Dr Illan Wall
Early Career Fellow 2016-17, Small Group Project 2017
The Law of Disorder
This project will pioneer the new field of the law of disorder. Legal concepts are usually framed as being a part of the everyday social order. However, in moments of disorder we find the legal system stripped of its conventional architecture: the monopoly of the use of force, the control of territory and populations, the authority of the legislature, the constitutional unity of the people, or law’s claim to neutral universal protection. In moments of disorder, law as an institution and a basis of the social order is questioned. The problem with extant ideas of the law of disorder is that they start from law’s ‘normalcy’.
More informationLegal Aesthetics in the Street
Law tends to hide itself, appearing for all to see only in the hush of the courtroom, the police officer’s shouted command or in our dry, formal acts like contracting or mortgaging. However, law is present all around us, it is in the spaces that we inhabit, in our voices and actions, in the atmosphere of public order. Law silently and subtly opens spaces for particular forms of activity. It no longer acts as the spectacular sovereign command or prohibition, but as a generalized conditioning. However, when law becomes all-pervasive, it becomes difficult to appreciate its specific role in shaping our everyday life. The challenge therefore, is not simply to notice that the law becomes part of the ‘order of things’ through regulations, intellectual property or contracts for purchase. It lies in connecting up the various, and often carefully occluded, ways in which we are affected by the force of law.
More informationResearch outcomes
The Ordinary Affects of Law. Law, Culture and the Humanities, 19(2), 191-209.
Policing Atmospheres: Crowds, Protest and ‘Atmotechnics’. Theory, Culture & Society, 36(4), 143-162.
Areas of interest
Biography
Illan works on critical legal theory, particularly using legal geography, affect studies and the broad continental philosophy tradition. He applies these insights to questions of rights, protest, strikes, revolt, policing and security. He has published on key debates around sovereignty, constituent power, and legal affect. He is author of Law and Disorder (Routledge 2021), Human Rights and Constituent Power (Routledge 2012) and editor of The Critical Legal Pocketbook (2021) and New Critical Legal Thinking (Routledge 2012). He has published in leading cultural studies, socio-legal and critical legal journals.
Illan is also one of the founding editors of the blog criticallegalthinking.com, and a managing director of the open access publisher Counterpress.
He has supervised and examined PhDs on law and contested development, anarchist constitutionalism, hate speech, protest, and policing among other topics. And welcomes proposals in any areas of expertise, particularly applying critical, feminist, post-structural and political economy lenses.
Biographical details correct as of 13.05.26