Call For Papers: Law and Geography in Urban Asia, February 18-19, 2025, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore @nus_ari

 

Dr. Dhiraj Nainani, National University of Singapore, announces an upcoming workshop entitled "Law and Geography in Urban Asia," which will be taking place on February 18-19 2025 at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. 

More information and a complete Call for Papers can be found here: https://ari.nus.edu.sg/events/law-and-geography/

The workshop will be in-person, and funding support for travel and accommodation is available. 

Proposals are due at the end of September, and if any further information is required please don’t hesitate to email him at dhirajn@nus.edu.sg. 

CFP: Islands and Remoteness in Geography, Law, and Fiction: Conference at the University of Verona, November 21-22, 2019

From the mailbox:

CFP:  Islands and Remoteness in Geography, Law, and Fiction, a conference convened by Matteo Nicolini, University of Verona, Law Department, and Thomas Perrin, UFR de Géographie et d’Aménagement, Université de Lille. The conference will take place at the University of Verona November 21-22, 2019.

The conference seeks to explore how, in many ways, islands appear to be “geographical
paradoxes”. Indeed, they are spatially remote places, which are, at the same time, bound to a continent by social conventions. The grounds of such puzzle are manifold. It is firstly a matter of spatial area. Secondly, the puzzle depends on how political power projects authority over circumscribed spatial realms, including non-continental realms. In so doing, authority forges the concepts of remoteness and bounds.

Proposals for papers are due by May 31, 2019 and should be sent to matteo.nicolini@univr.it and thomas.perrin@univ-lille.fr. Please also direct questions about the conference to them. They will make acceptances known by June 24, 2019.

The selected papers will be published in Pólemos – Journal of Law,
Literature and Culture,volume 14 (2020) Issue 2. The deadline for first draft papers submission is due by 15 January 2020.

For more information, see the link here. 

Ricca on How To Make Space and Law Interplay Horizonally

ICYMI:

Mario Ricca, University of Parma, has published How to Make Space and Law Interplay Horizontally: From Legal Geography to Legal Chorology. Here is the abstract.

This essay addresses the thorny issue of how legal words and spatial experiences interplay. The topic is treated trough the spectrum of the subsidiarity principle and its semantic-spatial implications. This perspective allows for an immediate focus on the cognitive continuities extant between categorical and spatial frames. When a subject (public or private) is considered to be subsidiary with respect to another, then he/she/it is entitled to a substitution, which as such implies a semantic and experiential shifting. This very possibility for shifting/displacement reveals cognitive continuities between word and space in the legal realm and experience. Moving from this view, the essay proposes a different approach to the relationships between legal words and space, assumed as a division of power by contemporary Legal Geography. The method used to define this perspective is precisely “Legal Chorology.” The essay will address its theoretical and practical implications in bridging and dynamically managing the diffraction between law and space. Legal reasoning is thus enhanced by using a semiotic perspective in the analysis of human spatial experience and cognition. The topics addressed range from a discussion of the intertwining of the human activity of categorization and the perception of space, to an assessment of the consequences that a chorological view can engender for classical legal issues such as inheritance law, urban law, contract law, public assistance on behalf of subjects with disabilities, and so on.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Ricca on Law, Cultural Categories, and Legal Geographies

Mario Ricca, University of Parma, has published Errant Law: Spaces and Subjects. Here is the abstract.

The essay addresses the following topics: I will talk about the intertwining between cultural categories and spatial categories. The first axis for the analysis will address the interspatial blurring and blending produced by the translating of the individuals through manifold and culturally plural circuits of state/territorial sovereignty. The second axis will focus on the intercultural translation intended as place of convergence and condensation of categorical connotations used by different cultures for marking the space. I will try to show how translating cultures, each into another, by means of law’s spectrum could be equivalent and coextensive with translating different ‘spatialities’, and viceversa. Reaching this interlocutory target allows for the configuration of inter-spaces capable of working as a platform to assure the legal relevance of different culturally oriented subjective agencies. The theoretical toolkit to investigate these topics is “legal chorology”. It will be explained by these sequential steps: a. Legal chorology and a timely intercultural translation. b. Inter-spatial dynamics and cognitive deficiencies of legal qualifications across cultures. Subsequently, I will apply the above considerations to envisage a pluralistic legal approach conceived beyond the exclusive use of inter-normative devices and inter-legality.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Guilfoyle on Mieville, the Social Construction of Place and Law, and Transnationality in Contemporary International Law

Douglas Guilfoyle, Monash University Faculty of Law, has published Reading the City and the City as an International Lawyer: Reflections on Territoriality, Jurisdiction and Transnationality at 4 London Review of International Law 195 (2016). Here is the abstract.

This essay uses China Miéville’s crime/speculative fiction novel to reflect on the social construction of place and law, and the role of transnationality in contemporary international law. In particular, it considers the role of international law in a world of interpenetrating jurisdictional orders not closely tied to exclusive territorial control.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Manderson and Van Rijswijk on Representations of Land and Sea in Law, Literature, and Geography

Desmond Manderson, ANU Colege of Law, ANU COllege of Arts and Social Sciences, and McGill University Faculty of Law, and Honni Van Rijswijk, University of Technology Sydney, Faculty of Law, have published Introduction to Littoral Readings: Representations of Land and Sea in Law, Literature, and Geography at 27 Law & Literature 167 (2015). Here is the abstract.

This essay introduces a collection of new work that addresses law, literature, and geography. Organized around the relationship between land and sea, and in that sense building on the book of that title by Carl Schmitt, the collection recognizes the importance of geographic spatial phenomena in the contours of our literature, and as these play out in legal concepts. But we need to pay attention to the particular contours of this relation, the highly specific -- indeed incorrigibly plural -- forms and fantasies such a relationship takes in specific places and concerning specific jurisprudential issues. The first axis involves recognizing the role of the imaginary in transforming social and legal conditions, and in delineating legal responsibility. The second axis invites us to recognize how closely connected are legal structures and practices to the material experience of concrete spaces and environments. The fictional nature of literature, the non-fictional nature of geography, and the normative nature of law are constantly refracting each other. The way to understand law as culture is to see how its modes and strategies pass through literature and the imaginary on the one hand, by way of geography and the material on the other. In this essay and the collection that it introduces, the particularities of Australia -- its law, its geography, and its literature -- are used as case studies through which to develop this interdisciplinary methodology.

The full text is not available from SSRN.