CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
The Culpable Liberal, The Latte Legalist and the End of the Settler Siege at Sea
**We are delighted to say that this post has been translated into Japanese by Yota Negishi, available here** It is the early hours of the morning on the 8th September 2025 and I am in Tunis at Sidi Bou Said Port listening to the sounds of stress, solidarity, and the song of the sea…the Mediterranean Sea whose on whose rupturous surface the Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) will set sail to break the siege on Gaza. I am in the port documenting the first of two drone attacks on Global Sumud Flotilla vessels that will take place in a 24 hour period for the legal support unit adjacent to the GSF that I am serving from Tunis. The praxis undergirding the words ‘from the river to the sea’ feels tangible in its surreality as Sumud sets sail amidst tides where waves of words move in a sea of deeds, steadfast.[1] Less than a week after the drone attack morality figures indicate that Israel and its accomplices have murdered nearly 700,000 Palestinians in the course of the...
ARTICLES
Who’s Breaching Whose Peace?
On 14 April 2011, the High Court of England and Wales ruled, in R (on the application of Joshua Moos and Hannah McClure) v The Commissioner of the Police of the Metropolis, that the police had acted unlawfully in “containing” (aka kettling) certain G20 protestors on 1...
What Kind of Law is This?
Many aspects of the Libyan situation remain unclear: the scope of the mandate given to UN member states by Security Council Resolution 1973, the broader aims of the intervention, how many civilians have been killed and by whom, and who the rebels represent. One thing,...
Law and Infinite Debt
In his critique of free will, Spinoza’s first argument against his opponents, named (Heereboord) and unnamed (Descartes, Aquinas, Burgersdijk) is that the intellect is not only the same as the will, but that in no way can the will be said to exceed the...
The End of Sovereignty, in North Africa, in the World
Spare a thought for Alain Badiou. He must be busy tending to the sensitive instruments of his evento-graph. As with the seismographs of late – all ‘revolutionary event’ detectors have had a busy time. The anticipation must also be difficult to bear. Syria is...
War, Apparatus, Witness
Jean-Luc Nancy’s Philosophical Chronicles, published in 2004, and originally broadcast over eleven months on France Culture radio with the intention to connect ‘philosophy with several nodes of contemporary life’ (xi). One of these chronicles (‘28 March 2003’) was...
Imperial Velocities & Counter-Revolution
Just when the state velocities of the Gaddafi regime were outpacing, outmaneuvering, and routing the Libyan insurgency, they were hit hard and slowed down by the much faster and more powerful air velocities of the imperial military machine. The waves of jets taking...
Excitable Speech: Shell to Sea & Joking About Rape
Give me your name and address and I’ll rape you. [All laugh] --- Unidentified Garda Sergeant Shell to Sea is an organisation operating in the west of Ireland which was formed to take direct action in protest against the Corrib Gas Project. It is widely known and...
Return of Revolutions?
From Iran, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan, and Syria to the countries of North Africa, such as Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, the anger, the desire to change the unbearable reality, the mass movement, and the process of reorganization of the political space are all present. What...
Philosophers at War
In times of confrontations between explicitly material interests, and in the absence of any real public debate involving the Italian Government (busy protecting the orgy of power), what could be better than a proper exchange between internationally-renowned...
The Russian Revolution, as covered by Sky
In the wake of the first Russian Revolution in March 1917, let’s survey some of the media coverage. Sky News -There are fears in London tonight over just who will come to power in the wake of this week’s events in Petrograd. Just days after US President Wilson...
Exception, Precariousness, Power & Authority: irregular migrants in Australian law (Pt. 2)
<<< Part I State of exception, resurgent sovereignty? The Australian government has attempted to assert that the entire RSA process is an exercise of non-statutory executive power and as such, status assessors and independent reviewers are under no obligation...
The Resistible Attraction of War
The military intervention in Libya has been met with a chorus of approval in France, resounding from all the parties represented in the Parliament, as was the case for the war in Afghanistan, as well as from various commentators. Everyone says that France has just...
The Great Libyan Distraction
The entire Libyan conflict of the last month – the civil war in Libya, the U.S.-led military action against Gaddafi – is neither about humanitarian intervention nor about the immediate supply of world oil. It is in fact one big distraction – a deliberate distraction –...
Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy, France, Libya and Me
In Alain Badiou’s open reply to Jean-Luc Nancy, he chides Nancy for falling into the trap that the NATO attacks on Libya were in any way designed to rescue the insurgents of Benghazi. Badiou is amazed that someone so informed about geopolitics, and the covert agenda...
Alain Badiou’s reply to Jean-Luc Nancy
The following is Alain Badiou's full reply to Jean-Luc Nancy's "What the Arab peoples signify to us". With many thanks to Verso Books UK. Yes, dear Jean-Luc, the position you adopt in favour of ‘Western' intervention in Libya was indeed a sorry surprise for me. Didn't...
Transitory persons, precarious lives: irregular migrants in Australian law (Part 1)
As workers and students were occupying and rioting across Europe in December last year, activists in Australia were again mourning the tragic loss of life of undocumented migrants.[1] On the 15th of December a boat carrying 100 asylum seekers was wrecked against rocks...
Thinking of Political Violence: a minor commentary on March 26th 2011, London
Events, by definition, are occurrences that interrupt routine processes and routine procedures; only in a world in which nothing of importance ever happens could the futoroligists’s dream come true. No one engaged in thought about history and politics can remain...
What the Arab peoples signify to us
The Arab peoples are signifying to us that resistance and revolt are with us once again, and that history is moving beyond History. They are doing it, as is appropriate, with all the fortune and misfortune that it involves. At the very least they have sent an...
In the light of today’s questions
We learn from David Cameron that Muammar Gaddafi ‘has lied to the international community,’ Sarkozy, in more poetic vein, suggests a ‘murderous madness’ which must be stopped, and Gaddafi himself, last night (22 March), criticises the commencement of a ‘new Crusader...
Use of Private Law to Control Student Occupations
I have been wondering about teaching one of the secret lives of private law; the use of the law of tort, contract and equity to regulate on-campus student protest. There is a growing online archive - of blogs, media reports and university press releases - which...
Human Rights for Corporations: The Death of Democracy?
Miraculous you call it babe You ain't seen nothing yet They've got Pepsi in the Andes McDonalds in Tibet (Roger Waters, Amused to Death) In the case of Citizens United v Federal Election Commission 130 S.Ct. 876 (2010) the United States Supreme Court, its highest...
KEY CONCEPTS
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