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"Settler Ecologies" at LSA San Fransicso

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"Settler Ecologies" at LSA San Fransicso

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Call for Roundtable Panelists and/or for Papers

Settler ecologies are the far-reaching and multi-faceted processes by which settler administrations imagine, construct, govern, discipline, and police nature, nonhuman animals, and Indigenous or otherwise marginalized communities. It is now more urgent than ever to reflect on how settler ecologies extend and exacerbate violence to both human and more-than-human communities. This roundtable will consider the “deep ecological foundation[s] of settler colonialism and, vice versa, the deep colonial foundation[s] of ecological thought” (Braverman 2023, 2).

If you are interested in participating in a roundtable and/or in presenting a paper on settler ecologies, email Irus Braverman at irusb@buffalo.edu by Oct 25, 2025.

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New book by Karen Engle in new "CRN book series": 

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New book by Karen Engle in new "CRN book series": 

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Toward an Abolitionist Human Rights Court

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Cambridge Core - Public International Law - Toward an Abolitionist Human Rights Court

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Law & Society Institute, Humboldt University Berlin Repeatedly Violates Academic Integrity by Inviting Israeli Supreme Court Judge

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Law & Society Institute, Humboldt University Berlin Repeatedly Violates Academic Integrity by Inviting Israeli Supreme Court Judge

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Open Letter to LSA drafted by CRN members Marina Veličković et al concerning annual meeting in Chicago. Add your signature if you agree!

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Open Letter to LSA drafted by CRN members Marina Veličković et al concerning annual meeting in Chicago. Add your signature if you agree!

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LSA Deadline extended to October 22, 5 pm ET

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LSA Deadline extended to October 22, 5 pm ET

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Call / Creative Roundtables / Law & Society and the Audiovisual in the 21st Century

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Call / Creative Roundtables / Law & Society and the Audiovisual in the 21st Century

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Please send your expression of interest to join these Creative Roundtables to the organisers, Luis Eslava (L.Eslava@latrobe.edu.au) and Lieselotte Viaene (lviaene@clio.uc3m.es) by 12 October 2024.

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Socio-legal scholars from diverse fields—including law & anthropology, Indigenous studies, critical race theory, international development, and political economy—have explored the potential of audiovisual production and communication for decades. With the emergence of digital formats, social media platforms and the widespread availability of recording devises, there is a recent upsurge on audiovisual production in the study of law and society. Attention to the informal economy, social reproductive work, the relations between humans and more-than-humans, and the social, sonic and material landscapes of anthropo- and eco-centric norms are some of the areas being subject of audiovisual attention today. Importantly, while this turn to the audiovisual is inspiring, it has been also driven by a neoliberal push to make research more ‘impactful’ and ‘attractive’. Yet there is still a shared sense that new 'science communication' strategies are needed to reach out new audiences and to generate much needed change.

Using as a backdrop the international premiere in these Creative Roundtables of the twin documentaries forming the series Human Rights Beyond the Human, set in Colombia and Nepal and part of the ERC RIVERS project (2019-2025), we welcome expressions of interest from scholars across the LSA community to join these sessions.* These two Creative Roundtables will provide an opportunity to reflect on the role of audiovisual production, mobilisation and analysis in the context of law & society scholarship and action. These roundtables build on a series of panels on law & society and the audiovisual that have been convened by the RIVERS project and the Amazon of Rights project since LSA Lisbon (2022).

Roundtable 1: Change and Legal Activism in Times of Urgency: This roundtable will open with the screening of Aty Seikuinduwa. Judge Between World (teaser) (25 min.) which follows the spiritual and legal journey of Indigenous Arhuaca Judge, Belkis Izquierdo, who has produced ground-breaking legal decisions recognizing Territory as a victim of armed conflict within the context of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace in Colombia. This roundtable will explore the question: what are the audiovisual methodologies needed to better understand and respond to the need for change in our violent and urgent times?

Roundtable 2: Plural Ontologies and Epistemologies vs Hegemonic Extractivism: Opening with the Human Rights Beyond the Human documentary in Nepal, which explores the tension between ancestral wisdom and nature's rights, and the relentless force of ‘progress’ and extractivism (teaser) (25 min.), this roundtable will explore the question: what is unique about the audiovisual to capture the ongoing clash between capital’s hegemonic extractive functioning and the plurality of existing onto-epistemologies about nature in the planet?

