To make trouble was, within the reigning discourse of my childhood, something one should never do precisely because that would get one in trouble. The rebellion and its reprimand seemed to be caught up in the same terms, a phenomenon that gave rise to my first critical insight into the subtle ruse of power: the prevailing law threatened one with trouble, even put one in trouble, all to keep one out of trouble. Hence, I concluded that trouble is inevitable and the task, how best to make it, what best way to be in it.

 - Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (Preface, 1990).

This workshop seeks to bring together postgraduate students and early career researchers from different regions and disciplines to examine questions relating to different methodological approaches to Law, in relation to their current projects.

Various strands within contemporary critical legal scholarship have questioned the sufficiency of a doctrinal approach to respond to questions of Law. Critical sociology, cultural anthropology, feminist, queer and postcolonial theory, amongst others, have offered new ways of reflecting on, and acting in relation to, Law. How does Law and its self-referential hermeneutics respond to these critical postures?

Although remaining within the boundaries of the legal body and method seems to limit the radical potential of critique, adopting a critical methodology appears to entail a forfeiture of ability to speak, interact and act within Law.  This is particularly the case for legal professionals. Lawyers responding to a call to critique find themselves intermittently abandoning their own office of lawyer; solicitor, barrister: the authority to appear before the Law and to speak to it is suspended in order to critique. To act meaningfully may therefore seem to be compromised. The relation of lawyers  engaging in critique to the sovereign becomes - as it has always been for sociologists; anthropologists; feminists, and others - always already mediated; they do not have the power to interrogate Law as foreigners to its economy. What, then, is valuable in these kinds of methodological encounters? Why is it important to conceive Law in Law’s terms? What are the benefits and risks of oscillating between Law and critique? Are there possibilities for revolt from outside the Law?

While these questions lie at the core of interdisciplinary legal research, there are few opportunities for emerging scholars to discuss them with others during PhD candidature or in the early years of post-doctoral research. This workshop seeks to bring lawyers and non-lawyers together to talk about how their methodological engagements with the Law calls into question their authority to speak; determines their capacity to revolt, and defines their ability to act. In short, this workshop seeks to clarify the possibilities and limitations of using non-doctrinal methodologies to insert a politics into questions of Law.