The Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at The University of Texas School of Law extends a call for papers for the Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender and Human Rights. The $1,000 prize will be awarded to the winner of an interdisciplinary writing competition on international human rights and women. The prize is made possible by a donation from University of Texas linguistics professor Robert King in honor of the work of Audre Rapoport, who has spent many hours dedicated to the advancement of women in the United States and internationally, particularly on issues of reproductive health. It is also meant to further the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center’s mission to serve as a focal point for critical, interdisciplinary analysis and practice of human rights and social justice.

Submissions should be sent via email to HumanRights@law.utexas.edu by July 1, 2013. Please submit paper (without any identifying information), abstract, and full contact details (including university, degree, and anticipated/actual graduation date) in three separate documents, and include “Audre Rapoport Prize for Scholarship on Gender and Human Rights” in the subject line. The winner(s) will be notified by early September.

Click HERE fore more information.

From left to right:
Mr. Juha Christiansen, Finland, Director of PACTA (Peace Architecture and Conflict Transformation Alliance)
David Kennedy
Ms. Yoriko Kawaguchi, Member of the Japanese House of Councillors and Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Japan
Thai Minister of Tourism Mr. Weeresak Kowsurat

On April 24-25, IGLP Director David Kennedy traveled to Beijing as a Member of the Asian Peace and Reconciliation Council.   The APRC delegation met with senior Chinese foreign policy officials and experts to discuss prospects for the peaceful resolution of conflict issues in Asia and China’s role in promoting peace and reconciliation in the region.    Dr. Surakiart Sathirathai, APRC Chairman and Former Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Thailand,  Mr. Shaukat Aziz, APRC Vice-Chairman and Former Prime Minister of Pakistan,  Ms. Yoriko Kawaguchi, Member of the Japanese House of Councillors and Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Japan led the delegation.   The group met with the newly appointed Chinese Councilor of State,  Mr. Yang Jiechi and with Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs  Mr. Zhang Yesui to discuss China’s role in maintaining peace and to review China’s relations with neighboring countries.   The delegation was hosted by the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs, which also convened a private meeting with Chinese foreign policy experts and scholars, including Mr. Wang Yingfan, Former Vice Foreign Minister and Permanent Representative of China to the United Nations,  Mr. Peng Keyu, Vice President of the CPIFA and former  Chinese Ambassador to the United Nations and  Mr. Li Zhaoxing, member of the APRC, President of the CPIFA and former Chinese Foreign Minister.

In the government compound of Mr. Yang Jiechi, State Councilor of China
Ambassador Virasakdi Futrakul, Secretary General of the APRC
Mr. Weerasak Kowsurat, Former Minister of Sport and Tourism, Thailand
David Kennedy
Dr. Surakiart Sathirathai, Former Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Thailand. Chairman of APRC
Mr. Shaukat Aziz, Former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Vice-Chairman of APRC
Ms. Yoriko Kawaguchi, Member of the House of Councillors and Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Japan
Mr. Juha Christensen, Finland
Dr. Tej Bunnag, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Thailand

IGLP: The Workshop is an intensive residential program designed for doctoral and post-doctoral scholars and junior faculty.  Should you apply to the Workshop?  We hope this site will help future applicants get a better sense of who has attended previous Workshops and the kinds of ideas with which they have engaged.  We have interviewed several participants from the 2013 Workshop — new participants as well as returning alumni — whose scholarship represents a wide range of new thinking in the fields of comparative law, global governance and international law.  Read their responses and reflections in their own words below!

Noha Aboueldahab, Ph.D. Candidate, University College London (United Kingdom) | IGLP Workshop Participant 2013

Globally, the number of prosecutions of political leaders has increased significantly in the last two decades. Since the ousting of the Egyptian, Libyan, Tunisian and Yemeni leaders in 2011, efforts to prosecute them and other high-ranking government officials for crimes allegedly committed during their rule have increased drastically.

My research investigates what led to the decision to prosecute and not to prosecute political leaders in the Arab region. Through a comparative case study of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen, I seek to explain what triggers and drives decisions regarding prosecution in those countries by looking at the dynamics of the processes of prosecution that unfolded in each country.

I am also investigating what shapes the content and the extent of decisions regarding prosecution. Why is there an emphasis in the prosecutions on corruption and financial crimes over human rights crimes? Why are the human rights charges mostly limited to the period of the Arab uprisings? Why are certain individuals tried while others escape investigation and prosecution?

Kathryn Sikkink’s work on prosecutions has been an important inspiration for my research. Her book, The Justice Cascade – How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics (2011), provided an excellent grounding for the development of my research questions.  Sikkink’s extensive research on prosecutions in Latin America was extremely valuable during my field research in Egypt, Tunisia, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil in 2012. Her observations on the impact of ruptured vs. negotiated transitions on the likelihood of prosecutions in Latin America made me skeptical of their applicability to the case studies from the Arab region. As a result, I am looking into how semi-ruptured transitions impact decisions regarding prosecution in my case studies.

Sikkink and others have taken note that most scholarly research focuses on the outcome of the decision to prosecute and not to prosecute, without examining the reasons behind an emphasis on corruption and economic crimes trials over human rights trials in some countries. The Arab region serves as a strong case for analysis in this regard. I am currently tackling this challenging question on the duality of the charges and the selection of individuals investigated and prosecuted. Drawing from and building on Sikkink’s work, my research will explain the processes that lead to the outcome of the decision to prosecute and not to prosecute, but it also goes one step further to explain the shape that these decisions take as a result of the processes they emerge from and the contexts within which they unfold.

The 2013 IGLP Workshop in Doha produced some very interesting discussions on Arab and Islamic law, thanks to the participation of experts on these questions. I am eager to learn more about the sources of human rights and criminal law in the Gulf countries, particularly as they are areas of law that continue to evolve throughout the region. I am also keen to explore how the transitions in the ‘Arab Spring’ countries have impacted legal reform. I look forward to the continuation of these important debates at future IGLP Workshops.

Nadia Ahmad, Legal Fellow, Sustainable Development Strategies Group (United States) |  IGLP Workshop Participant 2013

In the transnational schema, the inability to turn on and/or keep on the lights has a domino effect with economic and geostrategic consequences. I explore how policymakers and government regulators involved with long distance energy projects have not adequately instituted laws and policies to ensure necessary electrical generation that has environmental, health and occupational safeguards. I hypothesize that existing regulations, practices, and norms for long distance energy transmission may be doomed because of complications with right-of-way and transmission line easements unless the status quo is revamped. I am seeking to examine how international legal theory and federalism doctrines can be channeled for improving laws for transmission line and right of way easements for further eco-efficiency. Governmental and corporate best practices that can be utilized to facilitate energy for the greater good is also of concern. This research presents an opportunity for engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices during the assessment and construction phases and beyond for energy projects by focusing on the planning stages and everything in between up to when disaster strikes.

I have been inspired and challenged by economist Peter Fox-Penner’s work, Smart Power, which delves into the transformations occurring within the energy industry. Fox-Penner argues that the utility industry must adapt to the climate imperative through a recognition of industry’s technology, cost characteristics, and ability to function as a sustainable business. Hari Osofsky, Ashira Ostrow, and Hannah Wiseman have also been sources of inspiration on their respective works regarding energy federal, transmission siting, and renewable energy governance. The realm of possibilities posed by Vivek Wadwa and Adil Najam, both of whose primary focus is outside of law, but who propose new ways of injecting scholarly interventions through the use of innovation, technology and effective management, is intriguing. Lakshman Guruswamy, who is among the pioneers for the concept of energy justice for peoples of the developing world, is another source of inspiration.

The creation of sustainable, reliable, and eco-efficient energy is a global imperative. While the dichotomy between the developed and developing world is rapidly accelerating, global powers have recognized the issue of international energy governance, but are perplexed or confounded on how to manage energy demands while mitigating climate concerns. IGLP helped me develop a theoretical understanding for framing my arguments concerning energy justice, corporate social responsibility, and energy regulation.

Suzanne Akila, Ph.D. Candidate, Australian National University | IGLP Workshop Participant 2013

After the IGLP Workshop, I discovered through the writing workshop that my topic is concerned with a much bigger question of global governance than I had originally anticipated.  Initially, I was focused on the dichotomy of law and non-law mechanisms used by States to intervene on behalf of their citizens experiencing human rights abuses by other States. However, through the conversations and feedback provided in the writing workshop, particularly from Karen Engle and David Kennedy, I was able to re-conceive my topic. At the broadest level, I am grappling with the question of how States resolve disputes in relation to the human rights of their citizens abroad and the role of law in that process. In particular, I am interested in how different actors influence the protection process and the values that drive decisions by States to intervene on behalf of their citizens abroad.

The work of Professor John Braithwaite is provoking me to see law, particularly international law, through a more complex lens. As a regulatory scholar, Braithwaite’s work captures law as one influence in a tapestry of influences affecting global problems. At its broadest, regulatory scholarship is the study of influence. The protection of citizens abroad often concerns issues of sovereignty, law, foreign relations, media, participation of civil society, human rights and citizenship. A traditional doctrinal analysis of the protection of citizens abroad could not capture this tapestry of influences. Applying a regulatory lens allows me to consider how these issues affect State decisions to intervene on behalf of a citizen abroad and the manner in which they choose to do so.

After attending the IGLP Workshop, I have been motivated to consider the methodological challenges of conducting empirical research in international law. The traditionally doctrinal focus of international law analysis presents limited opportunities for delving into the political and social aspects of the protection of citizens abroad. I am reading and researching the ways in which international scholars have used empirical techniques to examine and explain international law questions.

John Ansah, Lecturer, University of Cape Coast (Ghana) | IGLP Workshop Participant 2013

The big question concerning global governance I am grappling with is the act of skewing the mode of involvement of states in the process of taking decisions concerning global trade, environment and criminal justice using such criteria as economic growth expressed in Gross Domestic Product. In terms of trade, market forces make the notion of comparative advantage a source of disadvantage for countries whose level of participation in global governance is low. In terms of environment, it is obvious that the degree of CO2 emissions is unequal among countries. Those who produce less are the worst hit which is symptomatic of a global environmental irony. The irony is more glaring when the worst hit countries are unable to actively participate in decisions that could reverse the ramifications of devastating environmental changes – climate change. The form and process of adjudication as well as the caliber of people prosecuted and sentenced at the courts of justice and the criminal courts represent another form of global governance I am grappling with because they appear to question not only the principle of natural justice but also the principles of equality and perhaps appears to smack off power inequality in the global political praxis.

The person whose ideas are inspiring to me at the moment is Jeffrey Sachs and his idea of sustainable development. Sachs sees development as a matter of human decency. Sachs argues that sustainable development is when economic growth ensures the protection of the earth’s resources. Achieving this, according Sachs, will be a matter not only of technology, market incentives and appropriate regulations, but of embracing sustainable development as a common commitment to decency for all human beings today and the future. Sachs concludes that sustainable development requires the mobilization of new techniques that are guided by shared values. This idea is inspiring because it provides new and challenging perspectives to development and introduces new structures upon which development becomes commonly beneficial. Sachs’ idea expands the economic, social and human scopes of development and introduces the ethical perspective. His works creates the platform for new thinking and measurement of development.

