Lunch Seminar: Law as Context: The Judicialisation and Criminalization of Palestinian Society

This lecture interrogates dominant representations of Palestinian society and legality, arguing that existing scholarship—despite its varied approaches—tends to portray Palestine as a site of lawlessness and exception. Much of the literature on the post-Oslo legal sphere frames it as a reform case, analyzed primarily through its institutional gaps, administrative deficiencies, and governance failures. In contrast, this study contends that Palestinians are not confronted by an absence of law but rather by its excessive presence. The post-Oslo period has witnessed an intensification of legal discourses, institutions, actors, and bureaucratic mechanisms, all shaped by the intertwined dynamics of state-building and colonial domination. This excess of legality, rather than its lack, defines the contemporary Palestinian condition. The paper argues that the colonial field of law is continuously produced through the separation and intersection of legal bodies, jurisdictional authorities, and regimes of power—forming a fragmented yet deeply entrenched system of governance that reproduces colonial control under the guise of legality and reform.

Reem Al-Botmeh is a Palestinian legal scholar and researcher at the Institute of Law, Birzeit University, where she served as Director (2019–2024) and currently leads the Birzeit Observatory for Social Justice. Her work focuses on family law, sharia and modernity in Palestine, with particular attention to social proximity, class, and gender, as well as the broader intersections between law, colonialism, and social justice. She is the Assistant Editor of the Palestine Yearbook of International Law (Brill) and has led and contributed to numerous projects addressing international law in context of Palestine, human rights and legal reform. Her research emphasizes interdisciplinary approaches to law and society within colonial contexts.