2006 Events
- 11-12 December: British Academy Collaborative Workshop, Popular Sovereignty and the Rule of Law in Divided Societies
- 22-24 November: Third Melbourne Legal Theory Workshop, Limit, Exception, Emergency, Miracle
- 22 November: 2006 Sir Kenneth Bailey Memorial Lecture, Miserable Comforters? International Law as a New Natural Law, Professor Martti Koskenniemi (Helsinki; NYU; International Law Commission)
- 3 November: Seminar, Competitive Adjudication? Dispute Settlement in FTAs and the WTO, Mr John Meltzer (Office of Trade Negotiations, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade)
- 7 September: Seminar, Trends and Challenges in Accountability Mechanisms of Multilateral Development Banks
- 11 August: Roundtable Discussion with Miloon Kothari (UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing)
- 7 August: Seminar, The International Court of Justice: A View from the Inside
- 15 May: Seminar, Fragmentation and the Sleeping Beauty of Systemic Integration
- 1 May: Roundtable Discussion with Paul Hunt (UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health)
- 27 April: Seminar, Human Trafficking: approaches to justice for human trafficking victims in Australia
- 12-13 April: Symposium, Declarations of Law
- 12 April: Public Lecture, The Normative Foundations of Empire, Professor Costas Douzinas (Birkbeck College London)
- 29 March: Research Seminar: The Role of Science and Public Sentiment in Regulatory Decisions regarding Health under WTO Law
- 16 March: Public Seminar, The Right to Health of Indigenous Australians
- 22 February: Workshop, Responding to the Anti-Terrorism Legislation
- 16 February: Public Forum, The Enemy Within
11-12 December: British Academy Collaborative Workshop, Popular Sovereignty and the Rule of Law in Divided Societies
(Convenor: Andrew Schaap)
In contemporary legal and political theory, the dominant consensus-oriented model of deliberative democracy understands the principles of rule of law and popular sovereignty to mutually presuppose each other. On this view, rule of law is an enabling condition for the exercise of popular sovereignty. However, theorists of agonistic politics have challenged this understanding of law as enabling popular sovereignty. Instead, they argue that the ‘containment’ of popular sovereignty within the law comes at the cost of silencing radical forms of political action and speech, which would fundamentally challenge the terms of political association. Drawing inspiration from this agonistic perspective, this workshop will critically examine the ways in which the principles of popular sovereignty and rule of law articulate in the context of divided societies to variably facilitate, underwrite and frustrate political processes.
Speakers will include:
- Emilios Christodoulidis (Law, Glasgow)
- Margaret Davies (Law, Flinders)
- Jason Frank (Politics, Cornell)
- Bonnie Honig (Politics, Northwestern)
- Fiona Jenkins (Philosophy, ANU)
- Paul Muldoon (Politics, Monash)
- Paul Patton (Philosophy, UNSW)
- Andrew Schaap (Politics, Melbourne)
- Scott Veitch (Law, Glasgow)
The workshop is now fully subscribed.
22-24 November: Third Melbourne Legal Theory Workshop, Limit, Exception, Emergency, Miracle
(Convenor: Anne Orford)
(Convenor: Anne Orford)
This workshop will aim to explore the ways in which a range of disciplines (including law, philosophy, political theory, international relations and anthropology) have understood the possibility, necessity or dangers of the moment at which authority produces itself through the suspension of law or tradition. The revival of interest in and anxiety about such a moment has been repeatedly invoked in international law in recent times, as expressed by reference to notions such as imperialism, exceptionalism, states of emergency, human rights violations, the off-shore detention centre and the camp, and through a revival of interest in major theorists of the state/law/exception nexus such as Kant, Schmitt, Agamben and Benjamin. The workshop will address a series of questions about the relations between law, authority, sovereignty, governmentality and the exceptional. What happens to law at the limits of modern political organization? Is law outside the production of the space of exception or state of emergency? Is the exception to jurisprudence what the miracle is to theology, as Carl Schmitt would have had us believe? What would it mean to live in a world without miracles? How is the authority of our different disciplinary traditions constituted, and what part have revolution, empire, the off-shore, the exception, the limit, the miraculous or the suspension of tradition played in that constitution? What is the responsibility of the jurist or the critic in the state of emergency or a time of suspended law? The workshop will bring together scholars from law and the humanities to attempt to generate a better understanding of the stakes of this pervasive contemporary anxiety about law at the limit.
