Law School: Events

JSI Seminar | Legalizing Assisted Dying: Are We On A Slippery Slope To Involuntary Euthanasia?
2023-06-15 18:00 - 19:30 (Australia/Sydney) | Common Room, Level 4, Sydney Law School
JSI Seminar: Legalizing Assisted Dying: Are We On A Slippery Slope To Involuntary Euthanasia?
In-person event

On 28 November 2023, theÂ Voluntary Assisted Dying ActÂ will come into effect in NSW. The Act allows ill persons having decision-making capacity, acting voluntary, and with less than six months to live (12 months in the case of a neurogenerative illness) to request a prescription of a lethal substance to end intolerable suffering. If the medical practitioners responsible for the assessment of the request confirm that the eligibility conditions are satisfied, the patient may decide to self-administer the lethal substance or that the substance is to be administered to the patient by a doctor. TheÂ Voluntary Assisted Dying ActÂ was eventually approved on 19 May 2022 after an exhausting and hard-fought parliamentary debate.
One of the main reasons justifying the opposition to the bill was provided by a slippery slope argument: The legalization of assisted dying would be a first and decisive step towards the gradual acceptance by public opinion, medical professions, and political decision-makers of the medical killing of people unable to consent. Given that this outcome is morally disgraceful, assisted dying should not be permitted in the first place. Slippery slope arguments are popular in a wide range of debates across bioethics, law, and public policy, and are still extensively used to prevent the legalization of assisted dying in countries such as the UK, Germany and Italy. Besides, they are widely employed to prevent policymakers from extending the right to assisted dying to new categories of persons in those jurisdictions where that right is already recognized.
However, it is highly disputed whether arguments of this sort are able to support their conclusions or should rather be dismissed because ill-grounded. In this seminar I will try to answer this question. To do that, I will first show that various versions of the slippery slope arguments are actually present in the debate on assisted dying. I will then claim that the only version of the argument that is not ill-grounded supports the opposite conclusion, namely that the non-recognition of the right to assisted dying may be a first step on the slippery slope to unvoluntary euthanasia in many legal systems.
About the speaker:
Damiano Canale
Damiano Canale is Professor of Philosophy of Law and Critical Thinking at Bocconi University, Milan (Italy). His scholarship mainly focuses on legal reasoning and legal interpretation, the methodology of jurisprudence, the relationship between scientific knowledge and legal knowledge, and the history of legal concepts. He was visiting fellow at the Max-Plank-Institut fÃ¼r EuropÃ¤ische Rechtsgeschichte (Frankfurt a.M.), the Yale Law School and the University of Oxford. He is the author of four books in Italian and his papers have been published in journals such as Law and Philosophy, Ratio Juris, the American Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, the Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, Jurisprudence, Informal Logic, Argumentation.

Thursday 15 June 2023, 6-7.30pm AEST
Venue:Â Level 4, Common Room, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus
CPD Points:Â 1.5

This event is proudly presented by the Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence at The University of Sydney Law School.Â

JSI Workshop | Towards a Moralisation of Jurisprudence? Reflections on the Future of Legal Philosophy
2023-06-27 14:00 - 16:00
JSI Workshop | Towards a Moralisation of Jurisprudence? Reflections on the Future of Legal Philosophy
In-person event
There is a trend in current Anglo-American legal philosophy that is drawing the attention of legal scholars. We could label this trend â€œThe moralisation of jurisprudenceâ€. Its animating idea is as follows: The questions still left open in contemporary jurisprudence can only be addressed by moral theory. Thus, there is no longer room for legal philosophy as an autonomous field of enquiry. The seminar aims to critically discuss this thesis from different theoretical perspectives.
About the speakers:
Professor Damiano Canale
Damiano CanaleÂ is Professor of Philosophy of Law and Critical Thinking at Bocconi University, Milan (Italy). His scholarship mainly focuses on legal reasoning and legal interpretation, the methodology of jurisprudence, the relationship between scientific knowledge and legal knowledge, and the history of legal concepts. He was visiting fellow at the Max-Plank-Institut fÃ¼r EuropÃ¤ische Rechtsgeschichte (Frankfurt a.M.), the Yale Law School and the University of Oxford. He is the author of four books in Italian and his papers have been published in journals such as Law and Philosophy, Ratio Juris, the American Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, the Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence, Jurisprudence, Informal Logic, Argumentation.
Dr Meir Yarom
Meir YaromÂ is the inaugural Julius Stone Postdoctoral Fellow. He has recently completed his PhD entitled ‘Reflections on Coherence in Law’ supervised by Jeremy Waldron at NYU School of Law.
Tuesday, 27 June 2023 2.00 – 4.00pm AEST
Venue: Â Board Room, Level 4, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus
CPD Points:Â 1.5

This event is proudly presented by the Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence at The University of Sydney Law School.Â

JSI Seminar: The stability of bad things
2023-07-13 18:00 - 19:30 | Common Room, Level 4, Sydney Law School
JSI Seminar: The stability of bad things
In-person event

Political philosophers have long been concerned with how best to ensure the stability of social orders. Stability is assumed to be a good, whether because whatever is good is better for being stably so, or because stability enables cooperation in the pursuit of whatever other goods we have.
But is stability always a good? What of the stability of systems of unfreedom, of forms of oppression and domination? Such systems are stable in the face of constant efforts to shift them. Why is this? Call this the question of the stability of bad things: why bad things are stable despite the fact that they are bad.
In this talk, I examine one central way in which systems of unfreedom are self-stabilizing: through shaping the moral psychology of agents within those systems. Unfreedom is not just a matter of having limited options for choice, but of the ways in which social systems foster in us particular ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. I argue that there are two ways in which this moral psychological shaping stabilizes systems of unfreedom. First, it generates support for those systems, by which I mean not just voluntary upholding of the system but a range of attitudes from consent to resigned participation. Second, it disrupts possibilities of collective resistance to those systems. Understanding these mechanisms of stability might better help us to first resist, and then transform, the systems of unfreedom to which we are all subject.
About the speaker:
Yarran Hominh
Yarran Hominh is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bard College. His research sits at the intersection of social and political philosophy with moral psychology. He draws liberally from a variety of traditions of thought and practice, including the pragmatist tradition, the Black radical tradition, Buddhist modernism, and anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperial praxis from around the globe. He is working on a book entitledÂ The Problem of UnfreedomÂ and has papers recently published or forthcoming inÂ Philosophers’ Imprint, The Pluralist, the Journal of Legal Philosophy, Comparative PhilosophyÂ and theÂ Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture.Â He is also the Associate Editor of the APA Studies on Asian and Asian American Philosophers and Philosophies and is on the editorial board of The Philosopher.

