_{The Centre for Critical Legal Studies (https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/research/centres/ccls/) has finally gotten the all clear from the myriad different academic and administrative committees in the University. We have lots of plans and ideas, but we would like to open it out to everyone now, firstly to join the centre, and secondly to help us plan our activities. We don't want to bombard you with information at this stage, so we want to just draw your attention to three things:}

_{1. Events Our plan is to run a small reading group each week on Thursday morning. This will continue on from the R&R group that Stephen has run so well in recent years. The Group will read a mixture of our own work as we prep it for publication and key critical texts. It will be open to everyone who might be interested, including UGs, PGs, sessional staff, professional services, and academic staff. We will be producing notes on the readings which we will start to build into a pedagogic archive. Please pass on details to any students or colleagues who might like to come along. This year it will always be at 10am in S2.09 on Thursdays. Our first reading group is this coming Thursday (the 3rd of October). We will be discussing the Introduction to Christine’s exciting new book. It is attached it here.}

_{2. Membership To join the Centre - for staff - you need to sign into the Warwick website, go to your staff page and click the CCLS in the sidebar. Once it is highlighted you are in. For others, for now, membership is really just attending events, planning events which the centre might be able to help with, or taking part in our other activities.}

_{3. CCLS Day Finally, as far as possible, all events for the CCLS will be organised on one day per week, to help make planning more easy. Thursday will be the key CCLS day this year.}

_{Best wishes,}

_{Illan and Christine}

Title: Recognition and the Colonial Theatre of Law

Abstract: Throughout the 19th century, colonial law secured jurisdiction by recognizing specific sorts of persons and actions as legitimate targets for its ordering forces. Legal recognition also involved authorized agents who decided on which truths, idioms, procedures, and institutions constituted colonial ‘law’. When fixing a jurisdictional gaze specifically on persons it accused of being criminals, for example, this law depended on institutional settings — or theatres — to signal the start of criminalizing rituals. My presentation focuses on such settings by examining the overlooked role that Justices of the Peace (JPs) played in deploying colonial theatres of criminalization in what is today called Alberta — emphasising the decade following the North West Mounted Police’s arrival in 1874. Providing an analysis of preliminary examinations and contemporary handbooks/guides, I explore how JPs: received information that crimes had taken place; named accusers and accused in uniform ways; used legal idioms of transcription; and decided on whether to send accused persons to further reaches of criminal justice networks. The paper concludes by reflecting on the Justices' legacy as legal agents whose delegated powers of recognition helped to shape massive, if unequal, criminal justice institutions that tenaciously confront us today.