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Critical Legal Geographies
Abstract
This chapter examines the processes of spatial production labelled ‘critical legal geographies’. Like the spatiality of law, they outline hierarchies of domination and apply the territorialised paradigm. In critical legal geographies, though, the relation between logical space, ideology, and power departs from that of the spatiality of law. Instead of normalising domination through a politico-legal discourse, critical legal geographies become manifest through law enforcement, and their underpinnings are revealed by comparative law and critical geographies. Likewise, normative spatialities related to terrorism, counterterrorism, and migration use the territorialised paradigm to entrench the ideology of domination and its effects.
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This paper sets out a research agenda for EU legal geography. It identifies some central traits to the project of legal geography, a relatively new and increasingly populated interdisciplinary space that links legal studies with geography. While the EU and the project of integration appear to offer particularly rich soil for the legal geographer, very little attention has been paid to the ways in which the nature, structure and lived experience of the EU can be explained from a spatial and temporal perspective. For many reasons, as will be elaborated, this is a shame. Most crucially, perhaps, there is a growing realisation in EU studies in general that the authority and legitimacy of the EU depends, more and more, on how it is experienced by its citizens. Legal geography, with its spatial awareness and focus on the way in which space, time and law are co-constituted, offers a lens, language and conceptual framework to fill this void. While EU lawyers have occasionally and haphazardly ventured into the terrain of legal geography, much work is to be done. This could take the form of methodological, empirical, or conceptual work, and would offer a new dimension to existing accounts of European integration and to the central concepts in doctrinal and constitutional work in EU legal studies.
This chapter evaluates the limits of justice in settler colonial contexts across the Americas. I begin by reviewing legal geography scholarship, arguing for a closer engagement with critical environmental justice studies and attention to settler colonialism. What follows is a countertopographic legal geography analysis, that shows how extractive imperatives and settler legal frameworks in the U.S. and Paraguay shape Indigenous struggles for land restitution, running up against the aporia the law/justice dialectic. If all the land was stolen, how is justice possible in the settler colonial present? I argue that though the very structure of Indigenous land rights (re)produce legal geographies that limit what justice is and can be, Indigenous peoples and their allies in Paraguay and the U.S. refuse to abide by the law’s limits, instead working to counter processes that perpetuate erasure. I conclude by considering the role of engaged, critical scholarship vis-à-vis struggles for Indigenous environmental justice.
EU citizenship finds itself in but a deadlock. Certainly no longer being just a symbol of European integration but still far away from a meaningful status of its holders, Union citizenship fails to find its place in the legal landscape of the EU. Having sketched out the current state of EU citizenship and some of its outstanding problems, this article suggests to analyse Union citizenship anew and free from the constraints of legal methodology. In order to do that, this piece employs the works of Jacques Derrida and, on the background of his views on Europe, deconstructs EU citizenship unravelling its aporia.
The article reappraises the law’s ‘egalitarian commitment’ in an era of global inequality. It upholds that such an egalitarian predicament scarcely squares with the reality. Firstly, international groups aim to control how wealth is distributed in society; secondly, the divide between the Global South and the Global North rises at a steady rate. Thirdly, the rule of law, which should spread good governance and development, conceals a policy of domination. Finally, global financial actors code their own interests through the law by seeking a connection with the public sphere in the field of public finance. The article argues that private interests have infiltrated the public sphere and contributed, globally and domestically, to the rise of ‘mortgaged democracies’. In so doing, it draws examples from English constitutional history and considers how the common-law mentality has facilitated their advent. It then explains how this has triggered a change in how societies perceive the political bond, which is now rooted in several acts of conveyance. Finally, the article provides us with a further paradigm for the organisation of communities. English law has been able to cope to the iniquitous effects of the mortgage by developing the conception of the equity of redemption. The redemption paradigm is probably able to challenge the role of economic interests within societies and therefore radically transform the idea that political obligations might be conveyed upon condition.