22 November: 2006 Sir Kenneth Bailey Memorial Lecture, Miserable Comforters? International Law as a New Natural Law
Academy of Finland Professor of International Law, Martti Koskenniemi, will give the 2006 Sir Kenneth Bailey Memorial Lecture, addressing the topic: 'Miserable Comforters? International Law as a New Natural Law'.
During the long years of the Cold War, international law played a useful role in the coordination of state activities, and in limiting ideological controversy. Since then, its institutions and practices - above all the United Nations - have often been attacked as unable to cope with the novel challenges grouped under the term 'globalisation'. Reacting to the critique, international law has moved in two directions: increasing technical specialisation and assisting in the spread of liberal values in the world. The situation today resembles an earlier moment of transformation - the end of the Thirty Years' War and the emergence of a secular natural law to govern thinking about international reform towards the end of the 17th, and early 18th, century. Then, as now, legal renewal was proposed as a project for grasping the inherent laws of human nature and society. It was this proposal that Immanuel Kant rejected in his attack on the natural lawyers as 'miserable comforters'.
Professor Koskenniemi is Academy Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki and Global Professor of Law at New York University. He was appointed as a member of the United Nations International Law Commission in 2002. From 1978 to 1994 he was counsellor for legal affairs at the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. His major publications - From Apology to Utopia: The Structure of International Legal Argument (1989) and The Gentle Civiliser of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-1960 (2002) - have become defining works in the history and theory of international law.
Free trade agreements (FTAs) are an increasingly common feature of the global economic system. Australia has concluded FTAs with the United States, Thailand and Singapore and there are on-going negotiations with China, Malaysia and the ASEAN states (together with New Zealand).
The substantive provisions of FTAs often reflect and in some instances extend beyond the multilateral commitments of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Like the WTO, FTAs also contain binding dispute settlement procedures to regulate the compliance of member state commitments.
The proliferation of dispute settlement processes in economic treaty fora raises a host of important normative and systemic issues. There is the initial question of whether FTA dispute settlement organs should automatically apply the developed jurisprudence of the WTO in adjudication of similar treaty commitments. The recent WTO Mexico – Soft Drinks case raises an entirely separate dimension to this difficult issue. Where substantive commitments diverge but jurisdiction is shared in a given dispute, there is the potential for differing outcomes depending on adjudication in either the WTO or the FTA in question. The sensitive task of managing conflict in jurisdiction in these instances remains a significant challenge confronting treaty negotiators and interpreters alike.
Joshua Meltzer acts as a negotiator for the Australia-Malaysia FTA and the ASEAN-Australia-New-Zealand FTA, with particular responsibility for the investment chapters in those agreements. Joshua holds an LL.M. from the University of Michigan Law School and was awarded a Grotius Fellowship for his on-going SJD research at that Law School. Joshua has also held positions at the Legal Affairs Division at the WTO and the United Nations International Law Commission. David Morgan, a Visiting Fellow at Melbourne Law School who has developed and taught the LLM subject Free Trade Agreements, will act as a discussant to Mr Meltzer's presentation.
The substantive provisions of FTAs often reflect and in some instances extend beyond the multilateral commitments of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Like the WTO, FTAs also contain binding dispute settlement procedures to regulate the compliance of member state commitments.
The proliferation of dispute settlement processes in economic treaty fora raises a host of important normative and systemic issues. There is the initial question of whether FTA dispute settlement organs should automatically apply the developed jurisprudence of the WTO in adjudication of similar treaty commitments. The recent WTO Mexico – Soft Drinks case raises an entirely separate dimension to this difficult issue. Where substantive commitments diverge but jurisdiction is shared in a given dispute, there is the potential for differing outcomes depending on adjudication in either the WTO or the FTA in question. The sensitive task of managing conflict in jurisdiction in these instances remains a significant challenge confronting treaty negotiators and interpreters alike.