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Creative Roundtables_Audiovisual and Law and Society, 071024

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Seeking Participants for Roundtable on The Potential and Problem of Land Grabbing Meeting International Law (IL)

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Seeking Participants for Roundtable on The Potential and Problem of Land Grabbing Meeting International Law (IL)

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The 2008/2009 food, fuel, and financial crisis led to the re-emergence of "land grabbing," a phenomenon characterized by the unjust acquisition or control of land and associated resources by force or deceit. The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has declared that land grabbing would be a significant consideration in the court's case selection and prioritization. However, the extent and scope of this declaration remain unclear. In light of recent incidents highlighting the convergence of land grabbing and International Criminal Law (ICL), this panel seeks to examine the implications of the Prosecutor's statement and the issues that arise.

The roundtable session aims to (1) assess the potential benefits that would likely encourage the process of establishing a comprehensive international criminal framework for addressing land grabbing, (2) analyze aspects overlooked and limitations arising from the integration of land grabbing and ICL, and (3) discuss potential future developments pertaining to the intersection of land grabbing and IL.

If interested in being a part of the roundtable or making suggestions, kindly send an email to tayoolarewaju@gmail.com and tayoo@student.ubc.ca

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LSA Chicago CfP - Compositions: Pursuing the International Law of the Middle (organisers: Renske Vos, Richard Clements)

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LSA Chicago CfP - Compositions: Pursuing the International Law of the Middle (organisers: Renske Vos, Richard Clements)

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Attitude, anti-method, and style have all been suggested as worthwhile avenues for taking seriously the messy complicity of researcher, method, and object. They have been positioned as alternatives to the impossible task of disentangling how the way we see our research is always already mediated by the experiences from which we write. Socio-legal and critical scholars are well-aware of this imbrication. But appreciating the messiness of our entanglements with law and its objects goes far beyond the question of scholarly method and positionality.

This panel experiments with composition as a way to talk about our research. What happens when we see our research as composing a musical, theatrical, literary or visual piece to reflect on? How do we compose ourselves as researchers in that process? This experiment gets us to experience law’s gaps, conflicts and ambiguities not as ‘gotcha’ moments but as productive sites of legal performativity. We find that such sites are most often found in moments ‘in-between’: in the middle of decision-making processes, within -as much as beyond- international law’s formal rules and procedures, and in-between moving from one research project to the next. This orientation allows us to engage with law beyond the hermeneutics of political complicity/resistance and ‘paranoid reading’. At a time when theory and praxis are intimately linked, it gets us to undo the division of ‘mainstream’ and ‘critical’ interventions. Sitting with law as an artistic installation, a theatrical performance, a literary work, or a musical composition helps us appreciate the law and lawyering of the middle, the meantime, the hiatus – imagistically, associatively and compositionally.

Interested participants should send an email and abstract to Renske Vos (r.n.vos@vu.nl) and Richard Clements (r.a.clements@uvt.nl) by 12th October. Abstracts should follow the LSA guidelines.

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LSA Chicago CfP 2025: Catastrophe, Coloniality and International Law as the End of 'Worlds' ( Organisers: Ahmed Raza Memon, Anamika Misra)

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LSA Chicago CfP 2025: Catastrophe, Coloniality and International Law as the End of 'Worlds' ( Organisers: Ahmed Raza Memon, Anamika Misra)

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Send in your abstracts to MemonA@cardiff.ac.uk  by 14th October 2024.

Conversations on international law as a ‘discipline of crises’ and as a ‘crisis of discipline’ have always emerged in different global crises and have proliferated recently in the shadow of the ongoing genocide in Palestine.  Instead, this panel will focus on conceptualizing the discipline and practice of International law as a form of catastrophe that interrupts cosmologies and pluralities of world-making. Displacing the focus from the discipline itself, we invite scholars to consider how ‘catastrophe’ as a spatially and temporally pluralistic concept reshapes our understanding of how international law conceives and perpetuates world-ending epistemes of Euro-modern coloniality.  We ask you to engage the traditions of plural, decolonial, anti-colonial, indigenous, black radical, and Islamic epistemologies and histories in theorising international law as ‘catastrophe’/’apocalyptic’. Furthermore, we encourage you to theorize ‘catastrophe’ as a way to ‘undiscipline’ international law, and law broadly, considering how it remains tied to perpetuating, creating and reiterating its own ‘catastrophic’ reality.

All abstracts should meet the LSA guidelines.  Accepted presenters will be contacted by 11th October with further instructions for submission to the LSA 2025 Conference.

