LSE Law, Society and Economy Working Papers: Special Issue on 'Hope in Law'
We are delighted to say that our special issue on hope in law – based on the workshop that we held in the Law School last November – is now out as the first special issue of the LSE Legal Studies Working Paper Series. It is dedicated to our wonderful friend and colleague, Conor Gearty, who embodied the best of all that was involved in this project: a sense of creativity and curiosity, a commitment to the community of the Law School and within legal scholarship more broadly, an openness to and interest in reaching across difference, and, most of all, a lively love of conversation and thinking through together. He was looking forward to seeing this issue out. We are pleased to announce its publication.
The issue explores the ways in which hope and law relate to one another and engage with each other. It raises questions – via reflections stemming from different disciplinary and methodological perspectives – of what thinking about hope can tell us about law and also what thinking about law can tell us about hope.
The structure of the issue reflects the discussions that underpinned the project from the outset. There are four sections: hope and the role of law; hope through law; looking for hope in and around law; and hope and rights, and hope as a right. Each one is made up of short reflection papers and a concluding conversation by the section authors.
Huge thanks to all the contributors!
Special Issue on Hope in Law (2025) LSE Law, Society and Economy Working Papers
22/2025 Sarah Trotter, ‘Thinking Through Hope in Law: An Introduction and a Welcome to this Special Issue of the LSE Law Working Paper Series’
Section 1: Hope and the Role of Law
23/2025 Nicola Lacey, ‘Institutionalising Hope in Law?’
24/2025 Jill Marshall, ‘Feminist Jurisprudence, Personal Liberation, and Hope’
25/2025 Marie Petersmann, ‘Hope in Climate Justice: Tales of Transition and its Refusal’
26/2026 Tola Amodu, ‘Hope in Property (or The “Hopefulness” of Property)?’
27/2025 Hope and the Role of Law: A Conversation
Section 2: Hope Through Law
28/2025 Emily Jackson, ‘IVF as a “Hope Technology”’
29/2025 Luke McDonagh, ‘Distinguishing Between Genuine Hope and False Hope in the Pharmaceutical Industry’
30/2025 Alperen Gözlügöl, ‘Great Expectations or False Hopes? The Case of Sustainable Finance’
31/2025 Elen Stokes, ‘Hope as an Object of Legal Scholarship’
32/2025 Hope Through Law: A Conversation
Section 3: Looking for Hope In and Around Law
33/2025 Imelda Maher, ‘Teaching Hope: An Interdisciplinary Challenge’
34/2025 Ayşe Gizem Yaşar, ‘Regulating the Digital Economy in the EU: The Hope of Redistribution’
35/2025 Parashar Das, ‘Sites for Utopian Hope: From the League Against Imperialism to the International Atomic Energy Agency’
36/2025 Sandhya Fuchs, ‘On the Certainty of Legal Labour: Meliorist Legalism and Habits of Hope in Hindu Nationalist India’
37/2025 Chaloka Beyani, ‘Hope for Accountability Against Impunity: Investigations by the UN High-Level Fact-Finding Mission to Libya and the Indictments by the International Criminal Court for Crimes Committed in Tarhuna’
38/2025 Anat Rosenberg, ‘Hope Against Autocratic Legalism: Affective Scripts During the Democratic Crisis in Israel’
39/2025 Looking for Hope In and Around Law: A Conversation
Section 4: Hope and Rights, and Hope as a Right
40/2025 Matthew Wray Perry and Kimberley Brownlee, ‘The Socially Fragile Power of Hope’
41/2025 Conor Gearty, ‘Living in Hope: Does a Right to Hope Make Sense?’
42/2025 Marion Vannier, ‘Hope as Illusion: The European Right to Hope and the Realities of Ageing Behind Bars’
43/2025 Sarah Trotter, ‘The Distinction Between an Idea of a Right to Hope and a Sense of a Right to Hope’
44/2025 Hope and Rights, and Hope as a Right: A Conversation
45/2025 Sarah Trotter, ‘Reflections on Hope in Law’