Call for Abstracts

Law and Boundaries is an interdisciplinary yearly conference that aims to discuss and propose new perspectives on the challenges the legal discipline is facing regarding its object, its function, its theoretical foundations and its practical outcomes.

The focus of this year’s conference is the idea of “conflicts” and the ways law and the neighboring disciplines account for the notion and its manifestations, particularly when it comes to conflicts embedded within the globalization processes.

We expect young scholars from all disciplines to submit their abstracts (250-300 words) before March 15th. Papers (max. 7000 words) will be circulated among participants during the conference and should be sent by May 5th. A limited number of papers will be selected for publication.

To submit an abstract, click here

We are interested in receiving contributions from graduate students and young scholars that address the following topics:

Zooming In and Zooming Out: the Dynamics of the Local/Global Conundrum

In this stream, we would like to think anew the relationship between “the local” and “the global”.

What are the ways in which legal arrangements frame the relationship between these two concepts? What is the nature of the relationship between the two notions: is it conflictual or dialectical? To what extent the “local” and the “global” are only substitutes for the traditional classical concepts used in legal theory or international law such as universalism and particularism, universalism and relativism, international and domestic? What are the implications for law of the impossibility to reduce certain phenomena to the binary global/local distinction?

In this stream, we welcome papers that explore the philosophical meaning of the distinction. We also welcome contributions that consider the implications of this distinction within European Union law, postcolonial studies, law and economic development and migration law.

Sexy Legal Education: Undressing Hierarchies

In 1983, Duncan Kennedy published a paper showing how law schools were an element in the reproduction of social hierarchies. This stream aims to provide an opportunity to revisit the notion of social hierarchical reproduction in legal education and to assess the state of legal education some 30 years later.

What is the relation between legal education and the challenges faced by the legal discipline? What role do law schools play in challenging or reproducing traditional conceptual frameworks?

What are the conflicts that underlie legal academia? Can we suggest a genealogy of such conflicts and of their outcomes? More specifically, what historical, political or other elements must be taken into account if one were to examine why some approaches to law – certain ways of talking about law- have been more enduring than others? Who are the heroes- the “winners”, who are the “losers” and what are the elements constitutive of the struggle within the legal academia?

Law in Wonderland: Challenging and Internalizing Violence

Violence takes a variety of forms and manifests itself on multiple platforms: it can be armed, economic, sexual, psychological…

What is the role of law in these various contexts? Is law protecting from, regulating or reproducing – for better or for worse– these various forms of violence? What kind of violence is targeted, used or defined by law? How do the divides between private/public, territoriality/extraterritoriality, jus ad bellum/jus in bello, civil war/terrorism/international conflict/responsibility to protect shape our legal imagination and our understanding of these phenomena? Can and should legal discourse be subversive to violence? How is the law and violence relationship transformed and reshuffled in the general debate about globalization?

Here, we welcome papers in legal theory, international law, history of law, international economic law.

Regulating the Intimate: Thinking about Sex and its Politics

In this stream, we invite contributions that reflect upon the discrepancy between the aseptic nature of the legal language and the clashing desires and unsettled self-representations that characterize the individuals’ everyday experiences.

How does law represent and shape sexualities, constrain the erotic domain, and intervene in the relationships between bodies?

Traditionally, family law, human rights or criminal law, constitutional law are referred to as the disciplines that seek to wrestle with these kinds of questions. What major transformations have been taking place within these fields?

What is the role of the public/private and the economic/cultural divides? What bodies, relations and spaces are made invisible by law? What are the taboos of our discipline on this subject? Can law provide the appropriate conceptual and practical tools needed for radical perspectives on sexuality?

For this discussion, we welcome papers on legal history, political philosophy, contributions in queer studies, feminist studies, criminal law, and economic law.

01 February 2013