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Catastrophe, Coloniality, and International Law as the End of Worlds

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roundtable "Star Wars, Dune, and Star Trek: science fiction or accessible analysis of law and (dis)order?": LSA Chicago 2025 seeking participants

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roundtable "Star Wars, Dune, and Star Trek: science fiction or accessible analysis of law and (dis)order?": LSA Chicago 2025 seeking participants

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CRN23 colegas,

we are looking for participants for a roundtable on the Star Wars, Dune, and Star Trek.

Science fiction informs, presenting how law, politics, and their assumptions operate in diverse settings. These stores are about empire, security, extraction, civilization, self-determination, discrimination, technology, hope, cynicism, and more. They suggest how to think about our realities. Participants will examine the role of law in sci-fi, stories that are pop and pulp but with lasting global appeal. We jump off from the assumption that sci-fi is more than just American fables created for Cold War audiences. It is consumed worldwide, long after its 1965 genesis. International legal concepts are central to these fictions. Session objectives are to start developing methods that: 1) identify the popular resonance of law in sci-fi and 2) use them to illustrate global (dis)order and its normative underpinnings in accessible manners.

so far, participations will discuss:

-imperial jurisdictions in STAR WARS

-water law and moisture farming in STAR WARS

-Prime Directive and superiority in STAR TREK

-space mining and law in DUNE

interested in participating?

any suggestions?

please email me (ehernand@chapman.edu) by October 9.

Creative roundtables are built on hope,

Ernesto Hernandez-Lopez
Professor of Law
Chapman University
publications, op-eds, & blog posts

ssrn

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LSA Chicago 2025 - call for papers - panel - Chaos Paradigm in International Law: Embracing Non-Linearity in the Anarchical World Order

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LSA Chicago 2025 - call for papers - panel - Chaos Paradigm in International Law: Embracing Non-Linearity in the Anarchical World Order

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SEND PROPOSALS TO douggcastro@gmail.com

ABSTRACT

The 21st century has emerged as a period characterized by complex international relations that deviate from conventional linear forecasts and pose significant challenges to the fundamental principles of global governance. The persistent hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, coupled with the implementation of unilateral economic sanctions, highlight the inherent vulnerability of the global system. The global outbreak of COVID-19 has brought to light the weaknesses present in international collaboration and response processes. Climate change poses a significant global challenge that transcends state borders and necessitates concerted legal actions that are at least as effective as the existential danger to humanity. The advent of artificial intelligence has emerged as a disruptive phenomenon with the capacity to fundamentally alter international relations and legal frameworks, hence exerting a profound influence on global governance. The terrorist acts of Hamas and the disproportioned response of Israel threaten the delicate security stability in the Middle East. Lastly, the rise of China as a global economic and political force has upset established power dynamics, hence presenting a formidable obstacle to the liberal legal order that emerged after World War II and bringing the Global South concerns to the center of the debates.

These scenarios emphasize the necessity of readjusting international governance systems, resulting in the increasing utilization of concepts such as de-globalization, slowbalization, decoupling, de-risking, and de-escalating. Furthermore, a substantial body of literature indicates that the current global system is characterized by a state of disorder. As we further explore the non-linear characteristics of order within the international sphere and the significance of International Law, it becomes apparent that the complexities of the 21st century extend beyond a simplistic explanation of disorder. Consequently, it becomes imperative to adopt innovative legal perspectives and reassess our approach to global governance. One notable constraint of the disorder literature, particularly in the context of International Law, is its tendency to employ the term disorder colloquially, denoting only the lack of order within the international system, without establishing a connection to the fundamental ontological characteristic of the system, namely anarchy. In the field of international relations theory, specifically within the framework of realism, the concept of anarchy refers to the absence of a centralized authority or government in the global system, in contrast to domestic systems where a sovereign power maintains order. Consequently, all states are compelled to engage in a struggle for survival, akin to a Hobbesian state of nature.

Moreover, the existing body of literature focuses on the insufficiency of conventional linear methods in International Law when it comes to tackling the intricacies of the contemporary global environment in the 21st century. Conventional international legal frameworks face difficulties in effectively addressing and adapting to the evolving reality of the global system, which is characterized by non-linear dynamics, rapid power shifts, interconnected challenges, and the emergence of diverse actors with varying cultural and legal perspectives.