Since the Workshop, I have been pursuing the relationship between law and development. I see such an idea as reflecting the notion that development needs will be met when laws are enacted. In one of our workshop discussions, the argument was that a necessary condition for development is law. Much as I felt that the argument was tenable, I also realized the argument about the relationship between law and development was an oversimplified one. In the discussion, I observed that the relationship between development and law is not simplistic and that the mere enactment of the law cannot make it a necessary condition for development. Rather, the relationship between law and society is a complex one. The potency of the law to ensure development depends on a number of variables. The variables include the content of the law, the level of enforcement and the value systems of the law enforcers. Having realized that these variables are useful in the argument concerning law and development, I thought I needed to examine further how they play out in the law-development nexus hence its pursuit.

Matej Avbelj, Assistant Professor of European Law, Graduate School of Government and European Studies, Kranj (Slovenia) | IGLP Workshop Participant 2013

My present research interests lie in the field of European integration, in particular in its capacity to react to the challenges of the economic crisis. It is clear that the actors of this crisis are not exclusively governmental, but increasingly private or semi-private actors with notable law-making capacity with a transnational reach that escapes the Member States and even the EU as such both as the source as well as the guardian of thus established transnational laws. This practical interest then translates into a more abstract research question querying how the European Union can best respond to the emergence of the so-called transnational law and cope with its challenges. This question ought to be resolved primarily on the conceptual level, for it challenges the received ideas of (positive) law, which are essentially statist, and in so doing announces a transition from modernity to post-modernity at the level of law too.

I am inspired by legal and legal philosophical literature that critically examines and deconstructs the present concepts of law and state lato sensu, but then in an intellectually constructive manner takes its critique to the transnational level with an aim of devising better theoretical solutions to the specific legal problems of our time. My research draws on the constitutional and legally pluralist paradigms; questioning the former in favor of the latter.

The IGLP Workshop exposed me to new theoretical and practical perspectives largely thanks to a fascinating body of fellows with rich and diverse experiences in a variety of scholarly and professional fields. It is by learning from them in formal and informal exchanges that some of my received ideas have been questioned, while others reinforced. While my research focus stays the same, the Workshop experience has made me shift some emphases and to approach several issues from a different and enriched point of view.

Lina Buchely, Graduate Assistant, Universidad de los Andes (Colombia) | IGLP Workshop Participant 2013

My research focuses on how domestic and international actors articulate transnational legal processes. In particular, I analyze how in the articulation of these transnational processes, legal and social meanings travel from domestic contexts to either the international sphere or different locales, using the idea of the Rule of Law as a space of bargain. I am interested in two aspects of this “transnational exchange” as a legal struggle. The first aspect relates to what is gained and what is lost in the exchange of legal and social meanings when they are mobilized beyond the space of the nation-state. The second aspect relates to the transformation of political and legal agendas when they travel to different local contexts and how they shape transnational agendas for social and legal mobilization. My research delves, as a result, into the actual content of the exchange among domestic and international actors in order to understand the conditions under which legal ideas leave local contexts to land in international and transnational levels and how in such journey political and legal agendas are transformed.

I am inspired by the work of Professors David Trubek, Chantal Thomas, Kerry Rittich, Helena Alviar and scholars associated with the network on Law and the New Developmental State (LANDS).

My main objective after the Workshop is to further investigate on the idea of bureaucratic activism. In a big way, discussions about the New Developmental State, and current state activism more generally, are related with the idea of alternative forms of law and power in which the state and the public are coming to shape the daily life of the people. While Old Legal Theory is paranoid about judicial activism and its problems for the liberal state, I propose in my research that we are witnessing today a conscious move towards a kind of “bureaucratic activism” as a way to capture the new manifestation of the public in the post-neoliberal era. In my understanding this “bureaucratic activism” is an essential component of the New Developmental State. Importantly, current “bureaucratic activism” is different to the old Weberian idea of bureaucracy as a way to rationally and strategically materialize the power of the state in citizens’ lives. What we have now, instead, is an escalation of a rich variety of street level bureaucracy, who is taking state decisions far away of the rational model of governance and the classical approach to the Rule of Law (although operating according to a state-like logic and under an aura of legalism).

Madelaine Chiam, Ph.D. Candidate and Sessional Academic, Melbourne Law School (Australia) | IGLP Workshop Participant 2013

My research is about what I call ‘war-talk’ – or public debate about war in liberal democracies – and the increasing centrality of international law within it. I am grappling with three main questions: what kinds of tasks do the users of legal language expect it to perform in war-talk? What promises do those users perceive law to offer? And what are the limits of legal language in war-talk? I am approaching these questions through an historical lens, by examining the war-talk of Australia during World War I, the Vietnam War and the 2003 Iraq War. I want to know how the tasks, promises and limits of law have been perceived differently during those three conflicts and I also explore the role that other forms of war-talk (such as the languages of justice or morality) played during those periods. Driving my research is a concern about the place of a technical language like law in debates about broad questions of humanity, and especially in state justifications for engaging in war.

There are two people whose work I am finding particularly useful at the moment. The first is James Boyd White. His use of the tools of literary analysis to perform a close reading of legal texts as texts rather than as law – notably in his book The Legal Imagination – has provided a grounding for my approach to the texts of war-talk, both legal and non-legal. I have also found White’s critiques of law as a technical language to be illuminating and am adapting some of these critiques to assist in my examination of war-talk. The second person whose work has inspired me recently is Sally Engle Merry. In my struggles with the question of how international law comes to have a place in the war-talk of civil society, Merry’s work on translating international human rights law to local contexts suggests some promising ways through. Her arguments on the process of remaking international norms into a local vernacular have inspired me to think differently about similar processes in my own research.

The Workshop produced two really great ‘Ah ha!’ moments for me. The first came from the feedback I received on my thesis chapter during the Writing Workshops. A couple of people pointed out that my analysis had missed how particular actors in the Australian Iraq War debate were, counter-intuitively, using legal language as resistance. This insight into some actors’ unexpected use of law as resistance helped me to reconcile the contradictions I had been wrestling with in the chapter and I intend to pursue the idea further in my thesis. The second moment came from the Human Rights and Social Justice stream, which in 2013 focused on what some have characterised as the ‘colonization’ of international human rights law by international criminal law. As a teacher of human rights law, I was challenged by these discussions, and am now conscious of finding ways to resist this disciplinary colonization in my own work.

Luwam Dirar, S.J.D. Candidate, Cornell School of Law (Eritrea) | IGLP Workshop Docent 2013

My interest in issues of global governance comes from my dissatisfaction, with the idea of neutrality of law and lack of parity of participation, of ‘global south’ in global economic order. In my current research project, I focus on EU-Africa trade relations and its impact on regional integration of Southern African states. Alternatively, I analyze how South-South relations, formed as an emancipation project, come under spasm when struggling to adjust to global demands for trade liberalization in the context of EU-Africa partnership agreements.

I am inspired and challenged by the works of several scholars both that are members of the core faculty of IGLP and others outside the network. Specifically, my SJD committee members serve as my core inspiration in my academic and intellectual growth and push me to think outside the box both theoretically and practically.

After attending the IGLP Workshop, I usually need a week or so to process the various intellectual discussions and inquires that occur throughout the Workshop. The inequality in knowledge production between ‘North’ and ‘South’; issues of global governance; monolithic global economic order and persistent inequalities among states are some of the questions that have come to my mind in the last IGLP Workshop. In conclusion, every IGLP workshop I have attended has pushed me to rethink my arguments and conceptions in order to proffer broader understanding of issues and thereby work towards alternative conceptualizations and thinking.

Vanja Hamzić, Lecturer, The City Law School, City University London (Bosnia and Herzegovina) | IGLP Workshop Docent 2013

My work, at the moment, revolves mostly around various historical and present-day approaches to Islamic law and ‘statecraft’ (siyāsa), including those of potential theoretical and political salience for rethinking the concepts such as ‘nation-state’, ‘international law’ and the evermore-pervasive ‘global law’. Mine is not an attempt at ‘reviving’ modernist or pre-colonial legal traditions of Muslim polities and philosophical schools; what I find both challenging and intriguing is how to respond to phenomena such as the Arab Spring from a critical legal perspective, which takes into account the systems of insurrectionary vernacular knowledge that have flourished – and still do – on either side of the imagined epistemological fault line between ‘East’ and ‘West’. Geopolitical contours are important, not least because of the obtruding legacy of an imperialist international law, but they can hardly account for the extraordinary resilience and diversity of legal thought and practice emerging – to use a well-known phrase – in the shadow of the (official or mainstream) law.

Professor Wael B. Hallaq, who teaches at Columbia University’s Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies, has recently published an excellent book, titled The Impossible State: Islam, Politics and Modernity’s Moral Predicament, in which he describes the idea and functions of the modern nation-state as inherently incompatible with that of the ‘Islamic state’. I find his work in general, and perhaps this book in particular, remarkably thought-provoking. Whilst Euro-American modernity, as a precursor and – in many ways – facilitator of ignominious colonial legal projects, has received a rich stream of scholarly reprisals, the body of thought and (political, nation-building) practice clumsily called ‘Islamic modernism’ is still critically underexplored.

I am delighted that the Workshop now has a brand-new stream, which focuses on the Arab and Islamic legal traditions. This could prove instrumental in a wide range of future scholarly collaborations, some of which I very much hope to be part of. I am particularly excited at the prospect of working with those IGLP alumni who research Islamic law, within and beyond Arab contexts.

Lucas Lixinski, Dean’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Faculty of Law, The University of New South Wales (Australia) | IGLP Workshop Docent 2013

I am currently engaged in two big questions. The first one has to do with how certain master narratives of the international legal order have an unseen impact on the operation of specialized fields of international law. The idea is that people unconsciously subscribe to one or another account of the international legal order, and work on the basis of a certain set of assumptions that goes unchallenged. By critically mapping how this occurs, we are in a better position to challenge these assumptions and their impact.

The second question focuses on expertise discourses and their role in shaping global governance in the heritage field. The field of heritage (both natural and cultural) has long relied on experts as the bridge between the law and communities, but experts have focused more on heritage as a goal worth protecting for its own sake, as opposed to heritage as a vehicle for identity or emancipation. This is the reason why, in my view, expert role needs to be challenged in this field.

I have recently discovered Annelise Riles’ “The Network Inside Out” (2001), which has been incredibly enlightening in trying to make sense of the dizzying number of ways and formats in which international governance operates. Also, at present I have been engaging quite substantially with the work of David Kennedy (on expertise) and Gunther Teubner and Martti Koskenniemi (on narratives of the international legal order).

IGLP: the Workshop has inspired me to pursue further work in background themes of international legal governance. After being involved for three years in this network, I can safely say that much of my current agenda is a product of discussions I have had with faculty and fellow participants at the Workshop.

