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LTRG Workshop Series 2011: 30 May - 1 June

The fourth Legal Theory Research Group Workshop Series took place from 30 May - 1 June in Old College, University of Edinburgh. The workshops involved PhD students and academics from around the world and provided a fertile ground for discussion. 


Videos with the full content of the workshops


Ideological Post-positivism
Speaker: Professor Karen Petroski (St. Louis University), Dr Cormac Mac Amhlaigh (University of Edinburgh)
Description: Discussant: Professor Karen Petroski (St. Louis University) / Respondent: Dr Cormac Mac Amhlaigh (University of Edinburgh) Prof. Petroski compares the work of the late Neil MacCormick and Bruno Latour, mapping similarities and differences and fleshing out to what extent both of them seem to commit to what Norberto Bobbio called 'Ideological post-positivism'.
Date: 1/6/2011
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Methodological Post-postitivism
Speaker: Professor Giorgio Pino (University of Palermo), Professor Gianluigi Palombella (University of Parma)
Description: Discussant: Professor Giorgio Pino (University of Palermo) / Respondent: Professor Gianluigi Palombella (University of Parma) Prof. Pino discusses the relationship between positivism and the separability thesis, and to what extent post-positivism represents an attempt to go beyond the actual scholarship.
Date: 1/6/2011
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Theoretical Post-positivism
Speaker: Prof. Thomas Bustamante (Federal Univesity of Minas Gerais), Dr Claudio Michelon (University of Edinburgh)
Description: Discussant: Prof. Thomas Bustamante (Federal Univesity of Minas Gerais) / Respondent: Dr Claudio Michelon (University of Edinburgh) Prof. Bustamante seeks to defend in his talk Neil MacCormick's post-positivistic turn, by considering the arguments brought against it and replying.
Date: 1/6/2011
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Professor Zenon Bankowski's Valedictory Lecture
Speaker: Professor Zenon Bankowski
Description: To mark the occasion of his retirement after 37 years at Edinburgh Law School, Professor Zenon Bankowski delivers his Valedictory Lecture 'The long goodbye: life in and out of the Law'.
Date: 1/6/2011
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Prisoners Voting Rights - A Debate
Speaker: Moderator: Prof. Antony Duff (University of Stirling)
Description: Moderator: Prof. Antony Duff (University of Stirling) Proposing: Professor Richard Sparks (University of Edinburgh), Professor Jonathan Simon (University of Berkely, California) Opposing: Mr James Chalmers (University of Edinburgh), Mr Jamie Bennett (University of Edinburgh and Govenor of HM Prison Morton Hall) A full-fledged debate on prisoners voting rights, moderated by Professor Antony Duff. A lively discussion cutting across law, politics and morality which reaches well beyond the academic environment.
Date: 31/5/2011
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The Form of Constitutional Adjudication in the EU
Speaker: Professor Gareth Davies (University of Amsterdam), Professor Michelle Everson (Birkbeck, University of London)
Description: Discussant: Professor Gareth Davies (University of Amsterdam) Respondent: Professor Michelle Everson (Birkbeck, University of London)
Date: 31/5/2011
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The Mythological Legitimacy of Constitutional Adjudication
Speaker: Mr Ross Carrick (University of Oxford), Professor Michelle Everson (Birkbeck, University of London)
Description: Discussant: Mr Ross Carrick (University of Oxford) / Respondent: Professor Michelle Everson (Birkbeck, University of London)
Date: 31/5/2011
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A Deliberative Theory of Adjudication for the Court of Justice?
Speaker: Professor Neil Walker (University of Edinburgh), Professor Michelle Everson (Birkbeck, University of London)
Description: Discussant: Professor Neil Walker (University of Edinburgh) / Respondent: Professor Michelle Everson (Birkbeck, University of London)
Date: 31/5/2011
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The Grammar of Customary Law
Speaker: Professor Jeremy Webber
Description: Professor Jeremy Webber, from The University of Victoria, Australia, presents an original and comprehensive account of law and its relationship with social practices.
Date: 30/5/2011
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Workshop Series in Legal Theory 2011

