This paper examines the work of lawyers, judges and country experts involved in asylum and migration litigation. I begin by analysing their work in the wider semi-autonomous asylum field within which a number of powerful institutions operate to shape policy, define the roles of key actors and determine access to legal redress/justice by asylum applicants and migrants. To understand the work of these three legal actors, I analyse four very different types of legal cases involving asylum, foreign adoption and migration law. An analysis of these cases helps to identify the constraints on effective litigation on behalf of refugees and migrants against the British Home Office and it illustrates the fact that it is Home Office policy, and the decisions taken by Home Office officials, that created the injustice for the individuals concerned by blurring the ‘bright line’ differentiating between the rights of nationals and those of ‘foreigners’.

Scholars have long argued that transnational legal indicators (TLIs) suffer from significant validity problems. In response to such critiques, the World Bank (WB) reformed its Doing Business (DB) legal indicators in 2014. This paper evaluates two important results of this reform: the WB distinguished between the quality and performance (efficiency) of law indicators and also claimed that they are positively correlated. I argue that this distinction is based on two different utilitarian perspectives; therefore, these indicators try to quantify different aspects of laws. However, new empirical tests indicate that they are not correlated. The statistical tests on the DB Resolving Insolvency Indicators do not show any strong correlation, and the case of Turkey's WB-led insolvency-law reform suggests that the developing countries can even incur efficiency losses from legal-quality improvements. Thus, this study demonstrates that the 2014 DB reform reproduced the validity problems inside the new distinctions and connections between its indicators, potentially creating new misconceptions for policy-makers.

Legalised accountability – the definition of torture as an illicit behaviour and the mobilisation of law-enforcement agencies, prosecutorial offices and courts to gather evidence, prosecute and convict torture perpetrators – has become central to anti-torture policies around the world, including Brazil. Based on legal-consciousness scholarship and in-depth interviews, this paper investigates the place and meaning of law in the everyday lives of Brazilian anti-torture activists. Counter-intuitive as it may sound, interviewees articulated an account in which law's authority is largely rejected, while non-legal tools against torture look much more preferable – even if they residually and cynically engage with the law. While exploring the discursive roots of such account, this paper highlights the role of law and justice institutions, particularly those in the criminal justice system, in the of building social support for – or rejection of – the law. These findings add to our knowledge of law's hegemony, while providing valuable insights for future legal-consciousness studies.

Situated within the larger context of Canadian pipeline decisions, it is argued that pipeline proposals in a geography without pre-existing pipelines are unsuccessful in contrast to proposals repurposing and expanding existing pipelines. The Chippewas of the Thames (the ‘Chippewas’) unsuccessfully opposed Enbridge's expansion, reversal and repurposing to crude oil of the Line 9 pipeline in Ontario, Canada. Analysing the Chippewas’ case within the context of recent oil- and gas-pipeline developments, using a lens of intersectionality focused on identity markers of indigeneity, socio-economic status and geographical location, exposes the naturalised power structures of Canadian law. These structures include the legal institutions of real-property law, Crown ownership of wildlife and fish, implicit ‘standing’ of the economy and assimilation of indigenous rights. Exposing this dichotomy of indigenous rights on paper vs. in practice deepens the consideration of indigenous rights, potentially allowing intersecting oppressions to be addressed.

I taught torts and legal profession at six US law schools over the course of forty years (1969–2008). This paper describes my efforts to incorporate socio-legal studies and critical legal studies into my teaching and my reflections on how successful this was.