03 May 2014

CONFERENCE: De-juridification: Appearance and Disappearance of Law at a Time of Crisis

The Annual Conference of the IVR International Association of Legal and Social Philosophy, UK Branch
The London School of Economics and Political Science
25-26 October 2014
on

De-juridification: Appearance and Disappearance of Law at a Time of Crisis

It was not too long ago that many legal philosophers and sociologists were expressing deep concerns about juridification, i.e. law’s expansion as a mode of governance and its distorting effects on social relations. 

Now, however, under conditions of globalisation and in the midst of a global crisis, there are several indications that the trend of juridification is being reversed, that law is subsiding and giving way to other modes of governance. With governments offloading many of their central tasks to civil society, with international economic agencies exercising normative authority, with people seemingly recognising each other more as economic actors than as legal subjects, and with the interpretation of indeterminate laws being carried out not by courts but by actual power-holders, to mention only very few examples, it seems appropriate to ask questions regarding a process of de-juridification which seems to be afoot. 

ARTICLE: Prof. Katia Fach Gòmez onWhy Does Legal English Sound Like Gibberish To Many Spanish Law Students?

We are pleased to inform you about the new article of Prof. Katia Fach Gòmez from University of Saragoza









Abstract:

Legal English is unfortunately still a rare bird in law faculties in public universities in Spain. However, a command of legal English — the generic term used in this article to refer to both a specific legal subject taught in English and an instrumental “English for Specific Purposes” (ESP) subject in the legal sphere — is one of the assets that the voracious labor market demands of even recent graduates. This article is a personal reflection on the multiple dysfunctional factors in Spain that, together, prevent this gap from closing as quickly and completely as would be desirable. My article also shows that other, more auspicious developments in the legal English teaching and learning field are starting to take root in Spain and that there are also reasons for believing that Spanish lawyers can be relied on to take the lead in the long overdue “degibberization” of legal English.

WORKSHOP: Comparative Business and Financial Law at UC Davis School of Law in Davis, California.


The Younger Comparativists Committee (YCC) of the American Society of Comparative Law (ASCL) is pleased to invite submissions for a workshop on comparative business and financial law to be held on November 7-8, 2014 at UC Davis School of Law in Davis, California. 


Up to thirty papers will be chosen from those submitted for presentation at the
workshop pursuant to this Call for Papers. The workshop audience will include invited young scholars, faculty from UC Davis School of Law and Graduate School of Management, faculty from other institutions, and invited guests. Submissions will be accepted from scholars who have held a full-time academic appointment for no more than ten years as of June 30, 2014. 

Submission Instructions 

To submit an entry, scholars should email an attachment in Microsoft Word or PDF containing an abstract of no more than 1000 words before July 1, 2014, to the following address: afraafsharipour@ucdavis.edu. Please title the email “YCC Business Law Workshop – [Name].” Abstracts should reflect original research 
that will not yet have been published, though may have been accepted for publication, by the time of the workshop. Abstracts should include a cover page with the author’s name, title of the paper, institutional affiliation, contact information, as well as the author’s certification that she/he qualifies as a younger scholar. Scholars may make only one submission. Both individual and co-authored submissions will be accepted. For co-authored submissions, at least one author must qualify as eligible younger comparativists. 

Notification 

Invitees will be selected via a blind review by a workshop selection committee.  Authors of the submissions selected for the workshop will be notified no later  than August 15, 2014. There is no cost to register for the workshop but participants are responsible for securing their own funding for travel, lodging and other incidental expenses. A limited number of travel stipends may be awarded to scholars from ASCL member schools who demonstrate financial need. If you would like to be considered for a travel stipend, please make that request in your submission. 

Final papers for the workshop will be due no later than October 17, 2014. 

Acknowledgements and Questions 

The YCC gratefully acknowledges the support of UC Davis School of Law and the California International Law Center. Please direct all inquiries to Professor Afra Afsharipour, Chair of the Program Committee, by email at aafsharipour@ucdavis.edu or telephone at 530-754-0111. Please feel free to share this Call for Papers with any colleagues who may be interested. 

The Program Committee: 

Afra Afsharipour (UC Davis School of Law) (Chair)
Virginia Harper Ho (University of Kansas School of Law)
Wulf Kaal (University of St. Thomas School of Law)


Workshop Selection Committee: 
Afra Afsharipour (UC Davis School of Law)
Martin Gelter (Fordham University School of Law)
Virginia Harper Ho (University of Kansas School of Law)
Wulf Kaal (University of St. Thomas School of Law)
Shruti Rana (UC Berkeley Law)

YCC Board of Directors: 
Richard Albert, Chair (Boston College Law School)
Virginia Harper Ho (University of Kansas School of Law)
Wulf Kaal (University of St. Thomas School of Law)
Sudha Setty (Western New England)
Ozan Varol (Lewis & Clark Law School)

WORKSHOP: Religion and Public Life at Queen's University Belfast

Religion and Public Life
15-16 May 2014
Senate Room, Lanyon Building, Queen’s University Belfast
This workshop is funded by the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy, Queen's University Belfast, and by the Society for Applied Philosophy. The workshop is part of the President of Ireland’s Ethics Initiative.

