Liberal and Democratic Egalitarian Rights: A Critical Legal Conception

2020 ◽  
pp. 174387212093056
Author(s):  
Matthew McManus
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Normative Approach ◽  
Political Left ◽  
Critical Legal Theory ◽  
Liberal Approach

This paper defends the need for a comprehensive critique of liberalism and the liberal approach to rights from the political left, in the vein of classical critical legal theory. However, it argues that critical legal theory was limited by its frequent unwillingness to put forward a counter normative approach which could inspire interest and activism. The paper therefore concludes by sketching out a more leftist approach to rights centering on an expressivist account of human dignity.

scholarly journals Critical Legal Theory in Central and Eastern Europe: In Search of Method

2019 ◽  
Vol 89 ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Rafał Mańko
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
The Political ◽  
Postmodern Theory ◽  
Critical Legal Theory

Critical legal theory emerged in the United States in the 1970s, at a time when Central and Eastern Europe belonged to the Soviet bloc and was subject to the system of actually existing socialism. Therefore, the arrival of critical jurisprudence into the region was delayed. In Poland, the first texts on critical and postmodern legal theory began to appear at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s. Lech Morawski’s monograph, characteristically entitled What Legal Scholarship Has to Gain from Postmodernism?, published in 2001, officially inaugurated a broader interest in postmodern legal theory. Adam Sulikowski has been the main representative of critical legal theory in Poland, developing a postmodern theory of constitutionalism. Other sub-fields of postmodern and critical legal theory, gradually developing in Central European jurisprudence, include such areas as law and literature, law and ideology, law and neocolonial theory, as well as feminist jurisprudence. There is a noticeably growing influence of critical sociology and critical discourse analysis which seem to be a promising paradigm for invigorating critical legal theory from an empirical perspective. The concept of “the political”, in the sense used by Chantal Mouffe, has been evoked to propose a “political theory of law” conceived as an analysis of the juridical phenomenon through the lens of the political. Recently, it has found its concrete applications in the political theory of judicial decision-making.

scholarly journals Legal Form, COVID and the Political: Notes Towards a Critique of the Corpus Iuris Pandemici

2021 ◽  
Vol 96 ◽  
pp. 33-46
Author(s):  
Rafał Mańko
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Law Enforcement Officers ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legal Form ◽  
Scientific Level ◽  
Critical Legal Theory ◽  
Difficult Times ◽  
Academic Resources

The scholarly analysis and critique of law always take place under circumstances of scarcity of academic resources. At any given moment, the number of academic jurists mastering a given legal system and being capable of analysing and critiquing it at a professional scientific level is limited. The pandemic of COVID-19 only exacerbated this phenomenon, exposing the importance of making methodological and paradigmatic choices. What critical legal theory teaches us is that the choice of method and approach to the analysis and critique of legal materials is not politically neutral. Asking about the political goals and choices behind solutions adopted by legislators, ministers, civil servants, law enforcement officers, and judges, and about the actual interests impacted by their decisions is much more important and topical in these difficult times. A sociologically oriented critical legal theory can provide the necessary tools for such an analysis of the corpus iuris pandemici.

Critical legal studies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilios Christodoulidis ◽  
Johan van der Walt
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legal Tradition ◽  
Social Production ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
Critical Legal Theory ◽  
The One

This chapter traces the tradition of critical theory in Europe in the way it has informed and framed legal thought. A key, and distinctive, element of this legal tradition is that it characteristically connects to the state as constitutive reference; in other words it understands the institution of law as that which organizes and mediates the relation of the state to civil society. The other constitutive reference is political economy, a reference that typically grounds this tradition of thinking about the law in the materiality of the practices of social production and reproduction. It is in these connections, of the institution of law to the domains of the state and of the political economy, that critical legal theory locates the function of law, and the emancipatory potentially it affords on the one hand, and the obstacles to emancipation it imposes, on the other.

Tending the Garden: Equity and Exscription

Pólemos ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan-Patrick Oppermann
Keyword(s):  
Legal Theory ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Legal Interpretation ◽  
Conceptual Space ◽  
The Third ◽  
Modest Contribution ◽  
Intellectual Capacity ◽  
Critical Legal Theory ◽  
Philosophical Origin

Abstract The first part of this essay means to make a modest contribution to the critical – that is to say investigative and non-traditional – study of the philosophical origin, sense, and parameters of the concept of equity. Its focus will at first be on Aristotle. Then I will seek to widen the Aristotelian concept of equity by a consideration of the moral and intellectual capacity of “enlarged mentality” as found in Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of Kant. In doing so, I will actively seek to loosen the legal or judicial bonds of this concept, instead allowing it to freely enter a larger conceptual space involving the political and the psychological. In the second part of the essay, this larger conceptual space leads me to a wider meditation with speculative moments concerning the possibility of an ontological extension of a trans-legal interpretation of equity through a consideration of some aspects of the work of French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy, particularly his notion of “exscription.” In the third part of the essay, I then supplement this Nancean meditation with a psychological turn focusing on Nancy’s commentary on Freud’s remark on the “extension of psyche.” I offer these speculative moments to step beyond Aristotelian and Arendtian/Kantian constraints and also in order to advance possible philosophical exploration of equity and justice against overly narrow containers in “legal philosophy” including “critical legal theory.”

