Modern Slavery research: Exploring Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Opportunities for Collaboration
When: Wednesday, 3 May 2023, 12:30-1:30 pm AEDT
Where: Dual delivery: Law Staffroom (UOW building 67, level 224) and Webex
Speaker: Jonathon Mackay & Matthew Pepper
Abstract: Modern slavery is a phenomenon arguably emergent from the increasing globalised nature of trade and the incessant pursuit of efficiency. Despite its emerging recognition across several disciplines, the research around this area is often siloed. Jonny and Matt will first discuss several of their concurrent research projects exploring the issue from a supply chain lens and the need for interdisciplinary research into the phenomenon. The next part of the seminar will be an informal, roundtable discussion aiming to generate discourse on the concept of modern slavery with the goal of identifying common interests and establishing area for collaboration across the Faculty. There is no working paper for this seminar.
Human Rights-Based Climate Change Litigation: Opportunities and Challenges
When: Wednesday, 22 March 2023, 12.30-1.30pm AEDT
Where: Dual delivery: Law Staffroom (UOW building 67, level 224) and Webex
Speaker: Prof. Dr. iur. Martina Caroni, Vice-Rector for Teaching and International Relations. Professor of International, Constitutional and Comparative Law, University of Lucerne
Abstract: The past decade has witnessed a remarkable increase not only in climate change litigation generally, but specifically in human rights-based claims relating to climate change. Such claims argue that the failure of State actors adequately to address the problem of climate change – especially in the form of reduction in their greenhouse-gas emissions – constitute a violation of human rights obligations. Drawing especially on the three climate-change cases currently pending before the European Court of Human Rights the seminar/lecture will address opportunities and challenges of human rights-based climate litigations.
Jurisprudential Variations on the (Filmic) Myth of the Big, Bad Narco across the Mexican-American Border
When: Wednesday, 22 February 2023, 12.30-1.30pm AEDT
Where: Dual delivery: Law Staffroom (UOW building 67, level 224) and Webex
Speaker: Luis Gomez Romero
Abstract: This paper addresses the relevance of stories (generally) and myths (specifically) in shaping law and our conceptions of justice, as evidenced through the jurisprudential analysis of two films – Sicario (2015) and Ya no estoy aquí (2019) – whose narratives are ingrained upon drug war discourses and practices. Storytelling is central to legal discourses, which are (and have always been) firmly rooted in myth. The mythical substance of law is particularly palpable at the core of the punitive norms that, both in Mexico and the U.S., have forbidden and persecuted drug trafficking since the early 20th century. The representations of drug traffickers across both sides of the border respond to a myth based on a symbolic matrix that produces the social and legal subjects we currently label as narcos. The narco myths actually aggravate the conflict and impair its peaceful solution by framing law enforcement tasks on the prohibition of illegal drugs as a series of timeless battles between good (embodied in civil society and its governmental protectors in Mexico and the U.S.) and an irreducible evil (personified in the infamous traffickers and their allegedly all-powerful cartels). Hollywood narco narratives such as Sicario have ramped up not the power of traffickers, but the violence exercised by the Mexican and American states alike to eradicate the alleged existential threat drug trafficking embodies. Powerful counter-narratives grounded in local knowledges – such as the one developed in Ya no estoy aquí –, however, prove that, from a cultural legal studies perspective, myth is not destiny.