In a system lacking a central authority to enforce order and deterministic rules, the relationship and interconnection of sovereign States with varying preferences and interests result in a complex and unpredictable system. This system operates based on underlying patterns that are not immediately apparent, necessitating a reassessment of international legal paradigms to better comprehend and address the complexities of modern global governance, which includes subjectivities, such as solidarity, which are not accounted for in the formation and maintenance of the international legal order.

Hence, rather than delving into the examination of disorder within the international system or legal framework, scholars and policy-makers must direct their focus towards the chaos paradigm. This paradigm, rooted in a Kuhnian perspective, challenges the Westphalia model and embraces a paradigm of multiple modernities, suggesting that there are several routes to modernity and that various communities may have unique experiences with and expressions of modernization, thus, opposing the idea of one-size-fits-all theory of how countries progress toward modernity and instead recognizes the richness of cultural variation.[1]

The chaos paradigm offers a fresh and inclusive interpretation of modernity by acknowledging the underlying and emerging order that challenges the prevailing Eurocentric model of International Law and politics. It involves the incorporation of traditions and cultures that are frequently marginalized. The application of chaos theory to the domains of International Law and Relations offers a more comprehensive comprehension of the intricate global phenomena that are now seen. This is achieved by taking into account the prevailing uncertainties, nonlinearities, and unpredictability of the international system, which can be attributed to the anarchical nature of the ontology.

In this sense, the application of Chaos Theory to the analysis of historical processes in the international system emphasizes the role of changes and interactions between States in shaping modern International Law, seeking to understand how historical events have contributed to the emergence of new conditions within the system, which are often misunderstood as a disordered state of affairs in the existing literature. In light of this, the book aims to address the inquiries raised by the current body of literature: to what degree does the notion of disorder effectively depict the current state of the international order, and how can International Law adjust to foster a more organized global system in response to present challenges? How might International Law facilitate the resolution of power changes and disputes resulting from the assertive foreign policies of developing global powers, like China, to promote a more stable and fair international system?

The findings in the chapters suggest that the adoption of the chaos paradigm in the field of International Law and politics offers a more accurate and comprehensive framework for analyzing and comprehending the complex and unpredictable nature of international relations in the 21st century. Therefore, it has a strong potential to improve the effectiveness of International Law by recognizing its inherent limitations and embracing other legal perspectives, so establishing a framework that better reflects the values and customs of different regions and traditions.

[1] Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. 2002. Multiple Modernities. 1st edition. New Brunswick, N.J: Routledge.

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LSA Chicago 2025 call for papers - mini-conference on prefiguration, performativity and alternative legalities

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LSA Chicago 2025 call for papers - mini-conference on prefiguration, performativity and alternative legalities

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!! Calling all CRN participants !!

Interested in 'How to do things with Law: Prefiguration, Performativity and Alternative Legalities'? Colleagues will be organising a mini-conference on the topic at next year's LSA in Chicago from 22-25 May. Currently accepting paper submissions and panel submissions. Deadline for abstracts, panel proposals: 15 September 2024. See call for papers attached for more details and who to email.

https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:2dd5ef16-491a-38c5-801c-8d07b82ad6e9

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Cfp, conference on the case of the S.S. Lotus: The first 100 Years

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Cfp, conference on the case of the S.S. Lotus: The first 100 Years

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Two CRN/LSA measures addressing the situation in Gaza/the Occupied Palestinian Territories

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Two CRN/LSA measures addressing the situation in Gaza/the Occupied Palestinian Territories

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Dear CRN members,

This is to inform you of two different measures that have been taken to address the urgent situation in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

The first is a letter that was written ahead of the annual meeting in Denver last week by us (the CRN co-ordination team), with input from various CRN members, and delivered to LSA President Michele Goodwin during the conference.

The second is a resolution that was adopted at a meeting on the second day of the conference (ie on Friday, 7 June) asking LSA to endorse the 2005 call of Palestinian civil society for a policy of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against the state of Israel and Israeli institutions and to work through its committees to give effect to the spirit and intent of that call. That resolution has also been communicated to Professor Goodwin, who has confirmed that she will take it forward, along with the letter, to LSA’s relevant bodies.

You will find both the letter and the resolution. Many thanks to everyone who contributed to the process of organising, drafting and discussing them. Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions.