Rebecca Monson, Lecturer and Convenor of the Law, ANU College of Law, The Australian National University (Australia) | IGLP Workshop Participant 2013

I work at the intersection of law, geography and anthropology and am broadly interested in the role of law in processes of colonization, imperialism and resistance; in particular the roles played by the law in relationships between persons and things. I am interested in the ways in which colonizers use law to transform the social world of the colonized; and also in the ways in which the same semantic and institutional structures may be turned against the colonizers by the colonized.

My doctoral dissertation (2012) examines the ways in which claims to land are negotiated and performed in two sites in Solomon Islands, and pays particular attention to innovations in customary land tenure and sociality arising in response to colonization, missionisation, and the commodification of land and other natural products. I am currently building on this work to examine local adaptation to climate change in a number of sites in Solomon Islands. While existing legal scholarship on climate change and displacement tends to locate solutions in international law and emphasise the responsibility of state actors in dealing with climate change, I am interested in the resilience of local communities and their use of ‘informal’, ‘customary’ and ‘local’ forms of land tenure and social ordering in climate change adaptation.

Sally Engle Merry’s work provided an important turning point in my legal education, as it not only critiques legal imperialism and highlights the use of law to colonise; but also the agency and creativity of people as they resist and subvert those processes. I am also immensely inspired by Sally’s generosity towards junior scholars. Epeli Hau’ofa’s famous essay, “Our Sea of Islands”, moves me to tears no matter how many times I read it, and is a touchstone for my teaching. At the moment I am excited by Sundhya Pahuja’s recent book, Decolonising International Law, and am particularly interested in her argument that the claim to permanent sovereignty over natural resources has been transformed into the protection of foreign investors (an argument that has important implications for contexts in the southwest Pacific). Ambreena Manji’s work, in particular her critiques of the global network of law and development scholars and practitioners, regularly prompts me to reconsider my own. Nicholas Blomley’s engaged writing and exposure of the ways in which law and space matter never fails to excite me. The work of ANU legal scholars Daniel Fitzpatrick, Sinclair Dinnen, John Braithwaite, Veronica Taylor and Hilary Charlesworth has influenced me in various ways, and I have been particularly inspired by their commitment to nurturing junior scholars.

I have been engaged with the law and development literature for some time, but due to my research focus, have only skirted around the edges of the critical scholarship on international law. The IGLP Workshop both reminded and inspired me to engage with this scholarship far more deeply than I have previously. I found the sessions on Science and Technology Studies particularly helpful as this is a field that I am only vaguely familiar with. I mentioned this literature to one of my doctoral students when I returned from Doha, and he is now finding it immensely useful to his work on colonial land reform in the Pacific.

Rose Sydney Parfitt, Assistant Professor of International Law, The American University in Cairo (United Kingdom) | IGLP Workshop Docent 2013

My approach to the issue of global governance is primarily connected to the history and historiography of international law. I am just about to start a three-year research project, at Melbourne Law School’s Institute for International La and the Humanities (IILAH), in which I am to examine the approach of the (Italian) fascist approach to international law in the inter-war period through the lens of international law, and to draw on my historical conclusions in order to examine global governance norms today. ‘Modern’ international law as conventionally understood, epitomised by the Genocide Convention, the Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration, Article 2(4) and so on, is usually understood as being everything that fascism is not. International law is viewed as having been constructed against fascism, precisely in order to prevent its re-emergence my means both of the provision of discipline (e.g. international human rights law) and of punishment (e.g. international criminal law). I aim to put this assumption under the spotlight. The provisional title of the project, which is to be undertaken at Melbourne Law Schools Institute of International Law and the Humanities, is: ‘We will give you another law and another king’ Fascism, Empire and International Community.

In terms of straight-up theory, the writers who have given me most in terms of inspiration as well as analytical tools are M. M. Bakhtin and V. N. Voloshinov. In terms of constant provocation and inspiration in the sphere of international legal history and theory, my hero is and remains Nathaniel Berman. If it were not for him, I would still be writing magazine features on celebrity psoriasis. In terms of a text that I came across recently, Mary Beard’s The Political Economy of Desire (Routledge, 2007) blew my mind. But my IGLP peers are also authoring amazing material. In particular, I am really looking forward to the publication of three doctoral theses: Luis Eslava’s Local Space, Global Life: The Everyday Operation of International Law and Development; Yoriko Otomo’s Unconditional Life: The Time and Technics of International Law and Charlotte (Charlie) Peevers’s Justifying Force: the Suez Crisis, the Iraq War and International Law (Oxford University Press, forthcoming, 2013).

I am at the moment trying to work out which kind of methodology would be most useful in terms of what I hope to achieve with the project outlined above. My aim is to find, or develop, an approach which will allow me to use works of art and literature alongside treaties and materials from the diplomatic archives. I therefore intend to pursue some of the questions raised by Sheila Jasanoff and more generally by the field of Science and Technology Studies – a field I had never even heard of until I began to attend IGLP: the Workshop. I also aim, over the next few years, to develop my understanding of the legal aspects of international finance, and will therefore be keeping the dilemmas and materials presented by Scott Newton and Leo Specht (‘International Financial Structures after the Crisis’) and by Christine Desan and Roy Kreitner (‘Legal Architecture of Montary Integration’) in mind. I am also very happy to be involved in the ‘Corporation in Global Society’ project, organised by Dan Danielson and Dennis Davis, to which I hope to contribute something on corporatism.

Karen Rhone, Doctoral Fellow, University of Chicago (United States of America) | IGLP Workshop Participant 2013

Right now, I am most concerned with how the law constitutes, and is constituted by, modes of economic morality. How can we understand these moralities? How are they strategically intertwined? Conversely, what makes them distinct? Why are some virtually uncontested and centrally understood as “good,” while others are deemed undesirable and problematic for governance? What are the mechanisms that do this work, e.g. rhetoric, linear hegemonic histories? What are the mechanisms that make some so successful, while others appear feeble, easily deconstructed and remade for the benefit of political expediency and maintaining asymmetrical power relationships, e.g. myths, fables? Why do academic investigations about governing the economy hesitate to frame issues as moral or normative, particularly when many economic issues clearly engage both? As well, what are the consequences if we fail to account for the work done by moral misunderstandings and manipulations in economy and governance at large, which include but are not limited to issues of faith, religion and secularism?

Given those large, sweeping questions, I am interested in – more specifically and empirically – how modes of morality are smuggled and strategically intertwined into rhetorics about economic development. More than this, how are these moralities used to make these rhetorics more palatable, enthralling even?

Many of the aforementioned questions provoked me to revisit Nietzsche’s “On the Genealogy of Morality” (1887). With it, I am allowing my ideas to be further challenged by Wael Hallaq’s “The Impossible State: Islam, Politics, and Modernity’s Moral Predicament” (2013). I remain inspired by the erudite Timothy Mitchell. Many of the questions and concerns raised at IGLP: The Workshop about how power is organized for the benefit of strategic governance led me back to Timothy Mitchell’s “Colonizing Egypt.” In that volume, he does a brilliant job of showing how colonizing projects ultimately infiltrated the minds of both the colonizer and the colonized under the guise of “objectivity.” More than that, he shows us how we arrive at – for me – moral imaginings and, as an extension of that, representations of “model behavior for the modern political subject.”

During the IGLP Workshop, it struck me that several participants were doing work on Islamic finance. Many of the queries about it envisage it as a moral answer to the inevitability of economic malfeasance in a capitalist economy. Many of these frames also had ties to the Global Financial Crisis. I have been working on Islamic economics and finance since 2006, and I have come to be less interested in how it compares to conventional finance and more interested in what its theories have to offer as a means for securing economic justice in a global, capitalist economy. To be sure, I left the Workshop wanting to pursue a more nuanced understanding of how representations of theories about moral economy are taken seriously in some contexts, but dismissed or co-opted in others, particularly for the benefit of both development discourses and “religious toleration.”

Osama Siddique, Associate Professor, Department of Law and Policy, Lahore University of Management Sciences (Pakistan) | IGLP Workshop Participant 2013

I am fascinated by the various widening gaps between ordinary citizens’ access to formal legal systems and reform designs and programs imagined by IFIs and national reform elites. It is this aspect of global governance through or in the name of ‘Rule of Law’ reforms that particularly intrigues me. I have theoretically and empirically explored this theme in the context of Pakistan specifically and South Asia generally in my forthcoming book ‘Pakistan’s Experience with Formal Law: An Alien Justice’ (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge 2013). I am now working toward broadening my scope of inquiry to include other post-colonial developing countries as well as to embrace additional qualitative and quantitative social science research techniques for gathering and analyzing evidence. I am not at all sure whether the aforementioned is a big idea or a weighty question but it is definitely one that not only attracts me intellectually but which also seems worth pursuing for the reason that to my mind it impacts so many rather than a select few.

I continue to be inspired by Sally Engle Merry’s inquiries as to the modes of popular justice and ordinary folks’ experiences in courts; Marc Galanter’s explorations of the interaction and contestations of the formal and informal justice systems in India; David Kennedy’s critiques of the new developmental ethos and its crowding out of the economic and the political through an exaltation of the legal; Duncan Kennedy’s insights into the formal legal system’s creation and perpetuation of various forms of hierarchy and domination; and Henry Steiner’s proposed dialectic for universal human rights and cultural relativism. At the same time, Dickens, Kafka, Orwell, Manto, Foucault, Marquez, Mahfouz, Mistry and many others constantly remind me – in their own inimitable ways – how central humans ought to remain in all our legal frameworks, fictions, frauds and fantasies. Not to forget also, their not too faint cautionary murmurings that only rarely have the common people been allowed to progress from the periphery of the real as well as the imagined in our political systems as well as our scholarly arenas.

I want to further understand and develop analytical frameworks for determining how struggling democracies strike a balance between a universal ‘Rule of Law’ and legal and normative diversity and pluralism; between a potentially equalizing and predictable and yet potentially exclusive and coercive formal legal system and more accessible and intelligible and yet potentially discriminatory societal dispute resolution mechanisms; between a centralizing and empowering constitutional ethos and a decentralizing and liberating federal structure; between a proactive, rights protecting and at times overreaching judiciary and a potential judicialization of politics that crowds out the space for genuine deliberative politics; and, between the false charms of so-called ‘modernity’ and the fatuous romance of so-called ‘tradition.’ I am also very interested in how struggling democracies ‘ought to’ strike such a balance. I am equally keen to determine the limits of scholarly legal discourse for exploring these and various other related ideas as well as to investigate other possible realms and genres for expression, including that of the fictional narrative. Therefore, my next project is as likely to be a legal-sociological commentary as a socio-legal novel. There is absolutely no guarantee, however, as to whether either will be even remotely worth reading.

