Professor Peter Fitzpatrick’s scholarship and teaching has transformed the study of law in the fields of legal philosophy and law and social theory. His book, The Mythology of Modern Law (Routledge, 1992), opened a new field of study for understanding the relation between law and myth and influenced a generation of scholars concerned with the relation between law, race and empire; while his more recent work on Michel Foucault has opened a new way of understanding law in the work of Foucault.
Professor Fitzpatrick has enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a legal academic, teaching at universities in Europe, North America, and Papua New Guinea. He is currently an Honorary Professor of Law at the University of Kent and a Fellow of the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law. His previous appointments include Anniversary Professor of Law at Birkbeck, University of London, Professor of Law at Queen Mary, University of London, and Professor of Law and Social Theory, University of Kent at Canterbury. He has also worked in international legal practice, and was for several years in the Office of the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea, and has acted in an advisory capacity to regulatory bodies and other universities. He is on the editorial board of numerous distinguished journals.
Professor Fitzpatrick’s books include Foucault and Law with Ben Golder (eds) (Ashgate, 2010); Foucault’s Law with Ben Golder (Routledge, 2009); Law as Resistance: Modernism, Imperialism, Legalism (Ashgate, 2008); Critical Beings: Law, Nation and the Global Subject with Patricia Tuitt (eds) (Ashgate, 2003); Modernism and the Grounds of Law (Cambridge University Press, 2001); Nationalism, Racism and the Rule of Law (ed) (Dartmouth, 1995); The Mythology of Modern Law (Routledge, 1992); Dangerous Supplements: Resistance and Renewal in Jurisprudence (ed) (Pluto Press, 1991); Law and State in Papua New Guinea (Academic Press, 1980). He is also author of over 160 journal articles and book chapters in legal philosophy, law and social theory, law and imperialism, Indigenous rights, law of economic organisation and constitutional law.
Professor Fitzpatrick has been the recipient of numerous honours in the course of his career, including the prestigious James Boyd White Award from the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities in 2007, “honouring outstanding scholarly achievement in the field”.
These two interviews, one biographical, the other more focussed on his work, were conducted by Professor Sundhya Pahuja and Dr Adil Hasan Khan in May, 2017 as part of a suite of events celebrating 25 years since the publication of The Mythology of Modern Law.
During the interviews, Peter’s voice is clear, but a few of the questions are hard to hear, so we have inserted subtitles where necessary. This includes the opening question in the second interview.