Monday 30 May to Wednesday 1 June 2011

Raeburn Room, Old College, Edinburgh

OVERVIEW

The Edinburgh University School of Law is proud of its lively graduate research community. The Legal Theory Research Group is an important part of this community and seeks to promote excellence in legal research through several academic activities throughout the year. To pursue its aim of disseminating knowledge and fostering ties within the academic community both domestically and internationally, the Group has organised the 2011 Workshop Series in Legal Theory, a unique three-day event which has run successfully for the past three years, attracting participants from all around the world. This fourth Workshop Series will open with a special introductory session, on 30 May, by Jeremy Webber, Professor of Law and Society at the University of Victoria. Professor Webber will speak on "The Grammar of Customary Law". Then, starting from the afternoon of 30 May, four PhD-run workshops will take place until 1 June, paving an exciting path between the MacCormick lectures of the week before by Prof. Joseph Weiler (Joseph Straus Professor of Law at New York University) and Professor Zenon Bankowski (Professor of Legal Theory at the University of Edinburgh)’s Valedictory Lecture, which takes place on the afternoon of 1 June. The four workshops reflect the broad interests of Edinburgh’s PhD students, focusing on issues such as the theory behind elements of the Scottish legal system, criminological theories, adjudication in the context of the European Union and the epistemological paradigm of modern law. An outline of the Workshop Series is provided below. Thanks to the generosity of the School of Law and the central Robert’s Fund, this year’s workshops will be video recorded, allowing us to further broaden the audience of our research activities. 

PROGRAMME

Monday, 30 May 2011 – 10:30 am

Special Introductory Session

Professor Jeremy Webber: "The Grammar of Customary Law"

In this round table event, featuring academics and PhD students, Professor Webber will present his general theory of the relationship between law and society. His construction starts from theories rooted in philosophical pragmatism (Fuller; Postema), demonstrates their shortcomings, and then builds in an awareness of the different conceptual languages within which different legal orders grapple with social practices. Ultimately, Professor Webber’s approach melds pragmatist insights with an approach that owes more to hermeneutics and Wittgenstein.


Monday, 30 May 2011 – 2pm

"Equity as a Source of Law and Legal Decisions in Scotland"

Organiser: Stephen Thomson

Session One: Equity as a Source of Law and Legal Decisions in Scotland

This session will explore to what extent equity has been a formative influence in the growth, development and maturation of Scots law and the Scottish legal order. It will also consider the role that equity has played, and continues to play, in adjudication by courts in Scotland. This discussion will enable us to identify and explore areas in which the Scottish experience of equity can illuminate useful and justifiable roles for equity in a modern legal system.

Session Two: Equity, Law and Morality

This session will explore the relationship between equity, law and morality. It is intended to explore some of the more theoretical aspects of equity, from both legal and non-legal perspectives.

 

Tuesday, 31st May 2011 – 9am

"Punishment and Citizenship"

Organisers: Gemma Flynn, You Yi

Session One: (9am-10.30am) The Democratisation of Penal Policy: What's the Problem?

Discussant: Katrina Morrison (Edinburgh)

The creation of the devolved Scottish Parliament in 1999 thrust criminal justice policy-making into an open and politicised forum, away from the hidden and protected world of policy made "behind closed doors" which existed previously. This paper examines this transition and asks what place the democratic process has, or should have, in the formation of penal policy.

Session Two: (11am-1pm) Prisoners' Voting Rights - A Debate

Proposing: Prof Richard Sparks (Edinburgh), Prof Jonathan Simon (Berkeley, California).

Opposing: Mr James Chalmers (Edinburgh), Mr Jamie Bennett (Edinburgh and Governor of HM Prison Morton Hall).

Chair and commentator: Prof Antony Duff (Stirling/Edinburgh/Minnesota).

 

Tuesday, 31st May 2011 – 2pm

“Constitutional Adjudication in the European Union”

Organisers: Ross Carrick, Tom Flynn

Session One: The Form of Constitutional Adjudication in the EU

Session Two: The Legitimacy of Constitutional Adjudication

Session Three: A Democratic Theory of Adjudication?

The focus of this workshop will be Michelle Everson and Julia Eisner’s book: The Making of a European Constitution: Judges and Law Beyond Constitutive Power. The principal concern in this book is the legitimacy of the Court of Justice’s constitutional law-making. Typically, this problem is addressed by many scholars and former members of the Court through framing discussion according to a constitutional orthodoxy: that courts (like the Court of Justice) make law through interpreting constitutional texts (like the Treaties), and that it is by virtue of the (political) legitimacy of such constitutional texts that courts’ law-making interpretations are legitimate. Everson and Eisner reject this orthodoxy, and present a provocative theoretical framework that underpins their theory of adjudication which, they argue, reflects the Court of Justice’s constitutional law-making.


Wednesday, 1st June 2011 – 9am

"Post-positivism and the Law"

Organisers: Paolo Sandro, Panagia Voyatzis

Session One: Ideological Post-positivism

Session Two: Methodological Post-positivism

Session Three: Theoretical Post-positivism

This workshop aims to discuss legal post-positivism from different viewpoints. First, we will discuss what legal post-positivism is, before moving on to consider its convergences and divergences with a positivist view of the law, and whether it stands by its own as a theory (that is, whether post-positivism is distinctive and, if so, why). We will also discuss if adopting a different [value-friendly] epistemological framework necessarily drives us away from legal positivism and takes us to the legal post-positivist terrain. Finally, we will reflect upon the new possibilities of legal enquiry provided by a legal post-positivist image of the law.

  

 



 
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