Warmly,

Rose, Richard, Markus, Nadia and Luis

(International Law & Politics CRN co-ordination team)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BYwOvpkWWISHh6OfVM_UQSdVDMmpcc2B/view?usp=drive_link

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NWTvu0PHSBcpjlkIN8aljM63beWPN1In/view?usp=drive_link

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Dear CRN Colleagues,

Many of you may have seen last week’s LSA Statement on Academic Freedom, which reiterates the urgency to protect academic freedom in challenging times. To provide some additional context, the LSA statement came in response to a request made more than a month ago for an individualized letter of institutional support on behalf of a longtime LSA member and recipient of LSA's International Award, the Palestinian feminist scholar Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian. (For those interested, the text of that request made to LSA leadership and the text of LSA's response are both pasted below.)

As many of you no doubt will have noticed, the recent LSA statement fails to mention the word Palestine or Palestinian. The LSA statement refers to a past record of a bold stance on academic freedom, and we would have hoped that LSA could have responded to the current moment with a bold statement in defense of Palestine-related speech and scholarship. Indeed, a particularly urgent case of a scholar targeted  for her speech expressing solidarity with the people of Gaza and condemning action taken by the state of Israel is LSA member Nadera Shalhoub-Kervorkian.

As the Middle East Studies Association’s Committee on Academic Freedom has detailed, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian has been subjected – for more than six months – to a persistent and public repression of her academic freedom. Moreover, the fact that an internationally renowned scholar has been persecuted in this manner produces a chilling effect on academic freedom. In a shocking escalation of this repression, last week Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian was arrested and detained on charges of incitement to violence. Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian was released from prison on 19 April 2024. However, as detailed in a recent open letter from colleagues outside as well as inside Israel, she continues to face grave risk. We note that:

According to her family, while Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian was incarcerated her hands and feet were shackled, she was put in urine-infested and cockroach-infested spaces, yelled at, and intimidated during several hours of interrogation. She was not able to sleep and was denied her essential medications.

Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s house was searched. Police took her laptop and smartphone, in addition to some of the papers she was working on, and a collection of poetry books and scripts by the poet Mahmoud Darwish.

While in custody, she was asked repeatedly about her academic publications and her interview on the podcast “Makdisi Street.”

Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian has been released from prison because the court did not find sufficient evidence to justify her immediate arrest or the continuation of her detention.However, judges at both the Magistrate Court and the District Court (Court of Appeal) maintained that Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian's scholarly work and statements could potentially amount to incitement. She was told she would be interrogated again this week.

A 12TV programme in Israel that aired on 20 April 2024 slandered her scholarship, claiming that the Palestinian children she interviewed for her research are terrorists. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem responded to the programme by further discrediting her research and stressing that they reject her scholarship.

While the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reversed the decision to suspend Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian and issued a statement against her arrest, they have not removed their social media post about her suspension, and they have neither acknowledged nor apologized for their role in inciting against her (e.g., the public release of the letters demanding her resignation, as well as the ongoing public condemnation of her scholarly work.)

In short, Prof. Shalhoub-Kevorkian remains in significant danger. Her family has circulated the following request for external support:

1. Write to Asher Cohen, President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem  (asher.cohen@mail.huji.ac.il); Tamir Sheafer, Rector (tamir.sheafer@mail.huji.ac.il); and Asher Ben-Arieh, Dean of the School of Social Work (benarieh@mail.huji.ac.il). In your letter, you could demand that they apologize for the harm they have caused Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian and that they use their influence to clear her name and to prevent the Israeli media from further inciting against her.

2. Create momentum for this issue on social media by calling for the immediate protection and prevention of further harassment and abuse of Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian; use the hashtag #FreeNadera and tag @HebrewU.

3. Contact your faculty bodies, academic associations, unions, government representatives and demand that they (1) call for Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s protection and prevention of further harassment and abuse; and (2) protect the academic freedom of Palestinian scholars, students, and those speaking out.

Please take action today. This is an issue that many of us care about. We know that commitment is not only to abstract principles but to action that can have consequences on the ground for Professor Shalhoub-Kevorkian and others.

Finally, if you believe that LSA can and should do more to protect academic freedom, then please communicate the importance of this issue to individual members of the current LSA Board of Trustees. Five years ago, the LSA Academic Freedom Taskforce submitted detailed recommendations which – had they been adopted – would have better equipped LSA to respond robustly (and in a more timely manner) to individual cases of academic freedom repression. The LSA Trustees will be meeting in late-May and a request has already been made for including on the agenda a discussion of LSA policies and practices concerning academic freedom. Please let them know that this issue is important to many of us.

Thank you in advance for your solidarity. If any of you would like to discuss this further one-on-one, then please do reach out to us.

