Critical Legal Geography Research Articles

The Somatechnic and Spatio-legal Regulation of Stagnant Water in Singapore

Using a critical legal geography approach that incorporates theories of law, space, and power, this paper explores how the public health surveillance of dengue fever is utilised by the state in an ongoing ‘war against the mosquito’ in Singapore. Here, the state deploys biopower as a form of spatio-legal ‘lawscaping’ – consisting of and implicating a host of actors, institutions, and objects – in order to seek and eradicate sources of stagnant water (and the mosquitoes that breed in them) in spaces across the city. The paper demonstrates how, in combating dengue fever this way, the public health surveillance and regulation of dengue fever in Singapore informs four distinct yet interconnected forms of spatio-legal materiality and normativity: a) the inspection of space; b) the invisibilisation of death; c) the implementation of self-regulatory objects; and d) the illegality of uncleanliness. Therefore, in tracing the public health surveillance of dengue fever as it relates to the biopolitical regulation of stagnant water, this paper is also able to evince how the state uses spatio-legal means to govern a range of sites as well as a host of human and non-human bodies, and in doing so reveal how state biopower can be exerted across different species. At the same time, these acts of biopolitical lawscaping serve to flatten different typologies of urban space – be they public, private, or even transient (or under construction). In its desire to eradicate mosquito breeding grounds, the state reduces urban space to that which is clean and unclean – even if unwittingly.

The Space Between Us: Questioning Multi-Spatial Justice in the Upcoming Indonesia’s Capital

Land is not only defined as an object of ownership by certain community groups, especially indigenous communities. Land has intrinsic value inherent in the way of life and culture, thus affecting the quality of life. This article examines the potential implications of the land acquisiton process in the prospected Nusantara Capital in regards to the fulfillment of the right to an adequate standard of living. It is reviewed by engaging multi-spatial justice within the context of city development and urban transformation with learning lessons from Brasilia and Jakarta. Utilizing a qualitative socio-legal approach, the research employs systematic and structural interpretation of various legal instruments. It incorporates the concept of multi-spatial justice as part of a critical legal geography and urban sociology theory to understand the potential of segregation and gentrification in the Nusantara Capital. The results highlight three key aspects. Firstly, the concept of multi-spatial justice underscores the need to consider diverse spatial entities and their equitable treatment. Secondly, analyzing the State Capital Law reveals both promising and concerning aspects of spatial justice. While it aims to balance development and inclusivity, inconsistencies within the law's provisions raise concerns about potential injustices. Lastly, the study anticipates future inequities between local and urban spatials due to unequal land compensation. These findings emphasize the importance of addressing procedural and substantive fairness in land acquisition, fostering inclusive urban development, and aligning legal instruments with principles of multi-spatial justice.

Bulldozing Basic Structures: Legal– Spatial Dimensions of Constituent Power

Using the lens of critical legal geography, this article examines the spatial consequences of legal interpretation and doctrine alongside the legal effects of spatial practices. It argues that spatial practices in the form of protests often constitute the exercise of ‘constituent power’ with an actual people inscribing themselves into the virtual realm of ‘we the people’. This performative exercise of constituent power often comes into conflict with the legal horizons of constituted power. The article looks at Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code (‘prohibitory orders’) as well as the use of bulldozers as a part of extra-legal mechanisms to control social protest and suggests that they collectively constitute a new ‘nomosphere’ that threatens to redefine constitutional rights and limits.

Water or mineral resource? Legal interpretations and hydrosocial configurations of lithium mining in Chile

The advance of electromobility has boosted global demand and interest in lithium. The consequent expansion of lithium mining puts the sustainability of Chile's Andean salt flats at risk. In these unique ecosystems, lithium is abstracted from mineralized groundwaters, referred to also as brines. This article analyses the legal treatment of brines and its implications in assessing the socioecological impacts of lithium mining projects. For our analysis, we draw from scholarship at the intersection between hydrosocial research and critical legal geography. Methodologically, our study is based on interviews and the analysis of legal texts and judicial and administrative claims, including the environmental impact assessment studies of the three single lithium mining projects approved in the country. We show that the interpretation of brines as mining resources supported by mining companies and endorsed by environmental State agencies is based on a legal loophole. We document how such interpretation is operationalized and contested in the environmental impact assessments of three mining projects and other instances. We explore how the same legal loophole could lead to alternative interpretations and relatedly regulatory proposals and discuss their implication for the assessment of socioecological impacts of mining projects. These include first an understanding of brines as hybrids minerals/waters put forward in a recent report commissioned by State agencies, and second an interpretation of brines as a type of water. The latter is in line with the position of some indigenous groups and academics. We conclude with reflections on the implications of our analysis for lithium mining in Chile and beyond.

