Law, space, and the geographies of power

by Nicholas K. Blomley

This illuminating new volume offers a ground-breaking exploration into the intriguing and politically significant relationship between law and geography. Nicholas K. Blomley asserts that space and law, rather than being fixed, objective categories, have a crucial bearing on the deployment of power and the structuring of social life. Arguing that the geographies of law can be powerful - even oppressive - in combination with their implied claims concerning social life, Blomley clearly demonstrates how, over the last two centuries, legal judgment has entailed the adjudication of issues of power and space. The volume synthesizes ideas from the fields of law and geography to construct a "critical legal geography" that both documents Blomley's theory and challenges the orthodox treatment of law, space, and power. With unusual insight into the ideology and intricacy of legal reasoning, the book shows how - contrary to appearance - representations (or "geographies") of the spaces of political,