Thursday 13 July 2023, 6-7.30pm AEST
Venue:Â Level 4, Common Room, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus
CPD Points:Â 1.5

This event is proudly presented by the Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence at The University of Sydney Law School.Â

JSI Workshop: Description and evaluation in contemporary jurisprudence
2023-07-20 11:00 - 13:00 | Board Room, Level 4
JSI Workshop: Description and evaluation in contemporary jurisprudence
In-person event
Modern jurisprudence has been tormented by a divide between description and evaluation in legal theory. Proponents argue that the distinction is essential to any clearheaded discussion of law itself and its relation to adjacent normative systems, especially morality. Opponents insist that being the necessarily normative practice it is, a pure description of the law and its theory is untenable. This conversation will bring together legal and moral theorists to shed some novel light on an old problem.
Speakers

Associate Professor Kevin Walton (University of Sydney Law School)
Dr. Yarran Hominh (Assistant Professor in Philosophy, Bard College)
Dr. Alma Diamond (Postdoctoral Fellow in Law & Philosophy, University of Chicago)
Dr. Meir Yarom (Postdoctoral Fellow in Jurisprudence, the Julius Stone Institute, University of Sydney Law School)

———————————
Thursday 20 July, 2023
Time: 11am-1pm
Venue: Level 4, Board Room, New Law Building (F10)
CPD Points: 2
———————————-
This event is proudly presented by the Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence at The University of Sydney Law School.

JSI Seminar: Epistemic privilege and duties of mutual assistance
2023-07-27 18:00 - 19:30 | Common Room, Level 4, Sydney Law School
JSI Seminar: Epistemic privilege and duties of mutual assistance
In-person event
Victims of oppression are sometimes said to have epistemic privilege in virtue of their marginalised social position into the operation and impact of oppressive social structures. Epistemic privilege sometimes is cited as a basis for deference in social relations between victims and non-victimsâ€”for example, the use of â€˜lived experience’ to resolve or terminate disagreements about social and political oppression. I am interested in whether epistemic privilege can be a basis for duties of mutual assistance between victims, where assistance is understood as mitigating the harms of oppression on other victims without necessarily targeting oppression itself. I outline the ways in which victims of oppression can be said to have epistemic privilege, the limits of this privilege, and what duties of assistance this privilege might ground.
About the speaker:
Ashwini Vasanthakumar
Ashwini VasanthakumarÂ is a political and legal theorist with research interests in political obligation and authority, migration, and the ethics of resistance.
She is currently an Associate Professor and Queen’s National Scholar in Legal & Political Philosophy at Queen’s Law School in Canada. She holds an AB from Harvard, an MA from Toronto, a JD from Yale Law School, and a DPhil from Oxford, where she studied as a Canadian Rhodes Scholar.
Previously, she has worked at King’s College London, the University of York, University College, Oxford, and Jindal Global Law School. She has also been a Researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies (Stockholm) and a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Fundamental Rights at the Hertie School (Berlin).

Thursday 27 July 2023, 6-7.30pmÂ AEST
Venue:Â Level 4, Common Room, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus
CPD Points:Â 1.5

This event is proudly presented by theÂ Julius Stone Institute of JurisprudenceÂ at The University of Sydney Law School.

The Life and Death of States: Author Meets Readers
2023-08-10 17:30 - 19:00 | Common Room, Level 4, Sydney Law School
The Life and Death of States: Author Meets Readers
In-person event
Natasha Wheatley’s bold new bookÂ The Life and Death of States: Central Europe and the Transformation of Modern SovereigntyÂ (Princeton University Press 2023) rediscovers the multinational Habsburg polity as a hothouse for ideas that still shape our understanding of the sovereign state. The radical mismatch between theories of singular sovereignty and the empire’s plural, layered legal order pushed politicians as well as scholars like Hans Kelsen toward bold new conceptions of the state and the nature of law. The book follows a recurring set of questions about the juridical birth, death, and survival of states through the creative experiments of Austro-Hungarian constitutional order and into the domain of international law following the empire’s collapse in 1918. These ideas would echo around the globe in the era of global decolonization that followed the Second World War, suggesting new ways of understanding Central Europe in the world.
About the speakers

Natasha WheatleyÂ is an historian of modern European and international history, with broad interests in intellectual and legal history, Central Europe, and the history of international law. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Sydney before joining the Princeton faculty as an assistant professor in 2017. She is the co-editor of the volumesÂ Power and TimeÂ andÂ Remaking Central Europe, and her writing has appeared inÂ Past & Present, History and Theory, Law and History Review,Â and theÂ London Review of Books, among other places.Â The Life and Death of StatesÂ is her first book.
Professor Lisa FordÂ is the prize-winning author of three monographs:Â Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia, 1788-1836Â (Harvard UP, 2010);Â Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800-1850Â (Harvard UP, 2016), co-authored with Professor Lauren Benton; andÂ The King’s Peace: Law and Order in the British EmpireÂ (Harvard UP, 2021). She recently co-editedÂ The Cambridge Legal History of AustraliaÂ (Cambridge UP, 2022). Her current project, on emergency in the British Empire is funded by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship.
Professor Lea YpiÂ is Professor in Political Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science and an Honorary Professor in Philosophy at the Australian National University. A native of Albania, she has degrees in Philosophy and in Literature from the University of Rome La Sapienza, a PhD from the European University Institute and was a Post-Doctoral Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford University. She is the author ofÂ Global Justice and Avant-Garde Political Agency, The Meaning of PartisanshipÂ (with Jonathan White), andÂ The Architectonic of Reason.Â Her latest book, a philosophical memoir entitledÂ Free: Coming of Age at the End of History,Â won the 2022 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Slightly Foxed First Biography Prize and is being translated into more than twenty languages. Her academic work has been recognised with the British Academy Prize for Excellence in Political Science and the Leverhulme Prize for Outstanding Research Achievement. She coedits The Journal of Political Philosophy and occasionally writes for The Guardian.

