Picking up the question of what FLaK might be, this editorial considers the relationship between openness and closure in feminist legal studies. How do we draw on feminist struggles for openness in common resources, from security to knowledge, as we inhabit a compromised space in commercial publishing? We think about this first in relation to the content of this issue: on image-based abuse continuums, asylum struggles, trials of protestors, customary justice, and not-so-timely reparations. Our thoughts take us through the different (...) ways that openness and closure work in struggles against violence, cruel welcomes, and re-arrangements of code and custom. Secondly, we share some reflections on methodological openness and closure as the roundtable conversation on asylum, and the interview with Riles, remind us of #FLaK2016 and its method of scattering sources as we think about how best to mix knowledges. Thirdly, prompted by the FLaK kitchen table conversations on openness, publishing and ‘getting the word out’, we respond to Kember’s call to ‘open up open access’. We explain the different current arrangements for opening up FLS content and how green open access, the sharedit initiative, author request and publisher discretion present alternatives to gold open access. Finally drawing on Franklin and Spade, we show how there are a range of ‘wench tactics’—adapting gifts, stalling and resting—which we deploy as academic editors who are trying to have an impact on the access, use and circulation of our journal, even though we do not own the journal we edit. These wench tactics are alternatives to the more obvious or reported tactic of resignation, or withdrawing academic labour from editing and reviewing altogether. They help us think about brewing editorial time, what ambivalence over our 25th birthday might mean, and how to inhabit painful places. In this, we respond in our own impure, compromised way to da Silva’s call not to forget the native and slave as we do FLaK, and repurpose shrapnel, in our common commitments. (shrink)

In September 2018 the University of Victoria Faculty of Law on Vancouver Island, Canada welcomed its first cohort of students to its cutting edge and innovative joint degree programme in Canadian Common Law ) and Indigenous Legal Orders ). The JD/jid programme draws on the law faculty’s more than two decades of experience and research on Indigenous legal orders, and Indigenous legal education. It is the first of its kind in the world, combining intensive study of Canadian Common Law with (...) rigorous engagement with Indigenous law. The rationale behind this programme is to engage with Indigenous legal orders using the depth, rigour, and critical focus that law schools bring to the study of other legal orders. Pushing against exclusion happening in higher education throughout the Commonwealth and beyond, the JD/jid programme aims to ensure that education in Indigenous Law is no longer an education in exclusion and displacement. This short piece provides necessary background to the programme, including structure and content, and details its transsystemic pedagogical and community-based learning approaches. (shrink)

Introduction. The law of the extempore -- The rise and reform of the New York City cabaret laws -- Deconstructive legal improvisation -- The 'wildness' of jazz improvisation -- Demystifying improvisation -- The structure-freedom paradox in law -- Justice as improvisation.