Sincerely,

Leila Kawar, Usha Natarajan, Vasuki Nesiah, John Reynolds, and Sujith Xavier

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Denver pics here: https://photos.app.goo.gl/y83PC7dchdmhhX6e9

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Translating human rights in the digital age 

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Translating human rights in the digital age 

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Digitization and datafication are at the forefront of expanding inequalities. Scholars have described how they produce new forms of colonialism and capitalism through data extractivism and surveillance (Cohen 2019, Zuboff 2019, Couldry and Mejias 2020); impose barriers to social rights (UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health 2023), and amplify racial discrimination (Eubanks 2018, Benjamin 2019). At the same time, digitization is sparking transformative social movements. It is creating new agential capacities for women (Maslen and Lupton 2018) and new forms of solidarity, for instance around women’s rights, sexual orientation and gender identity, and health (Waldman et al 2018; Davis et al 2023) as well as new spaces for mobilization and advocacy (Niezen 2020).

This panel invites papers that explore how activists in diverse contexts are mobilizing human rights in relation to data and the digital transformation. While some have critiqued the continuing viability of human rights as a frame for social justice (Billaud 2017, Moyn 2018, Whyte 2019), anthropologists see a new vitality in the diverse ways that human rights are “appropriated, adapted and redefined” to fit a variety of contexts (Merry 2018, Canfield 2022, Goodale 2022). Drawing on diverse field sites and conceptual lenses, including ethnographic (and digital ethnographic) research in and from the Majority and Minority worlds, we seek to understand how activists respond to challenges of digital access, datafication, discrimination, and platform capitalism given increasingly diffuse notions of accountability, privacy, and equality by translating human rights. We ask: How are activists redefining and applying human rights in a rapidly shifting realm where the role of the state, as primary duty-bearer, is frequently nebulous, and where the private sector dominates? What can anthropology and ethnographic methods offer to understanding human rights in the digital age?

This panel is being organized by Sara (Meg) Davis (University of Warwick) and Matt Canfield (Leiden Law School)

If you are interested in joining it, please submit abstracts by 13 October to m.c.canfield@law.leidenuniv.nl and sara.davis@warwick.ac.uk.

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Interested in presenting your work in a panel on International Law and Justice? Topics may include indigenous Peoples and Other International Laws / International Human Rights Law, Anti-Migration Politics and International Law / the End of International Institutions in the Age of Populism / (Post)Revolutionary Social Movements and International Law / The Global South Response to International Law's History AND MORE!

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Interested in presenting in a panel on International Law and Technology? Topics may include Technology, Work and International Law and Development, Artificial intelligence and the Use of Force in the 21st Century, Power and the International Law of Things AND MUCH MUCH MORE!

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Interested in presenting in a panel on International law and the Global Economy? Topics may included Ruins, renewal and the World Trade Organisation, Investment Law and the Privatisation of Public International Law, A new Tariff regime and the Fight for International Economic Law, AND MORE!

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Interested in presenting in a panel on International Law and the Environment? Topics may include International law as Crisis management, critical international conservation law, climate litigation in Global Times and much much more!

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First and foremost, a huge thank you to everyone that made it to Puerto Rico for making it such a memorable event. And thanks to our sponsors Kent Law School, Lund University Faculty of Law, the Institute for Global Law and Policy, Harvard Law School and University of Western Ontario Law, for the support.

After what seems like about fifteen minutes of down-time, preparations for the next conference in Denver begin!

The conference in Denver takes place Thursday 6 - Sunday 9 June 2024 and is the 60th anniversary of the Law and Society Association. It will also be the 10th time (!) that the International Law & Politics network convenes for the association’s annual meeting.

The conference will be held at the Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center and will be entirely in-person. The CRN will host special events highlighting this year’s theme, extraordinary panels created by you all, the annual mega-book launch and a CRN anniversary party!

The submission deadline is October 24 at 11:59 p.m. ET (USA and Canada).

For more information about e.g. types of submissions, the conference website is here: https://www.lawandsociety.org/denver-2024-homepage/

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Unsettling Territories: Tradition and Revolution in Law and Society

What began with a breakfast meeting in 1964 has become a global tradition. 2024 marks the 60 th anniversary of the Law and Society Association. This year's annual meeting returns to Denver, the site of the Association's first summer institute on social science methods in legal education.