———————————
Thursday 10 August 2023
Time:Â 5.30-7pm
Venue:Â University of Sydney, Level 4, Common Room, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown
This event is being held in-person at Sydney Law School.
———————————
This event is proudly presented by theÂ Julius Stone InstituteÂ at the University of Sydney Law School.

Julius Stone Address: What is political progress?
2023-08-29 18:00 - 19:30 | Lecture Theatre 101, level 1, New Law Building F10A, Campderdown Campus
Julius Stone Address: What is political progress?
In-person event

Progress is both a necessary and a dangerous idea. It is necessary if one is striving to improve the way things are, and it is dangerous because the pursuit of progress has historically often given rise to episodes of paternalism, colonial domination and narratives of civilizational superiority. In my talk, I will present some first thoughts on how to defend a more critical account of progress. I will start by distinguishing between moral and political progress, then explore the relation between political progress and justice. I will suggest that we make political progress not when we approximate an ideal of justice that is always already known to us, but when the political institutions we construct reflect what we learn from the trials and failures of the past.
About the speaker
Professor Lea Ypi
Lea Ypi is Professor in Political Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science and an Honorary Professor in Philosophy at the Australian National University. A native of Albania, she has degrees in Philosophy and in Literature from the University of Rome La Sapienza, a PhD from the European University Institute and was a Post-Doctoral Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford University. She is the author ofÂ Global Justice and Avant-Garde Political Agency, The Meaning of PartisanshipÂ (with Jonathan White), andÂ The Architectonic of Reason. Her latest book, a philosophical memoir entitledÂ Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, won the 2022 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Slightly Foxed First Biography Prize and is being translated into more than twenty languages. Her academic work has been recognised with the British Academy Prize for Excellence in Political Science and the Leverhulme Prize for Outstanding Research Achievement. She coeditsÂ The Journal of Political PhilosophyÂ and occasionally writes forÂ The Guardian.

Tuesday 29 August, 2023
Time:Â 6-7.30pm
Venue: Lecture Theatre 101, Level 1, New Law Building Annex (F10A)

This event is hosted by theÂ Julius Stone Institute of JurisprudenceÂ at The University of Sydney Law School.
The Julius Stone Address is generously sponsored by the Educational Heritage Foundation. It is named to commemorate the life and work of Professor Julius Stone, Australia’s foremost legal philosopher and for many years Challis Professor of International Law and Jurisprudence at The University of Sydney.

JSI Seminar | Beyond Indigenous Cultural & Intellectual Property: opportunities in law reform for Aboriginal-led medicines in Australia and the limitations of legal pluralism
2023-09-14 18:00 - 19:30 | Common Room, Level 4, Sydney Law School
JSI Seminar | Beyond Indigenous Cultural & Intellectual Property: opportunities in law reform for Aboriginal-led medicines in Australia and the limitations of legal pluralism
In-person event
Australian regulators and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples have the opportunity to co-design a cross-jurisdictional framework that ensures structural integrity and cultural ethics, which embodies international law principles and standards. However, the Australian intellectual property regime and regulatory framework for traditional medicines is not fit for purpose. Equally, the tension between Australia’s settler state and unceded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples remains constrained by legal pluralism, western concepts of Indigeneity and biocultural knowledge and truth-telling.
About the speaker:
Dr Virginia Marshall
Dr Marshall is a Research Fellow based at the Australian National University’s School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet). She is a practising lawyer and leading legal scholar with expertise in Aboriginal water rights, native title rights in Sea Country, Indigenous governance and the intersection of Traditional Knowledge systems and western intellectual property regimes, especially as it relates to Indigenous commercialisation of traditional medicines.
Virginia holds various government appointments including serving on the Climate Change Authority Board, Deputy Co-Chair of the Committee on Aboriginal Water Interests and the Drafting Group for the National Water Initiative Mark 2 and regularly invited on expert roundtables relating to water policy reform. Virginia serves on the ANU Human Ethics Research Committee, the inaugural MÄori Research and Ethics Council and Chair of the ANU Indigenous Research Advisory Group. Virginia is a Co-Chair of the ANU Institute for Climate, Energy & Disaster SolutionsÂ Indigenous peoples, cultures and knowledgesÂ research cluster and is a Research Associate and Board member of ANU’s Australian Studies Institute.

Thursday 14 September 2023, 6-7.30pmÂ AEST
Venue:Â Level 4, Common Room, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus
CPD Points:Â 1.5

This event is proudly presented by theÂ Julius Stone Institute of JurisprudenceÂ at The University of Sydney Law School.

JSI Seminar | Demystifying CLS: A reflection on writing an intellectual history of the Critical Legal Studies Movement
2023-10-05 18:00 - 19:30 | Common Room, Level 4, Sydney Law School
JSI Seminar | Demystifying CLS: A reflection on writing an intellectual history of the Critical Legal Studies Movement
In-person event
In his forthcoming bookÂ The Rise and Fall of Critical Legal Studies,Â Stewart uses the tools of CLS to analyse CLS, assessing its dominant narrative against its history and legacy. Literary and philosophical lenses are used to highlight the power of CLS, which in turn presents its deficits. In this seminar Stewart presents this rise and fall through key discoveries in his research, as well as anecdotes from the Crits, and why CLS was not as radical as it should have been.
About the speaker:
Dr James Gilchrist Stewart
James is a lecturer in law and LLB Program Manager at RMIT’s graduate school of business and law. James has published on legal theory, neoliberalism’s effect on law, and is a media voice on Australian consumer law. James’ first book â€œThe Rise and Fall of Critical Legal Studiesâ€ is scheduled for publication with Edinburgh University Press in 2024.
Thursday 5 October 2023, 6-7.30pmÂ AEST
Venue:Â Level 4, Common Room, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus
CPD Points:Â 1.5

This event is proudly presented by theÂ Julius Stone Institute of JurisprudenceÂ at The University of Sydney Law School.

