Law School: Events

JSI Seminar: Social Rights and Proportionality
2024-06-20 18:00 - 19:30 (Australia/Sydney) | 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
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