The annual meeting marks more than an anniversary for law and society. 2024 is also the 60 th anniversary of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 - a landmark antidiscrimination law enacted 100 years after Black Americans in the Colorado territory first petitioned for the right to vote - and the termination of the Bracero program that powerfully shaped U.S. immigration policy. 2024 also stands out as the 100 th anniversary of the U.S. Immigration Act of 1924, which established the U.S. Border Patrol and banned immigration from Asia. The year 1924 also saw the enactment of the U.S. Indian Citizenship Act, which declared that all non-citizen Native Americans within the United States were citizens.

LSA's return to Denver, Colorado is an opportunity to reflect on these themes. Settlers dispossessed Colorado's Indigenous Peoples of their lands, including through official policies of violence. Colorado also witnessed displacement of Hispano settlers. Today, more than 40 Native nations maintain relationships with Colorado lands, the drying Colorado River Basin makes visible the existential threat of climate change, and Colorado's shifting politics underline the uncertainty of the 2024 election.

Taken together, these histories and our host site highlight law's roles in settling territories of all kinds, both physical and ideological. As a movement, law and society has the power to understand these roles and potentially to unsettle them. We invite papers on the colonial, political, and environmental territories of law and society, the promise and threat of unsettling them, as well as other themes within the long and by now storied tradition of law and society scholarship.

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Exchange research and make valuable connections at the leading sociolegal conference in 2023.

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https://photos.app.goo.gl/VKFwzPrLAGqEUZoH9

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https://photos.app.goo.gl/CkXHwHzZkg7taias8

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https://photos.app.goo.gl/CkXHwHzZkg7taias8

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https://photos.app.goo.gl/EZfkpscS42XsCyTe8

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Call for Papers II. Ocean Legal Geographies

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Call for Papers II. Ocean Legal Geographies

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Organizer: Irus Braverman

Despite its cutting-edge tendencies, the recent proliferation of ocean studies scholarship, especially in the humanities, rarely engages with legal questions. Such a disregard is especially troubling because of the major role that the law plays at sea and in controlling the human-nature relations that occur there. Perhaps unsurprisingly, legal scholarship is itself filled with terracentric biases and influences, often neglecting questions pertaining to the oceans, their wet and fluid materialities, and the unique forms of governance that ensue. This panel will attempt to rectify this situation, calling for the emergence of a new subfield: ocean legal geographies. Beyond its academic importance in paving a new and much-needed direction in scholarship, this subfield will also be significant for its social, ecological, and political contributions. Oceans and their laws are currently being negotiated and decided, mainly behind closed doors and in jargon-laden settings. Consequently, most of the public is unaware that such crucial discussions are being held, with profound implications for our shared lives on this blue planet. The purpose of this collection is to “explode” the blackbox of ocean law, especially as pertaining to the deep sea and its “resources.” Ocean legal geographies will draw on interdisciplinary scholarship to establish a cutting-edge angle with which to comprehend, criticize, and rethink ocean laws in ways that will be understandable to people without legal background, within and outside academia. This new subfield will draw attention to the spaces, histories, lives, and laws of the sea. Taking into account the ordinary and extraordinary projects of governing ocean spaces, we will ask, in particular: what kinds of novel reflections and new directions would turning to the ocean offer for traditional ocean law, and what types of opportunities may a focus on law offer for critical ocean studies and for thinking about novel regulatory regimes? Thinking with oceans and their lively creatures through the lens of governance, power, solidarity, and care will provide a fresh opportunity to challenge the existing modes of governing oceans, bringing about more fluid and adaptable regulatory modalities. This panel, then, is about providing hope for life at sea, which critically depends on legal frameworks to survive the rapidly altering environments.

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Call for Papers I. Nature Conservation and Colonialism: Studies of Ecological Warfare

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Call for Papers I. Nature Conservation and Colonialism: Studies of Ecological Warfare

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Organizer: Irus Braverman

Nature conservation is often perceived as existing outside the domain of politics. This panel invites a critical contemplation of that assumption. We will examine how conservation, and the protection of certain lands and species in particular, is deployed as a potent colonial tool that furthers the dispossession and elimination of local and Indigenous communities. That the colonial administration of nature is configured through scientific expertise and practices illuminates how deeply entrenched the colonial mindset has become in ecological ways of thinking. Among other explorations at the nexus of nature and colonialism, we will also explore the underlying interconnections between acts of violence toward humans, nonhumans, and the earth. As Amitav Ghosh points out: “Indigenous peoples faced a state of permanent . . . war that involved many kinds of other-than-human beings and entities: pathogens, rivers, forests, plants, and animals all played a part in the struggle. [T]he Western idea of ‘nature’ is thus the key element that enables and conceals the true character of biopolitical warfare.”

