Law Space: Geographies of Justice (GEOG30031)

This subject aims to think carefully and critically about the relationship between law and space. In this way, it introduces the interdisciplinary field of study known as ‘legal geography’. In what is a very broad field, our focus will be on how law responds to the most pressing situations of violence, displacement, conflict and injustice. It is relatively easy to identify places of legal practice, such as court rooms, and legal definitions of particular types of spaces, such as national borders or war zones. It is harder – but necessary – to think about how particular places or scales give rise to or trouble particular forms and uses of law. Over this four-week intensive, we will interrogate a series of historical and contemporary, as well as mundane and extraordinary, ‘law spaces’. This will include examinations of the roles of bodies, objects, digital media, and everyday practices in making and sustaining different legal spaces.