Submission congratulations!

The Centre for International Governance and Justice and RegNet warmly congratulates PhD scholar Shane Chalmers on the submission of his thesis, entitled ‘Law’s rule – Liberia and the rule of law’.

The basis of Shane’s thesis was the challenge set down by Desmond Manderson in Kangaroo Courts and the Rule of Law: to take seriously the contradiction in the rule of law as its animating condition.

By definition ‘the rule of law’ is opposed to ‘the rule of humans’; and yet law remains an inter-subjective phenomenon, enlivened by the very humans over whom it would rule. Thus the rule of law, set against the rule of humans, cannot be instituted in a way that finally separates law from its subjects.

With Theodor Adorno’s negative-dialectical philosophy as intellectual guide, and based on fieldwork carried out in Liberia and the United States, the thesis examined how ideologies — above all capitalism — inform the rule of law, and how the rule of law provides a medium for them to take place.

Shane is now taking a well earned hiking break.