CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL
CRITICAL LEGAL THINKING
LAW AND THE POLITICAL

Why Human Rights fail Global Southern Women
Following a tumultuous start to her role as first lady of the United States of America, wherein she was accused of destroying ‘family values’ and promoting ‘militant feminism’,[1] Hillary Clinton delivered a much-lauded speech condemning Chinese abuses of human rights and calling for the protection of women.[2] This speech came sixteen years before she would gloat over her role in the assassination of Libya’s Gaddafiand 29 years before she joined the line of people ‘condemning Hamas’ for ‘brutally’ attacking Israeli women. The usurpation of Libya’s president plunged the country into a state of disaster, marked by the infliction of harm against women on a mass scale and a thriving slave trade. She never condemned the well-documented, systemic abuses of Palestinian women and girls at the hands of Israel nor did she revise her statements in light of the fact that certain Hamas sexual violence claims have since been debunked. There...
ARTICLES
Why Human Rights fail Global Southern Women
Following a tumultuous start to her role as first lady of the United States of America, wherein she was accused of destroying ‘family values’ and promoting ‘militant feminism’,[1] Hillary Clinton delivered a much-lauded speech condemning Chinese abuses of...
Rap vs. The State (in a time of genocide)
We know the genocide in Gaza is a collective work, a sort of F35 genocide whose parts come from an imperial collective, a collective of old colonial states now led by the USA. So the denial of genocide, at least of its naming, is also shared by these states across the...
A Preliminary Report on the Academic Office of Principal and Vice Chancellor
On 26 June 2025, Prof Iain Gillespie publicly accepted that he was ‘incompetent’ in his execution of the office of Principal and Vice Chancellor of the University of Dundee.[1] The surprise revelation of a roughly £30 million deficit at the Scottish university in...
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...
The Gaza Tribunal: A Simulacrum of Justice
The contemporary discourse on genocide is dominated by international criminal law, designed to punish individuals after the fact. Yet the framework derived from Public International Law and the Genocide Convention’s founding purpose was not punishment but prevention....
Blog Carnival: Discussing the Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Law
In her review of Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice, Isobel Roele mentions the use of ‘reverse-engineering’ as a method of counter-aesthetics. Sofia Stolk’s contribution to Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice,...
Blog Carnival: Sounding Justice
The sound of the spoken word rising, pausing, the rhythms of the lines, of the stanzas, of the silences, the poem verbalised. The images etched on the walls in black and white, comics, graphic novels, stretching across wall after wall, winding around the room. The...
Blog Carnival: Victims, aesthetics and counter-aesthetics of international justice
Narratives of international criminal justice often depart from the horrors of World War II and the legal process of the Nuremberg Trials to set the scene for how the International Criminal Court addresses contemporary violence. These narratives can be found in...
Blog Carnival: Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice
The politics of aesthetics are at the heart of Rob Knox and Christine Schwöbel-Patel’s energetic edited collection Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of International Justice brings together a diverse group of scholars, practitioners, and artists. The editors...
Dream-walker in the Academy: Self, Time, and the Borders of Critique
I have returned to the classroom. After years inside bureaucracy – the slow gravity of minutes, clearances, and protocols – I am again among students, texts, and the low hum of ideas. The air is lighter; my wings that carry my creativity remember their work. It has...
The UK’s recognition of the State of Palestine is meaningless without the proper recognition of international law on the aid flotillas
Israel has boarded the Global Sumud flotilla, representing a further escalation of their response to flotillas seeking to deliver aid to Gaza. The boarding of the flotillas in international waters and the taking of people by force into Israeli territory violates...
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...
CfP: Second International Conference of Critical Legal Geography
The second International Critical Legal Geography Conference, that will take place at the Universidad de Concepción, Chile, from 17 to 20 March 2026, will bring together transdisciplinary scholars to discuss the mutual constitution of space and law, broadly conceived....
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...
From Hyper-Chaos to the Irreversible
My philosophical project of radical democracy stands on two foundational intertwined discoveries that offer a firm ontological grounding of power.[i] 1. The world is radically contingent but is simulated by a world that presents itself...
The Architecture of Inequality: What Apartheid Teaches About Qualified Immunity
Oppression does not arrive wearing a hood; it arrives stamped, filed, and countersigned. What looks like order—forms, doctrines, jurisdiction—can be a choreography of domination. Fanon taught that colonial violence is not only the blow of the baton but the quiet...
The Outframe: How International Law’s Core Excludes Its Margins
International law is frequently represented as universal, neutral, and inclusive; however, from its inception, it has been influenced by, and primarily serves, a limited group of states historically categorised as "civilised.” This hierarchy is subtly embedded in...
Reclaiming the Ground: Lawful Expropriation and Land Justice in South Africa
Colonialism rarely dies; it mutates. Its uniforms change—from khaki to suits, from passbooks to policy papers—but the arrangement it protects remains the same: some live on the land, others live off it. Post-apartheid South Africa knows this intimately. Political...
Speed Limit: What does it mean to regulate AI?
Elena Esposito argues that artificial intelligence is misnamed and that a more accurate descriptor would be ‘artificial communication’.[1] Here, communication is closely connected to the idea of being informed: a communication is pertinent to the extent...
On the relationship between trans politics and disability
In the aftermath of the decision in For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers [2025] USCK 16, many disabled people sought to give practical solidarity to trans people. Disabled activists offered to share their RADAR keys with trans friends. Articles...
No Hearing, No Harm? Rethinking Jurisdiction and Protection in UAE v Sudan
On 5 May 2025, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) removed the case of UAE v Sudan from its docket, declaring it “manifest” that it lacked jurisdiction under Article IX of the Genocide Convention (Order, para 14). Sudan alleged that...



























