# data[].attributes.headline
Imperialism, sovereignty and the making of international law

# data[].attributes.subject
Imperialism, sovereignty and the making of international law

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Over the last few years, I have been thinking of what decolonisation should mean for legal academics in UK HE specifically. This essay reflects some of my 'initial' thoughts on where we are now, regarding decolonisation and law, and what we must think about as we chart a path forward. As part of my reflections and work on this, I am also convening a conference holding on the 13th September 2019: 'Decolonisation and the Law School.' Attend if you can.

Buy Tickets on Eventbrite

Introduction

'The only reason you say that race was not an issue is because you wish it was not. We all wish it was not. But it's a lie.' Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

Decolonisation forces us to confront the history and effects of imperialism upon our academic practices in law. As legal academics, it is imperative that we explore what 'decolonisation' means for us and what the possibility of decolonised law means for the relationship between law and society. How do we become more aware of, and directly mention, how the law came to be, in tandem with a history of legalised dispossession and othering from humanity? How do we acknowledge how that history has influenced how law is taught, what law is taught, and what law is now, and who the law works for? How do we teach law as the study of social order, and elucidate how racial stratifications in the social are formed and maintained?

Critical thinking is at the core of legal study, yet failing to engage with 'marginalised issues' is an impediment to achieving critical thinking. When we do not account for the concerns of various groups that have been 'othered', we fail to achieve the positive possibilities of legal study. When our curriculum delivery fails to contextualise the information we transmit, we contribute to this othering. We contribute to othering in many ways: when we teach Locke's ideas of the social contract theory without mentioning his legitimisation of slavery; when we hold out the concept of a fictional objective 'reasonable person' without acknowledging the gendered and raced and classisst boundaries of its premises; when we teach in and revere buildings constructed with colonial profits and benefits derived from enslaving human beings; when our curriculum is skewed in favour of domination and privilege; and when our subjects are infused with male 'voices.'... I could go on.

Why 'Decolonisation'?

'The intellectual project of decolonizing has to set out ways to proceed through a colonizing world. It needs a radical compassion that reaches out, that seeks collaboration, and that is open to possibilities that can only be imagined as other things fall into place.' Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies

I believe decolonisation takes us a step further than such concepts as equality, diversity, representation, inclusion, as it provides us with a context to confront the structures that necessitate the use of such concepts. Decolonisation requires us to be intentional about engaging with Britain's history of very active participation in slavery and colonization, as well as the complicity of academics and universities in enabling, benefitting from and not properly acknowledging that history and its remnants. How we deal with this history is the basic foundation of the decolonization movement. Therefore, it is important for us to think carefully about our specific history, and exactly who we want to be, considering who we have been. Decolonisation requires us to be specific. The passive voice does not work here.

Decolonisation is about knowledge, epistemologies, ways of knowing and being known. Scholars who have written about epistemicides - the superiorization of one body of knowledge to eliminate another - have emphasized the need for us to confront this history and the complicity of universities in normalising and reproducing this hierarchization of knowledge. Decolonisation is understanding that the episteme became a weapon, a war machine; the justification for dehumanisation that followed epistemicide. By consigning other knowledges to inferiority, it was possible to consign the humans who held those knowledges to inferiority. And we have not undone this consigning. That relegation is evidenced in what we name our buildings, what we teach, what we research and what knowledge we value. It is also evidenced in what is missing, the silence - what we do not name our buildings, what we do not teach, what and where we do not research, what and whose knowledge we do not value. Decolonisation is about ending the remnants of Empire.... or as Tuhiwai Smith explains: 'a long-term process involving the bureaucratic, cultural,linguistic and psychological divesting of colonial power.' Decolonisation is not a destination. It is a way of being.

Legal Academics as Freedom-Fighters

'The law is also memory; the law also records a long-running conversation, a nation arguing with its conscience.' Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

I believe that legal academics have a responsibility to do more than merely add to the profession, more than maintain certain standards of the legal profession, more than tinker around the edges of the ontology of law. We need to question it. And where necessary we need to disrupt it. As Sherry Williams suggests: 'if our laws are not universal in their objective and impact, then they are not race-neutral.' Laws affect certain, often racialised, sections of the state and the world, in markedly different ways - in criminalisation, migration, welfare, education and other ways. What then is the overarching purpose of teaching law? If the study of law is the study of the world, human societies and their order, do we not have a responsibility to effect positive change? Should we not have anti-racism and the dismantling of pre-existing systematic oppressions as part of our objectives? Should we not equip our students for freedom of all? Or at the very least, should we avoid being the obstacle that prevents them from attaining this freedom? What is excluded in the curriculum of the Law School is instructive of our values - what we consider to be important. Stanley examines the curricula of law schools in this regard, he says that the tendency of law schools to prioritise private law above public law places emphasis on the needs of certain sections of the society. (1988:83). Neutrality privileges bodies already privileged. The elephant over the mouse.