Joshua Meltzer acts as a negotiator for the Australia-Malaysia FTA and the ASEAN-Australia-New-Zealand FTA, with particular responsibility for the investment chapters in those agreements. Joshua holds an LL.M. from the University of Michigan Law School and was awarded a Grotius Fellowship for his on-going SJD research at that Law School. Joshua has also held positions at the Legal Affairs Division at the WTO and the United Nations International Law Commission. David Morgan, a Visiting Fellow at Melbourne Law School who has developed and taught the LLM subject Free Trade Agreements, will act as a discussant to Mr Meltzer's presentation.
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7 September: Trends and Challenges in Accountability Mechanisms of Multilateral Development Banks
In this seminar, Mr Suresh Nanwani will explore the use by multilateral development banks of accountability mechanisms that allow NGOs and community groups affected by particular projects to seek review of the bank's compliance with its own internal policies and procedures relating to project design and implementation.
Mr Nanwani is an expert in the law and practice of international financial institutions, particularly with respect to development issues. He is currently the Associate Secretary of the Compliance Review Panel at the Asian Development Bank, and has been critically involved in the development of law and policy reform projects within the ADB, including the recently established ADB Accountability Mechanism. He has also worked on institutional and administrative matters in the legal department of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Before assuming his current position, Mr Nanwani practised law in the private sector in Singapore, and worked from 15 years in the Office of the General Counsel at the ADB. He is co-author, with Eisuke Suzuki, of 'Accountability of International Organizations: The Development of Law and Practice in Multilateral Development Banks' (2005) 27 Michigan Journal of International Law 177.
7 September: Trends and Challenges in Accountability Mechanisms of Multilateral Development Banks
In this seminar, Mr Suresh Nanwani will explore the use by multilateral development banks of accountability mechanisms that allow NGOs and community groups affected by particular projects to seek review of the bank's compliance with its own internal policies and procedures relating to project design and implementation.
Mr Nanwani is an expert in the law and practice of international financial institutions, particularly with respect to development issues. He is currently the Associate Secretary of the Compliance Review Panel at the Asian Development Bank, and has been critically involved in the development of law and policy reform projects within the ADB, including the recently established ADB Accountability Mechanism. He has also worked on institutional and administrative matters in the legal department of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Before assuming his current position, Mr Nanwani practised law in the private sector in Singapore, and worked from 15 years in the Office of the General Counsel at the ADB. He is co-author, with Eisuke Suzuki, of 'Accountability of International Organizations: The Development of Law and Practice in Multilateral Development Banks' (2005) 27 Michigan Journal of International Law 177.
11 August: Roundtable Discussion with Miloon Kothari (UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing)
The mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing is a broad one, encompassing issues such as access to water and electricity, sanitation, land rights, forced eviction and displacement due to development and disasters, and post-conflict situations. Since his appointment to the position in 2000, Miloon Kothari's work has included reporting annually on the worldwide status of realization of the right to adequate housing, and identifying practical solutions to advance realization. An architect by training, he has extensive experience in the areas of housing and land rights. He is also the coordinator of the South Asian Regional Programme of the Habitat International Coalition's Housing and Land Rights Network, and a founding member of the International NGO Committee on Human Rights in Trade and Investment.
The Roundtable will draw on Miloon's expertise in order to focus on 'bigger picture' factors contributing to the housing and land crisis globally, as well as on housing policy and problems in the Australian context.
Justice Kenneth Keith QC KBE will discuss aspects of his work as a Judge of the International Court of Justice. Sir Kenneth has so far participated in two cases that are currently before the Court: the request for provisional measures in the Argentina v Uruguay case concerning Uruguay's construction of pulp mills on the River Uruguay, and the case brought by Bosnia and Herzegovina against Serbia and Montenegro concerning the application of the Genocide Convention. Sir Kenneth will also make some comparisons between the ICJ and other courts and tribunals he has sat on.
Justice Kenneth Keith was elected a judge of the ICJ in 2005. Sir Kenneth has also been a Judge of the Supreme Courts of New Zealand, Samoa, the Cook Islands and Fiji and has sat as a member of the Privy Council in London. He is a Counsellor of Honour and International Humanitarian Law Consultant with the Red Cross (NZ). Sir Kenneth was a member of the international arbitral tribunal in the Rainbow Warrior Case (NZ v France), and represented New Zealand in the Nuclear Test Cases before the ICJ in 1973, 1974 and 1995. He is a former President of the New Zealand Law Commission.