The prevalence of social injustice suggests the need for radical transformation of political economy and governance. This article develops the concept of ‘everyday radicalism’, which positions the everyday as a potential site of social change. Everyday radicalism is based on three main elements: dissensus and a rupture with dominant practices; collective rebellion and the creation of alternatives on a micro-scale; and the connection of these practices with utopian ideas to be able to develop strategies for social justice. The potential application of everyday radicalism is illustrated through a case study of a women’s social intervention in Manchester. The article aims to show how everyday radicalism has the potential to contribute knowledge towards the transformation of everyday life and the institutions that govern society.
Polymorphic borders. Territory, Politics, Governance. Conceptualizing the respatialization, rescaling and mobilization of border work is a central problem in current borders research. Traditional and ubiquitous border concepts imply a coherent state power belied by much contemporary research. In this introduction to the special issue on ‘Polyphorphic Borders’ we suggest that not only do empirical studies of border work reveal a much more fragmented and chaotic world of bordering that is more guided by site- and agent-specific contingencies than by grand schemes, but also that representing borders as ubiquitous calls forth the state as coherent, monstrous, omnipotent and omniscient. Rather than being either strictly tied to the territorial margins of the states or ubiquitous throughout the entire territory of states, bordering takes on a variety of forms, agents, sites, practices and targets. We propose reconceptualizing borders as polymorphic, or taking on a multiplicity of mutually non-exclusive forms at the same time. In this introduction we propose the metaphor of polymorphic borders in order to account for the respatialization of border work beyond and within traditional borders in a way that avoids viewing borders as either lines, or everywhere. The articles that follow elaborate polymorphic borders through ethnographic investigations of border work at various sites and scales.
The relationship between law and terrorism has re-emerged recently as a pressing issue in contemporary jurisprudence. Terrorism appears to take law to its limit, whilst the demands of counter-terrorism hold the cause of justice in contempt. At this point the case for engaging alternative intellectual approaches and resources is compelling. Ian Ward argues that through a closer appreciation of the ethical and aesthetical dimensions of terror, as well as the historical, political and cultural, we can better comprehend modern expressions and experiences of terrorism. For this reason, alongside juristic responses to modern expressions of terrorism, Law, Text, Terror examines a variety of supplementary literary texts as well as alternative intellectual approaches; from the drama of Euripides and Shakespeare, to the rhetoric and poetry of Burke and Shelley, the literary feminisms of Lessing and Rame, and the narrative existentialism of Conrad, Coetzee, Dostoevsky and DeLillo.
The Play of Law in Modern British Theatre investigates the place and purpose of law in a range of modern dramatic settings and writings. Each chapter, which focusses on a particular area of law and the work of a particular playwright, illustrates the important role of theatre in articulating legal and political issues to a modern audience. The encompassing aspiration of The Play of Law in Modern British Theatre introduces the reader to a variety of genres in modern dramatic writing. From the ‘state of the nation’ plays of the 1980s and 1990s, to ‘verbatim’ and modern historical drama, to the calculated violence of ‘in-yer-face’, and associated expressions of radical and feminist theatre. Amongst those playwrights whose work is considered are David Hare, Richard Norton-Taylor, Caryl Churchill, Howard Brenton, Mike Bartlett, Sarah Kane, Bryony Lavery and Evan Placey. Along the way the reader is introduced to an equally wide range of areas of political and legal debate; from constitutional reform, to the present state of international law, to a variety of familiar controversies in associated areas of law, society, and gender.
