CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
‘After’ the Rojava Revolution? Rethinking Political Hope in a Post-Autonomy Syria
Since early 2026, Rojava in North East Syria, has been under renewed assault by the new Syrian regime. A majority-Kurdish region, Rojava has, for more than 12 years been home to one of the world’s largest experiments in democratic autonomy and ecological living. The Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), led by Kurdish activists and facilitated by the organisational work of Tevgera Civaka Demokratîk (TEV-DEM; ‘Movement for a Democratic Society’), has built a new model of political community and legality in the wake of the Syrian civil war. Since 2014, the DAANES has provided safety, political and legal rights, and the means to lead a meaningful and peaceful life for almost 5 million stateless peoples from more than 11 religious and ethnic backgrounds. The DAANES experiment in Rojava can also be credited, uncontroversially, with the defeat of Daesh, through the organisation of its population into self-defence units that have also empowered women to...
ARTICLES
Walter Benjamin in Palestine
"The law which is studied but no longer practiced is the gate to justice. The gate to justice is study." — Walter Benjamin, “Franz Kafka.”[1. Walter Benjamin, “Franz Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of his Death”, trans. Harry Zohn in Howard Eiland and Michael W....
Legality and the Production of Difference
Legal theoretical approaches oriented around discerning a constitutive difference between law and morality are misguided in that they misrepresent epistemological claims for ontological certainty. While some, such as Kelsen, have been admirably straightforward about...
Nowhere Left to Dance: ScumTek, the Electronic Underground and Neoliberal Mainstreamism
As I sat down to write this piece on some of the less credited and understood sonorous movements in the UK and their affecting encounters with law, snippets of David Cameron’s pronouncements on ‘blitzing poverty’ and ‘bulldozing the UK’s worst sink estates’ transmute...
On parents going to school in pyjamas
Sometimes, working late at the university, when it’s dark or raining I call my partner (who works there also) to drive and pick me up. She jumps in the car, in her “loungewear”, and is at the university within five minutes. I was reflecting on our own comfort levels,...
Pirates in our public library: Why Indian scholars are closely watching a court case in Quebec
The online library aaaaarg.fail, which is being sued for copyright violation, gives researchers access to a wealth of vital texts that are inaccessible in the subcontinent. Originally published on Scroll.in and republished here with permission. In 2005, Sean Dockray...
Darkness Visible: A New Years Eve at the Calais Jungle with Black Sartre, White Fanon and friends.
This is a recounting of a New Year's eve night at the makeshift settlement known as the Calais 'jungle' that is the subject of so much media attention of late. A cold wet sludge of a jungle that's home to some 6000 people, the migrants of Calais. The encounters over...
The Left of the Future: A Sociology of Emergences
The future of the left is no more difficult to predict than any other social fact. The best way to address it is by way of what I term the sociology of emergences, which consists in paying special attention to signs from the present that can be read as trends or the...
Shut it Down #YarlsWood
Reading the migrant detention centre within a global economy of violence through new formations of resistance and solidarity. Yarl's Wood IRC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz1t3DFLplo On a wet windy November day in Bedfordshire, outside the notorious Yarl's Wood...
The Gardens of Atocha: Pablo Iglesias’ Election Night Speech
Kindly translated by Richard McAleavey over on the superb Cunning Hired Knaves. Translator's Note: This is a translation of the speech given by Pablo Iglesias following the election results on Sunday night. I do not have a satisfactory English translation for ‘patria‘...
The Weight of Our History
This is the long version of an essay that was first published on November 20, 2015 in L’humanité. Translation by Philippe Theophanidis with the help of Marie-Ève Morin and Marc James Léger. We would rather remain silent. In the face of the horror and emotion....
The Blind Leading the Blind: the Paris Attacks and the Construction of Infinite Evil
After the horrific attacks in Paris, the painting of the great Bruegel, The Blind Leading the Blind is in my mind. Bruegel finished this work in the year 1568. It was the year when the notorious Duke Alba arrived with his troops on behalf of the Spanish King in order...
Open Letter to the Australian Government
The following open letter was sent to Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton. It was signed by 600 refugees who are currently indefinitely imprisoned in the detention centre pursuant to Australia's 'Operation Sovereign Borders'. 30/11/15...
Concerning a Critical Legal Pedagogy: Exposing Race-Thinking in Political Canon
Locke’s philosophy worked to entrench slavery as a politically justifiable practice, effectively extending property rights to a select few while encouraging the political legitimacy of race-based persecution. John Locke is considered the most influential of...
Financial Indebtedness as a Political Strategy
Money in law is a form of debt Lawyers are not much concerned about, and economists have never really known, what money actually is. In microeconomics the issue of money does not appear at all: indeed, mainstream microeconomics has eliminated money entirely from the...
The folly of vengeance: Thinking through the Paris attacks with Simone de Beauvoir
‘…we said ourselves in an outburst of anger ‘They will pay’. And our anger seemed to promise a joy so heavy that we could scarcely believe ourselves able to bear it. They have paid. They are going to pay. They pay each day. And the joy has not risen up in our...
Capitalism and the Production of Difference
The defence of capitalism as a system of economic organization often takes the form of strangely pious declarations about how we have strayed from the path. This could involve over taxation, limiting incentives, government takeovers of industry. Crises, it is claimed,...
A Conversation with Duncan Kennedy
The recently published volume 10 of Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left reflects on the career of Duncan Kennedy, Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence, Emeritus at Harvard Law School and a leading figure in the US Critical Legal Studies movement....
The Importance of the Women-y Fringe-y Excesses of Irish Pro-choice Activism
In the past year or so, Irish pro-choice protesting has taken on a new vitality. Some pro-choice actors have adopted the language of satire, humour, scandal and disobedience to show up the limits of the abortion regime. I have written before about the abortion pill...
On Selective Grief: Can we recognize all lives as equally precarious?
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris on 13/11, mounting criticism can be seen with regard to the outpouring of solidarity for Parisians and, at the same time, scarce expressions of empathy towards victims of other nations that have experienced similar...
The Redundant Refugee
“In the first place”, Hannah Arendt wrote in 1943, “we don’t like to be called “refugees”. She had escaped Germany, survived...
One Piece at a Time
On work, theft and the age of automation through a reading of Johnny Cash's classic song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18cW_yHo3PY Johnny Cash's One Piece at a Time is a song about how he makes his own dream Cadillac by smuggling out all the parts from the factory...
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