Decolonising the School of Law Forum. A reflection on the origin of legal knowledge
This reflection is written by Joséphine Sangaré, PhD student in cybersecurity at CREATe, School of Law, and student member of the staff-student Decolonising the School of Law Forum (DtSLF) at the University of Glasgow.
In the academic year 2023/24, Professor Maria Fletcher and Doctor Catriona Cannon set the ground stone for the a staff-student partnership on Decolonising the School of Law Forum (DtSLF). Ever since, the DtSLF has become the home to a journey of critical self-reflection. Art projects, a human rights board game night, guided walks, museum tours, and the ensuing discussions mark important steps on our endeavour to understand the origin of our knowledge. For that, we are working on the essential questions of ‘who we are’ and ‘what we do’ in our School so that we can welcome, include and engage with a diverse student and staff body, and deliver a legal education that is inclusive and reflects the rich diversity of law, legal thinking and pedagogy. This work is slow work; if this is to be more than window dressing, at the heart of it lies culture change. Situated within the wider context of the actions in the Understanding Racism, Transforming University Cultures Action Plan published by the University in 2021 was to ‘build a strand on decolonising the curriculum into the next L&T strategy’ – it being recognised that there was ‘the need to develop a curriculum which is globally reflective, to ensure all students can engage fully in the learning experience.’ One of the internal drivers identified in the University’s 2021-25 L&T strategy talks to the need to ensure learning and teaching is inclusive and that policies and practices support student wellbeing and inclusion.
We work on accessing and recognising Indigenous knowledge in the design of our curriculum and teaching practices. In this process, we consider the impact of medium language instruction, i.e., when can we access knowledge in the language that it was produced in and where does accessing knowledge through a medium language add a bias to this knowledge. We similarly look into questions of cultural representation through staff and students in the School of Law, and its impact on our ability to engage in a diverse and multi-facetted knowledge-exchange.[1] Student protests like ‘RhodesMustFall’[2], or ‘Fees must fall’[3] and student action subsequently arising in the UK and other countries evidence continued limitations to access higher education globally. What can we learn from these movements when looking at UK law schools, and in particular our own?
Curriculum reflection can only include the voices of those who have access to law schools, and often this access is limited by broader factors of social stratification. Not all cultural knowledge is thus discussed at equal length.[4] As a consequence, critical thinking is limited to those values carried by groups who determine the values of the majority society, and Indigenous knowledge is commonly not associated with this majority. To counter parallel discourses and create an inclusive environment where mutual learning is encouraged through staff-student partnerships, our journey to decolonise relies on seeking open engagement opportunities to encourage members of the law school community to share their perspectives but also offer a space where a respectful and open discourse can achieve increased mutual understanding.
Successful practices from law schools outside the UK, for example Australia, picture how law schools grow into meeting places for epistemologies to decolonise jurisprudence and human rights.[5] A central question arising in this space is to ask about the legitimacy of knowledge. Who decides what knowledge is important and requires consideration? [6] As such we also need to accept that the prioritisation of which forms of Indigenous knowledge to include might not follow known patterns. The journey of decolonising asks from us to abandon thought patterns and familiarise ourselves with new ways of thinking.
By joining our resources in the forum, we can understand the origin of knowledge, how we all contribute to the preservation of certain knowledges and combine them to achieve an inclusive culture of legal scholarship. Starting from the L&T perspective, I had the opportunity to conduct a curriculum review pilot study during the summer break 2024. Following an extensive literature review that looked into global scholarship on decolonising in general, and decolonising higher education, especially in law schools, I developed interview questions to guide an open discussion with course convenors involved in undergraduate, postgraduate, and Legal Diploma teaching. Throughout, critical reflection on the progress with Maria and Catriona allowed to render this project a comprehensive discussion on what we teach, who we teach, how we teach, and what we learn from teaching. Teaching does not only comprise reading lists and libraries. Their full potential can only be exploited where classroom settings account for the diversity of the student population while recognising that teaching itself is also informed by personal knowledge and experiences. Together with the course convenors, a creative discussion on teaching experiences, changed curricula and teaching approaches and non-negotiable core elements of learning and teaching arose.
At the centre stood the idea of the course convenor as a knowledge creator through course design, as well as a knowledge mediator, through the teaching practice. We asked how both can contribute to decolonising legal knowledge, and to what extent student-interaction shapes a critical legal discourse. We started with the personal and academic background and gave each participant the possibility to introduce themselves, as much or as little as they felt comfortable. This included cultural environments they have lived and worked in, and how this informs their legal understanding and the design of course curricula. To fully understand the practice of teaching law at the University of Glasgow, we also discussed limitations to critical thought, the extent to which student backgrounds can be considered, and how to equip a law student with essential skills, critical social reflection as one of them.
The ensuing discussion gave us insights into the greatest challenges, the multitude of stratification factors that require consideration to successfully decolonise in our school, as well as their intersection, and best practices to navigate the continuous competition between essential skills to be conveyed through teaching and engaging with new knowledge in a critical manner. Now, after the academic year has come to an end, we are looking to catch up with everyone involved and ask about key takeaways from the initial discussion, major changes implemented, new experiences, and finally best practices to share with the School of Law community.
This blog article original appeared on the UofG Decolonising the Curriculum Community of Practice blog.
