Law & Society Seminars in 2011/2012 academic year
31 Oct. 2011 (Monday), 12-00:
Seminar: What Makes a Legal Transplant Successful?
Delivered by: David Nelken
In this seminar I shall discuss some of the different analytical frameworks and metaphors used to study legal transplants. I go on to outline some of the empirical and normative questions that need to be tackled to make progress in talking about the ‘ success’ of transplants. Various illustrations will be provided in the course of the seminar but participants will also be encouraged to raise for discussion examples they know about of efforts to transfer foreign legal institutions, rules, practices and ideals.
1 Nov. 2011 (Tuesday), 17-30:
Lecture: Legal Culture, the Culture of Legality and Court Delays
Delivered by: David Nelken
In this lecture I will discuss the use made of the concept of legal culture in explaining socio-legal differences between countries and the possibilities of legal and social change. I shall also explain the relationship between the terms legal culture and culture of legality. The conceptual and normative issues in question will be illustrated using as a case-study efforts to explain court delays in Italy. Special attention will be given to the relationships between legal culture and culture more generally.
Reading: Using the Concept of Legal Culture in 29 Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy 2004: 1-28
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24 Nov. 2011 (Thursday), 15-00:
Seminar: Regulating Drug Consumption
Delivered by: Alexandra Dmitrieva
Place: Centre for Independent Social Research, Ligovsky, 87, 301
19 January 2012 (thursday), 17:00:
Seminar: Culture trough the State
Delivered by: Lucero Ibarra Rojas
In the relation between law and culture it becomes clear that, while the law depends largely on a particular culture in which it is created, that is not a space constructed from homogeneity and permanent agreement, so the State can also use different tools (as the law itself) to influence the direction in which the development of culture takes place. This phenomenon is of special relevance as many, if not all, States in the world have come to the acknowledgment of their cultural diversity within, because then the role that the State plays in upholding certain cultures as dominant over others can be observed through different elements, as can be the managing of cultural heritage that and the intellectual property rights system. Different experiences around the world show that one cannot be blind to the struggle that takes place in these areas of law, which are extremely influential to the ways we understand our past, conceive our present and design our future.
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16 Feb. 2012 (Thursday), 13:00:
Lecture & Seminar: Judging Disagreement: Interrogating Judicial Dissent at the Supreme Court of Canada
Delivered by: Marie-Claire Belleau & Rebecca Johnson
In this presentation, we will share some of the results of our study of voting and writing practices in the Supreme Court of Canada (1982-2010). The data on practices of dissent (written expressions of disagreement with majority decisions) raise particularly interesting questions about practices of appellate decision making, as well as about the place of ‘judicial difference’ (gender, race, class, religion, language, etc) and ‘outsider perspectives’ for the project of producing justice.
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16 Feb. 2012 (Thursday), 17:00:
Seminar: Religion, Sexuality, and Longing in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America
Delivered by: Rebecca Johnson
In this presentation, I will explore the weaving together of sexuality and religion in the HBO version of Kushner’s play “Angels in America”. The film, with its eclectic collection of (primarily gay male and straight woman) Jewish and Mormon protagonists, weaves a complicated tapestry in which we can see the playing out of desire – desire that is sexual, religious, and, indeed, political. But here I want to slip from the language of desire to the language of ‘longing’. In this paper, I will reflect on what the film can help us see about sexual and religious diversity, by focusing on the role and the place of ‘longing’ — of longing for something just out of reach (a lost lover, health, a relation with god, political power, family, friends, and justice).
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17 Feb. 2012 (Friday), 13:00:
Lecture & Seminar: Participatory Justice: Reflections on the Prevention and Resolution of Disagreements
Delivered by: Marie-Claire Belleau
In view of evidence on the phenomenon of the vanishing trial, and the compelling demand for access to more responsive forms of justice, scholars around the world are exploring multiples avenues of dispute resolution. In the presentation, I will consider the spectrum of options available for resolving conflicts: partnering, facilitation, negotiation, arbitration, mediation, collaborative law, arbitration, judicial conciliation, case management. How can parties be empowered to find solutions which are custom made for their disputes? What challenges and opportunities do these alternative pose for law?
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17 Feb. 2012 (Friday), 17:00:
Seminar: Living Deadwood: Imagination, affect and the persistence of the past
Delivered by: Rebecca Johnson
Edward Said argued that stories about the past tell us less about that past than about cultural attitudes in the present. In this presentation, Rebecca Johnson, drawing on methodologies from law-and-film, turns to popular culture to explore that observation. She will consider the place of imagination, with its structures of feeling, in current legal, social and economic ordering. Professor Johnson uses the HBO TV show Deadwood (a modern ‘Western’) to explore and reconsider the emotional investments that help sustain capitalist and colonial relationships in our contemporary legal, social and economic orders.