Progressive and critical legal geography scholarship

Progressive and critical legal geography scholarship

Regulatory Alchemy: How the Water Cycle Becomes Capital in the California Desert

AbstractA proposed project will take water from an aquifer in the California desert to the coast. Lacking final approvals more than 30 years after it started, the project remains a plan despite sizeable opposition. What is its secret? In this paper, I examine the imaginaries of the underground aquifer underneath the lands of Cadiz Inc, the project proponent. While local theories insist the company is at the centre of a Chinatown conspiracy, I argue that the company stays alive through regulatory alchemy, a term that reveals the magic at the heart of scientific and regulatory approval processes. I examine narratives of the aquifer in environmental compliance and financial reporting in order to reveal how regulatory processes become the conditions of profit‐making, building on debates in critical legal geography and political ecology.

The ebb and flow of the Seaflower marine biosphere reserve: Law entanglements and socio‐environmental justice in the southwestern Caribbean Sea

AbstractThis paper explores the spatio‐legal dynamics of marine protected areas and their relation to socio‐environmental justice. It adopts a critical legal geography perspective to unpack ocean lawscape configurations triggered by territorial claims, the international mechanisms for maritime boundary‐making, and state sovereignty instruments. It is empirically focused on the Seaflower marine biosphere reserve, a protected area amid a geopolitical contestation between Nicaragua and Colombia in the southwestern Caribbean. By analysing its spatio‐legal history over two decades (2000–2021), the paper sheds light on the marine legalities of this region, which are often contradictory and overlapping. Focusing on the marine lawscape of Colombia, it explores the relationship between protected areas and marine territorialisation, also reflecting on the governance regimes' effects on indigenous livelihoods and marine biodiversity. The paper concludes that (i) marine protected areas are regularly being disrupted, re‐bordered, and reconfigured by the international ocean regimes governing the oceans; (ii) the link between the creation and management of marine protected areas and territorial jurisdiction compromises social and environmental justice, and (iii) inclusion of indigenous legalities might enhance equity and sustainability in ocean governance.

Centring Environmentalism in Space Governance: Interrogating Dominance and Authority Through a Critical Legal Geography of Outer Space

This article brings into conversation scholarship in law and the social studies of outer space around the question of the “uses” of outer space, the shortcomings of existing legal instruments, and the possibility to reform them to place environmental concerns at their core. Starting from the Outer Space Treaty (OST), and using legal geography and an environmental lens, we highlight the interconnections between de-territorializing outer space, the image of the province of (hu)mankind, and the seemingly consequent egalitarian principle of benefit sharing. By reading this language of the OST against its historical context, we note that these seemingly egalitarian clauses mask the persisting hegemony of older space powers in access to and benefits from outer space. In this context, environmental protection clauses originally proposed by Japan, which were marginalized in the drafting of the OST, remain marginal to many governance mechanisms. Even when we decentre the OST and look at multiple legal and governance frameworks of outer space, from Planetary Protection to the International Telecommunications Union, these different approaches reiterate a utilitarian view of space environments that ties them to their usefulness to exploration and exploitation. These mechanisms, while useful for de-homogenizing outer space, do not go far enough in proposing that environmental protection underpins all principles of space governance. One of the effects of this failure is that more technically able nations keep crowding the orbits with megaconstellations. We propose an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the complex interrelation between space governance, geopolitics, and concerns about the future of outer space environments. A critical legal geography of outer space provides us with a possibility to examine the role of the law in relation to both geographical imaginaries and historical contexts and advance discussions on the role and responsibilities of humans beyond the planet we inhabit.

Problematising use conformity in spatial regulation: Religious diversity and mosques out of place in Northeast Italy

This paper returns to a classic of planning and questions the inhibiting role that an approach to spatial regulation based on the requirement of use conformance has on the unfolding of (religious) diversity. The urgency to readdress the topic is due to the lack – among literature concerned with the urban effects of migration – of contributes questioning both the legitimacy of the categories used to order space and the very same process of ordering space through categories of uses. To fill this gap, the paper draws from critical legal geography and critical secular scholarships and, examining paradigmatic cases of “mosques out of place” in Veneto (in northeast Italy), shows that discourses over use conformity in spatial regulation need to be drastically re-examined. They, in fact, contribute to normalise sociocultural expectations about religion and space, resulting intrinsically discriminatory.