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We invite submissions for one or more panels for the Law and 2023 LSA Annual Meeting that engage with how law interacts with and shapes more-than-human societies and that explore the interactions between law and agentic properties and/or normativities of non-humans, including biological, geological, and infrastructural entities. We want to create a space for interdisciplinary, theoretical, critical and speculative research that explores the intersection between law, ecology, and the inhumanities. We welcome papers that consider the role of law in creating and perpetuating environmental harms as well as the types of lawful relations or legalities that are necessary to build ecologically livable and just futures. These panels will be part of the Collaborative Research Network (CRN23) on International Law and Politics.  Please send abstracts to Julia Dehm (j.dehm@latrobe.edu.au) by Monday 31 October.

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Sign up for the 2024 Denver Multi-book launch! This year's master of ceremonies: Jothie Rajah

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Sign up for the 2024 Denver Multi-book launch! This year's master of ceremonies: Jothie Rajah

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Have you published a book in 2023-2024? Please write down the details below and we will invite you to take part in the Denver version of our annual book launch

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Call for papers for LSA Puerto Rico June 1-4 2023 is now open! Deadline: November 8.

Separate and Unequal

Between 1898 and 1901, the United States invented a new tradition of territorial expansionism with a corresponding constitutional doctrine to rule the Spanish ultramarine territories annexed during the War of 1898. Anchored on the prevailing racist ideologies of Anglo-American exceptionalism, the ensuing constitutional interpretation has been described as the “doctrine of territorial incorporation,” the “Third View,” the “Insular Cases doctrine” or the doctrine of “separate and unequal.” Central to this constitutional interpretation is the idea that the United States can selectively rule “unincorporated territories” as foreign territorial possessions that belong tobut are not a part of the United States.

For more than a century, the federal government has used this doctrine to develop contradictory laws and policies. Examples abound. Although Congress has enacted legislation extending birthright citizenship to persons born in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, other legislation and jurisprudence can treat these territories as foreign possessions in a domestic or constitutional sense. Presently, federal legislation ascribes a non-citizen nationality to persons born in American Samoa. Constitutional rights and federal laws can be withheld or applied differently in unincorporated territories.

The 2023 Law and Society Association’s meeting in Puerto Rico invites participants to experience a conference in a separate and unequal territory within the United States empire. Drawing on multiple disciplinary interpretations of the relationship between law and society, this meeting invites participants to reflect on the ways that the law normalizes discrimination and inequalities in unincorporated territories like Puerto Rico. We invite participants to reflect on how this year’s theme can become a lens to understand other relationships of power and visions of the relationship between law and society.

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Letter in support of Critical Race Theory in the US and beyond 

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Letter in support of Critical Race Theory in the US and beyond 

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We received the message below from a close collaborator for many years. Please consider signing...

As you know there has been an ongoing assault on Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the US on many fronts – not just speeches by the likes of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz but also bans on the teaching of CRT passed by state legislatures.  This has had a chilling effect in academia – as intended! A network of US-based critical legal scholars (Critical Legal Collective) in the US has come together in response. For more on CLC see: http://www.criticallegalcollective.org/

The attached letter of protest and solidarity was developed by a number of CRT and TWAIL scholars from around the world. Your support would be much appreciated – This link takes you to the letter and an embedded link for your signature if you would like to sign on:

https://docs.google.com/.../1MhyIHL.../edit

In addition, it would be great if you could circulate and solicit signatures from your networks.

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Looking to present a paper. Is there a possibility to have a collaborative panel on it?

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Looking to present a paper. Is there a possibility to have a collaborative panel on it?

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Title: "Reconceptualising Discrimination from the third world approaches to Law"

Author: Shahab Saqib

Keywords: Discrimination, human rights, decolonization, TWAIL, Domination.

There have been laborious arguments on what constitutes discrimination and what does not. Surprisingly, even though the theories presented by various scholars on this subject cover the victim's perspective, the third-world views are usually marginalised. A cultural and poverty-centric approach is needed to review how this concept could be understood differently if the world is changed around us.

Contact: shahab.saqib@kcl.ac.uk

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LSA 2022 in Lisbon is over 🥲.

Planning for LSA 2023 in San Juan PUERTO RICO begins!! 😀

Together, we are going to make Puerto Rico something very special! Please use this space to let CRN members know about your session plans, or seek collaborations, starting now!