Events and Announcements: May 11, 2019

Call for Papers

• The Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at The University of Texas at Austin, School of Law invites submissions for an interdisciplinary conference on the theme of “Prison Abolition, Human Rights, and Penal Reform: From the Local to the Global,” which will be held from the 26-28 September 2019 in Austin, Texas. Mass incarceration and overcriminalization in the United States are subject to critique by some on both the right and the left today. Many critics increasingly talk of prison abolition. At the same time, the international human rights movement continues to rely upon criminal punishment as its primary enforcement tool for many violations, even as it criticizes harsh prison conditions, the use of the death penalty, and lack of due process in criminal proceedings. What would it mean for the human rights movement to take seriously calls for prison abolitionism and the economic and racial inequalities that overcriminalization reproduces and exacerbates? And what might critics of the carceral regime in the United States have to learn from work done by international human rights advocates in a variety of countries? During the three-day interdisciplinary conference, the Rapoport Center will address these questions along with its co-sponsors: the Frances Tarlton “Sissy” Farenthold Endowed Lecture Series in Peace, Social Justice and Human Rights, Center for European Studies, William Wayne Justice Center for Public Interest Law, LLILAS Benson Latin American Studies and Collections, John Warfield Center for African and African American Studies, Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, Department of Sociology, Center for Population Research, and Capital Punishment Center. Ruth Wilson Gilmore will offer the keynote lecture on September 26. We invite proposals for papers, panels, art, or other forms of presentation from activists, practitioners, and scholars in all disciplines. We are eager to include those who study or advocate around criminal law and human rights in different regions and contexts, those who work on various forms of incarceration (including immigration detention), and those who explore alternatives to current criminal punishment regimes. We encourage discussion of the distributive effects of various constructions of and responses to crime. Topics might include:
  • Racial capitalism and prison abolition
  • Prison abolition: short- versus long-term goals
  • Abolition and efforts to reform/transform conditions of confinement: are they in opposition?
  • Capital punishment, human rights, and the goals of death penalty abolition
  • Mass incarceration and surveillance
  • Gender, sexuality, reproductive rights and the prison system
  • Human rights and decriminalization
  • The human rights movement and national and international criminal law
  • Lessons from transitional and restorative justice
  • Incarceration and the intersections of criminal and immigration law
  • Immigration detention and the (private) prison industrial complex
  • Potential responses to violent crime
  • The UN and crime
  • Exportation of criminal justice models: good and bad
  • The role of victims in carceral regimes and anti-carceral responses
  •  Reflections on the role human rights courts do and should play in the carceral state
  • Black Lives Matter, human rights, and abolition
  • Queer politics and abolition
    • Please send an abstract of your paper, panel, or project in under 500 words to Sarah Eliason at seliason [at] law [dot] utexas [dot] edu by 15 July 2019. A limited number of need-based travel grants are available to support travel costs for selected participants. If you wish to apply for a travel grant, please complete this application form by 15 July 2019.

Events

• The London Conference on International Law is pleased to announce an event on “Engaging with International Law,” which will be held 3-4 October 2019 at the Barbican Centre in London. The two-day conference seeks to address the following fundamental question as it relates to a number of contemporary topics: what is the use of international law and how do we engage with it? The London Conference on International Law will bring together international law academics, judges, practitioners, representatives of civil society, business-leaders, and other stakeholders to see how States and all other actors engage with international law. For more details on the program and confirmed speakers, go here. To register for the event, go here.

• Grotius Chambers is pleased to announce an important panel discussion on the recently decided US Supreme Court decision in Jam v. International Finance Corporation, 586 U.S. ____, 139 S.Ct. 759, 203 L.Ed.2d 53 (2019), which deals primarily with the law on the immunities of international organizations. The panel, which will be moderated by Ms. Marine Veissiere, Partner at Grotius Chambers, will be comprised of Dr. Rishi Gulati, Fellow at the London School of Economics and Barrister, Victoria, Australia; Dr. Guido de Dekker, Attorney practicing at the Supreme Court of The Netherlands, BarentsKrans NV, Den Haag; Dr. Oliver Lorenz, Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (formerly with the WorldBank/IFC), Bonn, Germany; and Dimitri van den Meersche LLM, Researcher in the Dispute Settlement and Adjudication, Asser Institute, Den Haag, Netherlands. Speakers will address issues including, but not limited to, the scope of international institutional immunities following the Jam decision in the United States; how Jam may impact the international law understanding of institutional immunities; what steps international organizations may take to limit exposure to domestic proceedings; and crucially, what implications (if any) will the decision in Jam have for enhancing access to justice for the victims of wrongful international institutional conduct. We encourage, and are looking forward to, a lively discussion among the panel and including the audience. The event is scheduled to take place on 29 May 2019 from 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. at The Humanities Hub, Fluwelen Burgwal 58,  2511 CJ, The Hague, The Netherlands. Persons interested in attending the event can register here.

Announcements

• The Law & Practice of International Courts and Tribunals (LPICT) is pleased to announce that it is now accepting submissions for the Rosalyn Higgins Prize. The Rosalyn Higgins Prize is an annual prize which awards EUR 1.000 of Brill book vouchers and a LPICT subscription to the author of the best article on the law and practice of the International Court of Justice, either solely focusing on the ICJ or with the ICJ as one of the dispute settlement mechanisms under consideration. The winning article will also be published in LPICT and made freely available online to maximize its dissemination. Competition for the Prize is open to all: scholars as well as practitioners, junior as well as senior professionals. Submissions will be selected via a double-blind peer review process by a Prize Committee, including both co-Editors-in-Chief. Exceptionally, two papers of an equally high standard can be selected. The Committee is also able to choose not to award the Prize if in its opinion none of the submitted papers reaches the required standards. Submissions should be between 6,500 – 8,000 words in length, not yet published or under review elsewhere. Other submission requirements are the same as for regular LPICT submissions. For more information on “Instructions for Authors,” go here. The deadline for submissions is 31 August 2019. All submissions must be sent directly to Pierre Bodeau-Livinec (bodeaulivinec [at] gmail [dot] com) and Freya Baetens (freya [dot] baetens [at] jus [dot] uio [dot] no), the LPICT Co-Editors-in-Chief. The winner(s) will be announced in September 2019!

• The Codification Division of the United Nations Office of Legal Affairs recently added the following lectures to the Lecture Series of the United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law (AVL) website: Ms Chiara Giorgetti on “Selecting and Removing International Judges and Arbitrators”, and Mr. Pablo Moscoso de la Cuba on “The Obligation to Comply with the Decisions of the International Court of Justice” (in English and Spanish). The Audiovisual Library is also available as a podcast, which can be accessed through the preinstalled applications in Apple or Google devices, through Soundcloud or through the podcast application of your preference by searching “Audiovisual Library of International Law”.

If you would like to post an announcement on Opinio Juris, please contact John Heieck at eventsandannouncements [at] gmail [dot] com with a one-paragraph description of your announcement along with hyperlinks to more information.