CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
Cadaverous Tranquillity: Proscription, Anticipatory Repression and Coleridge
In December 1795, William Pitt’s government introduced the Treasonable Practices Bill and the Seditious Meetings Bill—the “Gagging Acts” as their opponents called them. They were designed to suppress the radical democratic societies that had flourished in the wake of the French Revolution. The great crime these organisations were deemed guilty of was to demand parliamentary reform and an end to Britain’s wars. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, then a young radical lecturing in Bristol, responded to Pitt’s “reign of alarm” with a pamphlet titled The Plot Discovered. His analysis of what those Bills represented remains strikingly relevant 230 years later, in the context of sustained assaults on democratic rights in Britain today. Writing about the two Acts, Coleridge warned that with their passage ‘[all] political controversy is at an end’. He went on to note, those ‘sudden breezes and noisy gusts, which purified the atmosphere they disturbed, are hushed to deathlike silence. The...
ARTICLES
Privacy as Immunity
"The idea of immunity, which is needed for protecting our life, if carried past a certain threshold, winds up negating life. That is, immunity encages life such that not only is our freedom but also the very meaning of our individual and collective existence lost:...
Corbyn’s Victory: Misplaced Optimism and Amnesia?
Though having never voted for the Labour Party (and I can’t imagine I ever will) Corbyn’s resounding victory is a welcome episode for leftists, progressives, greens as well as women, diaspora communities etc. His positions against Capital hegemony, trident and...
Dear Jeremy Corbyn
I’m writing to tell you how delighted I am that you have won the Labour leadership – and so decisively too. It may come as a surprise to you to know that I and many many of my friends here in Ireland have been watching this contest with a mixture of hope and...
Whispers of Transnational Corporate Responsibility: Chevron
On the morning of the 4th of September, the Supreme Court of Canada released their judgment in Chevron Corp. v. Yaiguaje, and maybe the sun broke on something. Or maybe nothing happened at all. Much has been written on the case and much more will be written still. In...
A Labour Party of protest or government? Bringing politics back in
A party of protest or a party of government – according to Gordon Brown these are the options, the choices at stake, suggesting they are very different things, polarities even. Those who protest don’t govern and those who govern don’t protest. But is this right?...
Nils Christie’s ‘Ideal Victim’ applied: From Lions to Swarms
Gaining victim status under international law is a fickle privilege – as easily granted as it is taken away. Libya’s refugees and migrants who are escaping the country’s economic collapse and violence are a testament to the use and abuse of the victim label under...
Equities: A Review of the Equity & Trusts Research Network Workshop
Men of law have certain scruples and are unable to eliminate justice from the law completely without twinges of conscious. But it is not possible to retain it because of the difficulties it involves, the uncertainty of operation and unpredictability it entails. In a...
Sovereignty as Tension: Sri Lanka and Its North-East
Even as neo-liberalism attempts to trans-nationalize the globe, the nation continues to be popular among many communities in both Europe and the postcolony. For Marxist postcolonial thinkers like Neil Lazarus (1999:48) and Timothy Brennan (1999:25 – 26), the nation...
Is there only power or the wilderness? On Labour selecting a leader
Instead of obsessing about taking power in five years, Labour should support projects of social transformation today. This is the kind of leadership Labour needs. In power or in the wilderness, the British Labour Party it would seem has two settings. Or, at least...
A Tangled Web: The Vested Interests of the EU Right
UPDATED WITH ADDITIONS 14/7 at 10:30am BST To understand the Greek crisis and the stream of ever worsening deals between the EU and Greece, it is essential to understand just how involved the EU main players have been in the creation of this situation over the past...
Their Law: The New Energies of UK Squats, Social Centres and Eviction Resistances in the Fight Against Expropriation (Part 2 of 2)
The eviction resistances in London express the contestation of private re-appropriation of homes through powerful displays of collective strength. They are an emergent movement that demonstrates an ever co-dependant dance between law and protest. Private accumulation...
Their Law: The New Energies of UK Squats, Social Centres and Eviction Resistance in the Fight Against Expropriation (Part 1 of 2)
For anyone old enough to remember themselves as a teenager during the nineties, with fond memories of piercing their own ears (multiple times) whilst listening to the second album of The Prodigy ‘Music for a Jilted Generation’ [self-piercing nostalgia optional], they...
One no, many yeses! The Greek Referendum
A victory for OXI would not just help restore a sense of dignity to Greece; it would strengthen the ground for anti-austerity struggles across Europe. Today, Greece has an opportunity to make history. The brave decision by Prime Minister Tsipras to call a referendum...
On Destroying What Destroys You: An Interview with Thomas Nail
Thomas Nail is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Denver and author of The Figure of the Migrant (Stanford University Press, 2015) and Returning to Revolution: Deleuze, Guattari, and Zapatismo (Edinburgh University Press, 2012). His publications...
The Greeks Deserve Better from Europe
Greek Prime Minister Alex Tspiras announced a July 5th Referendum on whether Greece should accept the Troika’s final demand that Greece accept additional austerity measures in exchange for further loans. Countering the ‘shock and awe’ tactics of the Troika, the Greek...
‘The Republic of Love’
Almost a month has passed since the verdict of ‘Yes For Love’ was returned in the same-sex marriage referendum in Ireland. For the people who drove the campaign; for those who canvassed during the hard emotional slog of its last month in particular; for all those who...
The In/determinacy of Human Rights: A Response to O’Connell
Paul O’Connell recently argued that human rights are not a trap for emancipatory and radical projects. They can be productively placed with different discourses like anti-capitalism, anti-racism or queer politics, generating productive moments of resistance. He argues...
Big Oil’s Ethical Violence
International attention has once again turned to the murky record of BP’s oil operations in Colombia. The High Court in London is to hear a case against BP, filed on behalf of Gilberto Torres, a former trade unionist who was kidnapped and tortured by state-linked...
Human Rights: Contesting the Displacement Thesis
As a general rule, the precise significance of historical shifts, developments or movements can take a long time to reveal themselves. This is no doubt also true for human rights. For good or ill, and in many ways that remains to be seen, the language of human rights...
Reforming the Welfare State for Saving Capitalism
[Given the recent success of Free Education movements and higher eductaion trades unions in blocking the 'Teach Higher' work casualisations proposals at the University of Warwick, we thought the below missive from Wildcat Germany was appropriate grounds for a pause....
Gay Rights in Russia
Homosexuality is not a criminal offence in Russia — since 1993. In 1999 it ceased to be regarded as a mental illness. Indeed, Russian history has many famous homosexuals — the poet Alexei Apukhtin; Sergei Diaghilev, the founder of the Ballets Russes; and of...
KEY CONCEPTS
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