Il/legal Practices
*Call For Papers*
Critical legal strategies are often illegal strategies. But how is that boundary drawn and maintained? How does the boundary legal/illegal organise thought, practice and political possibilities and inertias? What non-legal forces are deployed to keep it in place and with what consequences? And why is it so commonly required to be challenged, to be disputed, even upended – from conservatives and radicals alike? Alternatively, why might the distinction best be ignored in favour of other strategies, other assessments of how best to engage or overcome configurations of power because the focus on legal disobedience is, as Robert Cover noted, already to ‘accept the perspective of the established order’?
Law’s boundaries and distinctions mark social and political space in ways that are in need of constant reflection and engagement since they necessarily put to question established patterns of activism and complicity. This stream allows participants to explore and relate what can be learned from understanding and acting around that uneven, contested, yet forceful distinction, legal/illegal. It invites a range of perspectives including studies which may be historical, comparative, or contemporary, and across a range of legal doctrinal areas and political practices.
Stream Organiser:
Scott Veitch
Send titles and abstracts to the organising committee by 15 June:
clc@lbss.gla.ac.uk