Rene Urueña, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, Universidad de Los Andes (Colombia) |  IGLP Workshop Participant 2013

I’m trying to understand the ways in which the use of indicators, and other techniques of governance by information, transform global governance. To be sure, those producing the indicators defend them as platforms for enhancing good governance and the rule of law. And a growing body of critical scholarship reads indicators as implausible neoliberal simplifications, which reproduce the common sense dominant in a few institutions in the north and impose it on the developing world. However, indicators also seems to open new political spaces for contestation. They create a new form of global common sense, whose process of production is not yet defined. Is global power experienced differently exercised through of an indicator? Are there new sites of contestation that appear as this technology is used? How do social movements in the south (both grass-root and elite-based) react to the use of indicators? Do they always resist them as an imposition of the north, or is there a process of appropriation or strategic transformation for local needs?

I’m now beginning to work on Science and Technology Studies (especially Sheila Jasanoff and Bruno Latour for now).

I want to explore the patterns that explain the emergence of a particular “common sense” at a given time. Many of the exercises of power that we understand as global governance (such as indicators) seem to derive from an “expert consensus”, that is then applied to particular problems. My interest after IGLP: The Workshop is to unpack this expert consensus in the particular context of governance indicators: how does a common sense come into being?

Fabia Veçoso, Professor of Law, Faculdade de Direito do Sul de Minas (Brazil) | IGLP Workshop Participant 2013

Currently, I’m working on projects of regional integration in Latin America, trying to understand if International Law is still a powerful language to imagine the region. This effort includes recent ventures like UNASUR and MERCOSUR, as well as projects experienced in the region after the end of the WWII, such as ALADI, SELA, among others. The research question is related to a possible revival of international law in the region, as a language that may be used to articulate interests of some Latin American states. Addressing these questions may be tricky if one bases the research on traditional international law approaches. Textbooks from the field usually list the existing international organisations in Latin America, describing their institutional structures, their states parties, and the treaties celebrated, completing such an account with a reproduction of the text of the constitutive treaties. The analysis provides no explanation regarding the political context related to the creation of the organisations, neither relates new experiences to a broader scenery of regional integration in Latin America. The student must deal with them as a given.

The works by Liliana Obregón and Arnulf Lorca on the history of International Law in Latin America are decisive to my research. Jorge Squirol’s ideas on the law of Latin America are also inspiring. And, as always, Martti Koskenniemi’s writings on the history and theory of International Law.

The main question I want to pursue further after attending IGLP: the Workshop is to understand why, in Latin America, we keep renewing efforts of regional integration, with the creation and recreation of international organizations in a kind of “chaotic tradition”. Is this a process related to political reversals? Who is mobilizing the vocabulary of regionalism? In what context? For this end, conversations held with other workshop participants, also concerned about regionalism, but related to different parts of the globe, are fundamental in this attempt to understand Latin American experiences.

The Institute for Global Law and Policy and The Study of Capitalism, led by IGLP Advisory Council Member Christine Desan, are pleased to award research fellowships  for 2013.  The fellowships support research by current doctoral students who are pursuing innovative and interdisciplinary scholarship on capitalism, labor, and emerging approaches to political economy.

We are pleased to announce the following research fellowships for 2013:

The Regional Roots of Mexican Neoliberalism: Northern Businessmen and the Rise of Market Values
Derek Bentley, Ph.D. Candidate, Latin American History, University of Georgia, Athens

Derek Bentley’s research explores how, beginning in the 1970s, Mexican businessmen and their allies transformed conservative strategies for confronting the state, and how their efforts helped to legitimate free market ideas in Mexico. The dissertation focuses on northern Mexico, where conservative opposition to central authority was strongest. It examines alliances which formed among businessmen, the clergy, and civic organizations and the ways that these actors helped to reframe political-economic debates around a defense of the family, religious values, and traditional gender roles. Looking beyond the abrupt policy changes of the 1980s and 1990s, it explores how these novel challenges to the state’s role in shaping societal values nourished resistance to government economic intervention, and how this process laid the foundation for Mexican neo-liberalism.

The Work of Making Money: Labor, The Great Recoinage, and the Geography of Currency in Britain and its Empire, 1690-1730
Mara Caden, Ph.D. Candidate, History, Yale University

In the wake of the Glorious Revolution of 1688/89, the English state began a large-scale monetary project in 1696: the Great Recoinage, which entailed the collection of old coin and the mechanized production of new money in six locations across the nation. Petitions poured into the Treasury office from English towns, calling on the state to open mints and provide needed employment to the poor. By 1699, the Royal Mint at the Tower of London and the new country mints in Bristol, Exeter, Norwich, Chester and York had produced over 6.8 million pounds sterling in new silver money. My project gives a detailed picture of the nature of work and employment at the country mints and the Tower of London, asserts the importance of language of “employing the poor” in discussions about coinage, and explains the failure of efforts to erect mints in Ireland and Massachusetts during the same period. This study also addresses the legacies of the Great Recoinage, up to the Wood’s halfpence controversy in Ireland and the paper money controversies in the American colonies in the 1720s.

The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life
Eli Cook, Ph.D. Candidate, History of American Civilization Program, Harvard University

A research project on the political, intellectual and cultural history of statistical economic indicators in America, Eli Cook’s research uncovers the protracted struggle which took place in the nineteenth century over how economic life should be quantified and how American prosperity should be measured. By revealing the contested origins of statistics such as GDP, and by uncovering the alternative measures that ended up on the losing side of history, his work denaturalizes the seemingly objective nature of modern economic indicators while offering a fresh take on the rise of American capitalism.  In doing so, he seeks to explain how modern measures of market productivity and “economic growth” helped to transform the maximization of capitalist production and consumption into the main objective of American social policy, all the while turning monetary prices into the standard unit for measuring not only our goods but our planet, our society, our future and ourselves.

Dual Sovereigns in the Golden Twilight: Law, Land, and Sacrificial Labor in Ghana
Lauren Coyle, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago and  Exchange Scholar in the Departments of African and African American Studies and Anthropology, Harvard University

Lauren Coyle works in legal and political anthropology, historical ethnography, and critical theories of law, sacrifice, and sovereignty in capitalist modernity. She currently is writing a dissertation titled Dual Sovereigns in the Golden Twilight: Law, Land, and Sacrificial Labor in Ghana. This project, based on ongoing historical and ethnographic research, concerns transformations in searing contests over gold mining and the recently revitalized significance of the colonial legacy of dual legal systems – “customary” and state-based – for contemporary nationhood in Ghana. In particular, Coyle analyzes how this legal legacy interacts with “rule of law” governance logics and with various shadow sovereigns to frame signal conflicts over land, labor, gold, the sacred, and “sovereign wealth” in the nation’s neoliberal economy. More broadly, she examines the moral economies of sacrificial mining and environmental politics, as well as the mounting transparency and “upward adjustment” movements in Ghana and across the postcolonial world. Coyle also received an M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Her recent work has appeared in Telos, Transition, and Rethinking Marxism.

Feeding Slavery:  Scarcity, Subsistence, and the Political Economy of the British Caribbean, 1783-1833
Nicholas Crawford, Ph.D. Candidate, Harvard University

What if we made scarcity and human necessity central to our understanding of the political economies of slavery and empire? Historians of early modern colonial slavery have recognized that food scarcity and hunger were core components of plantation economies and the experience of the enslaved, especially in Caribbean sugar colonies. But scholars have not explained how the circulation of foodstuffs and other provisions were tied up in circuits of global commerce and imperial expansion in ways similar to—and no less significant than—trade in more profitable commodities, such as sugar, coffee, tobacco, and slaves. By examining the transnational history of provisioning in the British Caribbean from 1783 to 1833, Nicholas Crawford’s dissertation demonstrates the connections between the economic and coercive resources of the eighteenth and nineteenth-century British imperial state and the distribution of power between masters and slaves in West Indian societies. Most significantly, this project explores how practical and conceptual distinctions between being provided for and providing for oneself shaped the social and political terrain of the early modern Atlantic world.

Recognizing the Radical Potential of Economic Diversity in Food Security Projects
Leticia Garcia, Ph.D. Candidate, Geography Department, San Diego State University

As public health concerns regarding chronic disease intensify, many have expressed a growing interest in the connection between income and poor dietary habits in neighborhoods with a high occurrence of diabetes and obesity. This growing interest has led to the creation of missionary style food security projects that address hunger and malnutrition in low-income neighborhoods through market-based solutions. Within such projects, activists from privileged backgrounds charitably bring “good food” to those in need through economic incentives, such as vouchers for fresh produce. These projects hinge on depictions of low-income neighborhoods as lacking the economic resources and know-how necessary to make wise consumer choices. By framing low income neighborhoods from a deficit perspective, food security projects invisibilize the existence of informal economic activities, such as block parties, urban gardening and childcare shares, that have been traditionally excluded from market relations. These activities cultivate local knowledge and cultural practices that may pose some alternatives to existing capitalist relations, which produce uneven access to food resources in the first place. Why are the informal economic activities and the associated local knowledge of residents so undervalued? How might food security projects better address structural constraints in the food system through the cultural practices of residents? Drawing from current debates in feminist economic geography, Leticia Garcia discusses how various community organizations in North Central Philadelphia, a predominantly low-income African American region, work collaboratively to integrate economic development, food security and cultural empowerment through diverse and informal economic activities at the grassroots level. This research encourages proponents of missionary-style food security programs to interrogate their existing depictions of low-income neighborhoods in favor of more affirmative depictions that highlight radical spaces of collaboration, hope and possibility.

“Smart Cities” and the New Spatial Organizations of Accumulation
Kian Goh, Ph.D. Candidate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“Smart cities,” envisioned by IBM, Siemens, and Cisco, constitute a new trajectory of corporate urbanism after a period of anti-urbanness. In the 1960s and 70s, technology companies took flight from the cities and set up in suburban corporate parks, dreaming up the information systems that would enable further decentralization, prompting Melvin Webber to proclaim the “post-city age” in 1968. Now, global cities threaded by optical fiber and lit up by sensors, hotspots, and RFID tags herald the techno-urban revolution. “Smart cities” are lauded as emancipatory, a new “urban age” in which intelligent systems increase quality of life and alleviate ecological damage. Implying as they do new spaces of control and ownership, “smart cities” also suggest new frontiers in the privatization of urban space, a “virtual enclosures,” and new spaces of capital accumulation. But immediate profits are just the beginning, especially when considering the ultimate potential – the control of urban practice itself. What, then, will become of the “right to urban life,” as exhorted by Henri Lefebvre? This research project is a spatial and political economy study of the “smart city,” to document the real-world impacts of real-time intelligent urban systems. To what extent do “smart city” projects constitute new “virtual” and physical enclosures of urban public space in the globalized, capitalist city? And, as we increasingly submit to real-time information gathering and our means of decision-making become more and more intertwined with the networks of urban systems, how is urban “public” experience transformed?

The Tata Company and the Ethics of Capital in Modern India, 1870-1950
Mircea Raianu, Ph.D. Candidate, History, Harvard University

Mircea Raianu’s dissertation project is a study of the Tata Group, India’s largest and most powerful business, from its origins as a cosmopolitan mercantile firm in the age of empire to its position as a diversified industrial enterprise of national importance.  Based on archives in Pune, Delhi, and Mumbai, his research traces patterns of capital flows and infrastructural investments, focusing on the many philanthropic, scientific and educational institutions established by Tata across India.  His aim is to present Tata as a useful case study for addressing the contemporary ethical challenges for business within and beyond South Asia.

