Wars on law, wars through law? Reflections on the “past of the present” of the “War on terror”

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Conference theme

The occasion of the conference is to celebrate the publication of internationally renowned Law and Society scholar Rick Abel’s latest two volumes Law’s Wars¹ and Law’s Trials.² In these volumes, Abel offers the first comprehensive study of the US “War on Terror” and its legacy on the rule of law in the US. The conference builds and expands on this inquiry to ask: has the war on terror paved the way for the ongoing attacks on the rule of law we are witnessing today in the US and elsewhere in the world, be it in the surge of populism or the “migration” crisis? Debates overwhelmingly respond to this question by seeing in law – and lawyers – an external variable to political exception. There is a tension between what law ought to do to respond to extreme violence and lawfare through “rule by exception.” To go beyond this tension between wars on law and wars through law, this conference questions the “past of the present” of the relationship between law and political exception: in imperialism, globalization and the current crisis of global capitalism and the nation-state. It brings together an array of scholars from different disciplinary traditions - across Law and Society and Politics - to channel attention towards the specific roles played by lawyers and their relationship not only with politics, but structurally, with the field of state power. Through empirically-grounded analyses - focused on North American, Latin American, West- and East-European as well as sub-Saharan African contexts - debates will aim at fostering this inquiry synchronically and diachronically, by exploring how contemporary manifestations of exceptionalism may be rooted in longer structural patterns. Through this cross-disciplinary dialogue, the objective will also be to trace and question epistemological foci and divides on how we as scholars conceive of the relationship between law, politics and exception. The conference is co-sponsored by the Centre of law and society, Cardiff School of Law and Politics, and the Journal of Law and Society.

Footnotes:
¹ Law's Wars. The Fate of the Rule of Law in the US 'War on Terror' (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

² Law's Trials. The Performance of Legal Institutions in the US 'War on Terror' (Cambridge University Press, 2018).

Conference schedule

Day 1

12:00:

Welcome by Jiri Priban, Director of the Cardiff Centre of Law and Society, Roger Awan-Scully, Head of the Department of International Relations and Politics, and Sara Dezalay, Senior Lecturer, Department of International Relations and Politics

12:15-13:00 Lunch

13:00-14:00 - Opening keynote:

Rick Abel, Michael J. Connell Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus, Distinguished Research Professor, UCLA Law
Law’s Wars, Law’s Trials: The Fate of the Rule of Law in the U.S. “War on Terror”

Chair: Sara Dezalay, Senior Lecturer, Cardiff School of Law and Politics

14:00-15:45  – Panel 1: Lawfare and populist backlashes – cases from Latin America

Fabio de sa e Silva, Assistant Professor of International Studies and Wick Cary Professor of Brazilian Studies, University of Oklahoma
Fighting corruption, building fascism? Legal institutions and democratic recession in Brazil (2013-18)

Fabiano Engelmann, Associate Professor of Political Science, Federal University Rio Grande do Sul
The fight against corruption in Brazil: political crusade through judicial activism

Claire Wright, Research Professor, Universidad de Monterrey, San Pedro Garza Garcia, Nuevo León
Cross-Border Lawfare: Terrorism, Migration, and Regimes of Exception in the Andean Region

Chair: David Boucher, Professor of Political Philosophy and International Relations, Cardiff School of Law and Politics

15.45-16:00: Coffee break

16:00-17:30 – Panel 2: Terror trials and rule of law narratives

Sharon Weill, Senior Lecturer in International Law, Sciences-Po Paris
Terror in Courts: The Radicalization of French law and Actors

Ron Levi, Associate Professor Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto
Terror trials and legal narratives

Chair: John Harrington, Professor of Law, Cardiff School of Law and Politics

19:00 Conference dinner

Day 2

9:00-10:45 - Panel 3: “Illiberal” states and exception as the rule: cases from Sub-Saharan Africa

Mark Fathi Massoud, Associate Professor, Politics Department & Legal Studies Program,UC Santa Cruz
Law and Religion in Somali History

Peter Brett, Lecturer in International relations, Queen Mary University
The new politics of judicial selection in Southern Africa

Sara Dezalay, Senior Lecturer, Cardiff School of Law and Politics, Cardiff University
Africa’s lawyers: between imperial legacies and transformations in global capitalism

Chair: Urfan Khaliq, Professor of International and European Law, Head of Law, Cardiff School of Law and Politics

10.45-11.00: Coffee-break

11.00-12.45 - Panel 4: Imperial legacies, crises of the nation-state and transformations in global capitalism

Stuart Shields, Senior Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester
The paradoxes of fail forwards neoliberalism: Poland's recombinant populism and the500Plus policy

Dan Wincott, Blackwell Professor of Law and Society, Cardiff School of Law and Politics
In search of the law: “Subjeczens” of the Anglo-British State, blurred boundaries and colonial legacies

Julien Jeandesboz, Associate Professor of Political Science, Université Libre de Bruxelles
Exception or diffusion? European security and the politics of means

Chair: Christian Arnold, Lecturer in Politics, Cardiff School of Law and Politics

12.45pm-2pm: Lunch

2pm-3pm: Closing keynote

Ivan Ermakoff, Sewell-Bascom Professor of Sociology University of Wisconsin-Madison
Legal Revolutions

Chair: Peter Sutch, Professor of Politics, Cardiff School of Law and Politics