Judicialising Urban Political Ecologies: Post‐Politics and Environmental Governance in South Asia

AbstractLegal and judicial mediation and arbitration significantly influence who has access and control over resources. Taking insights from post‐political debates in political ecology and discussions at the intersection of critical legal geography and political ecology, we focus on the production of judicial ecologies. Through case studies on waste management in India, water governance in Pakistan, and urban air pollution in Bangladesh, we describe how political‐ecological questions get transferred to the courts. We describe this as a process of political bonsaification—a process that shifts political questions to the courts and contains political action to legal and technocratic forums. Our aim is to stimulate research on how courts and legal institutions form judicial ecologies by setting, enforcing, or ignoring rules that influence human–environment interactions. Understanding how judicial and legal systems intersect across class, race, gender, and different political‐ecological contexts, we argue, is the aim of research in judicial ecology.

PENDEKATAN GEOGRAFI HUKUM KRITIS DALAM KAJIAN HUKUM TATA RUANG INDONESIA: SEBUAH WACANA FILSAFAT HUKUM DAN INTERDISIPLIN

The development of legal research shows the importance of an interdisciplinary approach in examining legal issues. Apart from that, legal issues also need to be examined more critically and not to see them as a product of a vacuum without the influence of non-legal factors. This paper explains the development of critical legal geography discourse as well as the theory of social space production and spatial justice associated with this discourse. The study of spatial law has developed an interdisciplinary approach with these critical theories with a critical legal geography framework. However, studies of spatial law in Indonesia have not developed much of this discourse in examining urban problems. Only a few researches on spatial law in Indonesia uses a critical legal geography perspective based on the tracing described in this paper. In fact, urban problems in Indonesia are similar to the phenomena that underlie the emergence of discourse on critical legal geography. Therefore, the study of spatial law in Indonesia requires a more philosophical and critical approach. Various new approaches developed in legal philosophy, one of which is critical legal studies, can be an analytical method for analyzing the influence of economy and power on spatial planning in Indonesia.

Kosciuszko National Park, Brumbies, law and ecological justice

ABSTRACT The brumby (or feral horse) is an icon of colonial settler Australian culture in the Snowy Mountains region of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. 2018 saw the introduction of the Kosciuszko Wild Horse Heritage Bill 2018 (NSW), known as the Brumbies Bill, which cast heritage protections over brumbies in Kosciuszko National Park (KNP). The Brumbies Bill prioritised feral horses over the protection of Alpine Australia, an area which contains a unique ecosystem only present on 0.3% of the Australian landmass. The Bill was highly controversial and directly undermined decades of research into feral horse damage by overturning the pre-existing KNP Horse Management Plan. In this paper we explain the change of policy, an undertaking especially important in the context of debates about the need for more biodiversity protection. We apply a critical legal geography lens, focused on the need to understand how law/s shape places, draw on ideas from ecological justice and introduce the principle of non-regression to this controversial policy reversal. We are especially interested in exposing the processes behind such environmental policy reversals and in unpacking competing perspectives regarding policy formation. We suggest abrupt policy changes are not prudent for a precautionary approach to environmental protection.

Cross‐Border Social Dumping as a ‘Game of Jurisdiction’ – Towards a Legal Geography of Labour Relations in the EU Internal Market*

AbstractThe question of social dumping has again climbed the EU policy agenda. In this article, we call into question some established views of social dumping that conceptualize the relationship between EU internal market and Member States in binary terms. Based on an analysis of relevant case law, and drawing on the conceptual tools provided by critical legal geography, we show that the project of EU integration relies as much on the scalar differentiation of powers as it does on the ‘upward’ shift of powers from the national‐ to the supra‐national level. We propose an understanding of EU internal market law as productive of a ‘labour law patchwork’, defined by the simultaneous fragmentation and overlap of labour law regulations across and within EU Member States. Here, we re‐conceptualize cross‐border social dumping as a ‘game of jurisdiction’ – a set of strategic moves by actors within a multi‐scalar and multi‐jurisdictional space.

Beaches and Muslim belonging in France: liberty, equality, but not the burkini!

Drawing on Marco Antonsich’s framework for analyzing belonging while also engaging critical legal geographies, this article applies a legal lens to Muslim belonging. It does so through discourse analysis of court, legislative, and political pronouncements regarding burkini bans that surfaced in France shortly after a terror attack by a self-identified Muslim, and with ‘burkini’ serving as a proxy for Islam in their rhetoric. The article focuses on the language used by France’s highest administrative court in overturning one city’s ban, as well as language used by French political leaders in supporting the bans, to examine the message of belonging conveyed to Muslims in France. Legal language is the focus because of its ability to frame conversations regarding societal norms, with the language explored here framing the broader debate on Muslim belonging in French public space and arguably what the French population believes is necessary to belong in French society. This exploration provides a foundation for further research by scholars exploring issues of identity, migration, belonging, race, and religion, using methodologies such as feminism and critical race theory that can readily connect with the critical legal approach applied here.

