Centre for Law and Social Change

The Centre for Law and Social Change is a hub for connections on the topic of law and social change and a space to generate debate, between scholars, students, practitioners, and social movement organisers.

The CLSC is a place for projects encouraging interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral and intergenerational collaboration, with a focus on progressive social change and a commitment to active anti-racist, feminist, and decolonial practice.

In all areas of life scholars, practitioners and social movements seek to generate positive change through, with and despite law. Students with a commitment to social justice and human rights seek careers in law with the hope of defending the rights and interests of the vulnerable as against their oppressors. At the same time, both the limits of law’s emancipatory potential, as well as the historical role of law in structuring global imperialism, and present inequality and oppression, have been noted and examined by critical legal scholars and practitioners alike, and experienced by billions around the world.

The limits of, and obstacles to legal reform have been identified in various areas and, for example the potentials of accountability litigation are regularly explored, be it in areas such as universal jurisdiction or business and human rights. If law is to play a role in the transition to a fairer, more equal world it is clear that the ways, instances and methods for legal intervention require deeply engaged deliberation from all angles and contexts. 

Conversely, social movement actors in an increasingly authoritarian world may be forced to defend themselves within or against oppressive legal systems, and we need the formal and informal infrastructure, expertise and skills to do so effectively. Ultimately, the discussion of, and struggle for, abolition, and realising the transformations we so desperately need in the world are gaining ground and power, each time we make true the phrase "we keep us safe".

At SOAS, one of our focal points for learning and organising starting in 2024 will be 'the construction of the gendered, racialised and sexual legal subject in the colonial encounter'. Liked to this are our events about the abolitionist ethics of femmeness (Trans Femme Futures) as well as a Spring workshop Another is, 'the internal colony'. 

The latter notion draws on the work of Nadine El-Enany in (B)ordering Britain, where she shows how Britain's colonial racial violence 'boomeranged' back to the British metropole, where the state's institutions become the enforcers of the colony within, with racist state violence now being the norm to uphold white supremacy 'at home'. Linked to this is our 'know your rights' student co-production project. Finally, following a very successful first edition in May 2024, we are organising another "Law & Marxism Spring School" in May 2025.

The Centre was established in 2020 at The City Law School and has a track record of radical boundary pushing projects and events, engaging a host of brilliant students, scholars, authors and organisers from around the world.

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