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15 May: Seminar, Fragmentation and the Sleeping Beauty of Systemic Integration
This seminar, presented by Professor Campbell McLachlan (Victoria University of Wellington Law School), will discuss aspects of his work with the UN International Law Commission Study Group on Fragmentation of International Law, chaired by Professor Martti Koskenniemi (University of Helsinki; New York University). The report of the Study Group - an ambitious historical, theoretical and doctrinal mapping of the idea of international law as a system - has just been released, and is available from http://www.valt.helsinki.fi/blogs/eci/post82.htm.
After taking his undergraduate degree at Victoria University, Campbell completed his PhD at the University of London and went on to practise in the field of international litigation. He was a partner in the firm of Herbert Smith and head of its International Law Practice Group. He was a member of the law faculty of the University of Cambridge, taught at the University of London and was Joint Honorary Secretary of the British Branch of the International Law Association. Campbell is the current President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law.
This seminar is supported by the Asia Pacific Centre of Military Law and the Institute for International Law and the Humanities.
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1 May: Roundtable Discussion with Paul Hunt (UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health)
Paul Hunt's work as Special Rapporteur has focused on promoting the right to health as a fundamental human right, clarifying its contours and content, and identifying good practices for its operationalization. His work has addressed such wide-ranging issues as access to essential medicines, the responsibilities of the corporate pharmaceutical sector, a human rights based approach to health indicators, social determinants of health, reproductive health, relevant WTO Agreements, poverty and the right to health, discrimination, stigma and the right to health, and the right to health and violence prevention. The reports that Paul has produced as Special Rapporteur are available at the following link:
http://www.ohchr.org/english/issues/health/right/annual.htm
The Roundtable will provide an opportunity for participants to become more fully acquainted with the Special Rapporteur's work and its relevance to promoting health as a human right in the Australian context. It is anticipated that the Roundtable will focus, in particular, on how international human rights work and avenues for petition and complaint might be utilized towards improving the health of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. There will also be time set aside for open discussion between participants and the Special Rapporteur.
Report:
Download the 1 May 2006 Paul Hunt Roundtable Report
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27 April: Seminar, Human Trafficking: approaches to justice for human trafficking victims in Australia
This seminar, presented by Georgina Costello, will focus on pressing societal and global human trafficking issues including:
27 April: Seminar, Human Trafficking: approaches to justice for human trafficking victims in Australia
This seminar, presented by Georgina Costello, will focus on pressing societal and global human trafficking issues including:
- human rights abuses
- organised crime
- severe labour exploitation
- gender harm
- poverty and development issues
- border control
- the desire of many victims to migrate in search of a life that is more socially and economically secure.
Georgina Costello is a Melbourne barrister who has provided legal advice to several human trafficking victims and has written extensively about law and policy in this area. In 2003 she appeared as a lawyer at the inquest into the death in the Villawood Immigration detention Centre of a woman who may have been a victim of trafficking. She has coordinated research into instances of human trafficking in Australia and, in 2005, travelled to Italy and the USA to research trafficking law and policy as a Donald MacKay Winston Churchill Fellow. Georgina recently presented a report to the UN committee on the CEDAW in New York City regarding Australia's approach to human trafficking.
This seminar is supported by the Asia Pacific Centre of Military Law and the Institute for International Law and the Humanities.
This seminar is supported by the Asia Pacific Centre of Military Law and the Institute for International Law and the Humanities.
What remains unspeakable once law is spoken? In the echo chamber of contemporary law it is perhaps surprising that the act of declaration has rarely provided the focus of debate and theorising. This is so whether it declares the strategies of counter terrorism, the regulation of muslim and indigenous people, the restructuring of industrial relations, or the decimation of social security, to name just a few moments. The act of declaration resists being spoken of in contemporary politics. Yet, declaration insists in the coupling, doubling, fragmenting and intimate relation of the events of sovereignty, the enemy, criticism and the law. It is these four destinations that offer the arrival and vanishing points of declarations of law and, as such, offer the frame for a way of interrogating and theorising the act. This symposium offers a narrated path through discourses of sovereignty, the enemy, criticism and law. These coordinates provide an entry point for dialoguing about the declaration of law as the condition of a political and ethical engagement with the subject of law and the subject as law. Within this frame the symposium will consider questions and strategies that have emerged as “anti-terrorism”, “sovereign jurisdiction” and the “condition of the exception” in a contemporary politics. The symposium is therefore a forum for dialogue that engages the critic, and a platform for mourning what is always already lost in the act of declaration. It is a forum for witnessing the remainder of the unspeakable.