Theorizing Decolonisation

'Our minds must be as ready to move as capital is, to trace its paths and to imagine alternative destinations'
Chandra Talpade Mohanty

Many theories exist that explore how racial difference is structurally created and maintained, many of these theories overlap, converge and diverge. For example, postcolonial theory examines the overlap between race and empire; critical race theory and intersectionality (read together), examine the overlap between race and gender. Subaltern theory allows us to view the world from the position of those placed in positions of abject subjectivity. Effectively theorizing pain and trauma allows us to back up theory with effective and corrective practice. Solutions must match the problem. If the problem is systemic, the solution must address the system and law's complicity. The solution cannot limit itself to the personal.

We cannot hope to dismantle a system of dominator culture and its influences without closer examination of the world from the vantage point of those caught at the intersection of oppressions. It is even possible that further theorising could uncover intersectional injustices that have been so silenced, academia is yet to 'discover' them. As Catherine Mackinnon says: "we know things with our lives and we live that knowledge, beyond what any theory has yet theorized." Experience precedes theory and not the other way around. Let us remember that. The fact that people's lives do not fit into the theories YOU have used to explain the world does not mean those experiences are not valid. Theories are limited. So we must allow other peoples' experiences to complete our view of the world.

Dominator culture influences and sustains the world around us. It is the of domination that requires interrogation, personal prejudices are easily seen and deescalated. Seemingly isolated incidents of domination are actually an escalation connected to and fed by the pre-existing structural racialized and fetishized societal architecture. We are all socialised into this world system that privileges power over collective empathy. So, while we draw back in horror and disgust at overt and violent manifestations of sexism, racism, classism, homophobia, ableism etc, they are not as destructive as the sleeping cancer of dominator culture that we are steeped in. That we replicate. That our acquiescence and silence gives life and breath and legitimacy to.

Can the Subaltern Speak? Are we even listening?

"You know nothing of silence until someone who cannot know your pain tells you how to fix it." ' Lost Voices' by D Simpson and S Bostley

Often lived experiences that indicate the need for decolonisation are not heard, and even when they are, they are not understood, because the experience of the speaker is so far removed from the reality of the hearer. The hearer's comfort, belief system, world-view is often also assured by failing to hear, as DiAngelo explains in her book White Fragility. We cannot begin to hear because we do not acknowledge how hegemonic and hierarchical social constructions of identity, power and privilege affect our capacity to understand and believe testimony. This is further compounded by the inability of the silenced to comprehend the nature of their silencing and oppression. We expect those who have certain experiences to be able to calmly educate us in esoteric language about their pain, their trauma and their reality. We want them to use theories that have been used to Other them from humanity to explain why they belong to humanity. Thus law, which is often taught as a mechanism of social order, also leaves huge gaps in the understanding of social structures. I read the news and I realise that we desperately need better tools to understand the world. We need them now.

Freedom in the Law School

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself." Leo Tolstoy

Therefore, we need to try out dynamic approaches to teaching and research and every other thing we do in the Law School. If we want a different world from what we see in the news and on our streets, we must be part of that change in the work we do as law teachers and researchers. As Freire suggests:

'In a humanizing pedagogy, the method ceases to be an instrument by which the teachers ... can manipulate the students, because it expresses the consciousness of the students themselves... Teachers and students, co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge.' (2000: 68-69)

Or as bell hooks explains:

'The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created. The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility. In that field of possibility we have the opportunity to labor for freedom, to demand of ourselves and our comrades, an openness of mind and heart that allows us to face reality even as we collectively imagine ways to move beyond boundaries, to transgress. This is education as the practice of freedom.' (2014: 207)

Some Recommendations for Liberatory Legal Pedagogies

He who learns teaches, he who teaches learns. Ethiopian Proverb

I do not have hard and fast answers at the moment, but here are a few things ways in which we can think of various sub-divisions of law and law as a discipline. The first would be the false demarcation between national and international legal jurisdictions. Darian-Smith suggests that we examine the things which constitute the international, but are often regarded as outside of the international - and how we construct these distinctions. We must also interrogate the absence of race on the legal curriculum. Every Law School (and I believe every university department) should have a unit that specifically addresses law's relationship with race. A colleague and I designed one.

