10/31/08

PUBLIC JURIS: AN ONLINE ARCHIVE OF LEGAL SOURCES

To the LASSnet Community,



This is to announce the launch of Public Juris, an online archive of legal

sources.


This message is to elicit the active participation of the LASS community

in conceptualising and building Public Juris as a site where we are able

to provide access to material needed for law and social science research

in South Asia. As we see it, this initiative mirrors some of the concerns

outlined in the background note prepared for the LASS Inaugural session in

2009. We would like to bring this initiative to the LASS Inaugural session

as one of the possible collaborations in the future. We would very much

appreciate feedback, support and collaboration as we develop this project.





WHO WE ARE: We are two historians (Rochelle Pinto and Aparna Balachandran, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore) and an archivist (Abhijit Bhattacharya, Centre for the Study of Social
Sciences, Kolkata) who are interested in issues of technology, users and
access in relation to state and private archives in India
(www.publicarchives.wordpress.com).



THE PROJECT: We are soliciting contributions from LASSNET members for an online digital archive of legal sources called "Public Juris" focusing on, but not limited to South Asia. We hope this archive will be a useful and easily accessible resource for historians and other scholars interested in the study of different aspects of the law. We see this archive as particularly useful to students and teachers in South Asia and elsewhere who for logistical, economic or political reasons may not be able to travel to libraries and archives in order to access material of this kind.

Eventually, we envisage that an online archive of this kind will allow students to broaden the thematic and regional range of their research.



HOW IT WILL WORK: We do not have any strict definition of what constitutes legal sources --- they could range from acts and regulations to court cases, police records and petitions. For example, one set of records that has already been contributed to the archive consists of disputes over
ceremonial privileges between the Valangi and Idangai castes in the city of Madras in the early nineteenth century. Documents that are not usually archived such as leaflets, pamphlets, people's enquiry reports,photographs, and advertisements which are critical to understanding the relationship between law and the public, can also find a space here.


As a community of scholars we are in possession of resources that can be harnessed usefully and inexpensively -- all of us, for instance, have material collected fromdifferent locations that we have already used for our research or which is simply superfluous – this research could be shared. Since the archive inevitably leaves different traces for specific readings by different researchers, our research material could be put to other uses in other works. Hence, just as the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance has asked for your writings for their library, we would like to extend our request for collaborative energies within the LASS community to contribute to constructing a shared resource. Please do claim authorship of this archive by sharing with us material that you think should define and belongs in Public Juris.





MODALITIES: If you would like to contribute to this online archive, we request you to either bring the material with you when you attend the inaugural LASSNET conference in January, or if you prefer, send it by post to the address below. We will undertake to scan the material and make it available on the website which will be constructed at http://cinnamonteal.dogearsetc.com/.



We will acknowledge the contributor on the website, unless asked not to do so. We will also make sure that once scanned, the material will be sent back to the contributor.





If you have any questions about this initiative, please do contact Aparna Balachandran at aparna@cscs.res.in or Rochelle Pinto at rochelle@cscs.res.in.



If you would like to contribute to the archive, please do contact us and let us know what kind of materials you would be willing to provide.



Looking forward to hearing from you,



Aparna Balachandran, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society

Rochelle Pinto, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society

Abhijit Bhattacharya, Centre for the Study of Social Sciences

10/10/08

Asha Bajpai

Asha Bajpai is a law teacher at the Centre for Socio Legal Studies and Human Rights, Tata Institute of Social Sciences [TISS, Bombay]. She teaches and researches "law and social work", and "law and development".

Rachita Bansal

I finished the 5yr law course from Symbiosis Law College, Poona in 2005 after which I pursued Masters in Law from University of Warwick (International Economic Law). I worked as a corporate lawyer in Bombay for Kochhar and Co. for one year and have been now working in Delhi for Ms. Indira Jaising for the past 5 months. I handle all her public interest litigation in various High Courts and the Supreme Court. I worked on the recent writ petition against the stay of the smoke-free rules and was the counsel for the anti tobacco NGOs. I read voraciously and I'm interested in being associated with LASSNET.

Dr. Dina M. Siddiqi

Dr. Dina M. Siddiqi is a cultural anthropologist with a strong interest in gender, human rights and transnational feminist politics. She is a South Asia specialist, with particular expertise on gender and Islam in Bangladesh. Her research and publications concern globalization and human rights, non-state dispute resolution systems, and the cultural politics of Islam. Dr. Siddiqi has worked for leading human rights organizations in Bangladesh including Ain o Salish Kendra, and has been a consultant for UNDP, UNICEF and the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Dhaka. She teaches anthropology and gender studies on a part-time basis in the United States. Dr. Siddiqi was Senior Research Associate at the Alice Paul Center for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality at the University of Pennsylvania from 2004-2007 and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Policy Dialogue, Dhaka in 2002. She is currently a core resource person and adjunct faculty member at the Centre for Gender, Sexuality and HIV/AIDS at the James P. Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University, Dhaka. She is part of the Core Advisory Group of the South Asian Network of Gender Activists and Trainers (SANGAT) and a member of the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Societies (CSBR).

