CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL

Rap vs. The State (in a time of genocide)
We know the genocide in Gaza is a collective work, a sort of F35 genocide whose parts come from an imperial collective, a collective of old colonial states now led by the USA. So the denial of genocide, at least of its naming, is also shared by these states across the Imperial collective. Within this sharing of denial, the Gaza genocide dredges out the particularities of the colonial history of each of its participating states in their 'post colonial' present. Here in Britain the genocide in its denial has led to possibly the largest and most sustained social mobilisation in its history. A scale of mobilisation met by a scale of repression that has opened up its contradictions of state. A post Empire Britain constituted as a liberal democracy, yet as a liberal state that overlays a colonial state with its imperial trajectory. Rap opens up the faultlines between them. Through rappers such as Bob Vylan and Kneecap, an insurgent rap tells us why the scale of killing in Gaza is not only...
ARTICLES
Our ‘Angel in the City’: A Remembrance of Marshal Berman (1940-2013)
In the late nineties I was studying political theory and living in New York City. I had just finished my first year at the New School for Social Research, and wanted to explore what the City had to offer and take advantage of the university consortium the New School...
What’s “Left” of Communism? Part II of II
In my last article I was looking at the Left’s current return to communism and that, while the thinkers most often associated with this return are adamant that this is a new and more fluid communism than the communist projects of the 20th century, there are three...
What’s “Left” of Communism? Part I of II
In his 1980 book The Inoperative Community, Jean-Luc Nancy famously claimed that communism is, “… no longer the unsurpassable horizon of our time.” Three years later Benedict Anderson, in his groundbreaking book Imagined Communities, showed us how alliances based on...
The Dreadful Dr Freud
Macedonian writer and Gender Studies devotee, Goce Smilevski, draws in his latest novel on an alleged episode from the life of Sigmund Freud to show that the founder of psychoanalysis was a misogynistic pervert, fascinated by Nazism, and obsessed with money and...
Human Bodies in Material Space: Editorial of the Journal for Human Rights and the Environment
This edition of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment is dedicated to the greatest struggle of our era – the ongoing – and increasingly urgent – struggle to confront the entrenched and growing violence (both epistemic and physical) of a global order that is...
# Palestine /// Law as a Colonial Weapon: Review of ‘The Law in these Parts’ by Ra’anan Alexandrowicz
[vimeo 51930783 w=600&h=350] I recently watched Israeli director Ra’anan Alexandrowicz's fim, The Law in These Parts, which unfolds the legal mechanisms of the occupation of the Palestinian territories (West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem) since their take over by...
Michael Gove: Education, Re-moralistation and Foreign Policy
“Disgrace, you’re a disgrace!” jeered Michael Gove to Tory backbenchers after the British government’s defeat over intervention in Syria. Those who are aware of the Education Secretary’s thoughts on foreign policy would have been unsurprised by this over-excited...
On the murder of Pavlos Fyssas and the rise of Fascism in Greece: Interview with Costas Douzinas
Ionna Drosou (ID): It appears, from the most up to date evidence, that Pavlos Fyssas was targeted because of his music. What does this symbolise? Costas Douzinas (CD): The artistic name of Mr Pavlos Fyssas was Killah P(ast). He was, in this sense, an executioner: he...
Liberation through Occupation: Italian Property Outlaws
This short reflection stems from my recent experience at the Ex Colorificio Liberato (Ex Paint Factory Liberated) in Pisa, a 14,000 square meter factory which had been abandoned for eight years before being occupied eleven months ago by a group of citizens (Rebeldìa)...
Adjunct, Class, Fear
The biggest obstacle to organizing adjunct (part-time and full-time non-tenure-track) professors, who now comprise 75% of the faculty in higher education, with part-timers working for $2700 per course on average — is fear. Most people assume that adjuncts fear...
On Agamben’s Politics and Theology
Colby Dickinson and Adam Kotsko recently did an interview on Agamben for the Brazilian publication Unisinos, which was translated into Portuguese and recently published. They decided to publish the original English transcript for the benefit of non-Portuguese speakers...
No Alarms and No Surprises? Sixth Protester Dies in Turkish Demonstrations
Even though the international fascination with the Turkish protests seems to have somewhat faded, they have continued since last May. The demonstrators are neither tired of gathering together nor deterred by the tear gas and the water cannons used unsparingly by the...
Murder by Fascists in Greece
Last night, 34-year-old anti-fascist and left-wing rapper Pavlos Fissas was stabbed to death in Athens while he was surrounded by a group of 30 thugs in Golden Dawn shirts and military trousers. The victim, whose stage name is MC Killah P, had been watching a football...
The Political in the Contract Classroom
When we started ‘The Public Life of Private Law’ one of the conversations we wanted to have with participants, and with others following the series, was about teaching private law from a critical perspective. In particular, we wanted to think about how those of us who...
Palestinian Family Unification in Israel: The Limits of Litigation as Means of Resistance
At the end of March 2002, Eli Yishai, then the Israeli Minister of Internal Affairs, decided that all requests for family unifications submitted by Palestinian citizens of Israel married to Palestinians from the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) would be frozen...
Counterpress and Critical Legal Strategy
In 2007, Daniel Bensaïd suggested that we turn to the question of strategy. Traditionally, strategy is distinguished from tactics. Where strategy is the ‘use of engagement to obtain the plan of war’ in von Clausewitz, tactics are the short term acts which win battles....
The Antagonistic University? A conversation on cuts, conviviality and capitalism
Anja: Let me begin by posing three questions. Firstly, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that modes of labour are appropriating cognitive, communicational and affective skills. What does this mean to you for the political potential of academic and collaborative...
ELDH Statement on Syria: An alleged crime against humanity should not be punishable by an illegal use of force
The European Lawyers for Democracy and Human Rights (ELDH), with members in 18 European countries, is absolutely opposed to the proposed use of illegal force by Western powers against the Syrian regime. The US government is leading a call for military action against...
Euro Stability Mechanism proposes transfer of Greek assets to Luxembourg
The European Commission has been forced to rebuff a proposal by the Eurozone's new bailout fund, the ESM, that Greek assets be transferred to a new Luxembourg-based special purpose vehicle as a part of a wider privatisation scheme. The proposal, mooted by Finland in...
Thick Skin, a lawful film written and directed by Peter Rush
This film explores an aesthetics of law and its inhabitants through the public art sites of The Another View Walking Trail that was installed in the 1990s in the City of Melbourne. In a slow-moving filmic recitation, each of the sites focus our attention on the place-making and counter-memory of law and governance. What then would it take for the eye of law, beyond pretence and all forgetting, to recognise pain? What would it mean to investigate the manners in and by which proximate and suffering others have dwelt and do dwell in law? Available to watch for the first time in uploaded digital form here on Critical Legal Thinking…
Transphobia
"I have a hard time making my mind take place…" begins the poem Body & Isn’t by Bruce Covey. Indeed, it is hard for the mind to take place when it reads the column “Mikropragmata” (“Trivial Things”) by Aris Dimokides in LiFO of 18/7/2013.LiFO ‘What Exactly...
KEY CONCEPTS
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SERIES / SYMPOSIA
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