All units should consider their entanglement with social construction of race and gender... and class, and sexuality and citizenship. There should be consistent and representational student input in curricular design, particular to a law school's needs and resources, most specifically from sections of the student population that are underrepresented. A citation policy which would mandate a percentage of non-dominant voices in a bibliography has often been suggested. A citation policy of some kind is necessary because our legal knowledge is reiterative and performative, such that what is considered accepted knowledge only achieves that status through constant repetition. The reiteration of silence results in epistemic violence. The reiteration of a single voice makes that voice the dominant voice. Also, and this should not need to be said, but do not steal people's work. Acknowledge properly when your work is inspired by people from underrepresented populations.

Acknowledging the divisions that exist, that have been created, does not exacerbate them, but casts a light on them so that the rifts can actually be healed, so that we can truly transcend them. Maybe. As Audre Lorde says:
'it is not the differences between us that tear us apart, ... it is our refusal to examine the distortions which arise from their misnaming, and from the illegitimate usage of those differences which can be made when we do not claim them nor define them for ourselves.'
Conclusion: We make the road by walking it; we change the world by teaching it... properly

'Dear Teacher, I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness: Gas chambers built by learned engineers; children poisoned by educated physicians; infants killed by trained nurses; women and babies shot by college and high-school graduates; so I am suspicious of education. My request is: help your students to become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing and arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.' Haim Ginot

Courting discomfort is necessary, because discomfort spurs us to change things which we would otherwise consider to be impossible to change. Decolonising the curriculum is a hot topic now, so for now, we have the moment. The moment is ours if we hold our nerve, but if we falter, the moment is lost, as are we. Our world will be lost. We need to imagine a better world, not merely legislate it into being, but speak it, and reiterate it, in every class room, every lecture room, every public space, in every university. It is a cold comfort that is maintained and gained by refusing to acknowledge differences and disparities and the structures that created and silently maintain them. As well as our own complicity in those structures and systems of dominance. The presence of disadvantage should make us dissatisfied and uncomfortable, and force us to encounter discomfort. But the odds are in our favour. Because another university is possible. And because another university is possible, another world is possible - a better one.

Appendix

Questions to consider - querying your academic practice

To what extent do I understand the existing global power structures and their historical origins? (Have I done the reading?) To what extent does my teaching and research reflect or acknowledge them?

To what extent do I understand race and gender and class and heteronormative and geopolitical constructs? (Have I done the reading?) Does this inform my teaching and research?

What is my norm for objectivity, neutrality and reasonableness? To what extent does my pedagogy silence knowledges based on 'other' lived experiences?

To what extent does my 'diversity' silence? Do I do diversity to open or close the conversation? (if you would not run through a cancer fundraiser shouting "THERE ARE OTHER DISEASES TOO" you should allow other voices their space.)

Are my reading lists inclusive of non-white academics? If yes, how many are there? A wide variety of non-white academics? Are any of them women? Non-binary? Based in the Global South? Have I included only those who agree with dominant epistemology and legal knowledge?

Do I always treat race, gender, class, empire, sexuality, nationality etc as always distinct and very separate issues?

Am I going to do anything different? My suggestion? Each year make one change that is: Personal, practical and provable.

Bibliography

Ahmed, S. (2014). White Men. [Blog] feministkilljoys. Available at: https://feministkilljoys.com/2014/11/04/white-men/

Anghie,Antony, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (Cambridge UP 2007),

Ansley, Frances Lee. "Race and the core curriculum in legal education." California Law Review (1991): 1582

Cownie, Fiona, Anthony Bradney, and Mandy Burton. English Legal System in Context 6e. Oxford University Press, 2013.

Crenshaw, Kimberle. "Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics." In Vivar, Maria Teresa Herrera. Framing intersectionality: Debates on a multi-faceted concept in gender studies. Routledge, 2011

Crichlow, W. (2015). Critical Race Theory: A Strategy for Framing Discussions Around Social Justice and Democratic Education. Higher Education in Transformation Conference, Dublin, Ireland, 2015, 188.

