Law after Crisis: Reconfigurations of Power In the Post-Liberal World

The liberal legal order has long been associated with constitutionalism, individual rights, the rule of law, human rights, and the separation of powers. Yet contemporary crises and power transformations are reshaping not merely the institution of law but also its underlying rationalities. Among other things, law is increasingly governed through such infrastructures as digital platforms, data systems, borders, media, financial architectures, security technologies, and transnational political networks that are reconfiguring how legality is produced. In this context, crisis appears as the new normal through which new legal orders emerge. Hence, this panel explores how these changes have become constitutive conditions of new governance technologies, giving rise to new forms of law.

We invite contributions that examine how law is being transformed under post-liberal conditions. What legal institutions, doctrines, technologies, and infrastructures are emerging as rights increasingly coexist with security, populist politics, technological surveillance, resilience, and algorithmic governance? What becomes of legality when power is reconfigured through crises, data, emergency measures, or affective politics? How are these transformations experienced differently across lines of gender, sexuality, race, class, migration, disability, and coloniality? The panel welcomes theoretical, empirical, and comparative contributions from sociology, socio-legal studies, criminology, political science, geography, queer studies, and related disciplines.

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