Geography Of Law Research Articles

TRENDS: The Geography of Law: Understanding the Origin of State and Federal Redistricting Cases

Knowing where legal complaints arise can tell us something about them and reveal clues about their conditions of origin. In this paper, we examine the geographic origins of litigation challenging the boundaries of electoral districts—an increasingly salient and prominent source of political conflict. We construct an original dataset of all redistricting cases in state and federal courts nationwide, from 1960 to 2019. We show that redistricting litigation surfaces not just in states where there are regions undergoing rapid population change or that have a greater proportion of aggrieved racial minority groups but also in areas where there is close partisan competition. The filing of redistricting litigation is highly responsive to hypercompetitive political environments, suggesting that parties pursue judicial intervention vigorously when political power hangs in the balance and not simply due to demographic changes associated with decennial population measurement. These findings have important implications for understanding the temporal and spatial dynamics of redistricting politics and the consequences of intense partisan electoral competition in the United States.

Nuclear Citizens Jury: From Local Deliberations to Transboundary and Transgenerational Legal Dilemmas

ABSTRACTSouth Australia is home to one of the world’s largest uranium mines for export, but does not participate in further stages of the nuclear fuel cycle. In 2016, the Government of South Australia held a series of public engagement activities about the possibility of nuclear waste storage in the state. Two citizens’ juries, collectively called the “Nuclear Citizens Jury,” were the centrepiece of the series. This paper investigates jury members’ perspectives on nuclear waste storage and the deliberative process. The Nuclear Citizens Jury was effective as a local deliberation process that offered learning opportunities, gave access to information and made decision-making transparent. However, the process did not result in consensus or consent. Rather, jury members highlighted concerns about the democratic representativeness of the process, Aboriginal and transgenerational consent and unresolved national dimensions. The Nuclear Citizens Jury underscored the need for deliberative processes to consider multiple geographies of law, representation, and consent.

The Geography of Law: Why Law and Development Has Failed and What to Do About It

This paper uses insights from economic geography to argue that the reason why law and development has been largely ineffective is because (1) it is asking law to do something that law cannot; and (2) its principal regulatory templates – such as ‘rule of law’ – are ill-suited for the regulatory environments in which they are being used. With regards to the first claim, law and development most commonly looks to use law to promote economic growth. The dynamics of economic geography, on the other hand, argue that promoting economic growth is likely to be outside the reach of law. Such dynamics also render lessor-developed socio-economic environments less responsive to ‘rule of law’ and other regulatory templates commonly emphasized by law and development. Law and development therefore needs to change its focus: (1) from focusing on economic development to focusing on other conceptions of development; (2) from focusing on big issues to focusing on issues of everyday life.

Property, Law, and Space

This short piece, to be published in a special issue of Property Law Review, aims to provoke interest in thinking about the spatial dimensions of property (particularly in land). This reflects the burgeoning interest in the geographies of law more generally. While there are many ways in which one can think spatially, it is important to begin by noting that itself is capable of at least two meanings. An absolute view regards space as a priori and asocial, and thus calculable and geometric. A relational view, conversely, regards space as meaningful only in relation to human practices. Both these views of space, I suggest, can be discerned when thinking about property. Indeed, they often collide in important ways.

Law of Geography and the Geography of Law: A Post-colonial Mapping

This article examines the relationship between law and geography through the prisms of colonialism and neoliberal Empire. Using two novels set in the India of 19th and 21st century, respectively, it evaluates the so-called first law of geography that posits decisive impact of spatial distance upon relations between things. This paper argues that the formative and enduring relationship between global systems of domination and modern law has created a geo-legal space that has a global dimension. This geo-legal space procreates norms and subjectivities that are intimately related to spatially distant forces and projects. Emergence and consolidation of capitalism created a global geo-economic space where law and geography were brought together creating an intimate relationship between the global and the local. Accumulation by dispossession, an enduring feature of capitalism, renders this global relationship one of domination and exploitation. While colonial and post-colonial phases of global capitalism deployed different regimes of political and economic governance, they function within the same grammar of modern law that facilitates domination and exploitation in the service of capital accumulation by dispossession.

Socialisation in a Space of Law: Student Performativity at ‘Coffee House’ in a University Law Faculty

Working with ideas of performance and performativity, the geographies of law, and the sociology of the legal profession, this paper reports on a study of the microgeography of a social space in a major Canadian law school, and, more specifically, questions what it means to be a law student there. ‘Coffee House’ at McGill University Faculty of Law is a weekly social event sponsored for half the academic year by prominent Canadian law firms who supply free alcohol and food to the students attending in an effort to ‘brand’ their firm. These events contribute in different ways to the socialisation and identity of the law students present. We argue that a performativity of what it is to be a McGill law student heading towards corporate success begins to be structured through the repetition of a range of performances undertaken in this space.

