Legal Materiality: Genealogies, Working Definition, Critiques

In the last ten years or so, the notions of matter and materiality have gained more visibility in legal scholarship. These are distinct from approaches informed by historical materialism, and have borrowed from the diverse body of works loosely labelled as 'new materialisms'. I critique some of the legal scholarship's 'application' of new materialist works arguing that they result in flattening the explanatory field: first, they are not attuned to the concrete forms and compositions of legality and second, they tend to simplify and take for granted the complex histories of things, objects or materials. I ask what materiality could mean specifically in relation to 'legal' and propose a working definition that could further a differentiated study of legalities: as a quality in which certain physical and intangible things and techniques become enlisted and come to matter as legal matters of concern. I illustrate the use of such a perspective with the example of the making of 'climate justice'. Lastly, I think about the critiques of such a legal materialist focus, e.g. how does this approach address the 'bigger' concepts (capital, justice, bio/power); is this too or not enough 'materialist'; and does this not rarefy and transcendentalise 'law'?