Law and Social Theory

CALL FOR PAPERS

8^th International Roundtable for the Semiotics of Law (IRSL 2009)

(2-5 December 2009)

TRANSPARENCY, CONTROL AND POWER:

ISSUES IN LEGAL SEMIOTICS

Convenor: Vijay K. Bhatia

Conference Venue: Department of English, City University of Hong Kong .

The overall aim of a State is to protect the social order in which the individual liberty of the citizen is a major concern. As a consequence the State should guarantee simultaneously and paradoxically a high level of individual freedom and an order in which such freedom is made possible and guaranteed.

The 8^th International Roundtables for the Semiotics of Law invites contributors to reflect on the growing importance of Transparency, Control and Power in our international community and how these main ideas have been examined over the years. Contributors may choose to explore semiotic, rhetorical, pragmatic, sociolinguistic, psychological, philosophical and/or visual perspectives on Transparency, Control and Power.

Papers which examine the ways ‘actors’ in our society (legislators, politicians, activists, movie producers, singers, painters, graffiti artists, photographers etc.) have provoked public discourse to confront Transparency, Control and Power are particularly welcome.

The Roundtable will provide an opportunity for a general discussion of issues in the semiotics of law as well as open discussions to increase our knowledge about our Transparency, Control and Power with respect to Legal Semiotics..

In the interest of a cohesive roundtable, prospective participants are requested to adhere to the theme as outlined in the call for papers.

Proposals in either English or French (max 300 words) should be sent by e-mail by the 1^st of May 2009 to Vijay K. Bhatia at enbhatia@cityu.edu.hk and to Anne Wagner at valwagnerfr@yahoo.com

Selected papers will be published in a special annual issue of the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law (http://www.springer.com/law/journal/11196)…

Law and Society Association of Australia & New Zealand Annual Conference
W(h)ither Human Rights?

University of Sydney, 10-12 December 2008

The 25th Annual Law and Society Australia and New Zealand Conference to be held at the University of Sydney from 10 to 12 December 2008.

10 December 2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

To coincide with this occasion, LSAANZ is calling for papers that interrogate the place and progress of human rights post-Declaration. Continue Reading »

The Alan Watson Foundation (www.alanwatson.org), a nonprofit scholarly organization hosted by the University of Belgrade School of Law, is inviting academics who are focusing on the correlation between law and society to submit their papers for the Alan Watson Foundation Electronic Paper Collection. There is no limitation to the length of papers. For more information please contact AWF Project Coordinators at alan.watson@ius.bg.ac.yu.

Dear all,

My name is Kenneth Veitch and I am a Lecturer in Law at the University of Sussex in the UK. I am also a member of the Law & Society Association and the UK Socio-Legal Studies Association. I recently joined the Law & Social Theory CRN and thought I would post this message as a way of introducing myself and my research interests.

Until recently, my research interests fell within the area of medical/health care law. I published a book at the end of 2007 - ‘The Jurisdiction of Medical Law’ - which seeks to develop an interdisciplinary and critical approach to the subject. Drawing on work in the areas of  social, political, and legal theory, and moral philosophy, the book attempts to understand the origins and development of medical law as a subject in the UK while also charting how its nature has been influenced by, and relates to, broader political and sociological transformations.

Having finished this project, my intention now is to study issues such
as social exclusion / marginalisation. I am especially interested in
the themes of social and economic insecurity / precariousness and in
exploring the structural roots of these contemporary conditions. I am
interested in (and draw on) the work of, amongst others, Michel
Foucault, Zygmunt Bauman, Pierre Bourdieu, and Loic Wacquant. My plan is to try to use their work as a point of departure for exploring the ways in which law and legal mechanisms and institutions may be
involved in structuring / governing the (political, economic etc.)
processes that produce feelings of insecurity and social
marginalisation / destitution. I should add that my interests extend to legal and social theory, and the sociology of law, generally, and last year I set up and convened a final year undergraduate course called ’Legal Theory’ at Sussex.

If there is any interest within the Law & Social Theory CRN in these research themes / authors, it would be great to hear from you. More generally, I’d be very keen to hear about the research interests / projects of the other participants in this CRN.

Regards,

Kenneth

LAW AND JUSTICE IN THE RISK SOCIETY

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 15 FEBRUARY 2008

Submission forms: English, French, Spanish

The 2008 annual meeting of the ISA Research Committee on Sociology of Law (RCSL) will be devoted to “Law and Justice in a Risk Society” and held from Wednesday 9 July afternoon, to Saturday 12 July 2008, on the invitation of the Associazione di Studi su Diritto e Società, the Sezione di Sociologia del diritto dell’Associazione Italiana di Sociologia, the University of Milano, the University of Milano-Bicocca, the University of Insubria-Como and the Centro Nazionale di Prevenzione e Difesa Sociale (CNPDS).

Besides the panels organized by the RCSL Working Groups, the following Workshops, specifically connected with the topic of the conference, will take place: Ecology; Commons; European Integration; Market Economies, Enterprises and Work; Health and Assistance; Identities and Religion; Media and the Internet; Legal Systems and their Risks; War and
Terrorism; Law and Family; Law and Biomedical Technologies; Law and Anthropology; Security and Social Control.

Individual contributions on socio-legal topics will also be welcomed and discussed in ad hoc sessions of “Research in Progress“.