Nation, Locality and Radical Identity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malcolm Petrie
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Central Control ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Political Left ◽  
National Model ◽  
Selection Of

Concentrating upon the years between the 1924 and 1929 general elections, which separated the first and second minority Labour governments, this chapter traces the rise of a modernised, national vision of Labour politics in Scotland. It considers first the reworking of understandings of sovereignty within the Labour movement, as the autonomy enjoyed by provincial trades councils was circumscribed, and notions of Labour as a confederation of working-class bodies, which could in places include the Communist Party, were replaced by a more hierarchical, national model. The electoral consequences of this shift are then considered, as greater central control was exercised over the selection of parliamentary candidates and the conduct of election campaigns. This chapter presents a study of the changing horizons of the political left in inter-war Scotland, analysing the declining importance of locality in the construction of radical political identities.

The State as an Actor

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Menz
Keyword(s):  
Service Sector ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Regulatory Capture ◽  
Banking Institutions ◽  
Political Left ◽  
Central Actor ◽  
Capitalist State ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Rules Of The Game

Despite the state being such a central actor in establishing and policing the rules of the game of any given political economy, its role is often neglected. In this chapter, we briefly review relevant state theories and explore changes to the nature and appearance of the capitalist state. The awesome increase in the political fire power of the financial service sector has unfortunately led to regulatory capture. The state can no longer be considered a neutral umpire, being heavily influenced by the prerogatives of major banking institutions. This state of affairs corrupts the hopes that liberals place in the self-policing powers of the marketplace and reflects certain fears on the political left regarding the pernicious effects of ‘financialization’.

Are misinformation, antiscientific claims, and conspiracy theories for political extremists?

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 583-605
Author(s):  
Adam M. Enders ◽  
Joseph E. Uscinski
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
Political Orientations ◽  
Conspiracy Beliefs ◽  
Political Left ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Political Groups ◽  
Representative Samples

Extremist political groups, especially “extreme” Republicans and conservatives, are increasingly charged with believing misinformation, antiscientific claims, and conspiracy theories to a greater extent than moderates and those on the political left by both a burgeoning scholarly literature and popular press accounts. However, previous investigations of the relationship between political orientations and alternative beliefs have been limited in their operationalization of those beliefs and political extremity. We build on existing literature by examining the relationships between partisan and nonpartisan conspiracy beliefs and symbolic and operational forms of political extremity. Using two large, nationally representative samples of Americans, we find that ideological extremity predicts alternative beliefs only when the beliefs in question are partisan in nature and the measure of ideology is identity-based. Moreover, we find that operational ideological extremism is negatively related to nonpartisan conspiracy beliefs. Our findings help reconcile discrepant findings regarding the relationship between political orientations and conspiracy beliefs.

The social uses of the law at a Soweto garbage dump: Reclaiming the law and the state in the informal economy

2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 222-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Samson
Keyword(s):  
Informal Economy ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
Social World ◽  
The State ◽  
Informal Workers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Legal Theory ◽  
The Law ◽  
Social Uses

The informal economy is typically understood as being outside the law. However, this article develops the concept ‘social uses of the law’ to interrogate how informal workers understand, engage and deploy the law, facilitating the development of more nuanced theorizations of both the informal economy and the law. The article explores how a legal victory over the Johannesburg Council by reclaimers of reusable and recyclable materials at the Marie Louise landfill in Soweto, South Africa shaped their subjectivities and became bound up in struggles between reclaimers at the dump. Engaging with critical legal theory, the author argues that in a social world where most people do not read, understand, or cite court rulings, the ‘social uses of the law’ can be of greater import than the actual judgement. This does not, however, render the state absent, as the assertion that the court sanctioned particular claims and rights is central to the reclaimers’ social uses of the law. Through the social uses of the law, these reclaimers force us to consider how and why the law, one of the cornerstones of state formation, cannot be separated from the informal ways it is understood and deployed. The article concludes by sketching a research agenda that can assist in developing a more relational understanding of the law and the informal economy.

Reason, Development, and the Conflicts of Human Ends: Sir Isaiah Berlin's Vision of Politics

1980 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Kocis
Keyword(s):  
Moral Development ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Active Participation ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Human Values ◽  
The Political ◽  
Positive Liberty ◽  
Political Question

At the root of the conflict between Berlin and his critics is a fundamental disagreement over the possibility of certainty and over the relation of human ends to politics. Gerald MacCallum's formalist critique obscures the political question of whose values a free person is at liberty to pursue. Macpherson's attempt to defend positive liberty as not rationalistic is shown to fail because he (a) conflates liberty with its conditions and (b) assumes a rational pattern to human moral development. And Crick charges Berlin with ignoring politics, understood as active participation in the polis. Finally, Berlin's conception of politics as a form of human interaction aimed at creating the conditions of human dignity in a situation where we sincerely disagree over the ends of life is shown to be an effort to liberate us to live life for our own purposes. Yet Berlin's defense of liberty is problematic because it is too skeptical; to overcome this difficulty, a non-teleological yet developmentalist account of human nature and a weakly hierarchical account of human values is suggested.

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