To mark the 60th Anniversary of ANU Law and the 30th anniversary of the Centre for International and Public Law (CIPL), a major public law conference will be held at the Australian National University in Canberra, on 8-9 December 2020.
Growing inequality is a defining challenge of our times, domestically and globally. Yet the role of inequality in social, political and economic life is often muted (sometimes, invisible) in much public law scholarship. Notably, public law’s foundational concepts were forged in a social world where the inevitability of inequality was often taken for granted. The stuttering processes of democratization have rendered that assumption untenable.
However, although public law scholarship has considered how the field can contribute to political equality, there has been less focus, particularly in recent decades, on the relationship between public law and material equality. The question of whether equality is achievable in a world of yawning disparities in wealth can no longer be brushed aside.
How do public law concepts, institutions and norms frame or contribute to political and material inequality? How can public law and public law scholarship contribute to clear thinking about the set of problems associated with pervasive inequity in contemporary society?
We invite papers addressing these and similar themes along a variety of dimensions (e.g. gender), from a number of perspectives (e.g. the experience of Indigenous Peoples) and across multiple disciplines. The conference will be of broad interest to constitutional and administrative law scholars, including those whose work focuses on history and theory of public law or its broader role in social, political, economic and cultural life. Abstracts are due March 2, 2020.
For more information, including the full call for papers, visit the Conference website.
