Journal of Law and Society最新文献

This article explores the relationship between United Kingdom (UK) public law and ‘regimes of dispossession’, taking the Chagos Archipelago as its point of departure. This article argues that this instance of dispossession, typically understood as fortifying the military power of the United States, was also part of a wider geography of states dispossessing land for a specific set of economic purposes that were tied to particular class interests. Deploying a relational geographies of materialist public law approach, the article reconceptualizes the scales of public law, extending an examination of its effects and constitution beyond the territory of the UK, and considers public law's relation to capitalism, exploring the ways in which its technologies (re)produce regimes of dispossession. The article argues that the dispossession of the Chagos Archipelago was an example of ‘executive robbery’, a racialized dispossession (produced through conferring displaceability and disposability on the Chagossians) enacted to construct military infrastructure that was key for accumulation in the Middle East.

The structure, interpretation, and implementation of the European Union (EU) free movement of persons rules mean that when one's circumstances involve caring responsibilities, the quality of one's rights and protections under EU law diminishes. The consequence of this, in the context of the gender care gap, is that women who are exercising their free movement rights and living in another EU member state are exposed to a disproportionately increased risk of legal and physical precarity, poverty, destitution, and exploitation. They face challenges in attaining and retaining rights and are at risk of falling through gaps that exist between legal rules. Furthermore, the gender care gap is not visible. The connection between the gender care gap and the EU free movement rules has not been made by EU policy makers and civil society; there is currently no strategy among EU civil society organizations to represent the lived experience of EU citizens and lobby the EU institutions for progress on gender equality in this regard.

This article reads the theory of law of the Frankfurter jurist Rudolf Wiethölter as an ambitious attempt to realize through law the indispensable radical democratization of post-Second World War German society. The occasion was provided by the resurgence of critical theory and the subsequent and related emergence and affirmation of the student protest movement of 1968 at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Following the thread of the conflict/dialogue at the university with fellow philosopher Jürgen Habermas, the article brings into focus some stages in the evolution of Wiethölter's critical theory of law and of ‘true jurists’.

This article analyses the impact of a men's rights organization involved in political lobbying and legal mobilization around gender equality issues at the European level since 1986. Drawing on the as-yet unexplored archival materials of the Campaign for Equal State Pension Ages (CESPA), an organization that had a membership of about 1,200 individuals in the 1990s and later rebranded itself as PARITY, the article explores the meaning of European Union gender equality advocacy and mobilization by and for an organization initially composed exclusively of men based in the United Kingdom. It argues that anti-discrimination law was successively used as a strategic tool by this organization to further class equality and as a potentially anti-feminist instrument to defend men's rights.

This article provides a socio-legal analysis of the ways in which military personnel orient to the laws of war as they seek to produce and maintain lawful targets for the use of force. In order to further empiricize debates surrounding the United States’ (US) controversial interpretations of core concepts in the laws of war, the article takes up the concept of ‘imminence’ – which is fundamental to the doctrine of anticipatory self-defence – and details its consequential role within a civilian casualty incident that occurred in Afghanistan in 2010. By analysing the talk of personnel involved in that operation, the article details the ways in which a drone crew and Special Forces team constructed the ‘here-and-now’ meaning and relevance of imminence in order to ensure the lawfulness of the strike. In doing so, the article demonstrates that the US’ contemporary orientations to the laws of war expand the scope for lawful violence.

Judges are required to suppress and manage their own emotions as well as those of other court users and staff in their everyday work. Previous studies have examined the complex emotional labour undertaken by judges, but there is limited research on the emotion management performed by judges in their interactions with jurors. Drawing on a qualitative study of judge–jury relations in criminal trials in Ireland, we illustrate how judges learn and habituate emotional labour practices through informal and indirect processes. Judges described managing their emotions to demonstrate impartiality and objectivity. Their accounts also underline the importance of balancing presentations of neutrality with empathy, as well as being mindful of the potential emotional toll of jury service on jurors.