Darian-Smith, Eve. "Postcolonial theories of law." inBanakar, Reza, and Max Travers (eds). "Introduction: Law and Social Theory." Law and Social Theory. Second edition. Oxford, Hart (2013).

Delgado, Richard, and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Theory. NYU Press, 2012

DiAngelo, Robin. White Fragility: Why it's so hard for white people to talk about racism. Beacon Press, 2018.

Freire, Paulo Pedagogy of the Oppressed, [translation, Myra Bergman Ramos] (Continuum 2000)

Fricker, Miranda Epistemic Injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing(Oxford UP 2007)

Grosfoguel, Ramón. "The structure of knowledge in westernized universities: Epistemic racism/sexism and the four genocides/epistemicides of the long 16th century." Human Architecture: Journal of the sociology of self-knowledge 11, no. 1 (2013): 74-75

hooks, bell. Teaching to transgress. Routledge, 2014

Kennedy, Duncan. Legal education and the reproduction of hierarchy: A polemic against the system. NYU Press, 2007.

Lorde, Audre 'Difference and Survival: An Address at Hunter College.' In Byrd, Rudolph P., Johnnetta Betsch Cole, and Beverly Guy-Sheftall, eds. I am your sister: Collected and unpublished writings of Audre Lorde. Oxford University Press, 2009. 202

McIntosh, Peggy. " White privilege: Unpacking the invisible knapsack." (1990).

O'Callaghan, C. (2015). Concerning a Critical Legal Pedagogy: Exposing Race-Thinking in Political Canon. [Blog] Critical Legal Thinking: Law and the Political. Available at:

Said, Edward, Culture and Imperialism (Vintage 1994) 22-31.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 'Can the Subaltern Speak?' in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture(Macmillan Education UK 1988)

Stanley, Christopher. "Training for the hierarchy? Reflections on the British experience of legal education." The Law Teacher 22.2 (1988): 78-86

Tuhiwai, Smith Linda. "Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples." (1999).

Williams, Sherry J., 'Race Neutrality: What does it really mean?'

African woman, lawyer, teacher, poet and researcher. Singer of songs, writer of words, very occasional dancer of dances. I seek new ways of interpreting the African experience within our consciousness to challenge static ideology.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Decolonisation & the Law School: Initial thoughts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Over the last few years, I have been thinking of what decolonisation should mean for legal academics in UK HE specifically. This essay reflects some of my 'initial' thoughts on where we are now, regarding decolonisation and law, and what we must think about as we chart a path forward.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Towards Anti-racist Legal Pedagogy: A Resource

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
These subjects tend to be neglected from attention to 'diversify' the curriculum due to the perception that the regulatory requirements limit what can be taught. However, as Professor Steven Vaughan (2016) has highlighted many of us are unaware of the expansive remit of what can be taught in these modules. Given the increasing impetus and recognition of the scale specifically of racial injustices within the Higher Education sector and professional fields, clearly the time is right for teachers to ensure that we are working towards developing an anti-racist legal pedagogy

Chapter outline

Chapter one: outlines the drivers for change underlying the emerging regulatory framework seeking to address inequalities relating to race and education more broadly in HE and in relation to gaps in legal education. It also explores the experiences of racism in HE and highlights the work of the HEFCE Consortium of five universities who have developed an inclusive curriculum framework which acts as a benchmark of current good practice in the sector

Chapter two: outlines the methodology, theoretical framework and tensions in terminology from inclusion to decolonising

Chapter three: draws on existing literature and inclusive curriculum resources highlighting key elements to assist teachers prepare the ground for developing a more anti-racist curriculum and classroom

Chapter four: highlights existing examples of good practice in legal education gathered through interviews specifically with law school teachers and an online survey in the five QLD subjects and an Introduction to Law module.

