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2008 Events

 

 18-19 December 2008: Postgraduate and Early Career Researchers Workshop on Methodological Approaches to Legal Scholarship - In Search of Authority, Rebellion and Action

In addressing Law’s questions of authority, rebellion and action, we make strategic decisions as to which methodological approaches to use, and the ways in which we engage them.

We welcome papers from all disciplines addressing issues that arise in the strategic application of different methodological approaches to reading law in the participants’ current research projects. We particularly encourage emerging scholars to apply.

Possible approaches include:

Call for Papers - The deadline for abstracts is 1 August 2008
Please send titles and abstracts to the organizing committee at law-plsa@unimelb.edu.au

Further information and registration is available via the wiki, please click here

Download flyer here: Authority Rebellion Action Flyer

 

18 September 2008: IILAH Lunch-time Seminar: The Governance of International Refugee Law: Time for a Change? with Martin Jones, PhD candidate from Osgoode Hall Law School (Canada)

One hundred and forty seven states and one international agency are required to implement and enforce the rights contained in the Convention relating to the status of refugees of 1951. Unlike other treaties, there is no meaningful complaints or dispute resolution mechanism to ensure compliance. Although UNHCR is currently charged with the supervision of the implementation of the Convention, both its ability to perform this task and the bounds of the task itself are severely limited. As a result, there is no meaningful formal legal process by which to reconcile or evaluate the conflicting policies and judicial decisions of different jurisdictions. The resulting differences in interpretation undermine the legitimacy of the regime and, ultimately, its ability to provide protection to refugees. The presentation will explore the current situation and outline the problems with the status quo. Alternatives to the current situation, including the proposal for a 'world refugee court' of Justice North of the Federal Court of Australia will be assessed and evaluated using lessons learned from other governance regimes.

Martin Jones is a visiting researcher at the Institute for International Law and the Humanities. He formerly practiced refugee law in Canada and is presently a doctoral candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. He has taught refugee law at Queen's University (Canada), the University of East London and the American University in Cairo and has consulted for refugee legal aid organisations in Canada, Egypt, Turkey and Hong Kong. He recently chaired the 12th biennial conference of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration in Cairo.

Event details:
Date: 18 September 2008
Time: 12.45 - 2.00pm
Venue: Room 920, Level 9, Melbourne Law School, 185 Pelham Street Carlton
RSVP: by 15 September 2008

Contact details:
Ms Vesna Stefanovski
03 8344 6589
law-iilah@unimelb.edu.au
 

 31 July 2008: Delimiting Accountability: Writing History out of Transitional Justice with Dr Vasuki Nesiah, Director, International Affairs, Brown University

This seminar examines the embrace of history by the field of transitional justice. Today, in the wake of dictatorships and civil war, human rights movements across the world invoke the vocabulary and promise of ‘transitional justice’ in seeking to address and redress the legacies of human rights abuse. History and historical wrongs are a dominant part of these redress initiatives. Discussion of the perpetrators’ crimes is weighted with invocations of history in two senses first, the accountability mechanisms have a retrospective mandate and second, the crimes for which individuals are pursued are seen to be of historic significance. Yet ironically, just as coteries of lawyers and policy makers have emerged on the transitional justice field with a commitment to ensure that justice looks back, not just forward, it seems that our notions of the historical involve blinders to the enabling conditions of human rights abuse. This seminar will probe the narrowing of the potential meanings of ‘historical justice’ to focus on convicting perpetrators of bodily harm. As a result, historical structures that produced and shaped specific patterns of human rights violations fade into the backdrop. Rather than deepen and broaden our approach to justice or history, has the proliferation of calls to historical justice produced closure on history’s most critical claims? Has history been invoked in ways that have delimited its reach and pruned the discourse of accountability?

Dr Vasuki Nesiah is Director of International Affairs at Brown University. She was formerly Senior Associate and Head of the Gender Program at the International Center for Transitional Justice, where she led the institution’s work in South Africa, Ghana, India, the Philippines, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Dr Nesiah has also been Adjunct Associate Professor at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University. She has published and lectured in international and comparative law, feminist theory, law and development, postcolonial studies, constitutionalism, and governance in plural societies.