JSI Seminar | Bathroom Bills and Liberal Rights
2023-10-12 18:00 - 19:30 | Common Room, Level 4, Sydney Law School
JSI Seminar: Bathroom Bills and Liberal Rights
In-person event
On June 30th 2023 Florida’s House Bill 1521 came into effect. The bill requires that all trans people must use Florida public restrooms that align with the sex they were assigned at birth. This includes restrooms in all Florida airports, government buildings, schools and universities, city parks and beaches, and many Florida stadiums, rest stops, service stations, and conferences. The implications of this bill are that all trans women, for instance, must use the men’s bathroom in these places even if they have had sex reassignment surgery, have lived as a woman for decades, or since they were a child, are perceived to be a woman by everyone they meet, and/or have changed their birth certificate, their driving license, and their passports so that they acknowledge that they are female or a woman.
Earlier in 2023, Kansas adopted a similar bathroom bill, North Carolina adopted a similar bill in 2016-2017, the UK government is considering adopting a similar law, and at least 21 other US states have proposed similar bathroom bills. There has been a lot of discussion and criticism of these bathroom bills but no sustained case for their injustice (or their justice) has been made. This paper argues that bathroom bills like Florida’s breach trans people’s rights in three ways. I argue that we have the following three rights: (1) rights to not be made to subject ourselves to significant risks of harm in order to participate in the (face-to-face) public or social world; (2) rights to not be unjustly discriminated against; (3) rights to have our interests considered equally in lawmaking and policymaking.
I argue that a variety of more specific liberal and egalitarian rights and claims, made by a variety of liberals and egalitarians, imply (1-3) and (1-3) are very intuitive. And I argue that bathroom bills like Florida’s breach trans people’s rights to (1-3). I argue that bathroom bills force trans people to risk significant harm in order to participate in the public or social world, and refraining from adopting bathroom bills does not force anyone to incur any similar significant risk of harm to participate in the public or social world. I argue that the different philosophical theories of unjust discrimination that we have imply that bathroom bills are instances of unjust discrimination. And I argue that the adoption of bathroom bills does not involve equal consideration of trans people’s interests.
About the speaker:
Associate Professor Rach Cosker-Rowland
Rach Cosker-Rowland is an Associate Professor in Moral and Political Philosophy at the University of Leeds. She is the author ofÂ The Normative and the EvaluativeÂ (OUP, 2019) andÂ Moral DisagreementÂ (Routledge, 2020) as well as the co-editor ofÂ FittingnessÂ (OUP, 2022). She has recently published papers on the nature of gender, the relationship between gender identity and gender, and gender-identity-based rights in journals including Nous, Analysis, and the Journal of Medical Ethics. Before taking up her position at Leeds she held positions at the Australian Catholic University, La Trobe University, the University of Oxford, and the University of Warwick.
Thursday 12 October 2023, 6-7.30pm AEST
Venue:Â Level 4, Common Room, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus
CPD Points:Â 1.5

This event is proudly presented by theÂ Julius Stone Institute of JurisprudenceÂ at The University of Sydney Law School.

JSI Seminar | Contract law and reasons for action: A crash course in private law theory
2023-10-19 18:00 - 19:30 | Common Room, Level 4, Sydney Law School
JSI Seminar | Contract law and reasons for action: A crash course in private law theory
In-person event
If contract law is to be authoritative, it must mediate between the subjects of contract law and reasons for action they have. Either implicitly or explicitly, this insight informs various approaches to the theorisation of this law. Some have tried to understand contract law as mediating ordinary moral reasons relating to promising. Others have argued that this law embodies duties of private right, the sort of reasons that apply to us as independent individuals cooperating as equals. And there are others still who identify different sets of reasons for action special to the contractual relationship.
In my talk, I will identify the common flaw shared by these different theories. I will explain why focusing our attention on contract law as an exercise ofÂ politicalÂ authorityâ€”rather than authoritative in the abstractâ€”paves the way not only to a better understanding of the normative basis for contract but also the broad stakes involved in the making of contract law.
About the speaker:
Dr Arie Rosen
Arie Rosen is a legal theorist based at the University of Auckland Faculty of Law and a founding co-director of the New Zealand Centre for Legal and Political Theory. His work in legal and political philosophy focuses on political authority, the grounds for its exercise, the ideology that sustains it, and the impact it has on law and practical reasoning. His work appears in various edited volumes and leading journals, includingÂ Legal Theory, the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, the University of Toronto Law Journal, and theÂ Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence. His current project focuses on how political authority is exercised in the context of private law and what this can teach us about constitutional structures and the core commitments of liberal political morality.
Thursday 19 October 2023, 6-7.30pm AEST
Venue:Â Level 4, Common Room, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus
CPD Points:Â 1.5

This event is proudly presented by theÂ Julius Stone Institute of JurisprudenceÂ at The University of Sydney Law School.

