Law, space, and time

Description

Where and when is law? Asking this question means engaging with the boundaries, orientations, perspectives, and scales of law. Setting law in space and time calls for a study of law in context.

In traditional legal theory, law is still imagined as neutral and universal medium detached from specific spatial and temporal contexts. Feminist theory has fundamentally challenged this perspective. Moreover, globalisation, mass-migration, and the plurality of legal orders invite us to rethink the relationship between law, space, and time and to analyse law as a phenomenon that interacts and intersects with a multiplicity of spatiotemporalities.

How does law relate to space and time? How can we conceptualise this link? How does paying attention to the spatiotemporality of law help us to understand current legal problems in times when order seems less certain? What is the impact of these approaches on feminist projects in law? This workshop aims to answer some of these questions.

A workshop program will be made available for download closer to the date.

About the speakers

Mariana Valverde is Professor of Criminology at the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto. Her main research interests are: urban law and governance (historically and in the present), and, at the theoretical level, Foucault, sexuality studies, theories of spatiotemporality, and actor-network theory. She is the author of six sole-authored books, six co-edited collections, about 50 refereed journal articles, and various research reports and popular publications.

Margaret Davies is Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor at Flinders Law School, Flinders University. Margaret was a foundation staff member of the Flinders Law School and has been a recipient of three Australian Research Council grants. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and the Australian Academy of Law and from 2010 to 2012 Margaret was a member of the Humanities and Creative Arts Panel of the ARC College of Experts.

Fleur Johns is Professor and Associate Dean (Research) at UNSW Law School, University of New South Wales. Fleur’s work has focused, in particular, on the intersection of formal and informal, public and private, and legal and non-legal regulatory structures and norms in cross-border finance, humanitarian aid, development, and military conflict. Currently, her primary area of research surrounds new modes of global association and governance, and new modes of perceiving global publics, emerging in the context of technological change.

Desmond Manderson is ARC Future Fellow and Professor at the ANU College of Law. He is an international leader in interdisciplinary scholarship in law and the humanities. He is the author of several books including From Mr Sin to Mr Big (1993); Songs Without Music: Aesthetic dimensions of law and justice (2000); Proximity, Levinas, and the Soul of Law (2006); and Kangaroo Courts and the Rule of Law—The legacy of modernism(2012). His work has led to essays, books, and lectures around the world in the fields of English literature, philosophy, ethics, history, cultural studies, music, human geography, and anthropology, as well as in law and legal theory.

Registration is essential for this event as places are capped at 25 only. Please register at this webform.

The venue for this event will be confirmed when class timetabling for second semester teaching is finalised. Registered participants will be notified of the venue when it is confirmed.

Workshop organisers are grateful for the support of the ANU Gender Institute.

Please direct inquiries about workshop content to Mareike Riedel and inquiries about workshop registration and logistics to Julia Wee.