Manufacturing Advantage: the Federal Government, Diplomacy, and the Origins of American Industrialization, 1790-1840
Lindsay Schakenbach, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, Brown University

Lindsay Schakenbach’s research examines the role of the federal government in the development of manufacturing in early republican New England. While the standard narrative of industrialization in the United States emphasizes individual initiative and entrepreneurial innovation, this project will combine business papers with State Department and Congressional records to tell a story that reveals the rise of American manufacturing as dependent on favorable commercial policies, treaties, patent administration, and the settlement of shipping claims.  It will reveal economic development in the United States as less a product of laissez-faire policy than of the concerted efforts of prominent businessmen, politicians, and diplomats to shape economic development in specific and calculated ways.

Red Meat Republic: The Rise of the Cattle-Beef Complex, 1865-1905
Joshua Specht, Ph.D. Candidate, History, Harvard University

Joshua Specht’s dissertation, “Red Meat Republic: The Rise of the Cattle-Beef Complex, 1865-1905,” examines the consolidation of the American meatpacking and ranching industries. In the span of fifty years, fresh beef went from delicacy to daily fare. Yet the sort of industrialized animal husbandry that facilitated this transformation has had high costs, both human and environmental. In spite of these costs – the source of widespread criticism and public unease – this system has persisted in roughly the same shape for nearly a century. Specht argues this resilience depends on a set of widely accepted narratives that made centralized meatpacking appear natural and inevitable. Whether rooted in cultural discourses justifying native land expropriation or technological arguments rationalizing market concentration, particular narratives enabled the historical processes integral to the rise of big meatpacking. His dissertation critiques these narratives, offering an alternative account of industrial animal husbandry’s origins.

When Local Comes to Town:Food, Agriculture, and the Geography of Capitalism
Levi Van Sant, Ph.D. Candidate, Geography Department, University of Georgia

Levi Van Sant’s dissertation research examines the growth of local food systems in the South Carolina lowcountry — the coastal region surrounding the port city of Charleston. Proponents of local food systems in Charleston and beyond offer their model as one which can redress the social and ecological ills of global agribusiness. It is arguable, however, that the politicization of local food — as a process driven by urban society — represents a continued extension of the city’s power over rural futures. Through an historical and agro-ecological analysis of food system change, this project aims to develop a more full understanding of the geographies of capitalism.

The Purse of the People: Support for Taxation in the American States
Vanessa Williamson, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Government and Social Policy, Harvard University

Starting in the late 19th Century, states made the transition to more modern tax systems, often including an income tax. There is very wide variation in these modernized tax regimes; some states rely heavily on an income tax, while others primarily use sales taxes to finance government. This variation does not seem easily explained by the most obvious demographic or economic factors. Vanessa Williamson’s historical analysis, based on paired case studies, will examine the processes by which states chose their mix of taxes.  Understanding the historical context in which state tax policy developed will have important implications for a broader understanding of tax legitimacy in the United States. Williamson’s results could have additional implications for public policy; finding sources of revenue that are relatively immune from changing political tides would allow for vastly more effective planning. These results may also fit in a broader discussion about the social and political circumstances in which different tax tools are used to shape market outcomes.

The Costume of My Trade: The Politics of Work and Daily Life in Postwar Pittsburgh
Gabriel Winant, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, Yale University

Gabriel Winant’s project seeks to understand the transition in the labor market and the process of class formation, from the end of manufacturing through the development of the service sector, using Pittsburgh as a case study. Though Pittsburgh remains known as steel city, more people work for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center than ever did at U.S. Steel. Winant wants to examine how race, gender, and class intersected in this process of labor market shift to produce a particularly strange result: industrial maturity — even overcapacity — yielding declining wages and rising working hours. He hopes to argue that this perverse labor market outcome is the social basis of the phenomena  at the levels of high politics and political economy that are often described as neo-liberalism and financialization.

The deadline for applications to the IGLP Doha Grants Program is May 1, 2013.  See how to apply, below!

The Harvard Law School IGLP Doha Grants Program is generously supported by Santander Universities to support research by IGLP alumni and faculty pursuing innovative scholarship aiming to revitalize the Arab and Islamic traditions of law and governance and to explore issues of comparative law, global law, and policy in Qatar, the Middle East, and North African Region. The grants are intended to further the dialogue begun at IGLP: The Workshop through long-term research collaboration.  Our first grants were awarded in January at IGLP: The Workshop.

We are accepting applications for the following grants:

Individual grants:  to support research and writing by individual scholars.  Could include funding for travel, research support or publication and dissemination of results.  Maximum award: $3000.

Collaborative grants: to support research and writing by collaborative teams of IGLP alumni and/or faculty.  Grants could include funding for convening the team, supporting research by team members or dissemination of results.  Maximum award $5000.

Research project grants: to support sustained efforts by collaborative teams convened by  IGLP faculty members to develop and disseminate new thinking aiming to renew our understanding of the Arab and Islamic traditions and/or issues of comparative and global law or policy of relevance to Qatar and the MENA region.  Grants could include funding for conferences, workshops, translation or publication.  Maximum award: $25,000.

How to apply: Grant applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis by the IGLP Grants Committee.  The IGLP Doha Grants Program anticipates awarding a second series of grants in June 2013 at our annual Conference and Colloquium, sponsored by Santander Universities and Sovereign Bank. IGLP Workshop alumni are invited to apply for individual grants, collaborative grants and research project grants. The deadline for applications in the next round of funding is May 1, 2013.  Applications should include a statement of purpose outlining the proposed research, an indication of the activities to be supported, the research outcomes to be expected, a budget, the curriculum vitae for all proposed participants, and an indication of each participants’ prior affiliation with the IGLP, if any.  Applications will be reviewed after all of the necessary information has been received.  Please click here to submit your application.  If you have questions, please send an email to iglp@law.harvard.edu. 

New! Click here to download our Santander-IGLP Doha Grants Program brochure.

We are pleased to announce the following Research Project and Individual Grants awarded in January 2013:

RESEARCH PROJECT GRANTS

Contemporary Approaches to Arab and Islamic Law and Governance
Principal Investigator: Chantal Thomas, Professor of Law, Cornell Law School | IGLP Workshop Faculty

Chantal Thomas

This collaborative research project aims to canvass innovative trends in the fields of Arab and Islamic law by convening young scholars to assess the current state and future directions of comparative work in these fields. The project aims to develop an historical understanding of approaches to law and governance the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) that unites study of Islamic law and Arab legal traditions. The significance of law as a background, vernacular and stake in movements for legal reform, social and economic transformation in the region will provide a focal point. Across the MENA region, social change movements have framed their cause at least in part in the language of law, calling for the institution of the rule of law against corrupt and antidemocratic regimes. A contemporary legal understanding of the region should aspire to assess the contours of these vocabularies of resistance, and their relationship to structures of governance. As a sustained research project, this project will draw insight and support from existing collaborative projects already supported by IGLP at Harvard Law School, including Pro-Seminars on Heterodox Development and Transnational Labor Law and Social Policy. The project plans to collaborate with the Cornell Law School Clarke Initiative on Law and Development in the Middle East and North Africa. The grant will support a conference in New York City in Fall 2013, and will seek to bring together experts on comparative and international law, global governance, and development, modern Middle East studies, and Islamic legal thought. A preliminary meeting will be organized to coincide with the June 2013 IGLP Colloquium at Harvard Law School. The New York conference is planned to coincide with a meeting at the UN Development Programme Regional Bureau of Arab States. This office authored the 2004 Arab Human Development Report, which can be viewed as prescient in its unusual criticisms of the knowledge practices of Arab states. The meeting will bring together key actors at the UNDP with regional scholars, civil society, and UN officials. Proposed attendees include scholars from the American University in Cairo, George Mason University, Georgetown University, Harvard University, the University of Alexandria, and the University of Waikato, among others. The envisioned research outcomes include an edited volume and a casebook to be published in 2014 or 2015.

Law and the Arts in the Middle East Today
Principal Investigator: Amr Shalakany, Associate Professor of Law and Member at the Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies, The American University in Cairo (Egypt) | IGLP Workshop Faculty

Amr Shalakany

This collaborative research project seeks to map the doctrinal arrangements, institutional structures and market practices governing “Law and the Arts” in the Middle East today. The focus will be on the legal systems of Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Qatar, the UAE, and Iran, with comparative references to select East Asian, American and European jurisdictions, along with public international law and international economic and trade law. This project will continue thematic discussions begun at the Doha Workshop in January 2013 in the research stream on “Contemporary Approaches to Arab and Islamic Law and Governance” by focusing on the specific case study of law and the arts. This grant will support the first stages of what is envisioned, funding permitted, as a two-year project. The project will begin with a workshop at Brown University in Spring 2013 convening a core group of interested researchers. The workshop will develop research hypotheses and review relevant literature in preparation for an extended series of field consultations. Funding permitting, the core group plans to meet four times over the ensuing two years to share research results, review completed work, and fine-tune the project publications. Each meeting will also include select “guest speakers” as the meeting’s theme. The principal destinations for meetings and field work are Cairo, Alexandria, Ramallah, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Beirut, Istanbul, Doha and Abu-Dhabi, as well as Tehran if possible. The project will culminate with an edited volume (one part theory, the other a casebook on Law in the Middle East Today) in both Arabic and English.

INDIVIDUAL GRANTS

A Cautionary Approach to Biofuel Production in the Middle East: The Dilemma of Food Security and Energy Demands
Nadia Ahmad, Legal Fellow, Sustainable Development Strategies Group (United States) | IGLP Workshop Participant 2013

Nadia Ahmad seeks to research laws and policies related to the deployment of biofuels in the Middle East. The grant will support research on regulatory and governance mechanisms to analyze the consequences of biofuel production. In addition, the project will evaluate the Islamic perspective on sustainability and economic jurisprudence principles as it relates to energy development. The project aims to look at how agricultural demands for food cultivation may be undercut by ramped up biofuel production with a focus on Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, and Kuwait. Nadia Ahmad intends to prepare a law review article based on the outcome of her research.

An Analysis of ‘Shariah Clauses’ in the Constitutions of Muslim Majority Countries
Dawood Ahmed, JSD Candidate, University of Chicago (Pakistan) | IGLP Workshop Participant 2013

The project aims to contribute to scholarship on comparative constitutional design. It will initially undertake a comparative analysis of the constitutions of selected Muslim majority countries to analyze and understand the origins of sharia provisions, their evolution and relationship with human rights provisions in constitutions. This grant will support research and travel for this project.