JSI Seminar | The law and ethics of a property rights approach to frozen embryo disputes
2023-11-02 18:00 - 19:30 | Common Room, Level 4, Sydney Law School
JSI Seminar: The law and ethics of a property rights approach to frozen embryo disputes
In-person event
Disputes over frozen embryos represent a particularly problematic case, legally and ethically, due to the ambiguity of their moral and legal status and the potential rights-claims which can be made with regard to them. Recent work has contextualised frozen embryos as liminal and suggested a contextual approach to their legal classification.
By appeal to personal property law, with a lens provided by Roman law doctrines, and reproductive bioethics, we argue that frozen embryos may be subjects of property rights, providing a more stable framework for dispute resolution. To illustrate how a property approach would work, we reconsider the facts of the influential Evans case and argue that if a proprietary rather than promissory estoppel claim had been pursued, the reverse outcome may have been reached, to the benefit of women who are disproportionately harmed in these scenarios.
About the speaker:
Teresa Baron
Teresa is a Nottingham Research Fellow working on reproductive ethics and philosophy of parenthood. She was previously a postdoc at the Czech Academy of Sciences, and a visiting research fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna and the Jagiellonian University in Krakow.
Thursday 2 November 2023, 6-7.30pm AEDT
Venue:Â Level 4, Common Room, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus
CPD Points:Â 1.5

This event is proudly presented by theÂ Julius Stone Institute of JurisprudenceÂ at The University of Sydney Law School.

JSI Seminar | Bringing law back in: Theorizing the role of law in shaping the social reproduction bargain
2023-11-23 18:00 - 19:30 | Common Room, Level 4, Sydney Law School
JSI Seminar | Bringing law back in: Theorizing the role of law in shaping the social reproduction bargain
In-person event
A rich interdisciplinary feminist project spanning the fields of critical political economy, feminist economics, geography, migration, sociology and social policy has long sought to theorize and make visible the role social of reproduction and reproductive labour in sustaining both life and labour power, and its transformations, â€˜depletions’ and â€˜crises’ in post-Fordist life. With some notable exceptions, however, much of the intensive feminist attention upon social reproduction has taken placeÂ outsideÂ of legal scholarship. This might be attributed to several general factors: a dearth of materialist-informed approaches in feminist legal theory, legal feminists’ liberal orientations towards work, and a greater focus on unpaid care in the family, rather than paid reproductive labours performed in the market. In addition, non-legal disciplines have, for their part, been routinely less concerned with the role of law in their accounts of social reproduction, leaving the role of law in shaping the social reproduction bargain undertheorized.
This seminar paper maps aÂ legalÂ feminist approach to social reproduction theory. In doing so, it articulates the constitutive and distributional role of law in shaping markets in reproductive labours, focusing specifically on paid care and domestic work. Attention to law is important because when we focus on law’s distributional and disciplinary outcomes we can begin to imagine how different legal rules might shape them otherwise.
About the speaker:
Angela Kintominas
Angela Kintominas is a lecturer at the Faculty of Law and Justice, UNSW Sydney where she teaches labour law. Her research interests lie in feminist and critical approaches to work, gender, migration and social reproduction. She is particularly interested in the intersection between social security/welfare state law, labour law and migration law in producing gender (and other) inequalities. Her research has focused on forms of gendered, informal and reproductive labour including care and domestic work, au pairing and surrogacy, as well as the platformization of care and domestic work in the gig economy, family migration and transnational family life, and the human and labour rights of migrant workers.

Thursday 23 November 2023, 6-7.30pm AEDT
Venue:Â Level 4, Common Room, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus
CPD Points:Â 1.5

This event is proudly presented by theÂ Julius Stone Institute of JurisprudenceÂ at The University of Sydney Law School.

JSI Seminar | European Ã‰migrÃ© Legal Scholars in Australian Law Schools: Julius Stone's Circle
2024-03-07 18:00 - 19:30 | Common Room, Level 4, Sydney Law School
JSI Seminar | European Ã‰migrÃ© Legal Scholars in Australian Law Schools: Julius Stone’s CircleIn-person event

During and immediately after World War II, some Australian law schools had the opportunity to rescue European Ã©migrÃ© legal scholars fleeing persecution and fascism. Overwhelmingly, Australian universities did not become shelters for refugee intellectuals, despite the extraordinary efforts of some individuals and agencies supporting them. Nevertheless, some Ã©migrÃ© legal scholars did come to Australia, some gained positions in Australian universities, and they prompted a significant transformation in legal pedagogy and research.

Mark Lunney has remarked that the influence of European Ã©migrÃ© scholars on Australian law is a â€œforgotten historyâ€.[1]Â Part of a larger collaborative project that aims to retrieve that history, this paper details the contributions of Ã©migrÃ© scholars in the Department of International Law and Jurisprudence at the University of Sydney under Julius Stone’s leadership. Building upon the existing scholarship on Stone’s influence in Australia, this paper examines other individuals within Stone’s circle, including Ilmar Tammelo, Otto Bondy and Charles Alexandrowicz. It also explores the role of the Australian Society of Legal Philosophy, which was established to offer sanctuary and intellectual camaraderie for Ã©migrÃ© legal scholars.

Drawing upon archival records, unpublished sources and interviews with former students of the Department, the paper offers a case study of the network of jurists based at the University of Sydney in order to investigate the impact of migration on Australian legal institutions, education and practice.

The project, and perhaps also this paper, will introduce a wider cohort of characters that have influenced the development of Australian jurisprudence and legal education. In particular, it will allow for a richer understanding the aftermath of the Second World War as a key moment of transformation in the legal institutions and cultures in Australia.

[1]Â See Mark Lunney â€˜Legal Emigres and the Development of Australian Tort Law’ 36(2)Â Melbourne University Law ReviewÂ 494, 495.
About the speaker:
Katherine BiberÂ is a legal scholar, historian and criminologist, and Professor of Law at the University of Technology Sydney, where she specialises in the law of evidence. She is author ofÂ In Crime’s Archive: The Cultural Afterlife of EvidenceÂ (Routledge, 2019) andÂ Captive Images: Race, Crime, PhotographyÂ (Routledge, 2004). Her recent co-edited collections includeÂ Law’s DocumentsÂ (with Trish Luker and Priya Vaughan, Routledge 2022) andÂ Evidence and the ArchiveÂ (with Trish Luker, Routledge, 2017). She is currently writingÂ The Last Outlaws, a legal history of Australia’s last proclaimed outlaws, the brothers Jimmy and Joe Governor. Her research on the journeys and legacies of European Ã©migrÃ© lawyers in Australia is part of a collaborative research project with Eloise Chandler, Sara Dehm and Ana Vrdoljak.

