In the colonial context, engaging the legal system as a potential means of redress and the recognition of rights is fraught with a basic contradiction, says Brenna Bhandar: can the legal system be utilized as an arena for social-political struggle without legitimizing the colonial order itself?

Dr. Bhandar, a lecturer at the University of London’s Queen Mary School of Law, will address this contradiction in her free public presentation, “Strategies of Rupture: the Politics of Judgment,” Wednesday, November 9, at noon in the Farmers Conference Room, Ron W. Ianni Faculty of Law Building.

“The appeal to universal rights and conceptions of justice have offered little relief from this dilemma, which continues to plague advocates for social justice in many different jurisdictions,” Bhandar says. “Is it possible for a court, entrusted with upholding the constitution and sovereign foundations of the nation-state, to put in motion a ruptural force through the act of judgment?”

This event is part of the distinguished lecture series of the Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice.