], is this exclusion ab initio from legal reasoning of the very methods of contradiction which could faithfully express the contingencies of...
ARTICLES
Must Society be Defended from Agamben?
Many European countries have by now been in lockdown for more than a week. This has given everyone ample time to reflect on our current condition. Many of the world’s leading critical thinkers have shared their thoughts with us through op-eds, blog posts, and so on....
A Corona Utopia in Three Parts
“This episode of Black Mirror sucks!” The slogan that briefly went viral in the United States after the election of Trump has now acquired an even more infectious, irresistible irony for many in coronavirus-stricken Europe. The fear of loved ones and ourselves getting...
Covid-19 and the Continuity of the Familiar
The outbreak of Covid-19 is billed as a ‘once in a century event’. It has appeared as the prophesised rupture in our social, economic and political fabric of the world, with the recognition that what follows may not resemble what humanity has become used to. It is...
Never Waste a Crisis: A Practical Guide?
It is too early to predict how the COVID-19 pandemic will unfold and over what period of time. But we should expect that, much like September 11, the world afterwards will be very different to the world before. We know we should never waste a crisis, but the right...
Virus: All That Is Solid Melts into Air
There is a debate within the social sciences about whether it is easier to ascertain the truthfulness and quality of a society’s institutions under normal daily circumstances or in exceptional situations, during times of crisis. One can probably learn from both types...
Covid: The Ethical Disease
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNJwioSoyGA This morning, as I was cycling down a road I frequently take on my way to work, I came across a blockage, big orange plastic net boards cutting across the way, stopping all traffic from going through. Some road works,...
Decolonisation Is Not About Ticking a Box: It Must Disrupt
As academics in a post-truth world, I believe we have an urgent and important task. In a world where emotional appeals and emotive decision-making are seemingly the norm, academia should be in the business of truth. Rather than lament reality, we should be revealing...
From historiography to historiographical theory, or looking for politics where there can be none
Not long ago, at an international law conference, in my panel was a scholar whom I admire a lot (still do). After presenting their paper, said scholar was asked a methodological question to which they briskly retorted—I quote—that they don’t give a shit about...
Toward a New Universal Declaration of Human Rights (I)
Baruch de Spinoza, the great 17th century philosopher, wrote that the two basic human emotions (or “affections”, as he called them) are fear and hope, and he suggested that a balance needs to be struck between the two, because fear unmingled with hope leads to despair...
Digging for Failure
Dig Station is an idle tapping game, with grinder overtones, produced by C6H6 and available on the Amazon app store. The premise is that you are in control of a station that is digging into the earth’s crust in order to mine resources. You begin simply with a drill:...
Hong Kong, or How Social Struggles Can Reinforce the Cartography of Capitalist Enclosure
If the debates incited by the 2019 Hong Kong Protest Movement, known as the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill (or Anti-ELAB) Movement, have revolved around conflicting interpretations that favor differently weighted readings of geopolitics and more fundamental...
Dangerous Spaces
In radical or alternative left movements, the idea of safety is paramount. It is rare to go to a meeting about feminist, anti racist, queer, or otherwise progressive politics without a safe (or safer) spaces policy being presented. This document, whether read aloud or...
Marxist Legal Theory: Dictatorship of the Proletariat
This is one of a series of key concepts in Marxist legal theory organized in collaboration with our friends at Legal Form: A Form for Marxist Analysis of Law. All articles in this series, including the present one, will appear concurrently on Legal...
Marginalisation of Expertise & Media Bias
We write as members of the UK academic community. We are deeply concerned by the marginalisation of expertise in the media coverage of the general election. In particular we would like to highlight the lack of attention paid to recent analyses by economists and...
Dear White, It’s OK to be white
In October 2018, the motion ‘It’s OK to be white’ was introduced in the Australian Parliament by White Supremacist Senator Pauline Hanson. The motion called for the ok-ness of Whiteness while denouncing ‘anti-white racism’ and ‘attacks on Western civilization.’...
Refugee Struggles: From Helsinki to Paris
Even if refugees have lost their political community, their “society of equals” comprising “reciprocity and commonness” and “mutual agreements and promises,” as Hannah Arendt says, they are able to become and act as political subjects.Hannah Arendt (2005), The...
Liverpool Law Externals Resign over Management Threats
External examiners for Liverpool Law School today resigned en masse over Liverpool University management's threats to students. With the authors' permission we reproduce the letter below. Solidarity with everyone striking this week! We, the undersigned, have...
The End of the Transition to Democracy in Chile
After the historic march in Santiago that gathered more than a million people, and of multitudinous marches in other cities and regional capitals, the sense of the protests that began more than three weeks ago and led the country to the most acute crisis since the...
Gilles Deleuze: Jurisprudence
Key Concept The relationship between law and the thought of the French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, is an interesting one. Throughout his work, Deleuze, often, manifested his contempt for judgment and representation – undeniably, two fundamental characteristics of...
New Police powers aimed at #ExtinctionRebellion?
The Metropolitan Police force have requested greater powers to deal with the threat of #ExtinctionRebellion. The exact details of the request are unclear, but some of the proposals have begun to emerge. And they are couched in what may be politely be called ‘utter...
Why Context Matters in the Trans Prisoner Policy Debates
‘Let women prisoners decide’ on trans policy sounds democratic but follows a concerning trend of anti-trans groups using women prisoners for their own political agendas In a recent blog post, the Director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS) argues that...