Thursday 7 March 2024, 6-7.30pm AEDT
Venue: Level 4, Common Room, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus

CPD Points:Â 1.5

This event is proudly presented by theÂ Julius Stone Institute of JurisprudenceÂ at The University of Sydney Law School.

JSI Seminar | Dominium in the Age of Neurotechnologies: Who Is the Subject of Neurorights?
2024-04-15 18:00 - 19:30 | Common Room, Level 4, Sydney Law School
JSI Seminar | Dominium in the Age of Neurotechnologies: Who Is the Subject of Neurorights?In-person event

Many scholars expressed concerns about how potential misuse of neurotechnologies may threaten some basic rights such as right to privacy, freedom of thought, freedom from self-incrimination, right to fair trial, prohibition of discrimination, etc. In order to ensure an effective protection against these potential threats concrete proposals, such as reconceptualizing already existing rights or creating new rights, are set forth. Nevertheless, the academic debate on how to effectively protect the domain of cognitive liberty from potential violations is conducted without an open discussion on who should be the subject of neurorights. This is not surprising at the first glance, for there is a quasi-unanimity on the content of the notion of â€œhumanâ€ as the subject of human rights. The proposed categories of neurorights, especially that of cognitive liberty do not contradict the existing human rights concept in this respect.

The recently flourishing scholarship on the history of human rights, however, offers a critical study of the abstract concept of human as the subject of human rights. The present paper, in line with this scholarship, attempts to introduce a historiographic perspective to the debate on neurorights by asking whether the concept of human as maintained in the theory of human rights is suitable for defining a subject of rights in the age of neurotechnologies. First, the paper offers a historical account on how the concept of human was formed theoretically at the dawn of modernity. Secondly it explains the concept ofÂ dominiumÂ from a historical perspective and links it to the modern theory of human rights. Finally, it discusses whether neurotechnologies present a challenge to the theoretical constellation around the subject of human rights originating from the notion ofÂ dominium.
About the speaker:
Ozan ErÃ¶zdenÂ holds a PhD in public law from the University of Istanbul (1996). Before joining Kadir Has University Faculty of Law he held permanent lecturer positions at Istanbul University Law Faculty, YÄ±ldÄ±z Technical University, Department of Political Science and International Relations and at MEF University Law Faculty. Between 1998 and 2001 he worked as human rights observer within the OSCE mission to Croatia. Between March 2006 and September 2007 he conducted research at the International Criminal Law Institute of Cologne University as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow.

He participated in two different international scientific projects, namely Blue-Bird (funded by UNDP and coordinated by Central European University) and JURISTAS (funded by European Commission under the 6th Framework Programme), as well as a national one (TÃœBÄ°TAK 1001). ErÃ¶zden’s published works relate mainly to theory of state, theories of nationalism, human rights, transitional justice and philosophy of law. His current area of research is the interaction between neuroscience and legal theory.

Monday 15 April 2024, 6-7.30pm AEST
Venue: Level 4, Common Room, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus

CPD Points:Â 1.5

This event is proudly presented by theÂ Julius Stone Institute of JurisprudenceÂ at The University of Sydney Law School.

JSI Seminar | Well-tempered power: "˜A cultural achievement of universal significance'
2024-05-09 18:00 - 19:30 | Common Room, Level 4, Sydney Law School
#N/A

JSI Seminar: On Constitutional Review
2024-05-23 18:00 - 19:30 | Common Room, Level 4, Sydney Law School
JSI Seminar: On Constitutional Review
In-person event
Constitutional review is a continental European instrument of checking the parliamentary legislation for its compliance with the constitution. This practice has a long history traced from ancient Greek democracy to the French and American Revolutions up to the 20th century culminating in Constitutional Courts. The Czechoslovakian experience of its Constitution of 1920 gives a unique perspective on the rule of law and the perennial questions of constitutional review: who should be the guardian of the Constitution? In its contemporary form, this question has become whether the doctrine of the sovereignty of the parliament is a serious obstacle for a too strong (dominant) role of the judiciary the Large scale of competences of the Constitutional courts (except constitutional review). The talk concludes by discussing possible solutions without Constitutional Courts.
About the speaker
Alexander BrÃ¶stlÂ is a Professor of Legal Philosophy in Slovakia. He was formerly a Judge on and later advisor to the Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic, as well as a member of the Judicial Council. His career has included positions at Fudan University in Shanghai, and then Slovakian Consul in Beijing. Alexander next spent 18 years in Strasbourg as the Slovak member of the European Charter on Minority Languages. In addition, he has been professor of law at the PJ Å afÃ¡rik University and University of Trnava, and held several high level administrative positions.

Thursday 23 May 2024, 6-7.30pm AEST
Venue:Â Level 4, Common Room, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus
CPD Points:Â 1.5
This event is proudly presented by theÂ Julius Stone Institute of JurisprudenceÂ at The University of Sydney Law School.

JSI Seminar: A republican case for regulatory juries
2024-06-06 18:00 - 19:30 | Common Room, Level 4, Sydney Law School
JSI Seminar: A republican case for regulatory juries
In-person event
The idea of administrative juries was proposed by David Arkush in 2013, drawing on the republican revival in public-law theory. These proposed juries would make some key policy choices especially underlying delegated lawmaking in the US. The paper challenges some criticisms that have been made of his proposal. It also draws on aspects of the republican tradition not employed by Arkush to support such juries. Indeed, the paper suggests that more extensive delegation could occur where juries are involved. Partly for that reason, the wider term â€˜regulatory juries’ is preferred. The paper argues that such juries may assist in democratising delegated legislation as well as the political system more generally. They could do so not only in the US but also, at least, in the UK and Australia.
About the speaker
Eric GhoshÂ is an Associate Professor in the Law School at the University of New England, where he has taught jurisprudence and administrative law. His research is in constitutional theory, political philosophy and the history of political thought, with a focus on the republican revival in legal scholarship. He is the author of articles published in journals including theÂ History of Political ThoughtÂ andÂ Oxford Journal of Legal Studies. More recently, he wroteÂ Beyond the republican revival: Liberty as non-domination, positive liberty, and sortitionÂ (Hart, 2020).

