CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
Women and Colonialism in the UK Supreme Court’s decision in Re Dillon (2026)
There are many extraordinary things about the UK Supreme Court’s (UKSC) decision in Dillon. It unpicks at least half of Article 2 of the Windsor Framework – specifically undoing the elements that protect human rights in Northern Ireland post Brexit. Its use of interpretive tools to undertake what I’m sure it regards, to paraphrase Self-Esteem – as some kinda wizardry to arrive at absurdities of interpretation. Colin Murray in his blog posts outlines many of these legal high jinks in what he rightly calls a highly activist judgment. Reasonable sounding conservative judgments written in abstractions are rarely called out for their activism. Even where their apparent rationality and common sense are deployed to undo ordinary meanings and intentions. But here the UKSC, in seeing the controversial UK Legacy Act of 2023 as a way to narrow future protection of rights in Northern Ireland it is activist, including in ways that I will outline below, that impact...
ARTICLES
International law and failure in the context of Gaza
A few days ago a discussion developed on Twitter (as these things do) about whether Gaza (and specifically the failure to prevent or halt the ongoing genocide) signals a failure of international law. Many of the responses seemed to be saying a similar thing, mainly,...
What was the Anthropocene?
Apparently, we might no longer live in the Anthropocene. Such was the result of a formal vote by the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (SQS), issued on the 5th of March 2024, who oversee and administer 4.5 billion...
The uses of Marxist theory of law during a genocide
This was originally a talk, prepared for the Pashukanis @100 conference, with an afterword post-ICJ interim order of 26 January 2024. In some ways it is ironic and in other ways entirely appropriate that the Pashukanis @100 event falls on the very days...
What Taylor Swift Taught me about Fascism
Reposted from Unemployed Negativity: Years ago I remember encountering Félix Guattari's little essay, "Everybody Wants to be a Fascist." At the time its title seemed more clever than prescient. (Although it is worth remembering how much fascism, and the...
Explainer: South Africa v Israel at the International Court of Justice
On 29th December 2023, South Africa filed an application at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), instituting proceedings against Israel. In its application, it asked the ICJ – the judicial organ of the United Nations – to determine whether Israel had violated its...
Demystifying the neo-colonialism of international law
@ShahdAbusalama (Twitter) Colonialism—a modern form of imperialism—emerged in the sixteenth century, after the Spanish and Portuguese occupation of South America. Colonialism involves a state occupying a territory and exploiting its resources (natural and human) for...
Chile’s Second Constitutional Plebiscite: Of Headlines and Compromises
On December 17th Chile will face its second constitutional plebiscite in little more than a year. As might be recalled, in September 2022, 68.89% voted to reject the draft Constitution written by a Convention in which the Left held a considerable majority. This time,...
The Unpersonhood of the Enemy: The Turkish Case of Can Atalay
@Seyhan Avşar The Enemy, The Law, The Reason The repercussion of the prosecution of Can Atalay will have a major impact on the politics in Turkey. Atalay is a socialist lawyer and rights defender who was sentenced to 18 years in prison following the ‘Gezi Trial’....
What does it mean to dream of new anticolonial worlds from within the law school?
Continuing our series on Folúkẹ́ Adébísí brilliant Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge (Bristol University Press 2023), Beth Kamunge-Kpodo and Folúkẹ́ Adébísí have a conversation about how to use decolonisation to uncover the silences and absences in legal knowledge....
The Hegel of Coyoacán: In Memoriam, Enrique Dussel
(24 December 1934 - 5 November 2023) My most enduring image of Enrique Dussel shows him in the role that made him happiest. That of a teacher, maestro in Spanish; with a lowercase 'm', as in the mastery of non-mastery. There he is, in front of a whiteboard on which...
Letter from Legal Experts on Labour’s position on the commission of war crimes
Dear Mr Starmer, We, the undersigned, are writing to request that the Labour party immediately clarify its position on the prohibition of collective punishment. On 11 October, you were asked on LBC radio if Israel’s siege of Gaza, and the cutting off of...
To say and think a life beyond what settler colonialism has made
The Earth is closing on Palestinians in Gaza. As I write these lines, Israel continues to bomb more than two million Palestinians, refugees and the descendants of refugees confined to the besieged Gaza Strip, which measures a mere 365 square km. More than 300,000...
The “race power” Haunting the Voice Referendum in Australia – Is a Sonorous Constitution Possible?
Gordon Bennett, ‘Home Decor (Relative/Absolute) Flowers for Mathinna #2 (1999) Although ‘race’ is a construction, it manifests in various juridical and political formations, and in the lived experience of everyday life. Australia, as a state and society, is one such...
War and the Uncanny Face of the Other in Children’s Literature: A Case Study of Davide Cali’s Enemy
Mankind has been plagued by war since the beginning of civilization. History proves this well. Not just these days, but these centuries have always been war. But these days, by virtue (or perhaps evil) of the availability of social media and the internet, we, I mean...
“In Words the Subaltern Cannot Speak”
Using decolonisation to uncover the silences and absences in legal knowledge. A conversation between Foluke Adebisi, author of Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge (Bristol University Press 2023), and Katie Bales KB: I should begin by just reiterating how brilliant I...
Ghosts of the Nation: A Hauntological Critique of the Imagined Communion
The Imagined Communion As elaborated in Mikkel Flohr’s recent article for Critical Legal Thinking, for Benedict Anderson (1991), the nation and nationalism function in reference to an “imagined political community”. As Anderson elaborates, the nation is an imagined...
Women’s Body Under Secondary Colonialism
This is Behnaz Amani, one of the political prisoners of Iran’s recent revolt, “Woman, Life, Freedom”. I’ve been in Gharchak prison for 46 days and have seen things which make me wonder and ponder upon the concept of the female body and capitalism and how the state can...
Oh West: Delinking from the Coloniality of Iranian Imagination
Almost six months after the start of what then came to be rightly known as “Women, Life, Freedom” revolution after the state murder of Zhina Amini[I] - a girl from one the utmost subaltern peripheries of Iranian nation-state killed in its capital city of Tehran by the...
Uprisings in Iran and their historical origins
The world media is once again full of images, stories, discussions, and trending hashtags about ongoing mass protests in Iran. Those who are familiar with Iran’s social-historical context know that this country is the land of popular uprisings, political struggles,...
The Disaster of the Century
In Lieu of a Beginning… On February 5, 2023, we experienced two earthquakes in Turkey that were massive and their consequences extremely severe. The government officials called it “the disaster of the century”. The earthquake we experienced was itself destructive but...
Prefigurative Law Reform: Creating a New Research Methodology of Radical Change
Image by Noah Purifoy | http://www.noahpurifoy.com/joshua-tree-outdoor-museum Prefigurative politics and law have long been seen as opposing phenomena – one a grassroots radical practice that embodies sought-after norms (horizontality, social justice, and...