10/6/08

South Asian Legal Studies Workshop in Madison, Wisconsin

Dear All,

The South Asian Legal Studies Pre-conference Workshop will be taking place in Madison, USA on Thursday, Oct.16, 2008:

http://southasiaconference.wisc.edu/preconference.html#4

The workshop will immediately precede the larger 37th Annual Conference on South Asia in Madison:
http://southasiaconference.wisc.edu/


The workshop will consist of two plenary panels running 2-6pm, followed by a workshop dinner. All events will be held in Lubar Common (room 7200), University of Wisconsin Law School, 975 Bascom Mall, Madison: http://www.map.wisc.edu/

If you would like to attend (and have not already RSVPed), please e-mail me (sharafi@wisc.edu) by Friday, Oct.3 with your affiliation and contact details. Unfortunately, we are unable to offer travel funding for attendees.

Best wishes,
Mitra Sharafi (UW-Madison)

Call for Papers

3rd Global Conference
Evil, Law and the State


Friday 13th March - Sunday 15th March 2009
Salzburg, Austria

Call for Papers
This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary
conference will explore issues surrounding evil
and law, with a focus on state power and violence.
Perspectives are sought from those engaged in any
field relevant to the study of law and legal
culture: anthropology, criminology, cultural
studies, government/politics, history, legal
studies, literature, philosophy, psychology,
religion/theology, and sociology, as well as those
working in civil rights, human rights, prison
services, politics and government (including
NGOs), psychiatry, healthcare, and other areas.

Papers, reports, work-in-progress and workshops
are invited on issues
related to the following themes:

* when and why is law evil or a source of evil?
* state violence and coercion
* enforcement of criminal law and other legal
prohibitions
* law, citizenship, and political identity
* justifications for punishment, including capital
punishment
* whether and under what circumstances the
adversary or inquisitorial models of legal process
generate, tolerate, or allow evil outcomes
* issues of equality and distributive justice in law
* the consequences of legal error
* the intersection of law with issues of choice,
responsibility, and diminished responsibility
* state responsibility for terrorism, war,
intervention, ethnic cleansing, and other problems
of international law and international relations

Papers on any other topic related to the theme
will also be considered. 500 word abstracts should
be submitted by Friday 3rd October 2008. The
abstract will be double blind peer reviewed (where
appropriate). If an abstract is accepted for the
conference, a full draft paper should be
submitted by Friday 6th February 2009.

500 word abstracts should be submitted to both
Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word,
WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation, c) email address, d)
title of abstract, e) body of abstract

We acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper
proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply
from us in a week you should assume we did
not receive your proposal; it might be lost in
cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an
alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs

Ruth A Miller
Department of History,
University of Massachusetts,
Boston,
USA
E-mail: ruth.miller@umb.edu

Rob Fisher
Network Founder and Network Leader
Inter-Disciplinary.Net
Priory House, Freeland, Oxfordshire OX29 8HR
United Kingdom
E-mail: els3@inter-disciplinary.net

All papers accepted for and presented at this
conference will be eligible for publication in an
ISBN eBook. Selected papers will be invited for
development for publication in a themed hard copy
volume.

Evil, Law, and the State is part of a larger
series of on-going publishing and research
conferences run under the At the Interface
banner. This series aims to bring together people
from different areas and interests to share ideas
and explore various discussions which are
innovative and exciting.

For further details about the project please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ati/els/els.htm

For further details about the conference please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/ati/els/els3/cfp.html

10/4/08

Prof. Susan Visvanathan

Prof. Susan Visvanathan is the author of Christians of Kerala (OUP 1993). An Ethnography of Mysticism (IIAS, Shimla 1998) Friendship, Interiority and Mysticism (Orient Longman 2007) and the editor of Structure and Transformation: Theory and Society in India (OUP 2001). She has been a Fellow of NMML (1989-1992) Hon. Fellow of IIAS, Shimla (1990-1995) Charles Wallace Fellow to Queen's University Belfast, (1997) and Visiting Professor to MSH, Paris, (2004). She is also a writer of fiction and poetry.

Prof. Jane Schukoske

Prof. Jane Schukoske is a New Delhi-based law professor who is an Advisor to the Om Prakash Jindal Gramin Jan Kalyan Sansthan, the sponsoring body for the proposed O.P. Jindal Global University and Jindal Global Law School to be established in Sonipat, Haryana, www.jgls.org. From 1988 - 2000, she taught Contracts, Law and Social Reform, Professional Responsibility and clinical courses on housing law, environmental justice, and community development at University of Baltimore School of Law in Maryland, USA, where she is a visiting faculty member in the LL.M. program in Law of the United States. From May 2000 - April 2008, she headed the U.S. Educational Foundation in India (USEFI, recently renamed U.S.-India Educational Foundation, USIEF). She has over nine years experience in civil legal services practice prior to teaching. She has a B.A. from Boston University College of Liberal Arts, J.D. from Vanderbilt University Law School, and LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center. She was a Fulbright Scholar at University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Her publications include law review articles on topics in state and local finance, environmental law, and community development, and book chapters on clinical legal education and international education topics. She has interests in community development and clinical legal education.

10/2/08

Jeremy Roche

Jeremy Roche studied at the Universities of Kent and Cambridge and joined the Open University in 1995. He is senior lecturer in law in the Faculty of Health and Social Care and Associate Dean (Curriculum and Awards) for the Faculty. His research interests lie in the area of children's rights, law, policy and professional practice. He has written extensively in this field including (with S. Tucker) Youth in Society (Sage) and (with W.Stainton-Rogers) Children's Welfare and Children's Rights. He served on the Management Committee of the Children's Legal Centre between 1990 and 1994 and was on the editorial board of Social and Legal Studies from 1991 to 2003.