Format:
The symposium consists of two days of dialogue. The two days will consider aspects of counter-terrorism, the condition of the exception and sovereign jurisdiction. While speakers will offer a platform for dialogue, the days will largely consist of discussions, questions and contemplations from the participants. There will also be a public forum in the evening with a presentation and conversation with Costas Douzinas.
The symposium consists of two days of dialogue. The two days will consider aspects of counter-terrorism, the condition of the exception and sovereign jurisdiction. While speakers will offer a platform for dialogue, the days will largely consist of discussions, questions and contemplations from the participants. There will also be a public forum in the evening with a presentation and conversation with Costas Douzinas.
Speakers will include:
- Costas Douzinas (Humanities, Birkbeck College, London)
- Catherine Mills (Philosophy, University of NSW)
- Shaun McVeigh (Law, Griffith University)
- Joseph Pugliese (Critical and Cultural Studies, Macquarie University)
Facilitated by Peter Rush and Juliet Rogers (Law, Melbourne University)
Professor Costas Douzinas (Birkbeck College London) will explore whether we are moving toward a benign new world order or a new imperial arrangement. A public debate with important practical consequences has been taking place since 1989, but not much has been written about the normative foundations of the new disposition. Legal and political institutions are the best signs of the emerging of a new social order, reflections of the metaphysics of an age. By examining recent developments in international law, war, human rights, humanitarianism, political justice, and the spatial, temporal and linguistic understandings of our world, Professor Douzinas will begin addressing the questions: what are the common normative characteristics of the world order? Can we define it as a new empire?
29 March: Research Seminar, The Role of Science and Public Sentiment in Regulatory Decisions regarding Health under WTO Law
Tracey Epps, an SJD candidate in the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, will present aspects of her doctoral dissertation on the role of science and public sentiment in international trade disputes involving trade restrictive health regulations. Her paper will address the case for using scientific evidence as a benchmark for justification of trade restrictive health regulations under the WTO Agreement for Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standards (SPS Agreement), and question whether the use of a scientific benchmark leaves room for consideration of public sentiment by domestic regulatory decision-makers. Tracey approaches this issue from within a framework that accepts the importance and validity of both the welfare gains to be derived from health protection and increased international trade, and the need for trade panels to balance these sometimes competing objectives. Tracey argues that science plays an appropriate role in the SPS Agreement, subject to qualifications that recognize its indeterminate nature and the importance of public sentiment regarding health concerns.
The seminar will be chaired by Jurgen Kurtz, Director of IILAH's International Economic Law Research Programme.
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This seminar, convened by IILAH's International Human Rights Law Programme, in conjunction with the Equal Opportunity Commission Victoria and the Federation of Community Legal Centres, will bring together representatives of peak organisations working on this issue. The workshop will involve presentations by John von Doussa (President, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission) and Marika Dias (Federation of Community Legal Centres), as well as a group discussion facilitated by Joo-Cheong Tham (Melbourne Law School; Civil Rights Network).
This free evening public forum will provide an opportunity for the audience and guest speakers to discuss aspects of the revised sedition provisions contained in recent anti-terrorism legislation. The forum is the second in an interdisciplinary series of events jointly hosted by the Institute for International Law and the Humanities, Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy, Ashworth Centre for Social Theory (all of Melbourne University) as well as the Psychoanalytic Studies programme (Deakin University), and the Institute of Postcolonial Studies.
Speakers, all of the Psychoanalytic Studies programme, Deakin University, will be:
- Geoff Boucher
- Justin Clemens
- Russell Grigg
- Matthew Sharpe
After opening comments by the invited panel of speakers, general discussion will be facilitated by Peter Rush and Juliet Rogers, both of Melbourne Law School.