Preface
List of Abbreviations
Part I The Tragic Optimism of the Law: The End of a Story
1 Unsettling Times
Our Goyan Moment
The Dronification of Power: The Monstrosity of Our Time
Sacrificial Violence
Permanent Crisis
Trivialised Human Rights
Threats and Challenges
Disfiguring the State
Hollowing out Democracy
Destroying Nature
Devaluing Labour
Commodifying Knowledge
Recolonising Difference
Criminalising Social Protest
Conclusion
2 The End of Legal Reformism?
Lineages of Legal Reformism
The First Period
The Second Period
The Third Period
The End of Legal Reformism?
Conclusion
3 The Early Demise of Legal Reformism: My Journey through the Law and Modernisation Program at Yale
Introduction
Law and Modernisation in Context
Growing Up at Yale
Reality Check and Theory Building
The Difficult Birth of a Marxist Theory of Law
Building a Scientific Community
The Conclusion of Law against Law: Legal Reasoning in Pasargada Law
Conclusion
4 Room for Manoeuvre: Paradox, Programme, or Pandora’s Box?
Epistemological Excursus
Towards a Mortal Sociology of Law
The Sociology and the Politics of the Sociology of the Amherst Seminar
The Social Construction of the Amherst Seminar
The Great Tradition
Self-Criticism As Self-Congratulation
Part II Epistemologies of the South and the Law
5 Introducing the Epistemologies of the South
Introduction
Occupying Epistemology
The Danger of Mirror Images
The Sociology of Absences and the Sociology of Emergences
The Ecology of Knowledges and Intercultural Translation
The Artisanship of Practices
Conclusion
6 The Epistemologies of the South and Law: Towards a Post-Abyssal Law
Introduction
Three Thought Experiments
Law and the Epistemologies of the South
The Legal Abyssal Line
The Legal Abyssal Line Today
Abyssal Law, Civilisation, and Barbarism
Regulation/Emancipation and Appropriation/Violence
The Sociology of Legal Absences
Doing and Being
Belonging and Non-belonging
Intelligible and Non-intelligible
Legal Monocultures
The Sociology of Legal Emergences
Legal Reformism in the Eyes of the Epistemologies of the South
While the Abyssal Line Prevails
7 Is Post-Abyssal Law Possible?
Who Needs What Kind of Utopia?
