{"title":"Public Participation in Renaming Processes: Navigating Sir John Hawkins.","authors":"Emily Haslam, Suhraiya Jivraj","doi":"10.1093/ojls/gqaf012","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Debates about whether to remove, rename or 'retain and explain' monuments, buildings and street names play an important part in contemporary disputes about the construction and meaning of history. They also contribute to a significant cultural and socio-legal reassessment of Britain's colonial and slave-trading past. We explore how two local governmental legal processes dealt with renaming controversies. More specifically, we examine the extent to which they facilitated consultation and what impact this had on local debates. In doing so, we ask how legal processes around renaming can be prefigured to generate more transformative understandings of controversial histories without further polarising the 'culture war'. This exploration shines a critical light on the role of law in debates about Britain's past and offers valuable lessons for future legal development.</p>","PeriodicalId":47225,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Journal of Legal Studies","volume":"45 3","pages":"612-639"},"PeriodicalIF":1.0000,"publicationDate":"2025-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12395239/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Oxford Journal of Legal Studies","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqaf012","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2025/1/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"eCollection","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"LAW","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Debates about whether to remove, rename or 'retain and explain' monuments, buildings and street names play an important part in contemporary disputes about the construction and meaning of history. They also contribute to a significant cultural and socio-legal reassessment of Britain's colonial and slave-trading past. We explore how two local governmental legal processes dealt with renaming controversies. More specifically, we examine the extent to which they facilitated consultation and what impact this had on local debates. In doing so, we ask how legal processes around renaming can be prefigured to generate more transformative understandings of controversial histories without further polarising the 'culture war'. This exploration shines a critical light on the role of law in debates about Britain's past and offers valuable lessons for future legal development.
期刊介绍:
The Oxford Journal of Legal Studies is published on behalf of the Faculty of Law in the University of Oxford. It is designed to encourage interest in all matters relating to law, with an emphasis on matters of theory and on broad issues arising from the relationship of law to other disciplines. No topic of legal interest is excluded from consideration. In addition to traditional questions of legal interest, the following are all within the purview of the journal: comparative and international law, the law of the European Community, legal history and philosophy, and interdisciplinary material in areas of relevance.