Further readings
On the decolonisation of legal knowledge in higher education, the edited works ‘Decolonisation, Anti-Racism, and Legal Pedagogy’[7], as well as ‘Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge: Reflections on Power and Possibility’[8] offer fundamental knowledge supporting the strategising of decolonising legal understanding of law as a discipline and case studies to implement a diverse curriculum. Academic resources[9], as well as intersectional stratification factors[10], also find great consideration in decolonisation strategies. Looking at law in practice, international scholarship reflects on legal transplantation, comparative legal practice, and how human rights can become a driver for transformation. Wolkmer and Wolkmacher provide insights on decolonisation of legal practice and the notion of common values in Latin America,[11] while Sena Martins and de Sousa Santos,[12] Jensen[13], and Moses et al[14] discuss ‘common’ values and self-determination in the field of human rights law.
[1] Jansen, J D (ed.), Decolonisation on Universities: The politics of knowledge, (2019), Wits University Press, Johannesburg. https://doi.org/10.18772/22019083351.2; Woldegiorgis, ET; Turner, I; Brahima, A (ed), ‘Decolonisation of Higher Education in Africa: Perspectives from Hybrid Knowledge Production’ (2020). Taylor & Francis. ISBN: 9781000328547; Maringe, F (ed), ‘Colonization and Epistemic Injustice in Higher Education. Precursors to Decolonisation’ (2023). Routledge, London. https://doi-org.ezproxy1.lib.gla.ac.uk/10.4324/9781003180890
[2] Gopal, P, ‘On Decolonisation and the University’ (2021), 35 Textual Practice 6, 873, https://doi.org/10.1080/0950236X.2021.1929561; Chigdu, S, ‘Rhodes Must Fall in Oxford: a critical testimony’ (2020), 12 Critical African Studies 3, 302. https://doi.org/10.1080/21681392.2020.1788401; Ahmad, A K, ‘*RhodesMustFall: How a Decolonial Student Movement in the Global South Inspired Epistemic Disobedience at the University of Oxford’ (2020), 63 African Studies Review 2, 281. doi:10.1017/asr.2019.49.
[3] Booysen, S (ed), ‘Fees Must Fall’ (2018). Wits University Press.
[4] Motshabi, K, ‘Decolonising the university : à law perspective’, (2018), 40 Strategic Review for Southern Africa 1, https://doi.org/10.35293/srsa.v40i1.277; Otis, G, ‘Identitarisme, droits ancestraux et néocolonialisme. Le système de la Cour suprême’, (2012), 41 Recherches amérindiennes au Québec 1, 115. https://doi.org/10.7202/1012716ar; Booysen, S (ed), ‘Fees Must Fall’ (2018). Wits University Press.
[5] Rigney, S. (2020). Creating the law school as a meeting place for epistemologies: decolonising the teaching of jurisprudence and human rights In: Law Teacher, 54, 503 – 516.
[6] Otis, G, ‘Identitarisme, droits ancestraux et néocolonialisme. Le système de la Cour suprême’, (2012), 41 Recherches amérindiennes au Québec 1, 115. https://doi.org/10.7202/1012716ar; [6] Al Attar, M; Abdelkarim, S, ‘Decolonising the Curriculum in International Law: Entrapments in Praxis and Critical Thought’ [2023] Law and Critique 34, 41. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-021-09313-y; Vanthuyne, K ; Dussault, C, ‘La décolonisation de l’enseignement universitaire á l’épreuve de colonialisme d’occupation’, (2022), 53 Praxis décoloniales et rapports de pouvoir dans la fabrique des savoirs en contextes postcoloniaux 2, 67 ; Schachreiter, J, ‘Das Verhängnis von Ethnozentrismus und Kulturrelativismus in der Rechtsvergleichung‘ (2013), 77 Rabels Zeitschrift für ausländisches und internationales Recht 2, 272.
[7] Adebisi, FI; Jivrai, S; Tzouvala, N (eds), ‘Decolonisation, Anti-Racism, and Legal Pedagogy’ (2023). Routledge, London.
[8] Adebisi, FI, ‘Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge: Reflections on Power and Possibility’ (2023). Policy Press, Bristol. https://doi.org/10.1332/policypress/9781529219371.001.0001
[9] Clarke M, ‘Why we need to look at decolonisation in the law library,’ (2023), 23 Legal Information Management 2, 55-59. doi:10.1017/S147266962300018X
[10] Waites, M. (2024) Contesting colonial criminalization: Customary law’s significance for decolonizing queer analysis. In: Fischel, J. J. and Cossman, B. (eds.) Enticements: Queer Legal Studies. Series: LGBTQ politics. New York University Press: New York, pp. 85-108. ISBN 9781479807635; Hird, D (ed), ‘Critical Pedagogies for Modern Languages Education: Criticality, Decolonization, and Social Justice’ (2023). Bloomsbury Academic, London. 10.5040/9781350298804; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, SJ; Ndlovu, M, ‘Marxism and Decolonization in the 21st Century’ (2021). Routledge, London.
[11] Wolkmer, AC; de Fatima Schumacher Wolkmacher, M, ‚The Principle of the ‘Common,’ Legal Pluralism and Decolonization in Latin America’ [2022] Law and Critique 33, 63. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-021-09285-z
[12] Sena Martins, B; De Sousa Santos, B (eds), ‘El pluriverso de los derechos humanos’ (2019), 978-607-98185-6-2; De Sousa Santos, B, ‘La Universidad en el Siglo XXI’, (2007), Plural Editores, La Paz; De Sousa Santos, B, ‘Decolonizar el Saber, Reinventar el Poder’ (2010), Ediciones Trilce, Montevideo.
[13] Jensen, SLB, ‘The making of international Human Rights. The 1960s, Decolonization, and the Reconstruction of Global Values’ (2016). Cambridge University Press.
[14] Moses, DA; Duranti, M; Burke, R (eds), ‘Decolonisation, Self-Determination, and the Rise of Global Human Rights Politics’ (2020). Cambridge University Press.