States have long denied basic rights to non-citizens within their borders, and international law imposes only limited duties on states with respect to those fleeing persecution. But even the limited rights previously enjoyed by non-citizens are eroding in the face of rising nationalism, populism, xenophobia, and racism. Beyond Borders explores what obligations we owe to those outside our political community. Drawing on contributions from a broad variety of disciplines – from literature to political science to philosophy – the volume considers the failures of law and politics to guarantee rights for the most vulnerable and attempts to imagine new forms of belonging grounded in ideas of solidarity, empathy, and responsibility in order to identify a more robust basis for the protection of non-citizens at home and abroad. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Cambridge Core - Australian History - Empire and the Making of Native Title - by Bain Attwood
This bookanalyzes diverse representations of environmental moral engagement in contemporary mediated popular culture. It identifies and explores intertwining, co-constitutive, yet contrary stories of what the author terms “ecopiety” and “consumopiety” as they flow across multiple media platforms. The way these stories compete and conflict, vying for space as contested narratives in the public imagination, constitutes a central inquiry of the book. Drawing together theoretical insights from cultural studies, media studies, environmental humanities, and religious studies, the book offers a critical reading of primary source data drawn from such areas as the marketing of green consumer products, “greenwashed” corporate advertising, environmental mobile device applications, eco-themed reality television, the marketing of eco-funerals, Internet sharing of environmental tattoos, “green” fashion guides, and the media strategies of green hiphop activism. Taylor makes the case that a detailed, multichannel, cross-platform approach to cultural analysis is critical to understanding the kind of important “work” taking place as mediated popular culture plays an integral role in the “greening” of American moral sensibilities. Ecopiety delves into the complex and contested processes of remaking our world and rescripting the future in the digital age—a time when storytelling processes themselves are shaping and being shaped by new media outlets and digital sharing technologies.
The article focuses on the epistemological paradigms that underpin the current trends in comparative legal research, by assessing them within the framework of the law-and-literature movement. In particular, it examines the scientific state of mind and the veering towards quantitative approaches which now percolate through legal comparative studies. The article argues that such state of mind is not merely confined to the ambit of comparative law. It has indeed several traits in common with the scientific mentality which has been saturating the knowledge system in Western culture since the seventeenth century. This scientific state of mind was one of Jonathan Swift’s main targets. In Gulliver’s Travels , A Tale of a Tub , and A Discourse Concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit , Swift satirised the seventeenth-century scientific program, which had reduced the advancement of knowledge into a system that is very similar to twenty-first century information systems. This reduction was influenced by Cartesian philosophy and was achieved through methodological innovation. But it was also a consequence of the debate on ancient and modern learning , which had originated in France, but had immediate resonance in England. Swift rejected absolute reliance on quantitative methods: not only does this make it possible to set an equation between law and literature, but it also allows us to bring humanities into the debate about quantification in comparative law – and, as a consequence, to reappraise through literature some common assumptions we usually make about the law.
From great power politics and speculation about resource scrambles, to everyday encounters and objects such as smart phones, geopolitics affects citizens, corporations, international bodies, social movements, and governments. Geopolitics is far more than simply the impact of geographical features such as rivers, mountains, and climate on political developments. Geopolitics: A Very Short Introduction explores the intellectual historical origins of geopolitics and its current concerns, drawing on regional and thematic case studies. A country’s connectivity, location, size, and resources all affect how the people that live there understand and interact with the wider world. The recent rise of populism and economic nationalism worldwide are also considered.
Pierre Bourdieu's account of the modern state's emergence has affinities with the analyses of legal systems offered by Herbert Hart and Hans Kelsen. Bourdieu, Hart, and Kelsen each describe normative spaces within which practical life unfolds. While Bourdieu's account of the state as 'a space of spaces' is less systematic than the analyses of Hart and Kelsen, he augments their contributions in important ways. He conveys a more definite sense of the texture of lived experience within the space he describes than either Hart or Kelsen on the modern state. Bourdieu's analysis also affords a basis on which to draw out the significance of institutions that rarely feature in jurisprudential works on the state or legal systems. This article illustrates this point by reference to the public inquiry. It also finds at work within On the State an ideal that gives expression to an egalitarian philosophy of government. This is the ideal of politeia, which, on the view offered here, identifies legal, political, and economic institutions and practices as constituents of 'community.'.
This illuminating collection of essays assesses the 17th century, interpreting what used to be called "The Puritan Revolution," the ideas which helped to produce it and resulted from it, and the relations between these ideas and the political events of the day.
