Illan Rua Wall

Dr Illan Wall

Early Career Fellow 2016-17

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’.

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Areas of interest

Law Legal Theory Legal Geography Affect Political Affect Continental Philosophy Philosophy of Law Human Rights Protest Industrial Action Policing Security Sovereignty Cultural Studies Legal Sociology

Cohort

ECF3

Biography

Illan rua Wall joined the Law school as a Lecturer in 2024. Previously he was Professor of Law at the Warwick Law School, where he Co-Directed the Centre for Critical Legal Studies. He holds an Honorary Professorial Fellowship from the University of Warwick.

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 06.02.25