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27 Mar. 2012 (Tuesday), 17:00:
Seminar: Women on High Legal Positions
Delivered By: Ulrike Schultz
A unique case study will be presented during the seminar as far as it combines gender theory, theory of law and justice, and video technologies. This presentation will be devoted to women lawyers. The study aims to answer the questions: who is the scape goat for professional failures; who must prove their professionalism every day, not once in five years; who makes justice more humane; and most importantly: what does gender have to do with all this.
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28 Mar. 2012 (Wednesday), 18:00:
Lecture & Seminar: Voices and Choices – The social reality of justice. Gender and Judging: Changes in the Judiciary through feminisation
Delivered by: Ulrike Schultz
In recent years, the legal profession has undergone significant change, with rapidly rising numbers of women among its membership. Scholars of sociology, legal history, organizational behaviour, and law have examined various dimensions of the feminization of the legal profession. My review traces the parameters of differences in the judicial decisions of women and men in the contemporary courts. The conclusions are based on analysis of decisions made in German courts and on international comparative work. I document and assess the theoretical explanations of influence of gender on justice. I also examine women’s responses to their experiences and women’s impact on the law and the profession.
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12 Apr. 2012 (Thursday):
Lecture & Seminar: Feminist Critiques of Law
Delivered by: Rosemary Hunter
This lecture will examine three different aspects of feminist critiques of law. First, it will give an account of the feminist rejection of the notion of law as an autonomous institution which follows its own, objective, internal logic separate from the social world. Secondly, it will explore the feminist critique of law as an institution which excludes women and fails to take into account the gendered realities of women’s lives. This discussion will also consider which ‘women’ are encompassed within feminist arguments. Thirdly, it will look at the feminist critique of the ways in which law’s constructions of gender produce constraining effects for women’s lives, including reference to laws on rape, divorce, abortion, parenthood, prostitution, violence and marriage.
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13 Apr. 2012 (Thursday):
Lecture & Seminar: Women’s Access to Justice
Delivered by: Rosemary Hunter
Access to justice depends upon the ability to know one’s legal rights, to be able to enforce those rights or to claim a remedy in the courts, and to have access to effective legal representation in court proceedings. This seminar draws on several of my research projects which have identified ways in which women do not enjoy access to justice in relation to important aspects of their lives – at work (when they are subjected to sex discrimination or sexual harassment), and in their families (when they separate from a partner). The two major barriers to women’s access to justice in these situations are mandatory ‘alternative dispute resolution’, and restricted availability of legal aid for court proceedings. I will discuss these obstacles to access to justice, how they have come about, and their consequences for women.
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04 May 2012 (Friday), 17-00:
Seminar: Varieties of transition from authoritarianism to democracy
Author: Jiří Přibáň
This seminar draws on historical, comparative and structural analyses of various processes described as democratization and democratic transitions. The opening sections address the meaning and general theories of democratization and the emergence of democratic transition studies. Structural aspects, different actors and political varieties of transitions, especially the process of negotiations and round-table talks and their impact on the rule of law and constitutional aspect of democratic transitions are discussed, and close links between democratization, the rule of law and constitutionalism analysed in the following sections. Finally, problems of transitional justice and dealing with the authoritarian past are considered as an intrinsic part of democratic transitions.
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24 May 2012 (Friday), 13-30:
Lecture & Conference presentation: Corruption and Anti-corruption in the EU: Research Evidence on Perceptions of Corruption and New Trends in the Corruption Fight
Delivered by: Angelos Giannakopoulos, Ralf Rogowski, Dirk Tänzler
The lecture includes three parts: based on research carried out in the frame of the projects “Crime and Culture” and “ALACS: Promotion of Participation and Citizenship in Europe” funded by the European Commission (Sixth and Seventh Framework Programmes), the lecturers provide evidence on perceptions of corruption in Europe and on why are perceptions of corruption important to anti-corruption measures. By doing so they also highlight the importance of citizens’ participation in the fight against corruption by focusing on the “Advocacy and Legal Advice Centres” (ALACs), being them the currently most successful mechanism within the so called anti-corruption regimes worldwide. Besides, they evaluate the ALACs against the background of new trends in the European anti-corruption legal framework and finally analyse the relationship between the fight against corruption and perspectives of professionalisation in the anti-corruption field.
NB: 25 May, another paper will be delivered at the conference ‘Complex Gaze at a Complex World‘, organised by the Centre for Independent Social Research in the European University at St. Petersburg.
Law & Society 