CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
CONOR GEARTY
With greatness sadness we heard of the untimely and sudden death of Conor Gearty at the age of 67. Conor was the professor of human rights law at the LSE. He was born in Ireland and this led to his lifelong interest in terrorism, state crimes, violations of human rights and social justice. He was a leading scholarly voice on the abuses of anti-terrorism law, publishing Liberty and Security (2013) and Homeland Insecurity: The Rise and Rise of Anti-Terrorism Law (2024). Conor was a towering intellect and a wonderful human being. Open, kind, full of Gaelic joie de vivre, he was liked by everyone who met him. His many students speak of his kindness and generosity, he was a model academic and scholar. I was lucky to have a long, close and productive relationship with Conor. Conor was a prolific and elegant author. His books include among many others Can Human Rights Survive? (2006); Principles of Human Rights Adjudication (2004); and On Fantasy Island. Britain, Europe, and Human Rights...
ARTICLES
What is radical in ‘radical international law’?
This article started life as a response to the call for papers for the international Workshop 'Towards a Radical International Law', held at the London School of Economics in April 2011. The call for papers started with a bold declaration: International law is a...
Terminating the spatial contract: A commentary on Greece
A very unusual thing happened on February 12th in Athens: the Greek capital city went up in flames. Now, even the casual follower of events in the country might spot something peculiar in this sentence — not with the event described, but with the statement. Is that...
Civil Disobedience — Between Symbolic Politics and Real Confrontation
Some consider civil disobedience too radical; an attempt to procure political power under the mantle of moral principles or a one-sided renunciation of the duty to obey and uphold the law, and that is not to be tolerated. Citizens in functioning democracies must limit themselves to the legally sanctioned possibilities available to them for expressing dissenting views and influencing the political process. From this perspective, civil disobedience is little more than political blackmail. Others consider it an impotent expression of a reformist yearning for cosmetic changes within the given system; as a socially permissible and harmless protest of well-intentioned citizens that remains purely symbolic and only contributes to stabilizing prevailing relationships.
This essay attempts to show that both of these widespread views fail to fully address the specific characteristics of civil disobedience as a genuinely political and democratic practice of contestation. To present these specifics in detail, it is first necessary to define civil disobedience. Second, I situate this form of political practice between the opposing poles of symbolic politics and real confrontation. In a closing remark, I briefly examine the role of civil disobedience in representative democracies.
The Greek Elections and the Change of Political Cycle in Europe
The change of cycle in Greece, and in Europe, has already begun. Despite Syriza’s narrow defeat last Sunday, the fact that a supposedly minor party could, in less than a year, manage to obtain nearly 30% of the votes, double that of the social democratic party in...
Brutality on World Refugee Day – Ireland
Yesterday another mass deportation to Nigeria took place after many Direct Provision centres were raided by the Garda National Immigration Bureau (GNIB) early in the morning. We have been informed that people including women and children were taken in Carrick-on-Suir, Cork and Portlaoise.
Out of desperation, a woman called Adekemi tried to harm herself with a knife while she was being takenfrom her room. After having dragged her outside almost naked from the waist up, the police pepper sprayed her, beat her severely, and handcuffed her in front of early age children who were visibly distraught. As she had recently undergone a serious stomach surgery, the scar opened and started bleeding while she was being beaten. Adekemi was then hospitalised, but after a short time she was brought back to the hostel, and together with her three children she was taken to the airport by the GNIB for deportation.
The Greek Crisis as Racketeering
Sociologist Charles Tilly drew a compelling analogy between the state as the place of organised means of violence, and racketeering. He defined the racketeer "as someone who creates a threat and then charges for its reduction", in order to gain control and consolidate...
Declaration: Hardt & Negri
This is not a manifesto. Manifestos provide a glimpse of a world to come and also call into being the subject, who although now only a specter must materialize to become the agent of change. Manifestos work like the ancient prophets, who by the power of their vision...
In solidarity with the Greek People
For joint actions around the Greek elections, and for large Euro-Mediterranean’s mobilizations in autumn 2012! The response to the financial and economic crisis is the same everywhere: cuts in expenditure and austerity measures under the pretext of reducing deficits...
