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Discipline all the way down: Law and capital in Shaina Potts’ Judicial Territory

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  • Rachel Phillips

    (Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada)

Abstract

This commentary engages Shaina Potts’ Judicial Territory as a significant methodological contribution to economic geography – one that draws crucial attention to the (often opaque) relationship between law and capitalism and provides geographers with a set of tools to penetrate it. Highlighting three key elements of Potts’ approach to the study of capitalist sociospatial relations, I explore how her focus on the law makes visible actors, logics and modes of political and economic discipline that have largely remained hidden from view in economic geography. First, Potts frames law as a ‘structuring link’ between capitalism and imperialism, developing a theoretical perspective that sheds light on the legal production of uneven development and social difference. Second, she outlines a method of ‘geographically relational’ legal analysis that offers practical lessons for incorporating law into political-economic investigations. And third, through her analytical focus on episodes of legal struggle and contestation, Potts reveals how diverse sets of forces, actors and motivations come together to produce legal change. Here, Judicial Territory highlights the complexity of legal transformation and its relationship to capitalist globalization without losing sight of a basic motivation behind it: the drive to discipline Third World states and repress non-capitalist forms of economic life.

Suggested Citation

  • Rachel Phillips, 2025. "Discipline all the way down: Law and capital in Shaina Potts’ Judicial Territory," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 57(6), pages 840-845, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:57:y:2025:i:6:p:840-845
    DOI: 10.1177/0308518X251341691
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Brett Christophers, 2014. "Competition, Law, and the Power of (Imagined) Geography: Market Definition and the Emergence of Too-Big-to-Fail Banking in the United States," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 90(4), pages 429-450, October.
    2. Brett Christophers, 2014. "Competition, Law, and the Power of (Imagined) Geography: Market Definition and the Emergence of Too-Big-to-Fail Banking in the United States," Economic Geography, Clark University, vol. 90(4), pages 429-450, October.
    3. Shaina Potts, 2020. "Law as Geopolitics: Judicial Territory, Transnational Economic Governance, and American Power," Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 110(4), pages 1192-1207, July.
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