 Flyer_31July2008

Event Details:
Date: 31 July 2008
Time: 5.45pm - 7pm
Venue: Room 920, Level 9, Melbourne Law School, 185 Pelham Street
RSVP: by 30th July 2008

Contact details:
Ms Charlotte Morgans
03 8344 6589
law-iilah@unimelb.edu.au 
 

 30 July 2008: Law and Development in Practice – the Dutch Development Bank presented by Jan Job de Vries Robbé

This seminar is about development finance and provides an overview of how FMO (the Dutch development bank) assists the private sector in emerging country economies. This seminar includes a discussion of 2 successful case studies and the limitations of development finance, providing an example of where development finance institutions and commercial banks join force to facilitate local currency lending. The seminar also explores the implications of the credit crunch for development finance.

Case Study 1: The securitisation of micro finance receivables for BRAC in Bangladesh
Case Study 2: The Currency Exchange.

Jan Job de Vries Robbé, Solicitor, Netherlands Development Bank has been working in structured finance for a decade, alternately in private practice and as in-house counsel, in Europe and in Australia. His practice combines securitisation, derivatives and structured finance generally, with a particular interest in structured credit and micro finance. He has published various books on securitisation and derivatives, and contributed to domestic and international legal journals.

 30 July 2008 Twilight Seminar Flyer 

Event Details:
Date: Wednesday, 30th July 2008
Venue: Room 920, Level 9, Melbourne Law School, 185 Pelham Street, Carlton VIC 3010
Time: 5.00-6.30pm
RSVP: 29th July 2008

Contact Details:
Charlotte Morgans
03 8344 6589
law-iilah@unimelb.edu.au

01 July 2008: IILAH Twilight Seminar, Rule of Law in Post-Conflict Rebuilding presented by Associate Professor Balakrishnan Rajagopal

Establishing the rule of law is increasingly seen as the panacea for all the problems that afflict many non-western countries, particularly in post-conflict settings. Development experts prescribe it as the surest short cut to market-led growth; human rights groups advocate the rule of law as the best defence against human rights abuses; and in the area of peace and security, the rule of law is seen as the surest guarantee against the (re)-emergence of conflicts and the basis for rebuilding post-conflict societies. Therefore, in a very direct sense, the rule of law has come to be seen as the common element that development experts, security analysts and human rights activists agree upon and as the mechanism that links these disparate areas.

In this seminar, I will argue that this new-found fascination with the rule of law is misplaced. Underlying this 'linkage' idea is, I would suggest, a desire to escape from politics, by imagining the rule of law as technical, legal and apolitical. In other words, there is a tendency to think that failures of development, threats to security and human rights violations could all be avoided or managed by a resort to law. The rule of law agenda threatens to obfuscate the real tradeoffs that need to be made in order to achieve these worthy goals.

Balakrishnan Rajagopal is the Ford International Associate Professor of Law and Development and Director of the Program on Human Rights and Justice at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has published numerous scholarly articles in leading law journals and is the author of International Law from Below: Development, Social Movements and Third World Resistance (Cambridge University Press, 2003; 2nd edition forthcoming in 2008).

Download flyer here.

Event details:
Date: 01 July 2008
Time: 5.30pm for a 5.45pm Seminar
Venue: Room 920, Level 9, Melbourne Law School, 185 Pelham Street Carlton
RSVP: 30 June 2008

Contact details:
03 8344 6589
law-iilah@unimelb.edu.au



29 May 2008: Law and Development Reading Roundtable with Alvaro Santos (Georgetown Law School), co-hosted by ALC, CELRL and IILAH

At this intimate research workshop, co-hosted by the Asian Law Centre, the Centre for Employment and Labour Relations Law and Institute for International Law and the Humanities, we will be discussing two texts; one, an extract from The New Law and Economic Development: A Critical Appraisal, edited by Avaro Santos and David Trubeck, the other The Relationship between Law and Development: Optimists Versus Skeptics, a recent article by Michael Trebilcock and Kevin Davis. Participants are required to read the two texts before attending and be ready to participate in a discussion engaging closely with these. You may also wish to relate the texts to your own research. The workshop is open to any interested scholars. Graduate students are particularly welcome.

Associate Professor Alvaro Santos is currently visiting us from Georgetown Law School where he teaches and researches in international law and legal theory, focusing on the impact of global economy on domestic labour regimes. He has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at University of Texas and has taught international law at Tufts University, and taught law and development at University of Turin.