Feedback & Crowdsourcing

Please get in touch via the feedback form or the 'post a comment' box below. We would be delighted to receive:

comments or feedback from your practice as a result of this resource or

suggested contributions to this working document which we hope to continue on a crowdsource basis and/or

confirmation of your interest in joining a network of law school teachers who would like to stay in touch to share good practice.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Home - Towards Anti-racist Legal Pedagogy: A Resource

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
These subjects tend to be neglected from attention to 'diversify' the curriculum due to the perception that the regulatory requirements limit what can be taught. However, as Professor Steven Vaughan (2016) has highlighted many of us are unaware of the expansive remit of what can be taught in these modules.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Source: Privatewallmag (2019)

COMMENT Prof. Dr. Luke Mason 30 July 2021

It is hardly a radical proposition to suggest that decolonisation is an essentially contested concept. Indeed, it is partly the pluralistic nature of the very idea which makes it an intrinsically valuable one, allowing a creative playfulness around the ideas of canonical and threshold knowledge, and providing an openness which itself seems to encapsulate the elusive essence of the decolonisation educational movement. However, as with many ambitious and transformational intellectual-political movements, this epistemic openness brings with it both the risk of stasis, and, more worryingly, the risk of a capture of the process by its most simplistic and most superficial versions, either an extreme reductio ad absurdum or, even worse, a tick-box exercise which is captured by the very processes which the movement seeks to challenge. In the context of legal education, there is a particularly heightened risk of this happening due to law's internal complexities. This short piece seeks to set out the importance of grasping the specific nature of legal knowledge and learning, and the consequences for a transformational decolonising pedagogy.

Legal knowledge, legal scholarship and legal truth are of course themselves inherently contested and multi-layered, meaning that any process of decolonisation must grapple with intellectual and normative practices on several levels at once, often with contradictory or conflicting results. This is not a reason for despair however, as this process of recurring, discursive dispute resolution is a reflection of law's ultimately multimodel and open nature, despite its apparent external appearance of clear authoritative claims. These modes of legal knowledge are ultimately more than capable of accommodating the various modes inherent to decolonisation itself. However, through its ultimately normative essence, legal thought shapes and gives a certain form to these processes, itself a form of intellectual colonialism. This was famously described by sociologist Niklas Luhmann as law's nature as cognitively open but normatively closed. This means that a serious decolonisation movement in legal education must take place on several levels simultaneously, and in the knowledge that there will be complex and contradictory consequences of such a process.
On the Jurisdictional Dimension of Legal Curricula
The first and most obvious mode of legal education is its jurisdictional one, the question of which legal system or systems should be the object of study, and of which legal sources are examined. This question of course overlaps somewhat imperfectly with the political history and geography of modern forms of colonialism, a period of history which has generated the familiar world maps divided into 'families' of legal system. There exist of course many other versions of this question, which do not map easily onto questions of decolonisation, for instance the place of different forms of international and regional law, and of other forms of non- and transnational law. Legal education by tradition is an infelicitous mixture of jurisdiction-specific and aspirationally universalist approaches. A departure from both of these traditions would seem a structural first step towards a decolonising ethos within legal education, a reflection of the inherently overlapping and pluralistic nature of jurisdictional research. There exist however certain risks of this approach, somewhat present within a current trend towards 'global' legal education. There is a danger that this itself can fall into a naïve universalism of the very kind which it is seeking to replace, a new form of pedagogical colonialism reflecting idealised legal forms. In particular, the manner in which these overlapping sources and systems interconnect should form the basis of a robust and honest form of legal education.
On the Critical and Analytical Components of Legal Knowledge
A second recognisable mode within legal thought are its multiple critical and analytical aspects, providing models of understanding and application to the otherwise inert legal content which is studied, and frameworks of evaluation by which to judge them. It is within this mode that the decolonisation of legal education most resembles that which is found within cognate disciplines, such as the social sciences and the humanities. That is where the intellectual frameworks which the law student is exposed to, and encouraged to critically engage with, are revisited to ensure that they are suitably diverse and suitably critical of the doctrinal structures which are the object of analysis for the student of law. However, there is a risk within legal pedagogical decolonisation that such a revisitation of the intellectual canon be confined to a sub-genre of legal studies and its offshoots, rather than expanding out into private and public law and into substantive areas of international and regional law. Equally, there is a risk that decolonisation becomes reflected in an oppositional frame, as an alternative canon which exists in parallel to the inherited canon which it purportedly seeks to displace. This is problematic for several reasons, which should hopefully be obvious, but the perceived need to remain 'unsullied' by joining a compromised canon with which you become complicit should be resisted. It is only through this process that these alternative frameworks of knowledge can grant students the ability to engage as insiders within legal processes, armed with new and alternative modes of seeing and understanding. One particular danger in this regard is that, by sitting within a parallel silo, the legal decolonisation movement in fact reifies the very canon that it seeks to challenge, depicting a core legal vision as central (albeit wrong). This in fact generates an inaccurate and unattractive conservative and permanently 'colonial' vision of law, at odds with the open nature of legal thought, with the paradoxical effect that the decolonisation movement generates a more conservative vision of canonical legal knowledge that the exponents (real or imaginary) of those views.
On the Embeddedness of Legal Studies in Society
There exist of course many other recognisably legal modes of knowledge and thought, which can be understood from a decolonisation perspective. These include the ethical, political and cultural aspects of legal reason, often imagined away within legal education and 'pure' accounts of legal validity out of a valid concern to maintain a recognisably legal form of knowledge. These perspectives' inclusion of important aspects of the decolonisation movement are of course crucial for a meaningful decolonisation of the legal curriculum, competing for space with the explicit and implicit ideological modes of legal analysis which are already taught. While, in many ways, this is the mainstay of a decolonisation process within legal education, it depends on a robust approach to the other modes summarised within this short piece.
On the Meta-Epistemic Level of Legal Scholarship
A final mode which is over overwhelming significant in relation to decolonisation relates to our vision of what legal education and legal knowledge are. This might be called the meta-epistemic aspect of legal education, regarding our understanding of what kind of knowledge generating processes legal scholarship and learning are best understood as being. While a multimodal form of legal knowledge, as sketched by this short piece, suggests an openness towards various aspects of a progressive decolonisation of the curriculum (albeit one not without risks and potential pitfalls), there exist numerous versions of that same multimodal legal epistemology. One unhappy inheritance of legal education, and something which has re-emerged in these times of hyper-complexity and in the context of the massification of higher education, is an overly didactic approach to teaching, neglecting the critical and analytical components of the generation of valid (or plausibly valid) legal propositions, which is the essence of legal education. This would seem to stem from an elision of the law-qua-social-artefact with the law-qua-epistemic-practice. While the former has an authoritative form the latter is infinitely open-textured, albeit with the modal forms discussed above. This results in a meta-epistemic error, seeing the student of law as an absorber of knowledge of various kinds (even of radical and revolutionary kinds), and results in a form of doctrinaire expertise, which is of limited ultimate use in the multimodal epistemic legal world. The upshot of this is that a merely 'decolonised' content of legal curricula is insufficient to have its desired effect, it must come as part of enquiry-led, student-driven vision of legal learning through which new legal thinkers are equipped with new vocabularies and combinations of sources which can allow them to recast the canons and frames of reference in a way which reflects their own engagements with a changed, widened and decolonised curriculum.

