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
Alain Badiou on the Uprising in Turkey and Beyond
A large proportion of the educated youth all across Turkey are currently leading a vast movement against the government’s repressive and reactionary practices. This is a very important moment in what I have called “the rebirth of History.” In many countries around...
Notes on the Theology of Constituent Power
In its traditional conception, the constituent is a power that constitutes and reconstitutes the state. This is a dangerous, though important salve for the problem of corruption in the body politic. The people or their representatives may overthrow the constituted...
Surveillance: From Image to Archive
Surveillance has become alarmingly commonplace. CCTV cameras, mobile phones, aerial drones, webcams, automated number plate recognition, facial recognition and other biometric measures, DNA databases, radio frequency identification (RFID) chips in transport tickets...
Seven Theses on Human Rights: (7) Cosmopolitanism, Equality & Resistance
Against imperial arrogance and cosmopolitan naivety, we must insist that global neoliberal capitalism and human-rights-for-export are part of the same project. The two must be uncoupled; human rights can contribute little to the struggle against capitalist...
Anti-Colonial Events in Brazil
In the colonial countries, on the contrary, the policeman and the soldier, by their immediate presence and their frequent and direct action maintain contact with the native and advise him by means of rifle butts and napalm not to budge. It is obvious here that the...
Democracy or Capitalism?
The relation between democracy and capital has always been a tense one, of even total contradiction. Capitalism only feels safe it is ruled by whoever owns capital or identifies with its needs, whereas democracy, on the contrary, is the rule of the majorities who have...
Alexandre Kojève After Revolutionary Terror
If the French and Russian revolutions provided two models of post-revolutionary politics, neither of them led to the realisation of a universal and homogenous state, an empirical existence where State, Right and Religion would become obsolete. Kojève's overlooked...
Seven Theses on Human Rights: (6) Desire
Liberal theories from Immanuel Kant to John Rawls present the self as a solitary and rational entity endowed with natural characteristics and rights and in full control of himself. Rights to life, liberty, and property are presented as integral to humanity’s...
‘It is only the beginning, our struggle continues’: #OccupyGezi
It started with hundreds of peaceful protesters resisting the demolition of Gezi Park, one of the very few green spaces left in the center of Istanbul. There are plans to replace it with yet another shopping mall. The disproportionate police response to the peaceful...
Seven Theses on Human Rights: (4) Universalism & Communitarianism are Interdependent
[image style="polaroid"]https://criticallegalthinking.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Guernica-Sun.jpg[/image] The debate about the meaning of humanity as the ground normative source is conducted between universalists and communitarians. The universalist claims that...
Boston Marathon Bombings: the Emergency Declaration as a State of Exception
At the end of the 60s, American artist Martha Rosler produced a series of photomontages titled House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home. One of those images, “Red Stripe Kitchen”, shows two GI soldiers rummaging through the immaculate kitchen of what looks like a...
A Boycott of Academic Ranking Systems?
Universities and institutions of higher education across the globe are being impacted by structural change, guided by principles of the entrepreneurial university. The imposition of New Public Management principles means that universities are increasingly being...
Seven Theses on Human Rights: (3) Neoliberal Capitalism & Voluntary Imperialism
Why and how did this combination of neoliberal capitalism and humanitarianism emerge? Capitalism has always moralized the economy and applied a gloss of righteousness to profit-making and unregulated competition precisely because it is so hard to believe. From Adam...
‘Adjunct’ Faculty in the Neoliberal University
Chris from Remaking the University writes to introduce a post by Ivan Evans, professor of sociology at UC San Diego. Tarak Barkawi's opinion piece, "The Neoliberal Assault on Academia," produced a long discussion on several lists because of its claim that faculty have...
Seven Theses on Human Rights: (2) Power, Morality & Structural Exclusion
We will explore the strong internal connection between these superficially antagonistic principles, at the point of their emergence in the late 18th century here and in the post-1989 order in the next part. The religious grounding of humanity was undermined by the...
The Reactionary ‘Freeman-on-the-land’ and a Political Fracture
The Irish Times reports over 100 ‘Freeman’-style arguments used in the Irish courts this year, citing the Law Society Gazette [for the traditional legal response see here and here]. Last Tuesday, Francis Cullen (36) was sentenced to another three months in Mountjoy...
Seven Theses on Human Rights: (1) The Idea of Humanity
If ‘humanity’ is the normative source of moral and legal rules, do we know what ‘humanity’ is? Important philosophical and ontological questions are involved here. Let me have a brief look at its history. Pre-modern societies did not develop a comprehensive idea of...
Homegrown Terror: The Boston Marathon’s Media Coverage
In the wake of the Boston Marathon explosions (15 April 2013), the Obama Department of Justice’s treatment of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev—American citizen and primary terror suspect—gained significant attention from liberal media. Dzhokhar will be charged as a civilian for...
The Lacanian Trials
The 30th anniversary of Lacan’s death in September 2011 was marked by an “intellectual dispute,” one which was not settled in the sphere of ideas or public academic debate, but in a defamation trial in the French criminal courts. While a still on-going war of...
Suárez and Rouse: Masculinity, Sport and Rape Apologies
As Luis Suárez joined Johan le Roux and Mike Tyson in the annals of sports-biting history this week, across the water in Northern Ireland Alvin Rouse continues to play in goal for Ballinamallard United Football Club, despite facing three counts of rape, two of sexual...
Thatcher: The Wound Festers
The passing of Margaret Thatcher was announced to this author via a simple text message, it contained only two words, ‘rejoice rejoice’. Its tone appeared to encapsulate one side of a debate which has exercised British political life for over three decades, the person...
KEY CONCEPTS
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SERIES / SYMPOSIA
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