Abstract
Reflecting on the Occupy movement, particularly Occupy Wall Street, this article begins by addressing two major questions: how are social movements understood by legal academics; and how do social movements engage with law? Our aim is to present an alternative frame to understanding law and social movements. We draw on the work of Jean-Luc Nancy to explore law as both present and constituted in the coming together of persons in common which occurs in social movements. While the Occupy movement does engage with a form of law that is legislated and enacted through the government and legal system of a nation-state, the movement also forms and enacts law as part of its own processes. In this article we shift perspectives and attempt to think law within social movements. This involves a critical reading of some dominant approaches that explore social movements and law. Rather than situate our discussion within boundaries that seek to identify what is inside or outside a law and legal system that is determined and enforced by a nation-state (government and judicial system), our discussion of law involves a re-thinking of law. This law is part of a constant negotiation and it is involved in the dynamic processes of movements. Law involves establishing a limit and tracing this limit, but this limit is un-working itself as soon as it is constituted. The Occupy movements live law by existing not outside the law, but by rethinking the role and function of law in the movement and processes of community.
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Notes
Certain local occupy groups have issued demands—London is a primary example, the occupation at St. Paul’s Cathedral drafted a manifesto and a set of demands.
In April 2012 Tara Mulqueen conducted several unstructured interviews with active participants in OWS in NYC.
In this article we refer specifically to a body of literature considered as ‘law and social movements’. The argument we are pursuing could be seen to parallel debates on legal pluralism made by legal scholars such as Teubner (1991), de Sousa Santos (2002), Buchanan (2008). New legal realism, as posited by Merry (2006), could be critiqued for its adherence to a fixed form of law as a predefined entity found in a ‘different’ system, the study of which involves identifying ‘legal consciousness’. However, our discussion here is specific to the construction of OWS and literature concerning social movements, therefore we will not explore the debates in legal pluralism and new legal realism.
Occupy movements have also been criticised for their use of the term, ‘occupy’, which is a particular and negative term in the context of groups indigenous to a geographical area. Similarly, the claim, ‘we are here’ that is appropriated by Tarrow resonates in the context of aboriginal rights and land claims, see Wilmsen (1989). This problematic negotiation of terms and claims is beyond the scope of this article.
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Acknowledgments
Our thanks to the interviewees who offered their time and thoughts in NYC, and to Daniel Matthews and Dimitrios Tzanakopoulos for bringing together this edition and for continuing conversations.
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Mulqueen, T., Tataryn, A. Don’t Occupy This Movement: Thinking Law in Social Movements. Law Critique 23, 283–298 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-012-9103-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-012-9103-z