Albany Law School presents Africa and International Law: Taking Stock and Moving Forward April 13-14, 2012. The conference is co-sponsored by The African Interest Group of the American Society of International Law. Abstracts are due by Sept. 30, 2011.
A major objective of the conference will be to engage in a broad ranging conversation among scholars, practitioners and policy-makers to examine and evaluate how these international and regional regimes and institutions in Africa are producing new narratives of justice and how best they can make a real difference in responding to the challenges facing African peoples and governments.Abstracts and papers are invited on a broad range of themes including the French intervention in Cote DIvoire, the NATO/US allied action in Libya, the fledgling jurisprudence of regional integration tribunals as well as piracy trials being conducted under universal jurisdiction, the race for African resources by China and other countries. Thus, a broad range of themes from public to private international law, as well as international and regional economic and trade legal systems and policies will be explored at the conference and abstracts and papers are invited.
In addition, papers and abstracts are invited to examine one of the reigning paradigms of African international legal scholarship that has argued that Africa has been and continues to be an innovator and generator of institutions and rules of international law, rather than its passive recipient. Papers and abstracts examining the tenability of claims that Africa is wholly disadvantaged and ineffectual in regimes such as international arbitration and trade as well as the extent to which such regimes have reinforced Africas peripheral location in the international political economy are invited.
Selected papers presented at the conference will be published in the inaugural issue of a new international law journal which will serve as an authoritative mouthpiece of the African international law experience.
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