The current practices of several large multinational corporations with interests in cocoa production, aided by organizations that present themselves as being committed to fair trade, reproduces and continues the standards of slavery for workers all over the world. This abuse is centered in the West African nation of Cote d'Ivoire, where 40 percent of the world's cocoa is produced. Indigenous voices that could speak for farmers and their families in labor negotiations are systematically ignored or silenced.
This paper uses three recent struggles over public space in California’s East Bay (Berkeley and Oakland) to critically interrogate the ‘end of public space’ thesis. Developing a historical analysis of the discourse of the ‘end of public space’ over the past two and a half decades, the paper shows that dismissal of arguments about the end of public space both ignores the dialectical nature of the original interventions and comes at a real political and scholarly cost. The paper concludes that the tendency towards the end of public space in capitalism is closely related to the necessity for capitalism to produce abstract space. Both this tendency and this necessity are struggled over and contradictory, and it is out of these struggles and contradictions that actually-existing public space is produced.
This paper offers a sociological interpretation of the Canadian Comprehensive Land Claims (CLC) process, arguing that CLC is a strategy used by the state to dispossess Aboriginal peoples. CLC does this through leveraging the cession of Aboriginal rights and the relinquishing of indigenous lands. Drawing upon the ongoing Innu Nation Tshash Petapen (‘New Dawn’) agreement, I examine four related aspects of the process and the agreement which operate to dispossess the Innu: (1) the undemocratic social and political contexts in which agreement is elicited, (2) the depletion of Aboriginal rights of the indigenous party, (3) the depletion of indigenous lands, and (4) the creation of wealth and debt. Finally, I will interpret these processes as building on social changes inflicted on the Innu. These are characterized by imposed law and the state of exception.
Because of the inappropriate and excessively high demands of the formal requirements associated with low-cost housing facilities in most developing countries, many of those who comprise the urban poor have resorted to housing themselves through measures established by the informal sector. As the law could also intervene with such situations so that such informal settlements may be regularized, programmes that are provided are able to cover only some issues of public law regularization, for example that of community upgrading and private law regularization such as titles to land. This chapter therefore realises that formal law is interrelated with informal setups since these can be either a cause or a consequence. Using J. W. Harris' analytical framework from Property and Justice, this chapter aims to examine the nature of informal property law.
Familiar legal theories are epistemologically and politically stato-centric theories; they aim to rationalize intra- and inter-national legal systems. If this Westphalian approach were to be abandoned, then its replacement might be called Global Law, which invites theorizing that is not stato-centric. When that change happens, one would talk about a
Global Turn
in legal theory. Describing this turn is the aim of the paper.
This description is articulated around two ideas about the history and geography of the globalizing of Law, and three intuitions about the fate of legal theory itself once this
Global Turn
is taken. Namely, how theorizing Law from this perspective leads to focus on what is emerging and circulating, how the aesthetics of legal thinking shifts towards perspectivism and dissociation, and how more pluralistic, eclectic and pragmatic modes of reasoning and arguing about Law become dominant. What follows is neither a substantial or positivistic analysis, nor a prediction or a wish, but an attempt to point out tendencies which might be essential features of contemporary legal thinking.
Why does the spectre of May 68 still haunt French discourse? Alain Badiou on the country's longue duree sequences of restoration and revolt, and the place of Sarkozy's presidency within them. Lessons in political courage from Plato and Corneille, and a call to reassert the Manifesto's founding wager.
This book pays attention to the earlier fourteenth century in England as a literary period in its own right. It surveys the wide range of writings by the generation before Geoffrey Chaucer, and explores how English writers in the half-century leading up to the outbreak of the Hundred Years War expressed their concepts of England as a nation, and how they exploited the association between nation, people, and language. At the centre of this work is a study of the construction of national identity that takes place in the histories written in English. The contributions of romances and saints' lives to an awareness of the nation's past are also considered, as is the question of how writers were able to reconcile their sense of regional identity with commitment to the nation. A final chapter explores the interrelationship between England's three languages, Latin, French and English, at a time when English was attaining the status of the national language. Middle English quotations are translated into modern English throughout.