Luke Mason is Professor of Jurisprudence and Head of Westminster Law School at the University of Westminster and Chair of the Association of Law Teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Decolonisation, Law and Legal Education: A Multimodal View - africanlegalstudies.blog

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
COMMENT Prof. Dr. Luke Mason 30 July 2021 It is hardly a radical proposition to suggest that decolonisation is an essentially contested concept. Indeed, it is partly the pluralistic nature of the very idea which makes it an intrinsically valuable one, allowing a creative playfulness around the ideas of canonical and threshold knowledge, and providing...

# data[].attributes.headline
Some reflections on diversity and diversifying the law curriculum

# data[].attributes.subject
Some reflections on diversity and diversifying the law curriculum

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
11 Pages Posted: 10 Jun 2019

Date Written: May 16, 2019

Abstract

This is the text of a talk given at the Law Faculty of the University of Oxford in May 2019 as part of a 'Diversifying the Curriculum' workshop organised by Dr Sanja Bogojevic. It discusses some of the history of efforts to diversity the curriculum and looks at how we might or could diversify the law curriculum in terms of content.

Keywords: law school; curriculum; diversify; decolonise; pedagogy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
some reflections on diversity and diversifying the law curriculum

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Some Reflections on Diversity and Diversifying the Law Curriculum

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
11 Pages Posted: 10 Jun 2019 Date Written: May 16, 2019 This is the text of a talk given at the Law Faculty of the University of Oxford in May 2019 as part of a 'Diversifying the Curriculum' workshop organised by Dr Sanja Bogojevic.

