Call For Papers

Call For Papers

International Annual Meeting of Israeli Law and Society Association, to be held in Tel Aviv on December 20-21, 2009.

The main theme of the meeting is: Secularism, Nationalism and Human Rights: Law and Politics in the Middle East and Europe

Proposals should be submitted to Michal Locker-Eshed, minerva@post.tau.ac.il, by September 1, 2009.


Israeli Law and Society Association
International Conference


Secularism, Nationalism and Human Rights: Law and Politics in the Middle East and Europe

December 20-21, 2009
Tel Aviv Law Faculty, ISRAEL


The Program Committee of the International Annual Conference of the Israeli Law and Society Association (ILSA) invites Law and Society scholars from all disciplines (including law, social sciences and the
humanities) to submit proposals for individual papers and organized panels.

Panels and papers devoted to the theme of the conference – "Secularism, Nationalism and Human Rights: Law and Politics in the Middle East and Europe" – are especially invited, though part of the sessions in the conference will be dedicated to general topics of law and society. We apologize in advance, that due to the limited number of presentations this year we will not be able to accept all submissions.


The Conference’s Theme:

Secularism understood as the separation between religion and State or politics, nationalism as the ethnic premise of the modern state, and human rights, are commonly identified as fundamental attributes of modern law and politics. And yet, these foundational ideals are neither global nor even "Western" in general. They have their origins in specific European traditions, and they continue to play diverse and multiple roles all over the globe. In an attempt to bring law and social inquiry closer to the region and its unique concerns, the conference seeks to examine the influence of these legacies on the formation of law and legal institutions in Europe and the Middle East and in the different contexts in which Europe and the Middle East intersect, including within Israeli and Palestinian societies.

The conference will primarily address the following questions:

• How have secularism, nationalism and human rights shaped law, legal
institutions and legal consciousness in Europe and the Middle East?
What are the different, conflicting and complimentary meanings given to these notions across and within legal jurisdictions? To what extent are these legacies distinctly European and how do they differ from other Western traditions, such as the United States, where secularism, nationalism, and human rights seem to have very different connotations.
• How and under what conditions have these traditions been
implemented, resisted, subverted, and transformed in Israel, Palestine, and more generally in the Middle East? Conversely, how has Europe's recent encounter with the Middle East, primarily through labor immigration, shaped and reshaped the formation of these ideals?
What roles have law and legal institutions played in the dissemination, transformation, and enforcement of these legacies?
• How have these legacies affected diverse groups within European and
non-European societies, including ethnic and religious minorities and other potentially disadvantaged groups? In what ways do these ideas mirror power relations and how do the legal institutions shape images and practices of gender, class and ethnicity?
• To what extent can and should the specifically European version of
these ideals, if indeed one version exists, be accepted outside of Europe? Can international human rights be the legal and moral grounds on which nationalism and secularism are evaluated, or does the category of international human rights itself suffer from euro-centrism? Do better models exist elsewhere and under what conditions do local traditions emerge?
• Finally, are nationalism, secularism and human rights at all
relevant categories for analyzing what has often been described as an increasingly post-nationalist, post-secularist and post-human world?


Proposals should be accompanied by an abstract of 300 words as a Word email attachment (including title of paper, name and email address of author/s and institution affiliation). Organizers of panels should collect the abstracts from panel participants and submit them together with a description of the panel. Graduate students should submit together with the abstract a letter from their thesis supervisor in support of the proposal.

Proposals should be submitted to Michal Locker-Eshed, minerva@post.tau.ac.il, by September 1, 2009


Suitable full-length papers based on presentations made at the conference will be solicited for a dedicated issue of the Israel Law Review.

Participation in the conference will include conference fees and a sliding scale will be applied.


Program Committee

Daphna Hacker, Law Faculty and Women and Gender Studies Program, Tel Aviv University (co-chair)

Shai Lavi, Law Faculty, Tel Aviv University (co-chair)

Susanne Baer, Faculty of Law, Humboldt University, Berlin

Gad Barzilai, Jackson School of International Studies; Comparative Law and Society Studies Center, University of Washington

Marinos Diamantides, School of Law, Birkbeck University of London

Michael Karayanni, Law Faculty, Hebrew University, Jerusalem



Prof. Menachem Hofnung
Chair, Israeli Law and Society Association Department of Political Science The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Jerusalem 91905, Israel


Tel: Office :972-2-588-3164
Fax :972-2-5880281