The Role of the Judiciary in ‘Political Governance’ in Egypt
Muhammad Azeem, Ph.D. Candidate, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University (Canada and Pakistan) | IGLP Participant 2013

Muhammad Azeem’s dissertation focuses on the role of the judiciary in ‘political governance’ in Pakistan, and he plans to do a comparative study with Egypt, which has strong parallels with Pakistan in its relation to (U.S.) imperial interests, its long tradition of liberal Islam, its military position, and the recent popular upsurge that has led to the rise of the role of the judiciary in intra-elite struggles. This grant will fund travel to Egypt to collect relevant case-law, interview jurists, and interact with Egypt intellectuals who have been studying these issues. Muhammad Azeem plans to publish one or two articles, and will invite Egyptian scholars to Pakistan to develop further collaborative projects.

Avenues of Legal Reform of Transnational and International Labor Laws in the Gulf and Saudi Arabia
Cyra Choudhury, Associate Professor, Florida International University (United States) | IGLP Workshop Docent 2012

This grant will be used to study laws governing migrant labor in the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. Cyra Choudhury plans to travel to South Asia (India and Bangladesh) to study male and female laborers who work in the Middle East and return with the purpose of describing these experiences in order to inform a legal reform proposal. She plans to publish an article on the topic and follow up with a collaborative project involving a number of IGLP alumni and faculty in a long-term research collaboration.

Arab and Islamic Legal and International Legal Thought
Ignacio De La Rasilla Del Moral, Lecturer in Law, Brunel Law School (Brunel University)(Spain) | IGLP Workshop Participant 2011

This project aims to study the contribution of Arab and Islamic international legal thought to international law in Spain during the formative period for European international law in the period 1550-1700. The grant will support visits to the main Universities of Andalusia in Southern Spain (University of Granada, University of Cordoba and University of Seville) as well as to the Spanish National Library (Madrid) to provide coverage of the Arab and Islamic Traditions of International Law on the entries “Medieval International Law” and the “History of International Law : 1550-1700)” which have been commissioned by Oxford University Press – Oxford Bibliographies.

Study Space IV: Planning for Disaster: Place, Population, Culture, and the Environment
Luis Eslava, Senior Fellow, Melbourne Law Masters, Melbourne Law School (Australia and Colombia) | IGLP Workshop Docent 2012 and 2013

Luis Eslava will use this grant to travel to Istanbul to attend the workshop, “Study Space VI: Planning for Disaster: Place, Population, Culture, and the Environment,” which will be held from March 31 to April 6, 2013. Study Space VI is a joint project of the Center for the Comparative Study of Metropolitan Growth (Georgia State University College of Law) and Bahçesehir University (Istanbul, Turkey), in cooperation with the Payson Center for International Development (Tulane University Law School). During the workshop, Luis will conduct discussion groups and do fieldwork visits around Istanbul. As a result of his participation to the workshop, Luis will produce an original research paper that will be published in a special journal edition. The paper will focus on the challenges and opportunities experienced by urban residents, given Istanbul’s location within the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, yet being part of a nation that is in the process of integration to the European Union. The visit to Istanbul and the propoused research paper will further Luis’s ongoing research on the current international attention to local jurisdictions and the everyday operation of international law.

Towards an Interruptive History of Islamic Law
Vanja Hamzic, Lecturer in Law, City University London (Bosnia and Herzegovina) | IGLP Workshop Docent 2012 and 2013

The proposed research will critically assess the potentials and the limits of the two major streams of historiography of Islamic law in order to investigate many significant factors that have shaped the course and contents of Islamic Legal Tradition that have been overlooked, including those of (cyclical) globalization(s), vernacular knowledge systems, cultural revolutions, crude periodizations and modernist re-configurations. The research will allow for looking into historical narratives of Islamic law from various temporal and cultural contexts, thus challenging the mainstream, non-vernacular periodizations and generalizations of certain long-lasting historical phenomena. The project will rely on archival and ethnographic (legal anthropological) research, undertaken by the project author in Pakistan (2011) and Egypt (2012). The grant will support further archival research to be conducted in the United Kingdom (2013) and Egypt (2013), travel to relevant meetings and conferences, and translation (Arabic to English; Ottoman Turkish to English). The objectives will be to publish an article on “An Interruptive History of Islamic Law”; to present the research outcomes at one of IGLP’s major events (the Workshop, Conference, or Colloquium) as well as major conferences and events related to Islamic law; to produce a new module for students of Islamic law at City University London; and to organize an expert conference on the contemporary issues in the historiographic research of Islamic Law in Doha or London.

The History of International Activity in Palestine from the League of Nations until the Contemporary Era
Zinaida Miller, Ph.D. Candidate, Tufts University, and Fellow, IGLP (United States) | IGLP Docent 2012 and 2013

This grant will support research on both past and present international intervention in Palestine through archival research and present-day interviews. Zinaida Miller has conducted field interviews with international aid workers in the occupied Palestinian territories, and plans to return to conduct follow-up interviews. In addition, she plans to travel to Geneva in the spring of 2013 to research the Permanent Mandates Commissions Archives to explore the interwar discourses of intervention with regard to Palestine. The ultimate outcome would be to support dissertation research and publication of one or two law review articles.

We are proud of our collaboration with Santander Universities, who have supported IGLP and the IGLP Workshop since 2010. Santander Universities  joined the Institute as a Leading Sponsor in 2010. Santander Universities was created by Banco Santander on the conviction that the best way of contributing to growth and economic and social process is by backing the higher education and research system. Banco Santander’s commitment to progress finds its expression in the Santander Universities Global Division, whose activities form the backbone of the bank’s social action and enable it to maintain a stable alliance with the academic world in Latin America, China, USA, Spain, Morocco, Portugal, United Kingdom, and Russia. Santander Universities Global Division, a team of more than 1,900 professionals distributed across 14 countries, coordinates and manages Banco Santander’s commitment to higher education. Between 1996 and 2008, Banco Santander channeled €600 million into sponsorship of academic, research and technological projects in support of higher education. There are now 800 academic institutions receiving support from Banco Santander for the development of academics initiatives including Harvard University and The Institute for Global Law and Policy. Santander Universities is the Lead Sponsor of our June Conference, Colloquium, and Pro-Seminars at Harvard.

The IGLP is pleased to announce updates about two current Santander-IGLP Doha Grant recipients!

For more information about the Santander-IGLP Doha Grants Program, including how to apply, please click here.  The deadline for applications for the next round of grants is May 1, 2013.  Please spread the word!

Nadia Ahmad, Legal Fellow, Sustainable Development Strategies Group (United States), has had her article, “‘Turn on the Lights’: Sustainable Energy Investment and Regulatory Policy: Charting the Hydrokinetic Path in Pakistan” accepted for publication in the Washington and Lee University Journal of Energy, Climate, and the Environment. The article is on SSRN for comment and review: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2238458.

Additionally, Ahmad had a short piece on oil and gas law updates in Missouri that was published in the 2013 Oil and Gas Law Survey edition of the Texas Wesleyan Law Review. She presented at Texas Wesleyan Law School in Fort Worth, Texas, on the topic of Complications with Transmission Line Easements and is completing an article related to the presentation entitled, “Reconceptualizing Energy Easements,” which she will submit to law reviews for publication in August 2013.

She is also finalizing a piece this month entitled, “Meta-Regulation for Corporate Sustainability Reporting,” which she had presented at George Washington University in December.

The Santander-IGLP Doha Grant is supporting her research on regulatory and governance mechanisms to analyze the consequences of biofuel production. Her research also evaluates the Islamic perspective on sustainability and economic jurisprudence principles as it relates to energy development. The project aims to look at how agricultural demands for food cultivation may be undercut by ramped up biofuel production with a focus on Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, and Kuwait. Ahmad plans to submit her article for publication by September 1, 2013.

Dawood Ahmed, JSD Candidate, University of Chicago (Pakistan), has had his article “Defending Weak States Against the ‘Unwilling or Unable’ Doctrine of Self-Defense” accepted for publication in the Journal of International Law and International Relations (Toronto).  The article is available on SSRN: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2239817

He has also published his article “Let’s Give Pakistan’s Blasphemy Law a Break” in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs: http://journal.georgetown.edu/2013/03/20/lets-give-pakistans-blasphemy-law-a-break-by-dawood-i-ahmed/

Ahmed’s Doha Grant is supporting research related to his project “An Analysis of ‘Shariah Clauses’ in the Constitutions of Muslim Majority Countries,” which aims to contribute to scholarship on comparative constitutional design.  It will initially undertake a comparative analysis of the constitutions of selected Muslim majority countries to analyze and understand the origins of sharia provisions, their evolution and relationship with human rights provisions in constitutions.

Both Nadia Ahmad and Dawood Ahmed participated in IGLP’s Workshop in Doha in January 2013, and will be speaking on panels in IGLP’s 2013 Conference at Harvard Law School this June.  The IGLP is pleased to support their ongoing research. Congratulations Nadia Ahmad and Dawood Ahmed!

 Click here to download our Santander-IGLP Doha Grants Program brochure.

The IGLP Doha Grants Program is generously sponsored by Santander.  

The IGLP at Harvard Law School is pleased to announce a series of competitive research grants as part of its ongoing research project on liquidity in the global economy, financial services regulation in emerging markets and financial inclusion. The research initiative is supported by the generosity of IGLP’s sponsor VISA, Inc.

Graduate students, post-doctoral scholars and junior faculty are encouraged to apply. A first set of awards for summer and fall of 2013 will be made on May 1, 2013. The deadline for applications for this round of funding is April 19, 2013. Priority will be given to proposals which aim to generate written work suitable for submission for publication during the summer or autumn of 2013 on the following themes:

•  Public Policy and financial inclusion. Award eligible research may consider: the range of institutional and political choices available for the provision of financial services to the unbanked; the most appropriate regulatory environment and explicit public policies to encourage equitable and effective financial inclusion, the relationship between financial inclusion and social mobility, equality and economic development. We are particularly interested in comparative assessment of alternative regulatory and business strategies for micro-finances, mobile-based banking, informal banking and women-focused delivery models, with reference to their economic, political and ethical implications.

• Regulation and the structure of financial services in emerging markets. Award eligible research may consider alternative paths to economic development encouraged by alternative regulatory and institutional environments, including such issues as the relationship between formal and informal banking models, “national champions” and state-sponsored enterprises, and the impact of various regulatory models on small and medium sized enterprises, gender equality and poverty reduction.

Award recipients who complete their papers prior to October 15, 2013 will be eligible for consideration to present their work at a special IGLP/VISA workshop to be held in early 2014, with travel funded by IGLP and VISA, Inc.

We anticipate making both three and six month awards ($5,000-$10,000) for research to be completed during the summer and summer/fall of 2013. Award applicants will also be eligible to submit their completed work for possible publication as an IGLP working paper.

Interested students and scholars should provide a c.v., statement of interest, relevant research or professional experience and a short abstract (maximum 750 words) describing the research they intend to carry out. Applications may be made directly by email to iglp@law.harvard.edu.

The IGLP was pleased to  co-sponsoring the Workshop on Political Economy in conjunction with the Program on the Study of Capitalism. On March 25, 2013  Mary Poovey (NYU Literature) and Kevin Brine (Former Board Member, Stanford C. Bernstein & Co. Inc) discussed “The Foundations of Finance”  in WCC 3016 at Harvard Law School from 4:00-6:00 pm. Professor Aush Kapadia (Social Studies, Harvard University) and David Barber (HLS ’13) will commented on the work.