The languages of the meeting will be English, French and Spanish. Registration fees will include a social dinner, conference meals and coffee-breaks and will be as follows: 100 Euro - Students and ‘C country’ participants; 170 Euro - RCSL Members; 200 Euro: non-members.

Information on registration details, including the participation form and all other relevant data (hotel and other facilities) will follow and will be published on the Meeting website.

“THE PROMISE OF LEGAL SEMIOTICS”

CALL FOR PAPERS

Venue: Université du Littoral, Côte d’Opale (France), 1-4 July 2008

Conference Overview: We are at a significant juncture in the progress of law and semiotics, with the first publication of the bilingual international journal of Law and semiotics / Revue internationale de droit et semiotique twenty years ago in February 1988. The 2008 Round Table for the Semiotics of Law aims to investigate the work of those who have theorised law and semiotics in ways that have helped to change, improve our understanding of the law, its institutions, traditions and processes; and to further the growth of the study of semiotics in the law. It is hoped that this Round Table will provide opportunities to reflect on the key concepts of the past, so as to better understand what the future holds for the study of law and semiotics.

The Round Table will feature a keynote address by Professor Bernard Jackson, Alliance Professor of Modern Jewish Studies and one of the early pioneers of law and semiotics. Professor Jackson is the author of Semiotics and Legal Theory (1985), Law, Fact and Narrative Coherence (1988); Making Sense in Law (1995); Making Sense in Jurisprudence (1996) and Studies in the Semiotics of Biblical Law (2000).

Topics to be explored include the central debates in legal semiotics and the progress/key developments in the last decade; how we acquire knowledge in the field including the role of different research ‘approaches’; method, methodology and epistemology in legal semiotics; the relevant contribution of different theoretical traditions in legal semiotics; new approaches to studying legal texts and legal discourse in different legal cultures; the promises and limits of deconstructionism in studying the law, legal cultures; the political and/or ideological uses of particular approaches in legal semiotics.

Deadline:  February 15^th Abstracts in either English or French (max. 300 words) should be sent to IRSL2008@univ-littoral.fr  Decisions will be made by early April.

Selected conference papers will be published in a special annual issue of the international journal of Law and semiotics / Revue international de droit et semiotique (http://www.springer.com)

For more details, see http://www.univ-littoral.fr/irsl2008 or contact sofiecacciaguidi@eircom.net

FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT

The 2008 annual meeting of the Research Committee on Sociology of Law will be held from Wednesday, July 9, through Saturday, July 12, 2008, hosted jointly by the University of Milano, the University of Milano-Bicocca, the University of Como-Insubria and Milan’s Centro Nazionale di Prevenzione e Difesa Sociale, which has assisted a number of relevant activities of the RCSL over the past decades and will celebrate its 60th anniversary precisely in 2008. The theme of the conference will be “LAW AND JUSTICE IN THE RISK SOCIETY“.

The “Associazione di Studi su Diritto e Società” and the “Sezione di Sociologia del Diritto dell’Associazione Italiana di Sociologia” will contribute to the scientific programme of the event and, jointly with the Oñati Institute, will sponsor a special meeting of the international and national associations in the field of law and society.

The venues of the conference will be Milano (Wednesday afternoon to Friday morning) and Como (Saturday morning), with the opportunity to join a social excursion on Saturday afternoon to Como Lake and some of its renowned natural and historical settings.

The programme of the event, which has already been approved in principle by the organizing committee, will respect the traditional structure of RCSL annual congresses, i.e. Plenaries and Sessions of the ten Research Committee’s Working Groups: “Gender and Law”, “Socio-Legal Methodology”, “Legal Profession”, “Comparative Legal Cultures”, “Human Rights”, “Law and Politics”, “Urban Problems”, “Social and Legal Systems”,”Law and Popular Culture”, “European Integration”.

A number of Workshops specifically connected with main topic of the conference has also been planned. Among them:
“Ecology” (including a more specific session on the renaissance of the “Commons” question), “Media and the Internet”, “Market Economies, Enterprises and Work”, “War, Terrorism and Social Control”, “Health and Assistance”, “Identities and Religion”, “Legal Systems and their Risks”.

Individual contributions will also be welcomed and discussed in ad hoc sessions of “Research in Progress“.

A formal call for papers, as well as more detailed information on the programme, will be sent around quite soon and will appear in the Fall issue of the RCSL Newsletter.

Enquires, proposals for new themes or ad-hoc panels should be addressed to Vincenzo Ferrari or Luigi Cominelli.

The Law & Social Theory blog can now be translated into a number of languages other than English, just go down to the bottom of the right-hand side-bar, and choose your language.

CALL FOR PAPERS and PANELS

LSAANZ  Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand
2007 International Conference 29-30 November
Markings: sites of analysis, discipline, interrogation

Public forum: evening of 28 November

Hosted by the University of Melbourne Law School, its Centre for Media and Communications Law and Institute for International Law and the Humanities

Papers and panels within the full range of concerns of the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand are welcome for the 24th Australasian law and society conference. The conference theme examines questions of disciplinary, geographic, figurative and jurisdictional markings, and the organisers particularly seek contributions engaging with these issues:

• Sociolegal markings and boundaries
• Marking of borders: observing, policing
• Experimental markings: investigation and writing
• Methods and the markings of research
• Marking jurisdiction: sovereign and subject
• Textual markings: analysis of legal, political, social texts

PROPOSALS FOR PAPERS AND PANELS ARE DUE 21 SEPTEMBER 2007

For more details contact the conference organisers