Our [fairly simple] premise is that both law and society have been shaped by colonial histories. Thus, one could argue quite confidently that the last 500 years of human history have been fundamentally influenced by the manufacture and use of race to create human hierarchies and to produce material difference across human populations on a global scale. The main structures through which this has happened are the interwoven processes of racialised enslavement and extractive colonisation. The effects of these are carried on into the present, exemplified by racial violence, extreme inequality, and environmental devastation.

International and domestic forms of law have played complex, often paradoxical, roles in the foregoing processes—institutionalizing imperialism/racism as well as serving as a recourse for colonised and racialised populations resisting imperialism/racism. One could then strongly suggest that the very ontology of law is fundamentally shaped by its entanglement with racism and imperialism on a global scale as well as movements to dismantle them. Despite this, the core curriculum of legal education (particularly, but not limited to, Global North/Global North-influenced contexts) often does not include an examination of the questions that arise from this.

In response to this absence, recent years have seen a surge in legal academics and law students making concerted efforts to draw attention to the ways in which racism and imperialism have shaped the character of law – for example, as part of ‘Decolonising the Curriculum’ initiatives or ‘critical legal’ teaching more broadly. As part of this move, our newly created network intends to provide a forum for sharing this praxis across vastly different regions and different areas of law.

• Adébísí, Folúké. Decolonisation and legal knowledge: Reflections on power and possibility. Policy Press, 2023.

• Adebisi, Foluke, Suhraiya Jivraj, and Ntina Tzouvala. Decolonisation, Anti-Racism, and Legal Pedagogy. Routledge, 2024.

• Adebisi, Foluke I., ed. Decolonisation and the Law School: Dreaming Beyond Aesthetic Changes to the Curriculum. Taylor & Francis, 2024.

• Ansley, Frances Lee. “Race and the core curriculum in legal education.” Calif. L. Rev. 79 (1991): 1511.

• Burgis-Kasthala, Michelle, and Christine Schwobel-Patel. “Against coloniality in the international law curriculum: examining decoloniality.” The Law Teacher 56, no. 4 (2022): 485-506.

• Crenshaw, Kimberlé Williams. “Toward a race-conscious pedagogy in legal education.”  Nat’l Black LJ 11 (1988): 1.

• Devlin, Richard F. “Towards an/other legal education: Some critical and tentative proposals to confront the racism of modern legal education.” UNBLJ 38 (1989): 89.

• Fischer, Alison. “Colonialism, Context and Critical Thinking: First steps toward decolonizing the Dutch legal curriculum.” Utrecht Law Review 18, no. 1 (2022).

• Jivraj, Suhraiya. “Towards Anti-racist Legal pedagogy: A resource.” (2020).

• Karibi-Whyte, Asikia. “An agenda for decolonising law in Africa: Conceptualising the curriculum.” Journal of Decolonising Disciplines 2, no. 1 (2020).

• Petrov, Ivan, and Amina Yusuf. “Reforming Legal Education in the Global South: Colonial Legacies and Critical Pedagogy.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Society, Law, and Politics 4, no. 1 (2025): 220-230.

• Thornton, Margaret. “Technocentrism in the law school: Why the gender and colour of law remain the same.” Osgoode Hall LJ 36 (1998): 369.