John Haskell, IGLP affiliated scholar and Assistant Professor at the Mississippi College School of Law, is pleased to announce the recently established International and Comparative Law Center.

The International and Comparative Law Center, established in 2011 at MC Law, broadly examines transnational legal regulation in relation to economics, politics, religion, and society. The research agenda of the Center is aimed to foster an interdisciplinary, research-based forum for innovative collaboration and heterodox scholarship by emerging and established scholars from diverse geographic, ideological, and disciplinary perspectives to address the growing challenges facing contemporary global governance. The Center works with the International Law Student Association to organize regular events and support research projects, and also assists in coordinating MC Law’s Summer Abroad program. The Center offers a speaker series  with  lectures from a field of emerging and prominent scholars that address the growing challenges facing contemporary global regulation. The Seminar aspires to provide a forum for scholars to present innovative research into the historic and current state of institutional stakes in transnational law, and to formulate alternative models to governance.

The Zvi Meitar Center for Advanced Legal Studies at the Faculty of Law, Tel-Aviv University, Israel is pleased to announce a call for papers for “Law in a Changing World: A Workshop for Young Scholars” on October 30-31, 2013. 

Event Description: 
The modern world is changing at a rapid pace, and the law is in constant reactive mode to accommodate these changes. How should the law adapt to the changing reality? Which fields of law are most affected by globalization? What are the impacts of technological developments on different fields of law? What are the obligations of nations and corporations in an era of global interdependence?

The Zvi Meitar Center for Advanced Legal Studies at the Faculty of Law, Tel-Aviv University, invites PhD candidates and junior scholars from universities and research institutions throughout the world to contribute and advance current thinking about the future of the law in a transnational world. We welcome contributions mainly on the following themes: Law, Science and Technology; Transnational Law and Regional Legal Arrangements; Obligations of Nations in an Era of Global Interdependence; Changing Reality and the Law; and Science, Ethics and Democracy.

Click HERE for more information

IGLP Alumni and Doctoral Candidate at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, Bonolo Dinokopila, is pleased to share his recent article, “The Justiciability of Socio-Economic Rights in Botswana”  in the Journal of African Law.

Abstract:

The judicial enforcement of socio-economic rights remains a challenge in many countries. This is generally attributable to the inadequacy of a particular country’s legal framework, in particular its constitutional framework. Given the importance of judicial remedies in litigation, in particular public interest litigation, this article considers possibilities for the judicial enforcement of socio-economic rights in Botswana. It discusses the institutional, legal and constitutional framework for the promotion, protection and fulfillment of socio-economic rights in the country. It also tackles the issue of whether the judicial enforcement of socio-economic rights is easily achievable when those rights are not constitutionally entrenched. The article also considers whether the absence of directive principles of state policy within Botswana’s Constitution is a hindrance to the judicial enforcement of socio-economic rights in Botswana. Within that context, it highlights the possible means of judicial enforcement of socio-economic rights in Botswana.

Click HERE to read more

Ayça Çubukçu (London School of Economics and Political Science) and IGLP affiliated scholar is pleased to share the published article “Responsibility to Protect: Libya and the Problem of Transnational Solidarity” in the Journal of Human Rights.

Abstract:

The first part of this article examines some of the legal, ethical, and political dimensions of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine by engaging with cosmopolitan proposals for its application to Libya before the international military action to enforce it was initiated in March 2011. It presents reflections of a historical kind on state sovereignty, international community, and the political theology of humanitarian intervention while assessing the nature of the moral imperative underpinning cosmopolitan assertions of responsibility to save lives in Libya. Considering the official recognition of the Transitional National Council by the enforcers of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine as the sole legitimate authority on Libyan territory, the second part of the article situates this act of recognition within a history of colonial practices that include the legal mechanism of “the protectorate.” It also discusses the prominence of imperial affects in the Responsibility to Protect doctrine. The third part of the article evaluates disagreements among certain anti-imperialist commentators over the desirability of a military intervention in Libya in order to reflect on the politics of transnational solidarity from an angle that may present itself as an alternative to the Responsibility to Protect framework. While calling for a renewed critique of violence, the article concludes with an examination of telling difficulties that afflict attempts to differentiate acts of “foreign intervention” from acts of “transnational solidarity.”

Click HERE to read more!

Christine Schwobel, IGLP alumni and Lecturer in Law at the University of Liverpool is please to share her recent publication, “The Comfort of International Criminal Law”

Abstract: 

This paper examines the changing relationship between the disciplines of international criminal law (ICL) and international human rights law; I particularly focus on the associations of the former with comfort and the latter with discomfort. It appears that a shift may be taking place in that ICL is being refashioned from a field enforcing human rights law to one which has assumed an entirely independent status. Indeed, ICL appears to be crowding out international human rights law. The inquiry begins with the question whether ICL is becoming the preferred discursive framework for practitioners, academics, and politicians. A contemporary desire for certainty over contention, action over discourse, and simplicity over complexity is revealed; in short, a preference for comfort over discomfort. The second half of the paper is dedicated to highlighting some of the concerns attached to this preference and suggesting possible techniques for addressing these concerns. Employing the idea of ‘discomfort’, I refer to the relevance of (1) Michel Foucault’s Ethics of Discomfort, (2) Judith Butler’s idea of the Language of Discomfort, and (3) draw on Franz Kafka’s literary exploration of the Comfort in Discomfort. The ideas culminate in a call for relearning the comfort in discomfort of contention, discourse and complexity in international law.

Click HERE to read the article

Dilini Pathirana, IGLP Workshop alumni and member of the Faculty of Law at the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka, is pleased to share a research paper that will be presented at KLIBEL 2013 (Kuala Lumpur International Business, Economics and Law Conference. This paper has also been selected to be published in the International Journal of Business, Economics, and Law.

Abstract: 

The discourse on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) developed a groundbreaking idea that business corporations should be seen as socio-economic institutions which owed responsibilities towards the society in which they operate. This reformative notion has resulted in making capitalism more responsive in terms of environment and society excluding place excessive emphasis on maximizing profit and economic prosperity alone. Consequently, the identification of business corporations as mere economic instruments has become an obsolete phenomenon, while giving rise to the understanding that business corporations are corporate citizens who discharge responsibilities in terms of economy, environment and social and thereby also promote the sustainable development. Therefore, it is evident that the discourse on Corporate Social Responsibility has resulted in restructuring corporate activities particularly, including corporate purposes and preferences and the interaction between society and business corporation to a greater extent. Although the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility has resulted in formulating such a remarkable socio-economic modification, Corporate Social Responsibility has been frequently understood as a pure realm of voluntary action without sufficiently ascertaining its institutional value in the context of structuring the interaction between society and business corporations. While keeping this lacuna as the focal point, this paper challenges the contemporary understanding of Corporate Social Responsibility as a mere realm of voluntary action. Simultaneously, the paper highlights the significance of comprehending Corporate Social Responsibility as an institution which brings the public interest into the private domain of the corporation. Particularly, the paper presents the emerging frameworks for institutionalizing CSR on a global level, while examining the significance of adopting Corporate Social Responsibility measures in order to legitimate corporate activities. In the conclusion the paper highlights the importance of understanding Corporate Social Responsibility as an intuition as opposed to a mere realm of voluntary action in the context of structuring the interaction between the society and business corporations in a way which ensures the sustainable economic and social development.

Click HERE to Download

Check back regularly for updates to the 2013 Conference panel schedule.

~More information coming soon~

IGLP: The Conference: New Directions in Global Thought: IGLP at Five  |  June 3-4, 2013  |  Harvard Law School

Do you have questions about IGLP: The Conference?  Check out our Frequently Asked Questions below.   

Information for Conference Participants

Q.         Who should complete a Conference Acceptance Form, and by what date? 

A.           All presenters, panelists and panel organizers must complete an Acceptance Form by April 15, 2013.  If we do not receive your Acceptance Form by April 15, 2013, your place in the   Conference will not be guaranteed.  If you are attending The Conference as a participant and not a presenter, panelist, or organizer, you do not need to fill out an Acceptance Form.                                                      

Q.         Who is participating in the Conference?

A.         We expect a wide range of scholars from across the world pursuing innovative research on questions of global law and policy.

Q.         How will the Conference program be organized?

A.         The Program will combine plenary discussions with specialized panels.  The Panels have been designed to allow participants to engage deeply with one another on specific topics and to showcase their research.  Panels will have between three (3) and six (6) panelists.  To ensure the opportunity for collective discussion and engagement with new work, we ask each panelist to limit his or her opening remarks introducing research to 10 minutes.

Each panelist will have submitted an abstract of his or her paper which will be available in advance.  Abstracts of 250 words or less should be submitted in the Acceptance Form due April 15, 2013.  In the interests of a diverse and well-balanced program, we have limited each participant to one panel.

A Moderator will introduce the panel, host the discussion and manage the time. The IGLP will assign a moderator to a panel, unless the panel organizer has already identified one for the panel.

Q.         When will we find out what panel we are on?

A.         The final program will be distributed on May 1, 2013.  

Many of the panels have been proposed and organized by IGLP friends and alumni.  In such cases, the person who proposed the panel—the “panel organizer”—will serve as the primary contact for the panel.  Some panel organizers may participate as panelists or moderators—others may prefer simply to enjoy the discussion they have initiated!

We will make every effort to ensure that all participants are assigned to panels permitting the best opportunity for collective discussion and feedback on their research.  If you have been invited to participate by someone organizing a panel, we will make every effort to ensure that you are assigned to that panel.  We may also add participants to panels where good projects have been submitted by scholars who were not on the panel organizer’s original list.

Q.         If I proposed a panel and I find that some participants cannot come, may I invite new people?  May I change the title or description of the panel I    proposed?

A.          We will try to accommodate all such requests received in writing at iglp@law.harvard.edu prior to May 1, 2013.  Thereafter, we will not be able to change program assignments.

Q.         Where is the Conference Schedule?

A.         The Schedule will be available on May 1, 2013.  The IGLP will send an email to participants once information becomes available on the Conference webpage.

Q.         Will the IGLP distribute papers at the Conference?

A.         No.  The IGLP will not be distributing papers at the Conference. We will ask each panel presenter for a brief abstract that will be made available electronically.

Panel presenters may also post papers on the IGLP Conference website, which will not be password-protected.  Posted papers will be available publicly and will remain on the IGLP website through the end of the Conference.  If you would like the IGLP to post your paper, please upload it to your Acceptance Form due by April 15, or send it to iglp@law.harvard.edu by May 1, 2013.

If you wish to distribute your paper or any handouts at the Conference, it is your responsibility to provide the material to your panelists and/or attendees at the Conference.

Q.          I want to use PowerPoint for my presentation; can I request audio/visual for my panel?

A.          Due to the cost of audio/visual equipment and the need to accommodate multiple sessions simultaneously, the IGLP won’t be able to accommodate every request for media services. You are free to bring your own posters or visual aids to your presentation.  If you must request a/v, please do so in writing by sending an email to iglp@law.harvard.edu prior to May 1, 2013.

