We learned of a call for papers
for a special dossier of the journal “The Direito e Práxis Journal” on “Critical
Legal Studies: debating the anti-liberal tradition of critical legal studies”.
Here the call:
The Direito e Práxis Journal,
associated to the Post-Graduate Program in Law at the State University of Rio
de Janeiro (UERJ), invites interested scholars to submit proposals for articles
to be published as part of the June 2021 dossier “Critical Legal Studies:
debating the anti-liberal tradition of critical legal studies”, organized by
the invited editors of the Journal, Professors André Luiz Souza Coelho, Júlia
Ávila Franzoni and Philippe Oliveira de Almeida, all of them from the Federal
University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) Law School.
The dossier’s purpose is to
encourage the publication of research on the genesis and development of
Critical Legal Studies, the theoretical currents emerging from it and the
possibilities for updating and applying its categories and methods to problems
of today. Emerging in the early 1970s, in US law schools such as Harvard and
Yale, Critical Legal Studies became one of the most cohesive and combative
strands of “postmodern” critical legal thinking. Despite suffering a decline in
the 1990s — due to the neoliberal backlash after the fall of the Berlin wall,
that disseminated the “unique thought” and the “end of history” in law schools
— Critical Legal Studies provided research strategies to the countermajoritarian
currents of legal thought that remain important even today. In addition to the
“retrospective rationalization” tactics of the current law, widely used by
positivist dogmatics, Critical Legal Studies experimented with new ways to
study the legal-political reality — such as counter-narratives, which put
individuals, with their particularities and contingencies, front and center in
the critical studies of Law. Led by figures such as Roberto Mangabeira Unger,
Duncan Kennedy and Mark Tushnet, Critical Legal Studies proposed new strategies
for thinking, teaching and practicing law, escaping, at the same time,
normativist formalism and Marxian orthodoxy. Now, the spirit of Critical Legal
Studies survived in currents that flourished by making use of theoretical tools
developed by the crits to face realities that they did not
contemplate, as is the case with Critical Race Theory (Derrick Bell , Patricia
Williams, Mari Matsuda, Richard Delgado, etc.); DisCrit — Dis / ability
Critical Race Theory (David J. Connor, Beth A. Ferri, Subini A. Annamma, etc.);
and Critical Legal Geography (by David Delaney, Richard T. Ford, Nicholas
Blomley, Mariana Valverde, Andreas P. Mihilopoulos, etc).
The dossier will accept papers
and translations related to Critical Legal Studies in general (and its
developments, the Critical Race Theory, DisCrit, QueerCrit, Critical Legal
Geography etc.), as well as specific thinkers associated to the group (Karl Klare,
Mark Kelman, Drucilla Cornell …) and their impact on critical legal thinking in
Latin America. Monographic studies on specific aspects related to influences,
controversies, research methodologies and combat strategies employed by crits will
also be welcome. And, finally, the call also aims at giving greater visibility
to research that, using these methodological tools and many others correlated
(colonial [anti? counter? post?] thinking, political ecology,
social reproduction theory, for example, which, from the 1970s to the present
day, were experimented with by Critical Legal Studies and its ramifications),
seeks to reflect on the scenario in which we live now — marked by the covid-19
pandemic as a total social event, which intersects, and often accelerates,
other harmful processes, such as the climatic emergency, the rise of right-wing
populism, necropolitics and the precarization of labor.
Papers in Portuguese, English or
Spanish will be accepted.
Abstracts should be sent to ejc.fndufrj@gmail.com in
the format described below until August 30th. Proposals accepted for
development will receive consideration from the editors, and the full papers
must be delivered until December 15th, 2020.
Proposals must contain:
• Authors’ name, e-mails,
qualifications and institutional links.
• A summary of a maximum of 1,000
words clearly indicating the object of the work, its hypotheses, the method
that will be used in the development of the research, the expected conclusions
and the contribution of the research to the field.
Timetable:
1. Call for papers: June 2020
2. Deadline for Abstracts: August
30, 2020
3. Feedback from Editors: until
September 30
4. Deadline for Articles:
December 15, 2020
5. Publication: June 2021
After receiving the final
versions of the papers, there will be a round of evaluations of the manuscripts
and return to the authors for final corrections.