Governing the Belongings of the Precariously Housed: A Critical Legal Geography

Precariously housed people face serious challenges in securing their personal possessions from the actions of both private and public actors. This is despite evidence of widespread destruction, seizure, and theft; associated violations of equality and dignity rights; the significance of the belongings to their owners; and the heightened vulnerability that the loss of their belongings may place people in. Law seems to provide minimal recognition and protection of precariously housed people's possessions. There is a significant lack of scholarly and policy attention given to the issue. We lay out some preliminary concepts for the analysis of this important topic, focusing on critical legal geography, evaluation, governance, and personhood, before introducing our own research project.

Delimiting Central Europe as a Juridical Space: A Preliminary Exercise in Critical Legal Geography

The aim of the present paper is to contribute to the on-going discussion, both in legal theory and in comparative law, concerning the status of Central Europe and its delimitation from other legal regions in Europe, notably Romano-Germanic Western Europe but also Eastern Europe and Eurasia. The paper adopts the methodological perspective of critical legal geography, understood as a strand of critical jurisprudence laying at the interstices of spatial justice studies, critical geography, comparative law, sociology of law and legal history. The paper proceeds by identifying the notion of Central Europe with reference to a specific list of countries, then proposes a number of objective criteria for delimitng Central Europe and applies them in order to highlight the difference between Central Europe and other adjacent legal regions. Following that, the paper enquires as to whether Central Europe should be deemed to be a ‘legal family’, a ‘legal union’ or simply a ‘legal space’ or ‘space of legal culture’.

Coastal management and the political-legal geographies of climate change adaptation in Australia

This paper connects critical legal geography and coastal climate change adaptation. It is particularly interested in the role that complex political ecologies and legal geographies have played in underpinning a decade of idealised integrated coastal management in New South Wales, Australia. In attending to the political-legal nature of coastal management through the lens of legal geography, this paper illustrates the complexities of law’s role as both a driver and a barrier to coastal climate change adaptation, through a detailed review and analysis of repeated legislative reform between 2009–2018. This not-yet-documented analysis serves to highlight a shifting legal landscape and the politics of coastal climate change adaptation. It also illustrates how private property rights have been used as both a sword and a shield to advance dominant interests. The paper offers specific examples of ways private property discourses have been used to muddy the waters of adaptation responses, and how private property discourses can pervade, dissuade, and undermine land use management policies even as such policies aim to achieve more harmonious coastal management.

Claiming geothermal water: Critical legal geography and the scalar politics of hot spring development in China

This article contributes to the ongoing scrutiny of conflicts over nature with respect to the legal realm. We argue that legal geographies have been central to the boom in geothermal water extraction in China and its environmental and social effects. We examine the contesting of the legal definition of geothermal water and how it is embedded in the creation and production of China's hot spring landscape. Specifically, we focus on the biophysics of this particular natural resource to examine the scalar politics of how local governments grab natural resources, and the ways in which they produce socio‐economic consequences. The analysis illustrates the significance of critical legal geography in current political ecology studies, and suggests paying close attention to the contradictory and slippery legal practices involved in the governance and commodifying of nature.

Legal geographies of neoliberalism: Market-oriented tenure reforms and the construction of an ‘informal’ urban class in post-socialist Phnom Penh

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Cambodia’s transition from socialist to market-oriented tenure became associated with severe tenure insecurity for those living in areas of self-built housing in the capital, Phnom Penh. This paper explores the legal geographies of this tenure insecurity by assessing how low-income urban dwellers interacted with a rapidly shifting legal system. Through analysis of historical legal documents, survey data and archived land disputes, it is found that market-oriented tenure reforms were exclusionary by design, and directly resulted in an ‘informal’ tenure system that legally rendered self-built dwellings in a constant state of provisionality. The findings provide a critique of orthodox accounts of tenure reform in post-socialist cities, which propose the deepening of market reforms to increase security. Instead, the paper builds on critical legal geographies of neoliberalism by suggesting that insecurity in Phnom Penh was perpetuated by laws, rather than their absence or the circumventing of laws. The analysis also contributes to understandings of informal tenure by presenting a post-socialist, state-constructed and exclusionary system of informality.

From cantonments to townships: Lugard’s influence upon British colonial urban governance in Africa

ABSTRACTThe cantonment has been a neglected topic of planning history, yet is significant for urban landscapes and governance in both India and Africa. Drawing upon scholarship in critical comparative legal geography, path dependency and Foucault’s genealogical method, the article explores the transfer of laws and regulations for urban governance by networks of knowledge and actors, tracing a line of descent from rules for cantonments in British India, through Lugard’s Nigerian period, and his indirect rule policy to townships and local government ordinances. The influence of Lugard’s Political Memoranda and Dual Mandate books is evidenced through the work of various senior officials moving between colonies, specifically South Africa, Kenya, and Northern Rhodesia.