Alliances among Social Struggles
Real Legal Utopias and Legal Reformism
Social Transformations and Transitions
Interruptions and Irruptions
Interrupting the State: The State’s Two Souls
Exclusionary Equality
The Antinomies of Citizenship and Popular Sovereignty
The ‘Civilising Mission’, the Colonial State, and Imperialism
The State, the Non-state, the Quasi-State, and the State Otherwise
The State and the Inter-state: The Yasuní ITT Initiative
Subjection and Liberation: The Interruption
Part III The Abyssal Law under the Mode of Abyssal Exclusion
8 Lawfare: A Long History
Introduction
Definition and Range: Two Genealogies
Lawfare As Value-Neutral
Lawfare As the Law of the Strong
Lawfare and Abyssal Law
The Rule of Law
Types of Lawfare
Political Law and Justice
The Penal Law of the Enemy
The War on Corruption: Political Leaders
The War on Corruption: Business Enterprises
The Criminalisation of Protest
The War on Immigrants
Conclusion
9 Colonial Law and Imperial Law
The Land Question: Colonialism, Capitalism, and Patriarchy
The Legal Construction of Land Rights under Colonialism and Capitalism
Land, Race, and Gender
Imperial law
10 Colonial Legal Duality: The Creation of Legal Codes for Indigenous Populations
The Idea of the ‘Indigenous’ As the Abyssal Other
The Indigenato Statute: The Case of Mozambique
Conclusion
Part IV Real Legal Utopias: Interrupting the State
11 The Heterogeneous State, Legal Plurality, and Traditional Authorities in Africa: The Case of Moza
Introduction
The Heterogeneous State and Legal Plurality
The Emergence of the Heterogeneous State
Old and New Forms of Legal Pluralism
A Palimpsest of Political and Legal Cultures
Entangled Legal Pluralities: The Community Courts As Legal Hybrids
Intercultural and Pluriethnic Justices: The Case of the Traditional Authorities
Conclusion
12 The Rise of a Micro Dual State: A Case of Highly Politicised Legal Pluralism
Introduction
The Historical Context
Angoche, Northern Mozambique
Islam, the Customary, and Colonialism
Frelimo: Transformations and Continuities
Democratic Decentralisation and the Rise of the Dual State in Angoche
The Implications of Decentralisation: Renamo’s Victory in 2003
Conflict and Segmentation in the Modern Base-Level Structures of the Local State
Conflict and Segmentation in the Traditional Mix
Conflict and Segmentation in the Traditional/Modern Mix
Conflict and Segmentation in the Secular/Religious Mix
Conclusion
13 The Refoundation of the State in Bolivia and Ecuador?
Introduction
Transformative Constitutionalism in Bolivia and Ecuador
The Plurinational State
A New Project for the Country
A New Institutionalism
Deep Legal Pluralism
A New Territoriality
A New State Organisation and Forms of Planning
Intercultural Democracy
Women and the Refoundation of the State: Decolonial Feminism
Is Another Metizaje Possible? The Emergent Postcolonial Mestizaje
The Experimental State
Deconstitutionalising the Transformative Constitution
Conclusion
Part V Real Legal Utopias: Interrupting the Law
14 Law and Revolution in Portugal: Experiences of Popular Justice after the Carnation Revolution of
Introduction
The Carnation Revolution
Democratic Legality and Revolutionary Legality
On Popular Justice
Experiences of Popular Justice
The Struggle for the Redefinition of Criminal Justice
The José Diogo Case
The Struggle for the Right to Decent Housing
The Case of Maria Rodrigues
An Evaluation of Popular Justice in the Revolutionary Process
15 Popular Justice in Cape Verde
Introduction
The Rupture with the Colonial Bond
The Lesson of Comparative Experience
The State, Customary Law, and Popular Justice
Professionalisation or Deprofessionalisation
Politicisation or Depoliticisation
Law and the State
The Local Courts in Cape Verde
The Sociopolitical Context
A Local Court at Work: The Court of Fonte Filipe
The Neighbourhoods
The Court
The Case of Cesário Moreira
The Sentence463
The Local Courts, the State, and the Party
The Party-Political Dimension of the LCs
Document 1 (Bairro Lém Cachorro)
Document 2 (Bairro do Lazareto)
The Jurisdictional Dimension of the LCs
The Definition of Competences and the Appeals System
The Promotion of Local Justice by the RC
Conclusions
Postscript: Forty Years Later
16 The Landless Rural Workers’ Movement in Brazil and Its Struggles for Access to Law and Justice
Introduction
The Land Question: Resistance and Struggles for Access to Law and Justice
The Struggle for Indigenous Land
The Quilombola Lands
The Rural Workers’ Struggle
The Landless Rural Workers’ Movement Struggle for Land Reform in Brazil
Political Strategies Used by the MST to Gain Access to Land
Legal Strategies: The Role of Advogados Populares (People’s Lawyers)
Judicial Strategies
Non-judicial Legal Strategies
The Impact of the Political and Judicial Strategies: An Analysis of Court Cases
Conclusion
17 The Law of the Excluded: Indigenous Justice and Plurinationality in Bolivia and Ecuador
The Indigenous Struggles in Ecuador and Bolivia
Tensions in a Complex Transitional Process and Indigenous Justice
From Judicial Monolithism to Judicial Pluralism
From Liberal Multiculturalism to Interculturality
From Nation to Plurination
From Eurocentric Political Pluralism to Intercultural Political Pluralism
From Dependent Capitalist Development to the Sumak Kawsay or Suma Qamaña
Coordination between Indigenous and Ordinary Justice: From the Duality of Justices to the Ecology of
Building Respect for the Constitution and International Human Rights Law
The Defence of Indigenous Justice through International Law
Conclusion
18 Decolonising Justice and Democratic Peace in Colombia
Neoliberal Peace or Democratic Peace?
Challenges and Dilemmas Facing the Colombian Peace
Peace and US Imperialism
Peace and Ethnocultural Difference
Peace, Land, and Development
Peace and Ethical Difference
Peace and Political Renewal
Legal Pluralism in Colombia
Decolonising Justice and the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz, JEP
The Role of Transitional Justice and Ethnic Collective Rights
Protection of the Territories and Peace in the Territories
The JEP Mandate
The JEP in an Intercultural, Plurinational Country
A Critical Evaluation
Conclusion
Part VI Real Legal Utopias: Interrupting Hegemonic Human Rights
19 Human Rights in a Post-Secular Age: Counter-Hegemony and Progressive Theologies
Human Rights, a Fragile Hegemony
A Hermeneutics of Suspicion
An Ecology of Human Rights and Progressive Theologies: Human Suffering As a Starting Point
The Human Subject Both As a Concrete Individual and a Collective Being
The Multiple Dimensions of Unjust Human Suffering
Suffering of the Flesh
An Insurgent Radical Will and a Post-Capitalist Horizon
The Drive for Interculturality in the Struggles for Human Dignity
The Narratives of Suffering and Liberation
The Presence of the World Before or Beyond Interpretation
The Spirituality of/in Material Struggles for Social Transformation
Conclusion
20 Towards an Insurgent, Intercultural, and Cosmopolitan Declaration of Human Rights and Duties
Introduction
Rights and Duties to Be Shared in a Conversation for Humankind: A Legal Real Utopia
Conclusion
21 Rights of Nature
Where You Are and How It Came About
Spinoza versus Descartes
Spinoza As a Philosophy of Emergences: Nature Does Not Belong to Us; We Belong to Nature
Spinoza and the Indigenous People: An Intercultural Dialogue Delayed for Three Centuries
Natura Naturans, Pachamama, Mother Earth, the forest
Rights of Nature: From Legal Property to Legal Personhood
Sierra Club v. Morton and the Emerging Ecological Legal Theory
The Rights of Nature in Action
Ordinance No. 612 of 2006. Tamaqua Borough, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania
Ecuador’s Constitution of 2008
Bolivia’s Constitution of 2009
Te Urewera Act 2014 and the Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Act 2017 in New Zealand
Godavari Marble Case: Supreme Court of Nepal (2015)
Sentence T-622 of 2016 (Atrato River): Constitutional Court of Colombia
Salim v. State of Uttarakhand by the High Court of Uttarakhand, 2017
Yarra River Protection (Wilip-gin Birrarung murron) Act, Australia 2017
The National Environment Act, 2019 and Buliisa District Local Government Council resolution 22 Novem
ʔELHDAQOX DECHEN TS’EDILHTAN (‘ʔEsdilaghSturgeon River Law’) – Canada, 2020
Resolution n°025–21 Recognition of the Legal Personhood and Rights of the River Magpie: Mutehekau
Law n° 287 Recognizing the Rights of Nature and the Obligations of the State Concerning Such Rights
2022 Constitution of Chile, Constitutional Convention, Commission of Environment, Proposal Approved
The Territory As a Legal Subject
Earth Democracy and Earth Jurisprudence
Conclusion
Conclusion
References
Index