The Spatially Splintered State: Myths and Realities in the Regulation of Marine Fisheries in Tamil Nadu, India

AbstractThe spatial dimension of law is a neglected field of study. This article responds to suggestions that have been made to develop a ‘geography of law’, and investigates expressions of State‐centred law regarding common pool natural resources. It asks how variations in law between lower‐level territorial units are to be explained in situations where patterns of resource exploitation are similar and the overarching State proclaims an even approach. To explore these issues, the article focuses on a case study of Tamil Nadu marine fisheries. Comparing the reality of State regulation in different coastal districts, the author argues that the State occupies a relatively weak position vis‐à‐vis user groups, and strives to maximize its legitimacy by adapting to local political circumstances. The end result is a legal patchwork with strong spatial connotations.

Law, space, and the geographies of power

This illuminating new volume offers a ground-breaking exploration into the intriguing and politically significant relationship between law and geography. Nicholas K. Blomley asserts that space and law, rather than being fixed, objective categories, have a crucial bearing on the deployment of power and the structuring of social life. Arguing that the geographies of law can be powerful--even oppressive--in combination with their implied claims concerning social life, Blomley clearly demonstrates how, over the last two centuries, legal judgment has entailed the adjudication of issues of power and space. The volume synthesizes ideas from the fields of law and to construct a critical legal geography that both documents Blomley's theory and challenges the orthodox treatment of law, space, and power. With unusual insight into the ideology and intricacy of legal reasoning, the book shows how--contrary to appearance-- representations (or geographies) of the spaces of political, social, and economic life are deeply embedded within legal thought and practice. These representations, he argues, touch on all aspects of legal life including property, constitutional interpretation, contractual relations, crime, and intergovernmental law. To illustrate the book's analysis, empirical chapters offer case studies in Britain, the United States, and Canada, to reveal how legal geographies reflect complex and often contesting visions of social life under law. In a wide ranging exploration, Blomley unpacks struggles over U.S. occupational safety, the British miners' strike of 1984 - 1985, mobility and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and common law legal history.

Barristers and the Growth of Local Justice in England and Wales

The putative emergence of local legal cultures poses important questions both for the geography of law and for access to justice which have been affected by the unprecedented changes in the legal system of England and Wales since the early 1970s. There have been large increases in public funding through the Legal Aid Scheme and the Crown Prosecution Service, a rapid growth in the numbers of practising lawyers and decentralization of many of the higher courts. As part of this process, the distribution of barristers the advocates in the legal system has begun to alter. This paper examines the nature and geographical significance of the growth in the number of barristers, why these changes are occurring and the extent to which they could contribute to the emergence of a more locally-based legal system.

New Models in Geography: The Political Economy Perspective

Volume 1 Part 1 New models: political economy and human geography, Richard Peet and Nigel Thrift mathematical models in geography - 20 years on, Martin Clarke and Alan Wilson. Part 2 New models of environment and resources: resource management and natural hazards, Richard Peet and Jacque Emel the challenge for environmentalism, Timothy O'Riordan. Part 3 New models of uneven development and regional change: new models of regional change, Erica Schoenberger uneven development and location theory - towards a synthesis, Neil Smith rural geography and political economy, Paul Cloke the restructuring debate, John Lovering Marxism, post-Marxism and the geography of development, Stuart Corbridge. Part 4 New models of the nation, state and politics: nation, space, modernity, Philip Cooke the state, political geography and geography, R.J.Johnston the geography of law, Gordon Clark the political economy of the local state, Ruth Fincher. Volume 2 Part 5 New models of the city: the city as locus of production, Helga Leitner and Eric Sheppard reproduction, class and the spatial structure of the city, Geraldine Pratt women in the city, Suzanne Mackenzie third world cities, Lata Chaterjee. Part 6 New models of civil society: the geography of gender, Sophie Bowlby et al geography, race and racism, Peter Jackson Marxism, culture and the duplicity of landscape, Stephen Daniels what is a locality?, Simon Duncan. Part 7 New models in social theory: peripheral capitalism and the regional problematic, David Slater sociology and geography, John Urry modern geography, western Marxism and the restructuring of critical social theory, Ed Soja the crisis of modernity? human geography and social theory, Derek Gregory.

The Spatial Analysis of Legal Systems: Towards a Geography of Law?

t This is thefinal version of the third working paper in a series giving details of the research methods and results of the ESRC-funded, Access to Justice in Rural Britain Project (Grant EOO 232 054). A version revisedfor geographers will appear in (1986) 10:3 Progress in Geography 371 under the title Human Geography and Law: A Case of Separate Development in Social Science. The paper was presented at the 1985 European Conference of Critical Legal Studies on New Frontiers of Legality in Coimbra, Portugal, and at seminars in Sheffield, Birmingham and Cardiff. Subject to the usual disclaimer concerning responsibility, we wish to thank these audiences for their helpful comments and suggestions.