To engage in the question of what it means to decolonize law, we must ask by what authority a law has the authority to be invoked and to govern. In this paper, I describe the conditions necessary for the exercise of Canadian law as being the work of jurisdiction, and I call into question Canada’s legality and legitimacy in making jurisdictional claims. Decolonizing law means deconstructing the state’s grounds to inaugurate law on lands acquired through colonial settlement. By critically examining law’s geography and scope I call into question the modern definition of territory itself. Further, I draw attention to jurisdiction as a conceptual framework for understanding the specificities of settler colonialism; illustrate jurisdiction as a historical concept, distinct from territory and sovereignty; and show some of the ways in which jurisdiction is enacted to govern across multiple scales and issues.

This article traces some of the ways in which Australian law in the post-Mabo era has functioned to discursively historicize Indigenous Australia, that is, to construct Indigenous Australia as a historical relic. I argue that despite law’s continual historicization of Indigenous Australia, there have nonetheless been “moments of decolonization,” as there have been since the colonization of Australia began, in which Indigenous Australia asserts its contemporary presence in opposition to and outside of colonial Australia. Drawing on Doreen Massey’s conceptualization of place and space and three examples, I argue that in these moments, Indigenous activists do not only resist the ongoing project that is settler Australia, they also create an elsewhere to it.

In this paper, I argue that Indian Residential School (IRS) litigation, and the emphasis on “cultural loss” or genocide, threatened to expose the illegitimacy of Canada’s claim to sovereignty and the settler collective’s occupancy of Indigenous lands today. When settler illegitimacy is brought into view, settler collectives typically respond with violence. In IRS case law, this violence consists of the dehumanization of the Indigenous collective as property. I trace this violence on the part of Canada (government and law) in Blackwater v Plint (1996–2005). I suggest that Canada’s “disturbing defence strategy” in Blackwater likely contributed to Canada’s signing of the 2006–2007 IRS settlement agreement that brought Baxter v Canada to a close. I conclude that settler illegitimacy, genocide, and law’s racialized violence in the present ought to trouble the settler collective’s vision of both decolonization and the role of settler law in decolonization.

How and why did Canada end up with a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) rather than a judicially based public inquiry in response to Indian Residential Schools? Using a constructivist-interpretivist approach with interview research with twenty-three key actors, this article traces the path toward the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. It examines in particular the shift from calls for public inquiry to truth and reconciliation. In sourcing the idea of a TRC, it gauges the balance between transnational influences and home-grown elements and suggests that two different approaches to a truth commission were merged during the settlement negotiations. One approach, associated with the Assembly of First Nations, focuses on accountability and public record, and the other, associated with survivor and Protestant organizations, is more grassroots and community-focused. This article looks at hybridity and gaps in the TRC’s design, suggesting that the two visions of a truth commission continue to exist in tension.

Drawing attention to the legal and psychoanalytic genealogy of reparations, this article examines the relationship between reparations and racial difference through an analysis of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s documentary series 8th Fire: Aboriginal People, Canada and the Way Forward. The representational life of reparations in liberal settler colonialism is a repository for addressing the broader landscape of legality—sovereignty, self-determination and anti-colonialism—beyond the confines of international human rights mechanisms. This article considers the following questions: How do forms of testimony animate connections between reparations and racial difference? In what ways do visual and representational practices operate through racial and colonial temporalities central to reparative juridics? What is the relationship between reparations and possibilities for anti-colonialism? I argue that the social, legal, cultural, and representational life of reparations in settler colonialism is structured by racial difference.

Guaranteeing “certainty” (for governments, business development, society, etc.) is often the goal of state land rights settlements with Indigenous peoples in Canada. Certainty is also often seen as an unequivocally desirable and positive state of affairs. This paper explores how certainty and uncertainty intersect with the challenges of decolonization in North America. I explore how settler certainty and entitlement to Indigenous land has been constructed in past colonial and current national laws, land policies, and ideologies. Then, drawing on data from fieldwork among activists against land rights, I argue that their deep anger about their uncertainty regarding land and their futures helps to reveal how certainty and entitlement underpin “settler states of feeling” (Rifkin). If one persistent characteristic of settler colonialism is settler certainty and entitlement, then decolonization, both for settlers and for jurisprudence, may therefore mean embracing uncertainty. I conclude by discussing the relationship between certainty, uncertainty, and decolonization.

Can a real estate market operate without legal titles? The answer has conventionally been no. But in Shenzhen, the iconic city of China’s market economy, an opposite phenomenon exists: half of the buildings within the city, which has 1,993 square kilometers of land and over 10 million people, have no legal titles and have been rented or sold to millions of people illegally. These illegal buildings are called small properties, because their property rights are “smaller” (weaker) than legal properties. Based on my one-year fieldwork, this paper is a first step toward explaining the small-property market. It reveals that legitimate organizations and professionals have developed a network to facilitate impersonal transactions of illegal small properties. Set against the backdrop and context of China’s transition, this paper presents a feasible plan for building a market economy in transitional countries, where property laws are often less than ideal.