Queer theory: Weed or seed in the garden of legal theory

2022

The article explores the understanding of the notion, concept and method of queer legal theory. In other words, what do we mean by "queer legal theory"? If we are to understand it as a theory and practice of liberal liberation and struggle for the rights of LGBT people, it can be subsumed under the general theory of human rights, prohibition of discrimination, equality, and freedom. We can also understand it through different variations of critical legal studies. Understood in this way, queer legal theory is viewed through the prism of "outsider" jurisprudence and has tremendous critical potential. In this sense, the article aims to explore the methodological perspectives for a legal theory which tries to position law "outside" of the traditional streams of legal positivism. That is, the different levels of content and concepts of "queer" and queer legal theory, its methodology, approach, comprehension, as well as understanding of identity. Finally, the aim is to present one's own reflection on the possible understanding of and interrelationships within the broadly understood field of queer legal theory.

Routledge Handbook of Law and Society, 2021

This chapter provides an overview of queer theory and its relevance for socio-legal studies.

2019

This introduction to the Critical Analysis of Law special issue on queer legal studies excavates three conjugal artifacts: an academic manuscript delineating interracial and same-sex marriages as loci of state surveillance and unfreedom; a TED Talk on same-sex marriage as irrefutably queer; and the United States Supreme Court decision holding same-sex marriage a constitutional right. These artifacts, along with their singular referent (state-sanctioned marriage), point to what is or should be critical about the interdiscipline of queer legal studies: theorization not only of the subjectification of subjects of gender and sexual regulation (spouses, singles, you and me), but also theorization of the subjectification of power (here, state power and state formation). What kind of state, and what kind of power, materialize through the governance of sex, intimacy, and coupledom? This methodological imperative complements and productively conflicts with the contributions of this issue, al...

This course encouraged a slant-wise approach to thinking about the topic of queer jurisprudence: not, as a first parsing of the phrase might suggest, a course about the legal regulation of non-heterosexual relations. Instead, we approached queerness as the open mesh of possibilities that become available to us when we transgress the normal, and jurisprudence as a training in lawful conduct that we might acquire from a diversity of sources which may or may not be conventionally considered “legal. Bringing these terms in relation to each other allowed us to explore a range of expressions of law that are playful and subversive.

Pace Law Review, 2019

This Article argues for the application of phenomenology to legal understanding, specifically as a way to think about and through queer people’s interactions with law as well as queer theory in law. There are both pragmatic and theoretical justifications for this project. The pragmatic justifications include the need to better address the legal issues and experiences of queer people, recent political and legal decisions and debates that affect queer people specifically, the need to better provide epistemological resources for queer lawyers, law scholars, law students, and their allies, and the need to better understand how law affects minoritarian populations regardless of specific identity characteristics. The theoretical justifications include the relative under-theorization of queer theory in law, the improvement of legal theory’s interaction with related theories in the humanities and social sciences, and the development of a more robust theory of everyday interactions with law consistent with individuals’ diverse experiences and identities. These justifications counsel for further study and attempts to account for diversity in law.

LGBT people are in many ways under a set of legal conditions that impact our ability to actively participate in American society with the same legal protections of our cisgender heterosexual peers. (Hull, 2016) Many people refer to gay marriage as the end all, be all of the legal concerns of my community, but the interference of law in LGBT people’s lives is more ever present each year as we fight for individual liberties. LGBT people experience ‘socio-legal marginalization’ and often experience a heightened ‘legal consciousness’ through the continued cultural conflicts that are mediated through the legal system.

Direito & Praxis, 2021

The article proposes a mapping of feminisms and queer positionalities, demonstrating how gender and sexuality are useful categories of legal analysis and critique. It articulates the main discussions and dilemmas of feminist and queer struggles and theories, seeking to identify how their categories, methods and strategies offer a privileged and powerful position for legal criticism.

Legality and Affect Left and Right -Queering Legal Orders' Normative Force with Feeling, 2023

In her book From Law and Literature to Legality and Affect, Greta Olson argues for an expansive view of the legal, which encompasses both one's Rechtsgefühl and the sociocultural normative settings one is surrounded by. Acknowledging the existence of "a variety of competing nomoi" (Olson, From Law and Literature, p.7), i.e., diverse normative environments within a given legal order, notions of law as legality, and affect as law's new Other are conceptualized as projects fostering legal pluralism. Yet, is such a pluralistic, diversified notion of legality able to challenge those normative legalcultural conditions which still privilege cis, male, heterosexual, White, able-bodied, propertied non-immigrants? Agreeing with Roger Cotterrell that "[l]aw's interpretive communities now reflect the patterned differentiation of the social" (Law, p.100), and Olson's claim that "ideas about law are negotiated outside of the courtroom, the parliament, or even the governmental office where law and legal ordinances are directly translated into everyday life experience" (From Law and Literature, p. 20), this article examines how legality may speak back to law, in its professionalized, dogmatic sense, and to legal orders, and analyzes in which ways an understanding of law as legality may affect LGBTQIAP* rights activism. This critical queer theoretical perspective thus challenges Olson's nomoi by approaching the limitations of legal affects for trans and queer legal subjects. By analyzing the design and logic behind two recent cases of anti-trans bills in the U.S., Arkansas' HB 1570 ('Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act') and Idaho's HB 500 ('Fairness in Women's Sports Act') from a cultural studies perspective, this article examines how an expanded understanding of law as legality may affect the gendered, cis-ed, and heteronormative nature of the U.S.'s dominant legal order(s).