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

Call for Participation – Critical Legal Conference 2026
CLC2026 invites proposals for individual papers, performances, proof of concept participation, or entire sessions, that fall within the below streams. Each session should follow one of three modes: Works of Text, Performing Bodies, or Proof of Concept. Streams can include sessions in different modes, as stream organisers desire. Please see the Call for Participation where you can also view the available streams. To participate in a stream, apply directly to its convenor(s) by 29th June 2026. See the full CfP for more info.
ARTICLES
Israel’s Military Aggression against Iran: Some preliminary reflections
We are excited to have the following piece by Iranian theorist Parviz Sedaghat,[1] translated into English by Leila Faghfouri Azar and first published in Farsi in pecritique.com. 1)Israel’s military attack against Iran started in the early hours of Friday June 13 by...
Humiliation by Design: The Legal Aesthetics of Marginalisation
In liberal democracies, we are often told that law is blind to appearance. Yet, the opposite is often true. Public law and policy repeatedly mobilise aesthetic categories—such as decorum, decency, and ugliness—to judge who belongs in public spaces and...
The Critique of Trump’s Lawlessness Misses the Point
The Trump administration has felt like a nonstop emergency: bigoted attacks on trans people, immigrants, and civil rights in the name of a war on so-called wokeness; the rollback of environmental and public health monitoring; attacks on public employees and the labor...
Native Title and the Juridical Field: Bourdieu in Australia
The 1992 Mabo v Queensland (No 2) decision marked a watershed in Australian legal history, as the High Court formally rejected the doctrine of terra nullius and acknowledged the existence of native title. But legal revolutions are rarely what they seem. This...
The Politics of Vision, Targeting, and Palestine
‘The whole history of Palestinian struggle has to do with the desire to be visible.’ Edward Said On the evening of March 3rd, 1991, Rodney King, a 25-year-old Black American, was pulled over by LAPD officers after a high-speed chase. What followed was recorded by...
Tony Blair Will Not Save Us from Climate Hysteria
A resident holds a sign warning passers-by to slow down to reduce wakes that exacerbate flooded streets in a suburb of Houston, Texas, as U.S Border Patrol riverine agents evacuate residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey August 30, 2017. U.S. Customs and Border...
Some Points about Contemporary Fascism
We are delighted to repost Brian Massumi's latest essay, first published on his new Substack. The maturation of the modern nation-state coincided with a progressive becoming-immanent of power to the social field. Concepts such as disciplinary power, governmentality,...
Project 2025 and Manifestos for Undemocracy
A manifesto was instrumental in the formation of the constitutional democracy that was the United States of America, and we are currently witnessing its (re)inception as an undemocracy through the work of another manifesto. The Declaration of Independence – akin to...
The Law and Political Economy of 21st-Century Authoritarianism
Democratic self-government and freedoms are under attack around the world. From the consolidation of an increasingly authoritarian and erratic administration in the USA to the Turkish Government’s open persecution of the political opposition, from Israel’s systematic...
The Pulse of Resistance: Beating Beneath Black Veils
Hey, you who sit on the shore, merry and bright! A soul in the water surrenders to night. One there is, flailing with desperate hand, On this fierce, dark, and weighty sea, as you apprehend.…Tell me, at what moment should I say? A soul in the water throws life...
CfP: Critical Legal Conference, 2025 – University of Exeter
The Call for Papers is now live. Please read the full description of the streams here. If you would like to participate - send short abstract of your proposed paper to the stream organisers (as mentioned under their stream heading). Graduate students who seek a fee...
Parody Alternative Judgment: For Women Scotland [2025]
Following the Supreme Court’s decision in the For Women case last week, colleagues thought it would help to have a case summary for use in making sense of the judgment. Accordingly, I have produced a summary sticking precisely to the Court’s language from...
Mandate 2.0
The word Mandate here refers to the arrangement by which the fate of the people in Palestine was handed to European colonial powers a century ago. A rereading of the Mandate at this time becomes a necessary act. Towards that, I distinguish between a Mandate 1.0 and a...
Shouting ‘what makes a real woman’ as the earth is on fire!*
Every border implies the violence of its maintenance. It’s just that the border guards differ. Borders come in many kinds. The borders this statement brings to mind could be geographical, international. Perhaps they are otherwise spatial, or temporal. This is a...
The Age of Lawiness
As the bold “TED” logo dissolves into a flurry of red dots, a slightly nasal voice asks us to examine a picture and consider the puzzle it presents.[1] ‘These African students are doing their homework under streetlights at the airport in the capital city because...
Swallowing the Snake’s Tail: Responding to Žižek’s Critique of my “Many Worlds Interpretation”
In his book Freedom a Disease Without Cure, (2023), Slavoj Žižek draws a lengthy critique of my article “Many Worlds Interpretation, Critical Theory and the (Immanent) Paradox of Power.” The critique stands on a tripod (we will develop below). 1. Difference...
German Staatsräson means deportation?
Germany has joined other nation-states – such as the US and Greece – in the repression via deportation of political action against their respective governments’ ongoing material and ideological facilitation of Israel’s genocide in Palestine. The specificity of the...
Forming the Legal Humanities Association
In late 2021, a small group of legal scholars began a discussion about possibly setting up a new academic association for law and humanities research which would be registered in the UK, but open to people around Europe and the world. This led to a small, reflective...
“Man is the only real enemy we have”: Feminist reflections on staging Animal Farm in the fall of 2024
In February of this year, a new feminist blog called The Morrigan launched in Ireland as part of the Doing Feminist Legal Work Network. It features a mixture of Irish and international feminist legal thinking. This piece is a cross-posting from The Morrigan. No set of...
To Reclaim or Resist: Can Digital Sovereignty Ever Be Feminist?
Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven / AMVK; Bloem van Smarten (1990-1991) On 30 and 31 January 2025, a group of researchers participated in a workshop examining digital sovereignty through a feminist lens (see below for full list of contributors).[1] Digital or technological...
Ontology and Politics of Liberation: Two Paths to Decrypt Power
This analysis introduces two solid critical arguments—one ontological, the other historical—that illuminate the unique features of the theory of encryption of power, what sets it apart from other theoretical endeavors. The results are deeply intertwined, highlighting...














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