Progressive jurisprudence in the late-capitalist era?
In response to his latest book, Poverty Law and Legal Activism: Lives That Slide out of View, Professor Adam Gearey of Birkbeck College, University of London, was invited to a conference in Uppsala arranged by the Faculty of Law and held 23-24 August 2019.
The overarching theme and the question that Gearey’s book seeks to answer was whether critical legal thinking based on the American CLS movement (“Critical Legal Studies”) has any future as things stand, in the light of the collapse of leftism, the triumph of global capitalism and the return of authoritarian nationalism, etc. In addition to the heirs of the CLS movement, participants included representatives of critical legal studies in Finland and other scholars of jurisprudence.
During a workshop session, nine doctoral students met the scholars from abroad in rounds to receive direct feedback on their projects. Adam Gearey presented his view of his book during a public lecture at the University Main Building in Uppsala, with commentary by Adrien Wing (Iowa) and Juha Karhu (Rovaniemi). The conference ended with a full-day symposium during which all senior participants spoke based on Gearey’s work.
The conference will result in a book to be published in the Faculty of Law’s publication series De Lege. The arrangers were Maria Grahn-Farley and Joel Samuelsson, researchers with the Faculty.
Maria Cicilaki