CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
Discretionary Symbolism: An Analysis of Trump’s Policies for Latin America and Beyond
The international policies of the second Trump administration have caused quite an upheaval. From raising trading tariffs to (supposedly) ending wars efforts – while at the same time bombing small boast and sanctioning judges, it has not been easy to understand it. In many European countries it is now common to find institutional analysis explaining the current Trump administration international strategy as breaking apart from most of the historical US formal alliances and commitments. But I want to contribute with these reflections proposing something different: these policies are not breaking apart from previous US international strategies. They are, in fact, reenacting it. And Trump’s strategies to Latin America illustrate that well. I don’t believe that Trump’s policies for Latin America are completely new. In fact, I believe these policies try to mimic older American doctrines for the region – which is somehow coherent with his electoral campaign slogan, “Make America...
ARTICLES
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...
All Rise: What Does Justice Sound Like?
Three years ago last Saturday, an oil rig around 50 kilometres off the coast of Louisiana exploded. The explosion killed eleven workers instantaneously, and marked the beginning of an 87-day period of uncontrollable crude oil spillage into the Gulf of Mexico, the...
The Philpott Trial, Welfare Reform and the Facialisation of Poverty
The British Right celebrates the personality cult of its heroine Margaret Thatcher this week, at a time when an obsessively individualised personality-politics dominates the press and is increasingly redefining the terms of political debate and proffering mandates for...
Mao Tse-Tung in Bogota: The Pragmatism of FARC and its Parallel in China
Several analysts of the peace process currently under way in Colombia have overlooked the curious parallel between the guerrilla insurgents' proposal to establish some 50 Peasant Reserve Zones (ZRCs in their Spanish initials) in the national territory and the policy...
Sumak Kawsay, Interculturality and Decolonialization
Many commentators have been highlighting the novelty of the Ecuadorian constitution’s recognition of the right to nature and even the concepts of buen vivir and sumak kawsay (‘good living’ in Spanish and Quechua respectively), analyzing them as though they were simple...
Thatcher: a wound reopens
Last night in Brixton, London, George Sq. Glasgow, Easton in Bristol, Derry in Northern Ireland, and in pubs and working men's clubs across Britain, people cheered, raised a glass, partied, danced in the streets, to mark the death of Margaret Thatcher. Some people...
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SERIES / SYMPOSIA
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