CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
Rage Against the End of International Law: From Venezuela to the Global
In a recent piece published at Opinio Juris,[i] Nikolas M. Rajkovic calls on international lawyers to recalibrate their “ways of seeing” to account for the multi-scalar, relational, and interconnected nature of contemporary authority and power. His article invites a critical reexamination and update of the visual and conceptual tools lawyers use to understand the world, by way of moving beyond the outdated “cartographic lens” of international law. He suggests that the discipline must recognize that what appears as a crisis of international law is, in fact, a crisis of its epistemic frameworks. This way, he contends, international law can better respond to the challenges of an epoch shaped by global flows, geopolitical dynamics, emerging networks, and infrastructures. Transformation, not collapse, is the path forward, he concludes. While Rajkovic’s call for a radical transformation in legal thinking is compelling and his writing has much to be liked about, it nonetheless, to...
ARTICLES
Being Social: Ontology, Law, Politics
We are pleased to announce that Being Social: Ontology, Law, Politics, edited by Tara Mulqueen and Daniel Matthews, and published by COUNTERPRESS, is now available. Being Social brings together leading and emerging scholars on the question of sociality in...
Live blog: Warwick Summit on Protest
We'll be liveblogging the Warwick Summit on Protest today from 16:00 UK time. The Summit was proposed by Warwick Law School's Centre for Human Rights in response to events on campus last term which saw the University summoning the police to a Free Education...
Law’s Catastrophe and the Greatness of Syriza
Two narratives compete for the truth of today’s global political stage. On the one hand, there’s the narrative of leftist irresponsibility and incorrectness. On the other, an austere narrative of correctness based on the general notion that there’re certain...
For fragments, and not debts, we are
It may be the case that one could note the peculiar appearance of the thinking minister. A thinking minister is not suddenly a liberated or a good minister, but at least a minister who thinks and does not just administer or govern; thus maintaining for a number of...
The Greek Debt ‘Confidence Trick’
As William Shakespeare said in Much Ado About Nothing, “Let every eye negotiate for itself And trust no agent.” As so it seems appropriate to cast our ‘eye’ upon the discourses that have defined the current Greek financial crisis from both the left and the...
To Question Law, Without Condition
Take your time but be quick about it, because you do not know what awaits you (Jacques Derrida). The heady days of Occupy Central have passed. The 79 day occupation of the...
Why we should worry about the theoretical foundations of human rights law and practice
Ivor Crewe, the former Essex Vice-Chancellor, and a political scientist, used to compare contemporary human rights activists to 19th century Christian missionaries, spreading the gospel to less enlightened peoples. There is more than a grain of truth to this ironical...
Syriza’s new contract between Greece and Europe
On Sunday 8 February 2015, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras explained the government’s policy commitments. Thanks to AnalyzeGreece and GreekReporter, we are happy to publish excerpts from his statement. The new contract between Greece and Europe which will be...
Syriza: The Greek Spring
According to an oft-repeated cliché, the recent Syriza victory has historic significance. Its place in history books as the first elected left government in Europe is assured. But its importance goes further. The Syriza victory is an important marker in three...
‘We are not with the State, We are with the Community’
All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream. — E. A. Poe In an interview that Alexis Tsipras gave to the...
SYRIZA Wins: Reflections While the Tide is Turning
There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn’t. ∼ Leonard Cohen It is probably uncontroversial to argue that the Greek elections of the 25th January will be remembered as one of the most important in the history of Greece, of...
A Right to Breathe
The air is taken away from us; “we cannot breathe”. This is a commentary which draws inspiration from an evocative piece of writing by Jerome Roos which appeared earlier in Reflections on a Revolution. The title of his text, “From New York to Greece, we revolt ‘cus we...
Rewinding the Battle of Algiers in the Shadow of the Attack on Charlie Hebdo
In the classic 1966 film Battle of Algiers, Ali, a young, illiterate, unemployed bricklayer and draft dodger is arrested in Algiers for petty street crimes (he is a card swindler). In jail, Ali meets, unbeknownst to him, a member of the Algerian FLN (National...
“I am Charlie and I guard the Master’s house”
We condemn the Charlie Hebdo killings. We wholeheartedly and unreservedly condemn the killings and believe that no justification exists or can ever exist for them. We feel it necessary to make our condemnation explicit because we have found that there is a tendency to...
‘Not Afraid’
There is a close relation between satire and secularism as the latter came to emerge in Europe. Secularism, as is well-known, gained strength historically as a reaction to an era of European inter-religious violence and massacres. It was not only a desire for the...
‘Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone’? Modern Ireland, Inauthenticity and the Request to Revise Ireland v UK
In 1971 the Hillside Singers, in a song designed to inspire worldwide unity, sang of how they'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony; apparently the inspiration for the song came from the writers' experiences while delayed at Ireland's Shannon Airport....
Cuba and the Garden State: Assata Shakur, Abolition and the Problem of Pardon
My skin is black/ My arms are long/ My hair is woolly/ My back is strong/ Strong enough to take the pain/ inflicted again and again/ What do they call me/ My name is Aunt Sarah/ My name is Aunt Sarah — Nina Simone, “Four Women” The recent announcement by US...
Another Merry Week in Greece: A diary in fragmented parts to come
04.12.2014 | Thanatopolitics is an everyday spectacle The head of the Hellenic Police decides to ban public gatherings for two days (05.12 and 06.12). The formal cause of this decision was the visit of the Turkish Prime Minister in Athens. The Athenians are becoming...
Interruption: Five Artefacts of International Law (Part II)
ANZAC in Egypt: Myths, Memories and Movement in the Monumental Imagining of the First World War Charlotte Peevers* The original Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (‘ANZAC’) Memorial at Port Said, Egypt (destroyed during the Suez Crisis of 1956 and replicated in...
The First World War Interrupted: Artefacts as International Law’s Archive (Part I)
Separated from us by the barrier of a century. Inaugurator of a fully mechanised modernity. Eye-opener for the birth of a new, horrified, global society. Premonition of a future to come. This is the Great War. As one supremely tragic bookend to the ‘long’ nineteenth...
From the CIA Torture Report to Ferguson and Palestine: Should anyone be prosecuted?
We did not need the CIA Torture Report, released a few days ago, on International Human Rights Day, to know that US officials of the highest ranks, including former President George W. Bush and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were aware of, and condoned, or even...
KEY CONCEPTS
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