The call for proposals for the special issue 4(1) is now open: Queer Studies and Law(s): Urgent Reflections on the Rights of Women and LGBTIA+ People from Queer Perspectives

2026-02-16

This special issue aims to bring together diverse voices willing to reflect, from queer perspectives, on the legal and political dimensions of the transformations of recent decades regarding the rights of women and LGBTQIA+ people, with all their intersections. It seeks to contribute to the academic and political debate and, at the same time, to highlight the high quality of critical legal thought beyond the hegemonic Anglophone sphere, fostering the creation and expansion of networks among critical researchers in the field.

Different currents of critical philosophical thought have pointed to the structurally ambivalent nature of law, emphasizing both its function in reproducing the status quo and its potential to articulate processes of social transformation (Holzleithner, 2024). In critical studies, it is common to identify the legal system as a central element of various mechanisms and technologies of power (Bourdieu, 2000; Kennedy, 1997; Smart, 1989). In recent decades, however, traditionally marginalized groups and identities, such as women and LGBTQIA+ people (although with significant differences between them), have appropriated legal tools and mechanisms, using them for their emancipatory project, both domestically and internationally, through International Human Rights Law. The local translations of these "victories" from the international arena (regional and universal) have, in most cases, resulted in an expansion of rights for marginalized groups (Barrère Unzueta, 2018) or an expansion of the boundaries of the legal system and notions of citizenship (Rodríguez Ruiz & Winter Pereira, 2024).

Both the choice of the legal system as a battleground (the tools of the master in Lorde's sense) and the way in which these tools have enabled these "victories" to be achieved have sparked criticism and debate from queer perspectives (García López, 2016; Spade, 2015). The paradigmatic example is the debate surrounding the demand for marriage equality: whether its implementation had the potential to comprehensively transform the institution and gender relations, or whether it necessarily implied an assimilation of same-sex relationships to the heterosexual norm (Polikoff, 1993). There have also been critical voices that have labeled some of the assumptions of legal approaches to sexual and/or gender-based violence as essentialist (Osborne, 2010; Pitch, 2024). Currently, the far-right backlash against many of these changes and the widespread questioning of the political and legal mechanisms used are reigniting the need for reflection and critical theory (Alabao, 2025).

The call, intentionally broad, seeks contributions that offer a critical perspective on the possibilities, limitations, and contradictions of legal mechanisms and/or law in the struggle to achieve a more just, humane, and livable society for all, especially in a reactionary context like the present one. Interdisciplinary contributions are especially welcome, particularly from legal disciplines and social sciences and humanities such as sociology, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, history, etc.

Below is a (non-exhaustive) list of particularly interesting issues:

  • The ambivalence of law as an instrument of oppression and change: the potential and limitations of international human rights law and its state implementation; the dismantling and/or appropriation of the international human rights law system by the far right.
  • Sexuality and norms: cisheteronormativity and its relationship to debates between natural law and legal positivism; the regulation of sex work, explicit sexual content, and debates on pornography; sexual consent and the stigmatization of sexual practices; ageism and non-adult sexualities, etc.
  • Alliances between psychomedicine, nature, and the legal order: analysis of the heterosexual apparatus in relation to the regulation of sex, gender, and parentage; analysis of gender order and heteronormativity in the social organization of care; abolitionist proposals regarding the family institution; disciplinary production mechanisms.
  • Identities and the production of subjectivity: “civil status” and the legal regulation of the person; non-binary citizenship; (dis)abilities and crip studies; construction and deconstruction of political and legal categories (e.g., the trans or LGBTQIA+ legal subject). Conceptions of equality and anti-discrimination law.
  • Critical perspectives on legal education and research: queer methodologies and epistemologies, learning processes, revision of teaching content, hybridization of subjects, participatory methodologies, social and political engagement in research and teaching, etc.

This issue will be edited by Laura Esteve Alguacil, PhD in Law from Pompeu Fabra University, whose research focuses primarily on personal and family issues from a feminist and LGBTQ+ perspective. She has been a Visiting Scholar at Cornell Law School (New York) within the framework of the Dorothea S. Clarke Program on Feminist Jurisprudence and is currently an independent researcher on various research projects.

Relevant practical information:

  • Manuscripts should be submitted according to the guidelines in the journal's submissions section.
    All texts will undergo anonymized peer review. Texts that do not conform to the format stipulated in the submission guidelines will not be evaluated and will be rejected outright.
  • The deadline for receiving manuscripts is June 30, 2026.
  • The evaluation process will take place between July 1 and December 31, 2026, and the issue editor will contact the authors to notify them of acceptances and rejections, as well as to request the inclusion of any modifications suggested by the reviewers. A maximum of two rounds of review are permitted for each manuscript.