CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
‘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 University and College Union for instance experienced pushback around a report that stated University and College staff should be able to self-identify their ethnicity. This pushback came primarily from the right of the political spectrum, but also from a diverse range of social media users. This resistance to the language of “identity” on the one hand, can be considered as an attack against neoliberal notions of self-determination, individualism, and autonomy. On the other, such resistance itself could be considered a neoliberal attack on anything that may be perceived as compromising market productivity. Especially given that the report in question dealt with the experiences of discrimination experienced by...
ARTICLES
Open letter to President Lula da Silva
Dear President Lula da Silva, When I visited you in prison on August 30, 2018, in the brief time that the visit lasted I experienced a whirlwind of ideas and emotions that remain as vivid today as they were then. A short time before, we had been together at the World...
The Revolutionary Potential of Transnational Social Security Law: Lessons from Rosa Luxemburg
‘It cannot be denied that the direct cause leading the popular masses into the socialist movement is precisely the “unjust” mode of distribution characteristic of capitalism’ (Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution) ‘While they're standing in the welfare...
The Luxemburgian Trial of Rupture
‘Militarismus auf der Anklagebank’ © akg-images ‘Darling, imagine, how wonderful! Charges have been brought against me by the war minister von Falkenhayn… Imagine, what kinds of evidence one can bring forward, and make reparations for what the donkeys in the Reichstag...
‘Pushed into the Burning Desert’: German ‘Reparations’ to the Herero Through a Luxemburgian Lens
It is a sign of Rosa Luxemburg’s prescience and far-sightedness as a scholar and intellectual that a genocide that was ignored by most of the world, the German genocide of 80% of the Herero population of South-West Africa (now Namibia) of the early 20th century, did...
Rosa Luxemburg’s Self-Determination & Feminist Legal Thought
"As such so long as imperialistic world policies determine and regulate the inner and other outer life of the nation, there can be no ‘national self-determination’ either in war or peace. "(Rosa Luxemburg, The Crisis of German Social Democracy (1915)) Rosa...
Domination is More than Conquest: Rosa Luxemburg’s View from Partitioned Poland
In remarking upon the international legal status of lands acquired by the British Empire, John Westlake, in many ways the quintessential Victorian jurist, declared India to be ‘a peculiar case of conquest, operating by assumption and acquiescence’.[1] He...
‘National nihilism’ reconsidered: Rosa Luxemburg, Polish industrialisation, and the possibilities of post-imperial polity
Luxemburg, empire, and the nation-state In Soviet and Western historiography, Rosa Luxemburg’s remarks on the ‘national question’ routinely appear as a passing foil to the better-known and more widely studied ideas of Vladimir Lenin. In contrast to Lenin, who fought...
The New Form of Capitalist Militarism: The Permanent State of Exception
Today, we face the choice exactly as Friedrich Engels foresaw it a generation ago: either the triumph of imperialism and the collapse of all civilization as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration – a great cemetery. Or the victory of socialism, that...
Accumulation and Jurisdiction
One of Rosa Luxemburg’s great contributions was her insistence that capitalism, even beyond its prehistory, remains far from the realm of peaceful competition. In fact she famously argued the contrary; that violence only grows with the development of global...
‘A few not too troublesome restrictions’: Humanitarianism, Solidarity, Anti-militarism, Peace
What might Rosa Luxemburg’s thinking help us see about humanitarian efforts? What might it reveal for our understanding of the work of international law in both restraining and allowing organised violence, as well as responding to its humanitarian consequences? Within...
Emptying the bottom of the sea: Capital accumulation in the cavities of international law
Birutė Nomeda Stankūnienė, “Emptiness” (courtesy of the artist) Back in September, when the United Kingdom was getting used to a new Prime Minister, a seemingly minor piece of news went unnoticed by the public at large. ‘An obscure UN agency okayed the first...
Foreclosed Temporalities: Imperialism and International Criminal Law
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been widely denounced for its prosecution of exclusively African defendants as an instrument of imperialism and neo-colonialism. The conception of imperialism even in the critical accounts, however, remains imprecise and...
Rosa Luxemburg and the Imperialism of Money
International monetary and currency relations are among the most glaring manifestations of imperial power in contemporary society. Money is necessarily a crucial attribute of state sovereignty and yet power over money is not equally shared. As one moves from...
Introduction: Rosa Luxemburg and International Law
By Christine Schwöbel-Patel and Serena Natile[1] 2021 marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Rosa Luxemburg: a revolutionary theorist and political activist, whose work has provided important political economy critiques of imperialism, capitalism,...
Traditions of Critique: Gramsci, Buttigieg and James Joyce
Translator’s Introduction It is, I believe necessary to rescue Joyce from the industry he created. I don’t know of any other writer who who has given employment to so many scholars with the possible exception of Shakespeare, who has had a longer run at it. Joyce...
COP27: Planet Ransom
‘No State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of the protection of fossil fuel capital, or any claim for losses incurred due to decarbonisation; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.’ Prospects for this...
On the Vanishing of Ecologies: Latour and Global Destinies Imagined from Brazil
This article was written prior to the results of the elections in Brazil. Be not the one who debunks but the one who assembles, not the one who lifts the rugs from under the feet of the naive believers but the one who offers arenas in which to gather. Bruno Latour...
Brazil: Between Democracy and an Ongoing Coup
Last Sunday (October, 30) it became clear that a coup d'état is underway in Brazil. It is a coup of a new kind whose course is not substantially affected by the outcome of the elections. Only its pace may be. It is a coup that began to be set in motion in 2014 with...
Say it louder for the opportunists in the back: ‘Be the Voice of Iran’
As we watch the women and girls of our motherland lead what we can only hope will be a revolution in Iran, many of us abroad have been plagued by a sense of guilt and helplessness in light of our inability to fight with our fellow Iranians against a regime that has...
The Deviant Law Student
In a piece originally published in Socialist Lawyer, Kate Bradley reviews the Critical Legal Pocketbook, and finds it a useful corrective to capitalist legal education, perfect for socialists who study and work in law. Reposted from rs21 There are many...
Damage without Violence, Non-Violence without Peace: The Colston 4
Many of us have read about the Colston 4 Crown Court trial, and the merits of the defences raised in that case. This piece examines the recent appeal by the Attorney General (AG) of that case, and specifically how it fails to clarify a crucial...
