Dr Roxana Willis

This course is available on the BA in Anthropology and Law and LLB in Laws. This course is not available as an outside option nor to General Course students.

Have you ever wondered why we study law in the way we do? Have you ever questioned why the ‘logic’ of the law operates as it does? Have you noticed that certain issues, ideas, or voices are absent? And have you ever dreamt of using your legal education to effect change? In Race, Class, and Law we develop our critical, reflective, collaborative, and creative capacities to interrogate what the law does and to re-imagine what it can or should do. Borrowing from Audre Lorde’s influential metaphor, rather than attempting to use the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house – rather than trying to change the law by staying within the bounds of the procedures we’ve inherited – in Race, Class, and Law, we traverse a range of disciplines in search of new tools and ways to use them. Taking the English legal system as its point of departure, the course centres several inquiries: an examination of the legal system as experienced ‘from below’, a historical understanding on the making and workings of ‘modern law’, and a critical analysis of law beyond the confines of the nation state. By the end of the course, you will have acquired a fresh perspective on the law as seen from a diversity of perspectives, developed new skills to critique current laws, and engaged in innovative thinking about the future of law and potential for change.



The course is delivered through ten interactive weekly seminars. The first part of the course involves expanding our critical toolkit by re-examining foundational concepts that underpin the law, such as ‘neutrality’, ‘objectivity’, and ‘rationality’, allowing for creativity and feeling to inform our work. During our search for alternative ways to study law, we critically engage with decolonial debates, exploring how these ideas apply to law and reflecting on whether they should. Relatedly, we delve into abolitionist debates and the potential for transformative justice to improve law and society. Substantive topics include revisiting the ‘reasonable man’ in law and assessing the significance of gender, class, and race in his formation. We also explore the impact of trans-Atlantic slavery on the creation of the modern law and how its afterlives persist. Over the remaining weeks, we use our newly acquired tools in overlapping fields of law, such as crime and criminal justice, welfare and housing, labour law and immigration, conflict and violence, and climate justice and the Anthropocene. Instead of accepting the law is as it is, in Race, Class, and Law you are invited to evoke your radical imagination and envision how the law could be transformed in ways still to be discovered.

20 hours of seminars.

Students answer and submit a mock exam question (maximum 2,000 words).

• • Bhambra, G. (2007). Rethinking modernity: Postcolonialism and the sociological imagination. Berlin: Springer.
  
  • Adébísí, Folúkẹ́ (2023) Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge: Reflections on Power and Possibility, Bristol University Press
  
  • Harrison, F. V. (Ed.). (2010). Decolonizing Anthropology – Moving Further toward an Anthropology for Liberation (Third ed.). Arlington, VA: American Anthropological Association.
  
  • Táíwò, O. (2022). Against decolonisation: Taking African agency seriously. Hurst Publishers.
  
  • Bhattacharyya, G., Elliott-Cooper, A., Balani, S., NiÅŸancıoÄŸlu, K., Koram, K., Gebrial, D., El-Enany, N. and de Noronha, L. (2021). Empire's Endgame: Racism and the British State. London: Pluto Press.
  
  • Elliot-Cooper, A. (2021) Black resistance to British Policing. Manchester University Press
  
  • El-Enany, N. (2020) (B)ordering Britain: Race, law and empire. Manchester University Press
  
  • Gopal, P. (2019) Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British dissent. Verso.
  
  • Bradley and De Noronha (2022) Against borders: The case for abolition. Verso.
  
  • Day, A.S. and McBean, S.O. (2022) Abolition Revolution. Pluto Press.
  
  • Soulimani, A., England, G., and Hedidar W., (2021), ‘The (LSE) Decoloniality Reading Circle: A Manifesto in 14 Suggestions’. The Metric. Available at: https://themetric.org/articles/the-lse-decoloniality-reading-circle-a-manifesto-in-14-suggestions-2
  
  • The (LSE) Decoloniality Reading Circle: A Suggested Reading List: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uvoPddD3eFYySOu_GkyTqj1z5iPvvJAr/view

Exam (100%; duration 2 hours 30 minutes) in the spring term exam period.