Download flyer here.

 

22 May 2008: IILAH Seminar, Taking your beefs to the WTO: The continuing hormones dispute and issues in WTO dispute settlement, with Victoria Donaldson

(Convenors: Dr Andrew Mitchell and Dr Tania Voon)

In 1998, Canada and the United States succeeded before the World Trade Organization in their legal challenge to an EC ban on the import of hormone-treated beef. However, the ban remains in place today. The multiple proceedings relating to this dispute that have taken place over more than 10 years illustrate both the strengths and weaknesses of the WTO’s dispute settlement mechanism. Victoria Donaldson will discuss some significant and current issues in WTO dispute settlement, drawing in particular on the ongoing hormones dispute. She will cover issues such as transparency and public hearings at the WTO, evidence in WTO dispute settlement, the use of retaliatory trade sanctions, and discussions amongst WTO Member states as to how to improve their dispute settlement system in the future.

Victoria Donaldson is currently Visiting WTO Fellow at the Institute for International Trade of the University of Adelaide. She has taken a six-month leave of absence from her job as a Counsellor at the WTO Appellate Body Secretariat, where she has worked since 1999. From 1996-1999 she practiced law with the Brussels office of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen and Hamilton, and from 1995-1996 with Russell & DuMoulin in Vancouver. Ms Donaldson obtained Bachelors’ degrees in Law from University of Oxford and University of British Columbia, and a Masters of Law from Harvard Law School. She has served as a law clerk to Justice Peter de Carteret Cory at the Supreme Court of Canada. Ms Donaldson has contributed to books on WTO dispute settlement, writing in particular on dispute settlement procedures in international trade.

Download flyer here.


15 May 2008: IILAH Booklaunch, Rights and Redemption: History, Law and Indigenous People
by Ann Curthoys, Ann Genovese, Alexander Reilly 

(Convenor: Professor Anne Orford)

The book will be launched by The Hon Robert Nicholson AO, Professorial Fellow, University of Melbourne, formerly of the Federal Court of Australia.

We previously advertised that Chief Justice Black of the Federal Court of Australia was to launch Rights and Redemption. He is regrettably now unable to do so, but we are very pleased to have his continued support.

Rights and Redemption investigates the link between law and history, and asks ‘What kind of recourse does the legal system offer Indigenous peoples in a settler society such as Australia?’
Through a detailed examination of cases involving Indigenous litigants and analysis of interviews with litigants, historians, lawyers and trial judges, the authors compare assumptions and ideas about the interpretation and use of history. The dramatic evocation and narration of each case will make the book of interest to a wider public intrigued by questions of law, history and truth, especially as they have affected our understanding of Indigenous history. 

About the Authors
Ann Curthoys is Manning Clark Professor of History at the Australian National University and an ARC Professorial Fellow. Her recent books include Freedom Ride: A Freedom Rider Remembers, winner of the 2002 Stanner Prize, and, with John Docker, Is History Fiction?

Ann Genovese is senior lecturer and ARC postdoctoral fellow in law at the University of Melbourne. She researches in the areas of Australian law and history, feminist legal theory and family law.

Alexander Reilly is Associate Professor at the University of Adelaide. He specialises in public law and Indigenous legal issues, and has published widely on law, government and Indigenous rights. 

Download flyer here.

 

01 May 2008: IILAH Twilight Seminar, Constitutions and Democracy-Building in Africa, with  Dr Hashim Tewfik, State Minister for Justice and Deputy Attorney General, Ethiopia  

(Convenor: Dr Jennifer Beard)

Dr Hashim Tewfik will visit the Law School in April as a guest of the Law and Development Research Programme within the Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH. As a State Minister and Deputy Attorney General, Dr Tewfik is responsible for the prosecution and civil litigation division of the Ministry of Justice. He supervised and led the prosecution team conducting the controversial CUD trial, in which members of the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) party, and others are being tried for allegedly inciting violence in opposition demonstrations in 2005 protesting alleged electoral fraud. Dr Tewfik is also a member of the Constitutional Enquiry Council, which is a quasi-judicial body responsible for investigating constitutional law issues. Dr Tewfik has a keen interest in the relationship between law and development in his country and in the ways in which western law and development assistance influences his day to day work.