Q:        I am not presenting a paper and am not on a panel, but still want to attend The Conference as a participant, what should I do? 

A.        If you are not presenting a paper and are not on a panel, you may attend The Conference as a participant. Registration for participants will be on site at Harvard Law School on June 3, 2013. To attend The Conference, please bring the registration fees, USD $50 for students and USD $100 for faculty, in either cash or check upon your arrival. More information regarding registration will be made available closer to the event dates.

Q:      I am interested in serving as a moderator on a panel.  What should I do?

A.       We are so glad you asked!  The IGLP seeks moderators to introduce panelists and ensure that they adhere to time limits.  This is an exciting opportunity to get involved in our growing program!  Moderators may attend the Conference and their Conference registration fees will be waived. To apply to be a moderator, please click here to complete our application form.

Travel & Accommodations

Q.         Will the IGLP fund my travel to the Conference?

A.         No.  All participants are responsible for funding their own travel to the Conference.  Upon request, we will provide a formal acceptance letter indicating that you have been invited to present at the Conference to support your application for funding from your home institution or other sources.

Q.         Does the IGLP have any funds for travel?

A.         Yes.  The IGLP offers a limited number of Travel Grants for young scholars unable to secure funding from their home university. If you wish to be considered for an IGLP Travel Grant, you must complete an IGLP Travel Grant application and provide evidence of the unavailability of funds from your home university.  Such evidence could include an official email or letter from your university that states that your request for funding has been denied.  We strongly encourage you to apply by April 5, 2013.  Travel Grants will be awarded on a first come-first served basis.  Click here to access the application.

If you do receive a Travel Grant, you will be sent instructions about how to arrange for your flights through the Harvard Travel Office.  Please DO NOT Contact the Travel Office until you receive instructions from the IGLP and are notified that you have received a travel grant.

Q.         What if I need a Visa to enter the United States?

A.         It is your responsibility to ensure that you hold a proper visa.  Obtaining a visa can be a lengthy process, so you should apply as soon as it is reasonably practical.  As an accepted participant to IGLP: The Conference, you can use either the B-1 visa or visa waiver program for your visit.  Please let us know as soon as possible if your home country will require a letter of invitation from the IGLP before they issue you a B-1 visa.  Information about Visas and the type you are eligible for can be found on the U.S. State Department website at http://travel.state.gov/visa/visa_1750.html. Additional information can be found on the Harvard University International Office website at http://www.hio.harvard.edu/.

Q.         Health Care?

A.         It is your responsibility to ensure that you have adequate health care coverage for your stay in the United States.

Q.         What accommodations will be available?

A.         On-campus accommodations in the Harvard Law School graduate housing are subject to availability and will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.  One room with a shared bath costs USD$50.00/night for students and USD$100.00/night for faculty and will be available for three nights only, from the evening of June 2 until the morning of June 5, 2013.  Fees will be collected upon check-in on June 2 and June 3, 2013.  You must indicate your need for on-campus accommodations on your Conference Acceptance Form, which must be completed by April 15, 2013.  If you do not indicate your need for on-campus accommodations on your Acceptance Form by April 15, we cannot reserve campus housing for you.

If you need other accommodations, it is your responsibility to find and pay for them.  You will find a list of Harvard Square accommodations here: http://www.harvardsquare.com/accommodations.aspx.  In addition, some people have had luck on Airbnb as well as on Craigslist. Please note that due to commencement activities at Harvard and elsewhere, prices will be high and availability may be limited. Please plan accordingly.

Q.         Will there be meals available?

A.         Meals will be provided for all participants. Please indicate on your Acceptance Form whether you have any dietary restrictions.

Q.         What is the Conference Registration Fee?

A.         Registration fees are USD$100 for faculty and USD$50 for students. Registration fees are waived for all panelists, organizers, and moderators.  Registration fees will be collected at the Conference Registration on June 2 and June 3, 2013.

Other Conference Policies

Accessibility.  The IGLP is committed to making all reasonable arrangements that will allow IGLP’s members to participate in Conference events. All rooms at the Conference are wheelchair accessible. Special services, equipment, or accommodations should be requested in advance of the Conference. Please submit your request when you submit your acceptance form, or by email to iglp@law.harvard.edu. Participants who require special onsite assistance during the Conference should request such assistance from personnel at registration.

Lost Registration Badge. Your registration badge must be worn at all times during the Conference. Access to the Conference facilities may not be granted to those without proper credentials.

Modification of the Conference Program. IGLP reserves the right to modify the program, which is published as an indication only.

Photography & Filming. Professional photographs, audio, and video may be captured during the Conference. By participating in the conference, participants grant IGLP and its representatives permission to photograph and/or record them at the Conference.

Cancellation. In the event the Conference cannot be held or is postponed due to events beyond the control of IGLP, IGLP shall not be liable to participants for any damages, costs, or losses incurred, such as transportation costs, accommodations costs, or financial losses.

Questions or Concerns?

E-mail us at iglp@law.harvard.edu.

The IGLP is able to offer a limited number of travel grants for panelists and presenters at the 2013 Conference. The April 5, 2013 deadline for travel grants has passed.

Please note that the IGLP cannot guarantee that the travel grant will cover the entire cost of your travel. 

Travel FAQ 

Q:  Does the IGLP have any funds for travel?

A:  Yes. The IGLP offers a limited number of Travel Grants for young scholars unable to secure funding from their home university. If you wish to be considered for an IGLP Travel Grant, you must complete an IGLP Travel Grant application and provide evidence that you were unable to secure funds from your home university or other institution. Such evidence could include an official email or letter from your university that states that your request for funding has been denied. We strongly encourage you to apply by April 5, 2013. Travel Grants will be awarded on a first come-first served basis.

Q. Why do you ask that I first seek travel funding from my home university?

A:  The Institute for Global Law and Policy is pleased to be able to offer travel funding support for some conference participants. However, we do not have the resources to offer support to every participant. Therefore we are asking ALL conference panelists and presenters to first seek travel funding from their home university or institution. Those of you who are able to secure outside funding will help ensure that we will be able to offer some funding to those who could not.

Q: Will an IGLP Travel Grant cover all of my travel expenses to: The Conference?

A:  Depending on where you are travelling from an IGLP Travel Grant may not cover the full cost of your flights. Travel Grants for the Conference will only be applied to tickets purchased through Harvard Travel Office. It is your responsibility to pay for the remaining balance.

Q:  How do I book my flights if I am awarded a travel grant?

A:  If you are awarded a Travel Grant, you will be sent instructions about how to arrange for your flights through the Harvard Travel Office. The IGLP will only be able to apply the funds directly to the cost of a ticket purchased through Harvard Travel. You may not use an IGLP Travel Grant to reimburse you for any ticket you purchase. Please DO NOT Contact the Travel Office until you have been have been awarded a grant

Q: Can I purchase my own ticket and get reimbursed from the IGLP?

A: We will not offer reimbursements for any participants who purchase their own tickets. If an exception needs to be made, please note that Harvard Financial Office rules would not allow us to issue any payments until after the Conference is over.

Q: What if I need to change my flight after it has been purchased?

A:  If you make any changes to your travel itinerary, it is your responsibility to pay for any fees that are included in that action.

Q:  What if I need a Visa to enter the United States?

A:  It is your responsibility to ensure that you hold a proper visa. Obtaining a visa can be a lengthy process, so you should apply as soon as it is reasonably practical. As an accepted participant to IGLP: The Conference, you can use either the B-1 visa or visa waiver program for your visit. Please let us know as soon as possible if your home country will require a letter of invitation from the IGLP before they issue you a B-1 visa. Information about Visas and the type you are eligible for can be found on the U.S. State Department website at http://travel.state.gov/visa/visa_1750.html. Additional information can be found on the Harvard University International Office website at http://www.hio.harvard.edu/.

Q:  What if I want to arrive before June 2nd or Depart after June 5th?

A: We hope that many conference participants will spend time sightseeing in the area either before or after the Conference. The Law and Society Association’s Annual Meeting will also be held in Boston from May 30-June 2 and we know many IGLP panelists will be attending this conference as well. If you are planning on a longer stay in the Boston area please know that the IGLP Conference housing on the HLS campus will only be available from June 2nd to the morning of June 5th. There will be no campus housing available to us either before or after these dates. You will need to make your own lodging arrangements at your own expense. If this is the case, we ask that you please do your own research about places to stay or visit.

Have a question that we did not answer? E-mail us at iglp@law.harvard.edu

The IGLP is pleased to announce it will be co-sponsoring the Unbound Spring Panel: “The International Public Interest Legal Establishment: What Public? Whose Interest?” on Thursday March 14th at 7:30 pm in Austin East.  Vasuki Nesiah (NYU),  Zinaida Miller (Tufts University), and Aminu Gamawa (SJD Candidate Harvard Law School) will be panelists. We invite you to join the panelists for a discussion that asks difficult questions about public interest legal work in an international context. We aim to develop a critical perspective that will open up new ways of thinking about the way public interest legal work is organized and practiced. Dinner will be provided.

The IGLP is pleased to announce up to two residential Fellowships for the 2013-2014 academic year (September 1, 2013 – June 30, 2014). 

Inaugurated in 2006, the IGLP Fellowship Program offers full or partial student and post-doctoral fellowship support to a small number of scholars pursuing research in areas related to the IGLP’s ongoing work.  Through the Fellowship Program the IGLP seeks to encourage the development of progressive and alternative ideas about international law, society and political economy by supporting original, provocative and challenging intellectual work that might not otherwise find support from mainstream institutional resources and which contributes to the emergence of new approaches to international law and global social justice.

The Institute welcomes all interested graduate and post graduate scholars who are currently pursuing research in the areas of global law, economic policy, and social justice, to apply for our 2013-2014 residential Fellowships.  We are particularly interested in candidates from emerging markets and developing economies.  Current Harvard Law School graduate students and alumni of IGLP: The Workshop are especially encouraged to apply.

While in residence in Cambridge, IGLP Fellows will have the opportunity to pursue and develop their own research as outlined in their proposal.  In addition the IGLP Fellows will devote up to half of their time to assisting the IGLP Faculty Director in the planning and organizing of the Institute’s academic programs and initiatives, including the IGLP’s January Workshop in Doha and June Colloquium at Harvard.

The 2013-2014 Fellows will be awarded a competitive stipend commensurate with experience.  The Fellowship also includes an office at the Institute, a computer and printer, access to the Law School’s Libraries as well as other libraries at the University.    With the permission of the teaching faculty member, IGLP Fellows may audit Law School courses on a non-credit basis. There is no tuition charge for auditing courses.

Interested candidates should submit:

• A resume or CV that clearly shows degrees received and current position, as well as your current academic affiliation
• A 2-3 page description of your current research project.
• Two letters of recommendation, including a letter of support from your doctoral or other academic supervisor.

All Materials should be submitted electronically to iglp@law.harvard.edu .  The deadline for submissions is April 30, 2013.