Thursday 6 June 2024, 6-7.30pm AEST
Venue:Â Level 4, Common Room, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus
CPD Points:Â 1.5
This event is proudly presented by theÂ Julius Stone Institute of JurisprudenceÂ at The University of Sydney Law School.

JSI Workshop: Positive Pluralism and its Limits
2024-06-18 14:00 - 15:00 | Board Room, Level 4
JSI Workshop: Positive Pluralism and its Limits
In-person event
This project asks how freedom of religion should be construed when applied to religious insular communities whose way of life is often at odds with Western assumptions of a good life. I will argue for protection of distinctive religious communal identities as entities in and of themselves that are deserving of constitutional protection on the ground that they contribute to a thick pluralism. I propose a theory of pluralism that is premised on its positive value, and not merely on what John Rawls calls the â€œfact of pluralism.â€ At the same time, I argue that it is equally if not more important to ensure that members of such communities have a meaningful ability to exit from them. The project will spotlight several concrete impediments to the â€œright of exitâ€ in one large insular religious community: the Hasidic community in New York. It will lay out not only how internal communal practicesâ€”including and most notably the lack of secular educationâ€”can hamper members’ ability to exit but also how the state, via its family courts, contribute to its curtailment.
About the speaker
Zalman RothschildÂ is Assistant Professor of Law and Horn Family Distinguished Research Scholar in Law and Religion at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. Previously, he was a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School. His research focuses on the First Amendment, anti-discrimination law, and law and religion.
Before becoming a Bigelow Fellow, Zalman served as a law clerk to Judge Jane Roth on the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and practiced law for several years as a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss. During that time, Zalman was recognized byÂ The American LawyerÂ in its “Litigator of the Week” profile for winning a Fourth Amendment appeal and securing the reversal of all convictions of his client (2021) and received the “On the Riseâ€”Top 40 Young Lawyer” award from the American Bar Association (2022).
Zalman holds a JD, magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School and a PhD in Religion from New York University.
———————————
Tuesday 18 June, 2024
Time: 2-3pm
Venue: Level 4, Board Room, New Law Building (F10)
CPD Points: 1
———————————-
This event is proudly presented by the Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence at The University of Sydney Law School.

JSI Seminar: Social Rights and Proportionality
2024-06-20 18:00 - 19:30 | Common Room, Level 4, Sydney Law School
JSI Seminar: Social Rights and Proportionality
In-person event
This seminar outlines a model of proportionality analysis for the adjudication of positive constitutional economic and social rights [hereinafter: social rights]. Three distinctions are the basis of this model: (i) the distinction between empirical and normative aspects of the adjudication of social rights; (ii) between the level and mode of fulfilment of those rights; and (iii) between the competence of political authorities and courts to determine the appropriate level and mode of satisfaction.
About the speaker
Carlos BernalÂ is First Vice-President and Commissioner of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission. He is professor of law at the University of Dayton (Ohio, USA) and Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia). Between 2017 and 2020, he was Justice at the Colombian Constitutional Court. His qualifications include a LL.B. from the University Externado of Colombia (BogotÃ¡ – Colombia) (1996), a S.J.D. from the University of Salamanca (Spain) (2001), and a M.A. (2008) and a Ph.D. in Philosophy (2011) from the University of Florida (U.S.A).
Prof. Bernal’s research focuses on constitutional rights’ interpretation, comparative constitutional change, human rights, energy transition, and general jurisprudence.
Thursday 20 June 2024, 6-7.30pm AEST
Venue:Â Level 4, Common Room, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus
CPD Points:Â 1.5
This event is proudly presented by theÂ Julius Stone Institute of JurisprudenceÂ at The University of Sydney Law School.

JSI Seminar: Natural Law to Natural Rights to Human Rights
2024-07-24 18:00 - 19:30 | Board Room, Level 4
JSI Seminar: Natural Law to Natural Rights to Human Rights
In-person event
**Please note this event date has been moved to one day earlier than originally advertised.**
Natural law and natural rights are frequently discussed as if they are tightly connected, and human rights are presented as natural rights in a new label. But the relationship between all three is complicated and in tension. Natural law consists of objective legal principles and rules dictating the right course of action: do good and avoid evil, do not murder or steal, honor contracts, and other binding proscriptions and prescriptions. Natural rights, in contrast, are innate subjective rights individuals hold against government and others. This is about individual powers, entitlements, and areas of protection from infringement by others: a right to possess property, to defend one’s life, to exercise free speech, to choose one’s religion, to choose employment and spouses, and so forth.
Thomas Hobbes drew a clear distinction between the two: â€œRIGHT consisteth in liberty to do, or to forbear: whereas LAW, determineth, and bindeth to one of them: so that law, and right, differ as much, as obligation and liberty.â€ Or as John Locke put it, â€œfor right [jus] consists in the fact that we have a free use of something, but law [lex] is that which either commands or forbids some action.â€ A tension arises because natural rights promote freedom while natural law compels conformity. Natural rights and human rights appear obviously connected, since both espouse rights that attach to humans universally. Yet tension exists because natural rights had expired over a century before â€œhuman rightsâ€ obtained recognition, those who recognized human rights did not identify them with natural rights, and the content of the human rights extend far beyond previously recognized natural rights. Natural law, natural rights, and human rights are linked yet distinct.
About the speaker
Brian TamanahaÂ is the John S. Lehmann University Professor at Washington University School of Law. A scholar of jurisprudence and law and society, he has written eleven books, which have collectively received 6 book awards, and his work has been translated into a dozen languages.
Wednesday 24 July 2024, 6-7.30pm AEST – NEW DATE
Venue:Â Level 4, Boardroom, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus
CPD Points:Â 1.5
This event is proudly presented by theÂ Julius Stone Institute of JurisprudenceÂ at The University of Sydney Law School.