Thursday 15 May 2014

13:00-14:00:   Registration and Lunch

14:00-14:10:   Welcome and Opening Remarks

14:10-15:20:   Maeve Cooke (University College Dublin): ‘Religious Conviction and Democratic Protest: Reconsidering Conscientious Objection’ - Chair: Keith Breen  

15:20-16:30:   Peter Jones (Newcastle University): ‘Belief, Choice and Responsibility’ - Chair: Vincent Geoghegan

16:30-16:50:   Tea and Coffee

16:50-18:00:   Veit Bader (University of Amsterdam): ‘Neo-Republicanism on “Religion and Public Life”. Some Critical Remarks’ - Chair: Keith Breen

19:30               Workshop Dinner (by Invitation Only)

Friday 16 May 2014

09:00-10:00:   Matteo Bonotti (Queen’s University Belfast): ‘Political Liberalism, Free Speech and Public Reason’  - Chair: Jeremy Watkins

10:00-10:20:   Tea and Coffee

10:20-11:30:   Sune Lægaard (Roskilde University): ‘Multiculturalism and Secularism’ - Chair: Cillian McBride

11:30-12:30:   Cillian McBride (Queen’s University Belfast): ‘Religion, Respect, and Reasoning’ - Chair: Matteo Bonotti

12:30-13:10:   Lunch

13:10-14:20:   Jonathan Seglow (Royal Holloway, University of London): ‘Religious Accommodation and Self Respect’ - Chair: Cillian McBride

14:20-15:30:   Cécile Laborde (University College London): ‘Is Religion a Conception of the Good?’ - Chair: Matteo Bonotti

                        CLOSE


Registration is free and includes lunches, teas, and coffees. However, places are limited and registration is therefore essential.

To register, please email Matteo Bonotti (m.bonotti@qub.ac.uk). Please include your full name, email address, institutional affiliation (if any), dietary requirements, and any other requirements you think the organizers need to know about.

CONFERENCE: Cambridge conference on Public Law: Process and Substance

Cambridge conference on Public Law: Process and Substance

15 – 17 September 2014

University of Cambridge





In September 2014, the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Law and its Centre for Public Law will host a major international conference on Public Law. Following an outstanding response to the call for papers, the conference convenors are delighted to be able to publish the conference programme. The conference will bring together around 60 speakers—along with approximately 150 other participants—from across the common law world, to engage in debate on the theme of “Process and Substance in Public Law”. The conference will consist of four plenary sessions and fifteen parallel panel sessions. A full list of speakers, together with the titles of their papers and abstracts, can be found on the conference website here.

Information about how to register for the conference, together with a link to our secure online booking facility, can be found here. Any queries about registration that are not answered by the information on our website should be directed to the conference administrator via publiclawbookings@law.cam.ac.uk.

Further information about the conference can be found on our website. Updates are posted to our Twitter account: @PublicLawConf

30 April 2014

CONFERENCE: Sales Law in the Region of the Caucasus and Central Asia

Institute of East European Law of the University of Kiel and Al-Farabi Kazakh National University have announced the conference Sales Law in the Region of the Caucasus and Central Asia: between Divergence and Harmonization in Almaty, Kazakhstan 23-24 May 2014.

Target group: legal researchers and practitioners, governmental officials, who deal with international and national regulation of international trade (private law aspects) in the region of the Caucasus and Central Asia.

Conference language: English and Russian with simultaneous translation.

Topics: The Conference will deal on a comparative basis with the sales law in the region of the Caucasus and Central Asia, with particular accent on regulation of international sales contracts. Sales law of all countries besides Georgia base on the CIS Model Civil Code. In the recent 20 years the sales laws of the countries of the region were amended many times. The reforms were strongly influenced by international legal frameworks and foreign, in particular German, legislation. But these reforms were not harmonized between each other. Today we have quite different legal framework for the sales law. As the result the countries of the region approaching step-by-step to the international trends, are drifting more and more from each other. The Conference is targeting to shed light to this interesting development and compare it to the developments in the EU, in particular to establishment of the Common European Sales law. The Conference focuses on several aspects: the structure of the Sales Law, its development and the role of international organizations and foreign technical aid organizations, not individually negotiated terms, conflict of laws rules of the countries of the region applicable to the international sales contracts, transport contracts and contracts on sales of hydrocarbons, which are very important for the countries of the region.