# data[].attributes.headline
Decolonialising and Diversifying the Curriculum in LSE Law Department

# data[].attributes.subject
Decolonialising and Diversifying the Curriculum in LSE Law Department

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This module looks at whether and how law can be 'decolonized'

This module considers whether and how law can be 'decolonized', through a detailed consideration of, a) colonial and post-colonial history and theory, b) the application of post-colonial ideas to international law in particular, c) the substantive issues of redress and reparation for colonialism and other equivalent forms of domination, both in and of themselves, and the abuse and exploitation associated with them. Case studies considered include the 'Rhodes must fall' movement; the Caribbean campaign for reparations for slavery and the slave trade; the restitution of Nazi-appropriated art; and the return of artefacts from museums, art galleries and universities.

Aims

Outcomes

A student who has successfully completed the module should:

be proficient, at a sophisticated level, in understanding and applying the relevant areas of international law, notably third world approaches to international law, and relevant cognate disciplinary approaches including political theory, notably post-colonial theory, and the history of colonialism and imperialism;

have a greater appreciation of the underlying issues of policy at stake on the topic, such as the question of intergenerational responsibilities, anti-racism and anti-imperialism, and how they mediate, and are mediated by, the legal framework;

have a more advanced ability to engage in critical analysis generally and critical analysis of law in particular, notably when it comes to the role of law in undergirding oppression and its emancipatory potential;

have a more sophisticated understanding of, and aptitude for, the law and relevant cognate disciplines in general;

be able to recall, and write in a sophisticated, informed, lucid and concise manner about, the ideas covered in the course;

be more ready to play a responsible and ethical role in society in general and the workplace in particular, by being equipped with relevant ideas, notably concerning combatting inequality, racism, and imperialism, and the ability to apply these ideas to practical situations and social interactions, and more generally being better able to engage in critical

Module syllabus

This module is subject to change.

The course will cover the following general topics:

Decolonizing the curriculum, 'Rhodes must Fall', theories of decoloniality and modernity

Post-colonial theory generally, and post-colonial/third world approaches to international law

Other relevant legal and political theory: critical theory generally; critical race theory; feminist theory; transitional justice; theories of redress, restitution, reparation and 'apologies'; inter-generational justice; inter-temporal law.

Colonial and post-colonial history

The central relevant features and legal regimes of the international legal and institutional system, including colonial law, the law of self-determination, human rights law

Central relevant features of domestic/municipal law (e.g. public law, human rights law, tort, criminal law)

The course will cover the following case studies, and where relevant, associated cases and 'apologies'

Reparations for slavery and the slave trade, e.g. the CARICOM initiative

The question of the return of artefacts in museums, art galleries and universities

Restitution and reparation for art stolen during periods of war and occupation (e.g. Nazi-appropriated art from Jewish owners)

University endowments linked to colonialism and slavery

The Herero Massacre and associated German apology

UK policies during colonialism and in decolonization with ongoing legacies:

The Palestine Mandate - Balfour Declaration; conduct of Mandate administration

India - massacres and famine; partition

Southern Africa - concentration camps

Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya - abuses, concentration camps (cases and apology)

The dispossession of the Chagos people by the UK (various cases including Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice)

Current colonial situations

Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara

Israel occupation of the Palestinian Territories

Remaining European and US colonies and sovereign 'overseas' territories

Economic imperialism and land- and resource- grabbing

Power and domination in cyberspace and relating to big data

Recommended materials

Preliminary reading

Chaudhuri, Amit. (2016) 'The real meaning of Rhodes Must Fall', The Guardian, available online: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/16/the-real-meaning-of-rhodes-must-fall

Anghie, A, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law (CUP, 2005)

Mignolo, W. D. 'Modernity and Decoloniality', Oxford Bibliographies, available online: http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/abstract/document/obo-9780199766581/obo-9780199766581-0017.xml?rskey=Czy06y&result=1&q=Mignolo#firstMatch

Key information

UCL facilities

UCL locations

Connect with UCL

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This module looks at whether and how law can be 'decolonized' This module considers whether and how law can be 'decolonized', through a detailed consideration of, a) colonial and post-colonial history and theory, b) the application of post-colonial ideas to international law in particular, c) the substantive issues of redress and reparation for colonialism and other equivalent forms of domination, both in and of themselves, and the abuse and exploitation associated with them.

# data[].attributes.headline
"Why is it my problem if they don't take part?"

# data[].attributes.subject
"Why is it my problem if they don't take part?"