Legal geography II: Discerning injustice

In this report I assess progress in legal geography – past and potential – in terms of its contributions to two significant projects in contemporary critical geographic thought: the discernment and diagnosis of spatial injustice and the idea of the right to the city. I argue that conventional spatial imaginaries tend to invisibilize injustices, obscure the contingencies and causes of injustice, and uncouple injustice from responsibility. Conventional legal imaginaries commonly legitimize injustices or render them as mere misfortunes, if not deserved fates. Because traces of the legal are commonly constitutive of the spatialities of injustice – underpinning them, shaping relations of power with respect to them, rendering places meaningful in distinctively legal ways – then much of what legal geographers do is investigate the contingencies and constraints of spatial justice. I also draw attention to recent work by non-geographers and the increased penetration of critical spatial thought into legal scholarship as grounds for anticipating future progress.