CfP: ANU Law 60th Anniversary Conference: Public Law and Inequality

Call for Abstracts for “ANU Law’s 60th Anniversary Conference: Public Law and Inequality”

8-9 December 2020

Canberra, Australia

To mark the 60th anniversary of the Australian National University (ANU) College of Law and the 30th anniversary of the ANU Law Centre for International and Public Law (CIPL), ANU Law will host a major conference in Canberra, 8-9 December 2020.

As a precursor to the conference, on 7 December 2020, Professor Philip Alston – NYU Law, United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, and the inaugural Director of CIPL – will deliver the annual public Geoffrey Sawer Lecture.

Conference Theme: Public Law and Inequality

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.

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 inequality in contemporary society?

Call for abstracts

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.

We encourage abstracts from early career researchers. Conference speakers receive a 20% discount on their conference registration fee.

The online portal for abstract submissions closes on 2 March 2020.

For key dates and instructions on how to submit abstracts, please click here for a copy of the flyer.