Critical Legal Conference 2025 -

Following the theme, Surf ‘n’ Turf: Critical Laws of the Land and Sea, the Critical Legal Conference (CLC) 2025 at the University of Exeter offers an opportunity to interrogate the dynamic interplay between land and sea within the context of critical legal thought. Inspired by the coastal landscape of Devon and Cornwall, this year’s theme echoes the distinct cultural and geographical identity of the region, shaped as it is, by the intermingling forces of land and sea. The conference invites participants to explore the shifting boundaries and intersections of terrestrial and maritime legal regimes, focusing on how these domains reflect and reproduce power, governance, and resistance.

Land and sea, often perceived as natural opposites, are both constructed spaces subject to competing claims and governance strategies. From enclosure and colonisation of land to the exploitation of oceans and seabeds, legal frameworks have historically functioned to consolidate authority and control over these terrains. Yet, these spaces are also sites of contestation, where critical legal perspectives expose the tensions between sovereignty and commons, local and global interests, and human and ecological systems.

This conference aims to unravel how laws of the land and sea shape our political, social, and environmental realities. How do legal regimes maintain historical hierarchies of power in land-based and maritime contexts? What insights can the ocean, as an emblem of fluidity and resistance, offer to challenge the rigidity of terrestrial law? Conversely, how do struggles over land—whether involving indigeneity, property, or environmental justice—inform understanding of legal orders governing the sea?
The conference invites delegates to situate these questions within broader critical debates, including postcolonial, feminist, ecological, technological, speculative, aesthetics and Marxist perspectives. It also welcomes interdisciplinary approaches, recognising the value of insights from anthropology, geography, history, and cultural studies in deepening our understanding of law’s entanglements with the material and symbolic dimensions of land and sea.

The Surf ‘n’ Turf theme underscores the necessity of attending to the material and metaphorical borders that distinguish and connect terrestrial and maritime spaces. At a time of intensifying environmental crises, rising sea levels, and global migrations, the interplay between land and sea raises urgent questions for critical legal scholars. From the construction of “landscapes of exclusion” to the territorialisation of oceanic expanses, law functions both to delineate boundaries and to mediate interactions across them. This anniversary celebration of the CLC invites participants to rethink legal structures in light of these pressing concerns, exploring possibilities for justice, solidarity, and sustainability across land and sea.

Possible streams might include:

Land and Sea as Contested Spaces: a stream to examine the histories and contemporary dynamics of contestation in land and maritime legal regimes, including issues of sovereignty, property rights, and resource extraction.
Environmental Justice and Ecological Crisis: With a focus on climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation, a stream to interrogate the roles of law in perpetuating ecological harm and explore alternative frameworks for ecological resilience and justice.
Postcolonial and Decolonial Perspectives on Land and Sea: a stream to explore how colonial and imperial histories continue to shape legal frameworks governing terrestrial and oceanic spaces, emphasising indigenous and decolonial critiques.
Fluid Borders and Migrant Mobilities: a stream to focus on migration across land and sea, exploring how legal regimes shape—and are shaped by—practices of movement, displacement, and border enforcement.
Maritime Imaginaries and Critical Theory: Engaging with the symbolic and cultural dimensions of the sea, a stream inviting reflections on how maritime imaginaries challenge terrestrial-centric legal orders and inspire critical theoretical interventions.
Embodied Territories and Gendered, Feminist Perspectives on Land and Sea: a stream to interrogate the relationship between bodies, territories, borders, and statehood drawing on feminism, gender and sexuality.
Aesthetic and Affective approaches to Land and Sea: streams that explore plural imaginaries of law associated with land and sea; thinking with processes that challenges existing representational frameworks compelling a reconsideration of what constitutes these earthly elements and collaborating with the arts and artists to make alternative imaginaries of land and sea possible.

By bringing together these diverse yet interconnected strands, the 40th anniversary of that first “CLC workshop” hosted by Birkbeck College “CLC workshop” in 1985, this year’s CLC aims to foster critical dialogues on the laws of the land and sea, reflecting on past achievements in critical legal thought while charting new directions for the future.

Confirmed keynotes:
Prof Gina Heathcote (University of Newcastle)
Prof Vito De Lucia (Tromso, Norway)
Prof Anne Bottomley (Kent)

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