The Challenges of Indignation: Spain’s 15M
The 15M [the Indignados 'movement'] is very alive, we see this in the great challenges that await it. It has many achievements, some very visible, like the creation of a different social climate or having socialized the idea that the crisis is a con, and that this con...
The Irish Referendum: Fear Prevails
The result of the referendum on the Fiscal Treaty that took place yesterday in Ireland was a Yes in favour of the constitutional change that allows the neoliberal measures contained in the Treaty to implemented. There was a very low level of participation: around 50%...
Anorexia and the Political
Stretched across the critique: have we lost connection with each other? Have we lost a sense of grounding as critical legal scholars? However we frame this question, it goes to the heart of a fear that critical thought is not in touch with any reality. Some paper...
The legal market has its Lehman Bros. moment
As partners and associates of 190 equity partner US law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf filed out of their 6th Ave. New York office, cardboard boxes of desk clutter in hand, one could not help noticing the similarities with the images of the collapse of Lehman Bros. The...
SYRIZA Proposal: The Exit from the Crisis on the Left
1. Creation of a shield to protect society against the crisis • Not a single citizen without a guaranteed minimum income or unemployment benefit, medical care, social protection, housing, and access to all services of public utilities. • Protection of and relief...
Private Legal Transplants: Bright and dark nature of an unnoticed phenomenon
Only a few months ago, the social image of prominent transnational enterprises such as Apple and HP was threatened by media reporting several violations of labor rights by Foxconn, the main contract manufacturer for electronics companies such as these, and which is...
“Wendland am Main” – Blockupy to return
One week after the Blockupy protests the Blockupy Alliance has concluded that the event was on balance a success – despite the ban. So much so, that the activists have announced their return to Frankfurt, and to turn it into what the German left call a “Wendland”, referring to the Free Republic of Wendland, a protest camp established in Gorleben, Germany on 3 May 1980 to protest against the establishment of a radioactive waste dump there.
Although almost all Blockupy actions were recently banned by the authorities – the organisers will not be discouraged: “We have decided in the alliance that this goes on,” said the regional chairman of the Left Party (Die Linke), Ulrich Wilken, on Thursday in Wiesbaden. In the autumn, a congress critical of capitalism in Frankfurt is being planned.
Open Letter Demanding the Release of Baba Jan Hunzai
For the past 8 months Baba Jan Hunzai and four fellow activists have languished in various jails of Gilgit. Twice in this period he has been removed from jail and tortured by military and police agents. He and his colleagues have been charged under Pakistan’s...
A European State of Prolonged Emergency
If we look at the post-2008 history of European and Member States’ legislation, we can clearly perceive the emergence and consolidation of a discourse of crisis and necessity, which has been used to abandon existing legal constraints and to dismantle the boundaries provided by the structure of the EU. Fortified by a narrative of apocalypse, illegality has been transformed into lawfulness.
Considering the famous 2009 judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) in Germany, we can affirm that according to the fundamental Treaties:
‘the European Union must comply with democratic principles as regards its nature and extent and also as regards to its own organisational and procedural elaboration. This means firstly that European integration may not result in the system of democratic rule [in Member States] being undermined. […]
Blockupy and The Politics of Crisis
The politics of crisis speaks among other things to the inherent crisis within the capitalist process. Nonlinear studies of capitalism, for example, take a far more honest approach to their subject matter. One can read the theology that is neoclassical economics and...
Photoblog: Blockupy day 4 – “Blockupy hat gewonnen!”
Hold your mouse Locals in the Bahnhofsviertel showed their support
Blockupy Day 4: 19 May – against the politics of crisis and authoritarianism
22:10 CET: The centre right Zeit newspaper is less than impressed with the policing overkill: Taking the Blockupy events' expiration as a benchmark to assess the city's hard line, it is difficult to understand: even with a few more permitted events, with less security...
Blockupy Day 3: 18 May – German media: “Blockupy has already won”
23.38 CET: Napoleon once said: "you should never disturb the enemy when he is the middle of making a mistake". This seems to adequately describe today's Blockupy activities in which targeted and pertinent Blockupy action simply offered a leitmotif for the furious,...
KEY CONCEPTS
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
SERIES / SYMPOSIA
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.