Schedule

31 Oct. 2011 (Monday):

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

1 Nov. 2011 (Tuesday):

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.

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19 January 2012 (thursday), 17:00:

Seminar: Culture trough the State
Delivered by: Lucero Ibarra Rojas
Place: CISR, Ligovsky pr., build. 87, room 301 –> map

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
Place: CISR, Ligovsky pr., build. 87, room 301 –> map

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
Place: CISR, Ligovsky pr., build. 87, room 301 –> map

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
Place: CISR, Ligovsky pr., build. 87, room 301 –> map

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
Place: CISR, Ligovsky pr., build. 87, room 301 –> map

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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28 Mar. 2012 (Wednesday):

Lecture & Seminar: Voices and Choices – The social reality of justice. Gender and Judging: Changes in the Judiciary through feminisation
Delivered by: Ulrike Schultz
Place: CISR, Ligovsky pr., build. 87, room 301 –> map  

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12 Apr. 2012 (Thursday):

Lecture & Seminar: Feminist Socio-Legal Studies
Delivered by: Rosemary Hunter

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11 May 2012 (Friday):

Lecture & Seminar: Transitional Justice
Delivered by: Adam Czarnota

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25 May 2012 (Friday):

Lecture & Seminar: 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
Place: CISR, Ligovsky pr., build. 87, room 301 –> map