Peter Fitzpatrick (1941-2020) contributed immeasurably to the intellectual, organisational, and cultural life of postcolonial legal studies, critical legal studies, law and social theory and law and the humanities – fields he helped to consolidate.  

PETER FITZPATRICK (1941–2020)

It is a tribute to Peter that work with a colonial or postcolonial theory dimension or concerned with racism and empire is now to be found in virtually all law departments and legal journals.  Similarly, legal theory, law and the humanities, and law and society as they relate to the colonial and post-colonial, owe much to him. An early proponent of the significance of poststructuralist theory, he wrote powerful accounts of how racial othering constituted modern law.

Peter’s influence, however, extends well beyond his scholarship.  He was a much-loved friend, colleague, and mentor, teaching and supervising an incredible number of people, amounting to two or even three generations of students and colleagues.   

In this special issue, ten of Peter’s friends, former colleagues and students succinctly elaborate on and engage with his scholarship, provide new insights into his personal and professional development, and celebrate his life and many achievements. The collection begins with an article that adds to what we already knew about Peter’s personal and professional biography and assesses and clarifies his key ideas and their intersection with his ethics and lived experiences.  It provides a backdrop and context for the eight subsequent articles that elucidate Peter’s contribution to scholarship, engage with his ideas and illuminate specific junctures in his life.  The contributors also consider how specific fields and subjects not usually associated with Peter – including international law, and the relationship between musical improvisation and law – might be advanced through an engagement with his ideas

The issue ends with an edited transcript of Peter’s final seminar in February 2020.  It addresses a variety of themes, including his critique of HLA Hart, his notion of ‘slow reading’, the relationship between theory and grounded engagement with people, the idea of community and relationality, the role of the critic, self-criticism, the impossibility of law, decoloniality, Occidentalism, mythologies and governmentality, and the significance of narratives.   

The issue also conveys something of the special person that was Peter: his tireless innovation; his empathy towards “outsiders” and “others”; the person whose support as a supervisor and friend regularly exceeded the norm; his community-building; his delightful individuality; and his gentle sense of humour. 

The recent eruption of the “Black Lives Matter” movement; the toppling of statues associated with the Atlantic slave trade and a colonizing empire; the movement to “Decolonise the Curriculum”; and the attendant pushback all testify to the ongoing struggles over the extent to which we recognise the enduring legacies of colonialism, post-colonialism, imperialism and empire.  In these as in other respects, Peter’s work and example remain as important and relevant as ever.

David Sugarman 

Contributors to the Special Issue

Upendra Baxi (Warwick Law School and O.P. Jindal Global University).

Eve Darian-Smith (Global Studies, University of California Santa Barbara).

Ben Golder (Law, University of New South Wales). 

Sundhya Pahuja (Melbourne Law School).

Abdul Paliwala (Warwick Law School).

George Pavlich (Sociology, University of Alberta). 

Sara Ramshaw (Law, University of Victoria).

David Sugarman (Law, Lancaster; IALS, London; CSLS, Oxford).

Patricia Tuitt (London). 

William Twining (Law, UCL).