CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
Surprising Law (Symposium)
In one of the moving tributes to Valerie Kerruish posted on Critical Legal Thinking[1] shortly after her passing away, Emilios Christidoulidis wrote that “(h)er magnum opus The Wrong of Law, which she spent the last two decades of her life writing, remains devastatingly unfinished.” Its publication[2], with so much love and care besorgt by Uwe Petersen, will not change this, except perhaps for the devastation wrought by this unique maze of philosophies, logics, laws, cultures and case studies. Yes, the book is devastating, because no one, not even Valerie herself, would be able to wrap it up or map it out, let alone review it. Yet, precisely this trekking through a landscape without a preset destination, with just that one question ‘where to stay the philosophical night?’ – turns the text into an invitation to join Kerruish’s trails for a while. It transforms its infinite deferral of closure into an energising rather than a devastating force. So let me...
ARTICLES
Private Security: Twin Indignities
The privatisation of criminal justice practices is an affront to human dignity. When we are acted upon for profit as well as for justified ends, the proper link between coercion, rights, and authority is lost. Ministry of Justice proposals could mean that all...
Britain: The Empire that Never Was
Why Brexit is the culmination of a British national project which weaponises imperial amnesia and nostalgia. Brexit sold the country a dream; ostensibly a project built on anti-migrant sentiment, it also invoked delusions of grandeur, rooted in reanimating the...
Radicalizing Women’s Rights Internationally
The recent "burqa bans" in Austria and Quebec appear to be troubling legal manifestations of the rising tide of Islamaphobia in Europe and North America. The news coverage of the bans coincided for me with a bout of reflexive angst regarding the recent publication of...
Sustaining neoliberal capital through socio-economic rights
In a 2013 contribution aimed at influencing the post-2015 development agenda, seventeen UN Special Rapporteurs recommended that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) should include a goal on the provision of social protection floors. In April 2015 the UN Committee...
The Fallacies of Neoliberal Protest
This post is an amended version of remarks read at a rally organized by Cornell University’s Black Students United (BSU) on September 23, 2016. Students gathered to protest the recent police shootings of Tyree King, Terence Crutcher, and Keith Lamont Scott. It is...
The Left and Catalonia
How a Left position regarding the Catalonia referendum on 1 Oct 2017 could present itself juridically and politically The Catalonia referendum this Sunday will become part of the history of Europe, possibly for the worst of reasons. I will not discuss here the...
On Marx’s Philosophical Methodology in the Grundrisse
There is a considerable debate about the value of Marx’s earlier philosophical works relative to his mature period writing the three volumes of Capital. Some believe that they are of great importance for understanding Marx, while others such as Althusser[1] famously...
Letter to the Editors of the Journal of the History of International Law
[This letter was sent to the editors of the Journal of the History of International Law on 29 August 2017 and published at Opinio Juris. It is republished here with permission.] Dear Editors, We are writing to express our grave concern about the publication of an...
Tenses of Violence: Antifascist Action & Legal Critique in Charlottesville’s Wake
[M]any Trump supporters said they welcomed [Trump’s] visit as an opportunity to express their views.Tim Foley, an Army veteran who leads his own citizens’ border patrol in Arizona, showed his Glock handgun to a reporter, saying he and his comrades had come to Phoenix...
The Jamestown Massacre: Rigour & International Legal History
Over recent years there have been significant advances in scholarship on the history of international law. Critical histories, including feminist, Marxist and most productively Third World perspectives, shed fresh light on the history of the discipline and its...
From the Cybernetic World War towards a Cybernetic Civil War
On an emerging phenomenon in the field of political affairs. On the Road to the Cybernetic World War Energy is essential for the production and movement of “things”. Using an assemblage of machines the industrial revolution exponentially increased the energy available...
Catastrophe at Warwick
A catastrophe is only violent in its uncalled for appearing, and its coming is all around us in the smallest things. This year’s Critical Legal Conference takes place at Warwick under the title Catastrophe. This is not without reason, for it sees the notion of...
The Razor’s Edge of Politics: Notes on the Meaning of the Encryption of Power
The original theory of the encryption of power was formulated by Gabriel Méndez-Hincapíe and I in an article published in Spanish in 2012. In the following years, several panels regarding the theory where held at the Critical Legal Conference, in 2014 at the...
The Workerant
In the unfolding drama of work in the digital age, new circumstance demands new language. Gig economy, on-demand work, sharing economy, precarious work, automation, zero-hour contracts, outsourcing, workfare. Whilst the entire stage set changes, the central character...
Poverty, Indigeneity and the Socio-Legal Adjudication of Self-Sufficiency
A man who has a language consequently possesses the world expressed and implied by that language.” — Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks In 2013, Darlene Necan, a homeless First Nations woman from northern Ontario, Canada, began the construction of a modest one-room...
What does ‘the crowd’ Want? Populism and the Origin of Democracy
The liberal critique of the recent rise of populism reveals an uneasiness toward ‘unruly’ emotional crowds and their leaders’ anti-democratic postures – albeit these figures have captured political power through democratic means.[i] Trump, Le Pen, Modi, and Erdogan...
Macron & Africa’s ‘civilisational’ problem
Mr Macron has been nostalgic lately. First, he was nostalgic for the 18th century and hereditary rule asserting that the French people did not want to execute the king and that the revolution has left a (king-shaped) void at the heart of the Republic that only other...
Protecting Public Space: The Gypsy and Traveller Community
The Gypsy and Traveller community is obliged to have respect for a system which both marginalises and excludes them. On 5 July 2017, a community of Travellers pulled up to Preston Park in Brighton. The council and the police soon descended on them to inform them that...
History and Historical Mystification: Critical Observations on Badiou’s Politics
Alain Badiou is one of continental philosophy’s most original and creative minds. His politics can be understood as evading both the temptations of analytical political theory and post-modern skepticism through his metaphysics. According to Badiou, the multiplicity of...
Looking in the mirror: reflections on the DUP and ‘the Irish problem’
The chatter, comments, and headlines are clear: the perennial 'Irish problem' has returned to haunt the British stage. But what is there to hear in the silence that frames the chatter? To the surprise and unease of many in Britain the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP)...
Radical Reconfigurations? Old and new futures in Northern Ireland
As the Conservative Party’s majority evaporated in the early hours of 9th June 2017, the new parliamentary power of the DUP quickly came into focus. With Sinn Fein resolutely abstaining from taking their seats, the Democratic Unionist Party find themselves in a...
KEY CONCEPTS
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
