CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
What Matters?
Yet always there is another life, A life beyond this present knowing, A life lighter than this present splendor - Wallace Stevens, ‘The Sail of Ulysses’ It is the condition of the critical theorist to be constantly attuned to unnecessary suffering and injustice and yet to hold steadfastly to the promise of things being otherwise. Sometimes the weight of the former threatens to crush the latter. But despite the evidence, despite the human pain and ecological degradation, there is a “present splendor” (as Stevens put it) that persists. It takes shape variously, in the perseverence of human dignity, in the suddenness of beauty, and in the incalculable love of family and friends. Simone Weil saw such a juxtaposition in universal terms, expressing it in a way we can all recognise: “At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed,...
ARTICLES
The Hegel of Coyoacán: In Memoriam, Enrique Dussel
(24 December 1934 - 5 November 2023) My most enduring image of Enrique Dussel shows him in the role that made him happiest. That of a teacher, maestro in Spanish; with a lowercase 'm', as in the mastery of non-mastery. There he is, in front of a whiteboard on which...
Letter from Legal Experts on Labour’s position on the commission of war crimes
Dear Mr Starmer, We, the undersigned, are writing to request that the Labour party immediately clarify its position on the prohibition of collective punishment. On 11 October, you were asked on LBC radio if Israel’s siege of Gaza, and the cutting off of...
To say and think a life beyond what settler colonialism has made
The Earth is closing on Palestinians in Gaza. As I write these lines, Israel continues to bomb more than two million Palestinians, refugees and the descendants of refugees confined to the besieged Gaza Strip, which measures a mere 365 square km. More than 300,000...
The “race power” Haunting the Voice Referendum in Australia – Is a Sonorous Constitution Possible?
Gordon Bennett, ‘Home Decor (Relative/Absolute) Flowers for Mathinna #2 (1999) Although ‘race’ is a construction, it manifests in various juridical and political formations, and in the lived experience of everyday life. Australia, as a state and society, is one such...
War and the Uncanny Face of the Other in Children’s Literature: A Case Study of Davide Cali’s Enemy
Mankind has been plagued by war since the beginning of civilization. History proves this well. Not just these days, but these centuries have always been war. But these days, by virtue (or perhaps evil) of the availability of social media and the internet, we, I mean...
“In Words the Subaltern Cannot Speak”
Using decolonisation to uncover the silences and absences in legal knowledge. A conversation between Foluke Adebisi, author of Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge (Bristol University Press 2023), and Katie Bales KB: I should begin by just reiterating how brilliant I...
Ghosts of the Nation: A Hauntological Critique of the Imagined Communion
The Imagined Communion As elaborated in Mikkel Flohr’s recent article for Critical Legal Thinking, for Benedict Anderson (1991), the nation and nationalism function in reference to an “imagined political community”. As Anderson elaborates, the nation is an imagined...
Women’s Body Under Secondary Colonialism
This is Behnaz Amani, one of the political prisoners of Iran’s recent revolt, “Woman, Life, Freedom”. I’ve been in Gharchak prison for 46 days and have seen things which make me wonder and ponder upon the concept of the female body and capitalism and how the state can...
Oh West: Delinking from the Coloniality of Iranian Imagination
Almost six months after the start of what then came to be rightly known as “Women, Life, Freedom” revolution after the state murder of Zhina Amini[I] - a girl from one the utmost subaltern peripheries of Iranian nation-state killed in its capital city of Tehran by the...
Uprisings in Iran and their historical origins
The world media is once again full of images, stories, discussions, and trending hashtags about ongoing mass protests in Iran. Those who are familiar with Iran’s social-historical context know that this country is the land of popular uprisings, political struggles,...
The Disaster of the Century
In Lieu of a Beginning… On February 5, 2023, we experienced two earthquakes in Turkey that were massive and their consequences extremely severe. The government officials called it “the disaster of the century”. The earthquake we experienced was itself destructive but...
Prefigurative Law Reform: Creating a New Research Methodology of Radical Change
Image by Noah Purifoy | http://www.noahpurifoy.com/joshua-tree-outdoor-museum Prefigurative politics and law have long been seen as opposing phenomena – one a grassroots radical practice that embodies sought-after norms (horizontality, social justice, and...
‘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...
We do this for each other
It’s a tip, a trickle. I’ve read international law and international relations in three institutions and three countries. In each, I’ve twisted and turned, tripped and fallen willingly into rabbit holes and inexplicable complexities. People wrapped in clothes that...
Critical Phenomenology as a Good Friend
Aspiration concept and ambition idea as a chopped trunk casting a shadow of a tree as an achievement recovery and hope for futur success symbol in a 3D illustration style. When people ask me ‘why phenomenology?’ I usually point to emerging research in psychology and...
The Residual as Method: Thinking on the Margins of the Interview
“Recording No. 1: 21st January 2022 (00:01-00:31) [Note to self: We are eating peanuts in his veranda (!)]” This is how the transcript of my interview with a key activist of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), the most popular (but much maligned) social and civil...
The Canon as Method, or, the Strange Joy of Footnotes
Footnotes are routinely associated with boredom and annoyance—even dread, if the matching of a journal’s style requirements adds dozens of footnotes to retool to our already overfilled plates. Sure, we are aware of the importance of rigorous citation, its necessity...
Please Mind the Gap: A Venn Diagram Story of Method in International Law
Working in international law as government lawyers for many years, method was not a day-to-day concern for us. Although we dealt daily in the ‘sources’ of international law, the question of ‘method’ was not part of the picture. The day-to-day job of a government...
In which I posit you as a legal methodology agony aunt
This is a cry for help! Specifically, it is a cry for legal methodological help. So if you are good on this stuff please read on and maybe get in touch. In order to explain my problem, I need to fill you in on some background. I came to legal scholarship...
Dance Me to the End of Law: Art, Justice, Improvisation
https://player.vimeo.com/video/446988530?h=e59ce0d8f2" At its core, improvisation demands an ongoing interaction with shifting tight places, whether created by power relations, social norms, aesthetic traditions, or physical technique. Improvised dance literally...
Art as Legal Method
Initially, our project was an experiment. What would happen if an artist created a visual response to a piece of legal scholarship that criticised how law regulates public spaces? What insights into art, law and justice might be generated? What started as an art...