Download flyer here.

 

10 April 2008: IILAH Roundtable: Doctoral Students Roundtable with Professor Susan Marks

(Convenor: Associate Professor Dianne Otto)

Susan Marks is Professor of Public International Law at King’s College London, University of London, United Kingdom. She is a graduate of the University of Sydney and holds an LLM and PhD from the University of Cambridge. Prior to joining King’s College London in 2006, she taught in the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge and at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Her research centres on international law and the international protection of human rights. In previous writing she has addressed themes which include democracy, Marxism, ideology, torture and hunger. Her current research is concerned with exploitation and with debates about international legal knowledge. She wrote The Riddle of All Constitutions and, with Andrew Clapham, International Human Rights Lexicon.

Susan is teaching in the 2008 Graduate Program in Human Rights Law and has kindly agreed to participate in a roundtable with Melbourne Law School PhD students. We would start off with a conversation where students could talk about their work or could comment on an aspect of Susan’s work and then we would pursue ideas and themes as they emerge.

 


3 April 2008: IILAH Lunch-time Seminar, Legal Conceptualization of Security Council "Sanctions" , presented by Ms Devika Hovell (Balliol College Oxford, UK)

(Convenor: Professor Anne Orford)

In recent times, the Security Council has come under significant criticism for its failure to ensure procedural fairness in its decision-making process on sanctions. Cases such as Kadi and Yusuf in the European context have highlighted the alarmingly arbitrary nature by which individuals have been placed on Security Council “blacklists”, leading to a world-wide freeze on their assets and travel bans. As a precursor to the development of normative standards applicable to the Security Council, it is necessary to consider the nature and role of sanctions under international law – are they criminal measures, administrative measures, emergency measures? The paper will draw on analogies from domestic jurisdictions (including criminal, administrative and preventive measures such as ASBOs and terrorist control orders), together with theories of legal punishment and censure, to arrive at a conceptualization of international sanctions.

Download flyer here.

 

14 March 2008: IILAH Roundtable, with Ken Roth, Human Rights Watch, New York

(Convenor: Associate Professor Dianne Otto)

The Institute for International Law and the Humanities hosted a Roundtable with Ken Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), on Friday 14 March, 2008, from 9.00-10.15am, at the Melbourne Law School. Associate Professor Dianne Otto chaired the roundtable.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international NGO, dedicated to protecting the human rights of people around the world. It is based in New York, with offices in Brussels, London, Moscow, Paris, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tashkent, Toronto, and Washington.

Ken opened the Roundtable by explaining that he was in Australia to explore first-hand the possibility of HRW establishing a presence here. A thoughtful discussion ensued about the aims that HRW would have in establishing an Australian office, the benefits that might flow from such a development, both domestically and regionally, the anticipated relationship between HRW and Australian human rights organisations, and the all-important question of its geographical location. The Roundtable was attended by a number of academics, practitioners, students and NGO representatives. Participants included representatives from the Australian Centre for Human Rights Education, Australian Lawyers for Human Rights, Human Rights Law Resource Centre, Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre, Victorian Council of Social Service and the Victorian Foundation for the Survivors of Torture. The general view was very positive about the enhanced attention to human rights issues that a presence of HRW in Australia would engender, and the new opportunities that would be created for bringing together human rights research and advocacy.

Click here to view  the photo galery of this event.

 

18 March 2008: Seminar, The Future of International Human Rights Protections: Reflections from the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism with Professor Martin Scheinin, Melbourne

Professor Martin Scheinin is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights while Countering Terrorism. From 1997-2004, Prof Scheinin served as an independent expert on the UN Human Rights Committee. He is currently a Professor of Constitutional and International Law and Director of the Institute for Human Rights at Åbo Akademi University in Finland. Prof Scheinin has recently attended and observed military commission hearings in Guantanamo Bay, after which he concluded that it may be ‘impossible’ for defendants to receive a fair trial. Prof Scheinin’s most recent report to the UN Human Rights Council examines the relationship between terrorism and economic, social and cultural rights. 

The event is co-sponsored by the Institute for International Law and the Humanities and the Centre for Comparative and Constitutional Studies at the Melbourne Law School, and the Human Rights Law Resource Centre

Please download flyer here for booking form and event details. 


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