Julius Stone Address: Law, Philosophy, and the Susceptible Skins of Living Beings
2024-07-31 18:00 - 19:30 | Auditorium 104/105, Michael Spence Building (F23)
Julius Stone Address: Law, Philosophy, and the Susceptible Skins of Living Beings
In-person event

Catherine the Great (apparently) wrote to the French philosopher Diderot something along the lines of: â€œYou philosophers are fortunate. You write on paper, and paper is patient. Unfortunate emperor that I am, I write on the susceptible skins of living beings.â€ Catherine expressed, I think, an important insight, that is true of the law as well: the law writes on the susceptible skins of living beings.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that we should not philosophize about the law, or that we should not take advantage of the benefits of having patient paper to write on. But as we do so, we should philosophize about the law all the time fully realizing that the law itself does not write on patient paper, but on the susceptible skins of living beings. This has important implications to how we should – and how we should not – do philosophy of law. This talk elaborates on these implications – both in general, and using more specific examples.
About the speaker
Professor David Enoch
David Enoch is The Professor of the Philosophy of Law at Oxford, and the Rodney Blackman Chair in the Philosophy of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He works primarily in moral, political, and legal philosophy.
David studies law and philosophy at Tel Aviv University, and then got his PhD in philosophy at NYU (2003). He has published a book defending moral realism (Taking Morality Seriously, OUP 2011), and many papers mostly in moral, political, and legal philosophy.

Wednesday 31 July, 2024
Time:Â 6-7.30pm
Venue: Auditorium 104/105, Michael Spence Building (F23), City Road, University of Sydney, Camperdown campus

This event is hosted by theÂ Julius Stone Institute of JurisprudenceÂ at The University of Sydney Law School.
The Julius Stone Address is generously sponsored by the Educational Heritage Foundation. It is named to commemorate the life and work of Professor Julius Stone, Australia’s foremost legal philosopher and for many years Challis Professor of International Law and Jurisprudence at The University of Sydney.

JSI Seminar: 'The Little Commonweale of my poore thoughts': nature, ownership, Cosmography, and the origins of the climate crisis in Richard Zouche, 1613-63
2024-08-29 18:00 - 19:30 | Common Room, Level 4, Sydney Law School
JSI Seminar:Â â€˜The Little Commonweale of my poore thoughts’: nature, ownership, Cosmography, and the origins of the climate crisis in Richard Zouche, 1613-63
In-person event
This seminar examines Richard Zouche’s legal thought on â€˜nature’ at some of the earliest origins of the climate crisis and the formation of international law. Zouche is usually remembered as the â€˜father’ of international legal positivism for his 1656 treatiseÂ An Exposition of the Fecial Law and Procedure, or of Law between NationsÂ where he influentially introduced the termÂ â€˜jus inter gentes’Â or law between peoples as the basis for his juridical system. In this work, Zouche deals extensively with questions of ownership in war and peace. He describes a tripartite right for princes and peoples as â€˜Plenary’, â€˜Hereditary’ or â€˜merely Usufructuary’ rights both to holding power and property. He also deals with questions of sea jurisdiction and appropriation by occupation, which he expanded on in his posthumous treatise on the Admiralty courts.
Most significantly, Zouche solidifies two major tenets of legal argumentation that provided the early architecture for claims and extraction that formed the early climate crisis. First was the â€˜jus inter gentes’ formulation that allowed for international law to be developed by consent between princes and peoples, referable to Augustinian concord but not bound by it or the law of nature. Second, Zouche’s modernisation of the disputation format gave â€˜both sides’ of each of these legal questions, both obscuring Zouche’s own views and giving princes and lawyers a handbook with the argumentative structures for claiming and resisting legal disputes around ownership, showing the vital importance of these legal questions in the early history of international law. But it is in Zouche’s juvenile cosmographical poemÂ â€˜The Dove’Â (1613) that an early vision of the political economy of the world and the importance of sight and ordering â€” the main tools of positivism â€” were first announced through the circling of Noah’s dove. Zouche called this poem â€˜the little Commonweale of my poore thoughts’.Â The DoveÂ provides an early announcement of the foundational commitments that thread through Zouche’s major juridical works. Throughout these works, Zouche’s engagement with nature and natural resources move quickly to questions of ownership and right, revealing the function of law to connect early forms of extraction, capitalism and empire.
About the speaker
Martin Clark is a lecturer at La Trobe Law School. His research focuses on the history of legal thought and international and public law. His work has been published in the Modern Law Review, theÂ British Yearbook of International Law, theÂ Leiden Journal of International LawÂ and theÂ Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly, and he is finishing a book (with Dr Yoriko Otomo) on law and commodities,Â Eating the World: A Global History of Law and CommoditiesÂ (Counterpress). He was awarded his PhD in Law from the London School of Economics and Political Science in May 2020 for a thesis on the history of the ideas of â€˜domestic’ and â€˜international’ in British legal thought. At LSE he was a Judge Rosalyn Higgins Scholar andÂ Modern Law ReviewÂ Scholar (2018 and 2019).
He is an Editor at theÂ London Review of International LawÂ and Web Assistant at theÂ Modern Law Review. Prior to joining La Trobe he was aÂ Modern Law ReviewÂ Postdoctoral Fellow, a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for International Law and the Humanities at Melbourne Law School, a Lecturer at UTAS Law, where he taught contract and legal theory, and a JD Teaching Fellow at Melbourne Law School, where he taught contract
Thursday 29 August 2024, 6-7.30pm AEST
Venue:Â Level 4, Common Room, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, Camperdown campus
CPD Points:Â 1.5
This event is proudly presented by theÂ Julius Stone Institute of JurisprudenceÂ at The University of Sydney Law School.

JSI Seminar | Taking Power Seriously in Constitutional Law: A Materialist Approach to Constitutional Law, Executive Power, and the British State
2024-09-11 12:00 - 13:00 | Common Room, Level 4, Sydney Law School