29 April 2014

CONFERENCE: The Present and the Future of Jus Cogens


Law School of Sapienza University of Rome organizes a conference in honor of Gaetano Morelli Lectures 1st Edition with title The Present and the Future of Jus Cogens. The conference will take place at 29, 30 and 31 May 2014 in Legal Science Department of  Sapienza University of Rome, Piazzale Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Rome.

Programme

THURSDAY, 29 MAY 2014
2.30 pm - Commencement Addresses
ENZO CANNIZZARO, Professor of International and European Law, Sapienza University of Rome
GIORGIO GAJA (to be confirmed), Judge, International Court of Justice, The Hague
ANDREA TIRITICCO, Head of the Legal Office, Ministry of Foreign Affaires, Rome
3.00 pm - The Emergence of the Notion of Jus Cogens: the Contribution of the ICJ
PIERRE-MARIE DUPUY, Professor of Public
International Law, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva - Emeritus Professor Université Panthéon-Assas, Paris
5.00 pm - Jus Cogens and the UN Security Council
CHRISTIAN TOMUSCHAT, Emeritus Professor of Public International Law and European Law, Humboldt University, Belin

FRIDAY, 30 MAY 2014
9.00 am - Jus Cogens and the UN Security Council
CHRISTIAN TOMUSCHAT, Emeritus Professor of Public International Law and European Law, Humboldt University, Belin
11.00 am - The Emergence of the Notion of Jus Cogens: the Contribution of the ICJ
PIERRE-MARIE DUPUY, Professor of Public
International Law, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva - Emeritus Professor Université Panthéon-Assas, Paris

SATURDAY, 31 MAY 2014
9.00 am - The Emergence of the Notion of Jus Cogens: the Contribution of the ICJ
PIERRE-MARIE DUPUY, Professor of Public
International Law, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva - Emeritus Professor Université Panthéon-Assas, Paris
11.00 am - Interactive Seminar Consequences of serious breaches of Jus Cogens
ENZO CANNIZZARO, Professor of International and European Law, Sapienza University of Rome
PAOLO PALCHETTI, Professor of International Law, University of Macerata
BEATRICE I. BONAFE', Associate Professor of Public International Law, Sapienza University of Rome


Official program is here.

CONFERENCE: Investor-State Arbitration and Beyond







Britinsh Institute of International and Comparative Law is announced 22nd ITF Public Conference Investor-State Arbitration and Beyond at Thursday 8 May 2014, 8:30 - 17:30 in BMA House, Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9 JP.

This meeting proceeds from the observation of a period of unprecedented re-examination and innovation with respect to the dispute settlement aspects of the investor-state treaty regime. The purpose of this meeting is to address some of the most important policy and rule changes which have taken place over the past several years and ask about changes and new structures currently under consideration.


Keynote Address
"The Tokyo Resolution of the Institut de Droit International on Investment Treaty Arbitration"
Professor Andrea Giardina, Chiomenti Studio Legale; University of Rome (Sapienza)

Panel 1: Alternatives to Ad Hoc Dispute Settlement. This panel will look at proposals and mechanisms for alternatives to "ad hoc" arbitral tribunals, such as the use of specialised dispute settlement mechanisms for particular classes of claims, treaty-based interpretative committees, and the use of treaty-based appellate mechanisms.
Anne van Aaken, University St Gallen
Bart Legum, Dentons
Ted Posner, Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP
Yanick Radi, University of Leiden
Christoph Schreuer, University of Vienna

Panel 2: Beyond Arbitration. This panel will consider the adoption by some states of domestic legislation to replace investment treaties and the future of ISDS in investment treaties between developed states, such as the US and EU.
Mark Kantor, Indipendant Arbitrator
Mark McNeill, Shearman & Sterling
Rodrigo Polanco, University of Chile; World Trade Institute
Christian Vidal-Leon, Price Waterhouse Coopers
Jason Yackee, University of Wisconsin

Panel 3: Making the Most of Current Processes. This panel will look at recent changes to existing investor-state arbitral structures, such as UNCITRAL's new rules on transparency, innovations in mediation practice, and the role of treaty secretariat's as potential engines for reform.
Alejandro Carballo, Energy Charter Secretariat
Jean Kalicki, Arnold & Porter; Georgetown University
Wolf von Kumberg, Northrup Grumman Corporation
Julia Salasky, UNCITRAL Secretariat

Closing Remarks
N Jansen Calamita, Investment Treaty Forum

Details here.