Faculty of Law, University of the West Indies, Barbados - Call for papers for The Caribbean Law Review, Volume 20: Issue 1 (2022)
Theme: ‘Racialisation and Racism: Pillars or Perversions of the Law?’
1. Concept
Race is a central motif in the Caribbean, the Americas, and the world, paradoxically both a hyper-visible and hidden fulcrum. It is significant across scales, shaping the internal organisation of societies, the relationships between states, and the organisation of the global order. For its part, law is a central device in the constitution and transformation of these relations across scales. Despite the ubiquity of race in lived experiences and the rich tradition of interrogating race in the academy, analyses of the relationship between racialisation, racism, and the law are uncommon. In our forthcoming issue—Racialisation and Racism: Pillars or Perversions of the Law? — the Caribbean Law Review will explore the role of law in the constitution, thwarting, and transformation of racism. Where do we locate the law in these practices? Does it sit above, below, or between systems of racialisation and racism? Is racialisation an anthropological, legal, economic, or epistemological process? Is it all of them? How do legal scholars theorise racism, and how do we connect it to other isms? Pragmatically, how may engagement with race transform questions of policy, law-making, and legislative design or, more generally, how we do law? To provide a broader sense of law’s relationship to issues of race, we invite reflections on these themes. Our preference is for contributions from scholars who share our two premises. First, they recognise that law and race are co-constituted, and, second, they believe in interdisciplinarity in their engagement with the topic.
We will consider all submissions that excavate law’s relationship to race, and are especially interested in submissions that touch upon the law’s relationship to:
• Law and Practices / Processes of Racialisation
• Law, Racism, and Epistemology • Law and Racial Capitalism
• Law in / as (Anti-) Racist Struggle
• Law, Race, and Post-Colonial Theory
We welcome submissions from public, private, and international law scholars, practitioners, and postgraduate students. We also encourage submissions that consider connections with the Caribbean and engagement with scholarship and realities from across the region. FACULTY OF LAW
2. Timeline
We aim to publish the issue in January-February 2022. Please account for the following stages when deciding if you wish to contribute.
- 31 March 2021: Prospective contributors submit abstracts of less than 500 words in which they outline the topic they wish to explore as it pertains to this call for papers.
To counter letterhead bias, our editorial committee will anonymise the submissions before selecting eight (8) preferred pieces. We also welcome proposals for pedagogical reflections, book reviews, and case notes that pertain to the issue’s themes. - 15 April 2021: The CLR will notify successful contributors and invite the preparation of articles ranging between 6-8000 words (alongside the shorter pieces). You may download our style guide from our forthcoming website (April 2021)
- 31 August 2021: Firm deadline by which authors must submit their manuscripts via the CLR’s submission platform. 30 September 2021: Editors circulate peer reviews to authors to finalise the papers. 31 October 2021: Authors return revised manuscripts.
- January-February 2022: The CLR publishes Volume 20: Issue 1.
Please email your abstracts and proposals to lawdean [at] cavehill.uwi.edu by 31 March 2021, with a brief biography as well as contact details.
3. About The Caribbean Law Review (CLR)
As the Cave Hill Faculty of Law celebrates its 50th anniversary, its flagship publication, the Caribbean Law Review (CLR), is at a critical juncture. Nurturing the region’s legal intellect since 1991, it is recognised as an iconic Caribbean legal artefact, promoting doctrinal and critical scholarship alike, as well as practical legal analysis. Regrettably, the journal has suffered convulsions since 2009, though we are pleased to have recently digitised all back issues.
In honour of our anniversary, we are re-launching the CLR. In contrast to many other legal publications, the CLR possesses a civilisational quality, helping to problematise the relation between law and post-coloniality as the Caribbean continues to trudge through the post-colonial. It therefore belongs to the Caribbean people and should be accessible to students, thinkers, practitioners, and visionaries in the region and beyond. We are thus moving forward with an open-access journal model.
Through strong partnerships, we aspire to establish the CLR as an online presence marked by rich and robust discussions, creating a platform of intellectual engagement and practice. Serendipitously, the journal’s abbreviation mirrors the name of Caribbean hero, CLR James. “We, there in the Caribbean, are a very peculiar people”. We believe that the CLR must nurture this peculiarity through our legal imagination. This character emphasises the scope of the journal: focused on the Caribbean yet situating the Caribbean in the world.
What should the Caribbean’s future look like? How will we achieve it? And, critically, how will our future cohere with that of others? The CLR will nurture a forum for deliberations about these existential questions as seen through the prism of law.
4. Governance
- Executive Editor: Mohsen al Attar, University of the West Indies
- Managing Editor: Rashad Brathwaite, University of the West Indies
- Board of Advisors:
- Titiyalo Adebola, University of Aberdeen
- Olabisi Akinkugbe, Dalhousie University
- Richard Albert, University of Texas
- Shazeeda Ali, University of the West Indies
- Antony Anghie, National University Singapore
- Adelle Blackett, McGill University
- Brendan Browne, Trinity University
- Simon Chesterman, National University Singapore
- Babatunde Fagbayibo, UNISA
- Malebakeng Forere, University of the Witwatersrand
- James Gathii, University of Loyola in Chicago
- Kevin Heller, University of Copenhagen
- Pasha Hsieh, Singapore Management University
- Ardi Imseis, Queen’s University
- Joel Modiri, University of Pretoria
- Elisa Morgera, University of Strathclyde
- Jayan Nayar, University of Warwick
- Rohini Sen, Jindal University
- Sally Wheeler, Australian National University
