JSI Seminar: On Constitutional ReviewIn-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 […]
JSI Seminar: A republican case for regulatory juriesIn-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 […]
JSI Workshop: Positive Pluralism and its LimitsIn-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 […]
JSI Seminar: Social Rights and ProportionalityIn-person event This seminar outlines a model of proportionality analysis for the adjudication of positive constitutional economic and 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 […]
JSI Seminar: Natural Law to Natural Rights to Human RightsIn-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 […]
Julius Stone Address: Law, Philosophy, and the Susceptible Skins of Living BeingsIn-person event Catherine the Great (apparently) wrote to the French philosopher Diderot something along the lines of: “You 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.†[…]
JSI Seminar: ‘The Little Commonweale of my poore thoughts’: nature, ownership, Cosmography, and the origins of the climate crisis in Richard Zouche, 1613-63In-person event This seminar examines Richard Zouche’s legal thought on ‘nature’ at some of the earliest origins of the climate crisis and the formation of international law. Zouche is usually remembered as the ‘father’ […]
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In-person event In the Voice Referendum, one major reason for voting No was the conviction among some Australians that the Australian people ought to be seen as single and undivided; for these Australians, the recognition of divisions within the polity would be inconsistent with the equal, democratically-grounded citizenship of all Australians. In this seminar I […]
In-person event Constitutional theory increasingly recognizes that constitutional norms are shaped and implemented by a broad range of actors – at different levels of government, across different institutions, and from the “top down” and “bottom up”. Polyvocal constitutionalism of this kind also has a range of advantages: it has potential epistemic benefits, can enhance the […]
This seminar is part of a larger work on legal reasoning. The seminar focuses on three aspects of our reasoning capabilities, to provide a sense of the intellectual territory we inhabit when we engage in legal reasoning. The seminar presents a broadly Wittgensteinian approach to rules and rule-following and the nature of knowledge, in particular […]
In-person event Some legal practices, such as the private law of obligations and property, are justified by the good that general compliance with their rules bring about. It cannot be said, however, that each particular act of compliance by individuals itself contributes to that good outcome. And yet there is clearly an ethical tie between […]