LASSnet Inaugural Conference Programme

LAW AND SOCIAL SCIENCES RESEARCH NETWORK (LASSnet), INAUGURAL CONFERENCE
JANUARY 8-11, 2009

Organised by
CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF LAW AND GOVERNANCE (CSLG),
JAWAHARLAL NEHRU UNIVERSITY, NEW DELHI

Supported by
FORD FOUNDATION &
MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY, HALLE

Thursday, 8th January, 2009
4.30 pm - 7 pm: Opening Plenary
Peregrinations: travelling through law and theory
Venue: School of Social Sciences 1, Auditorium, JNU
Chair: Niraja Gopal Jayal
Panelists:
KG Kannabiran, Reflections On The Life Of Law
Veena Das, Law And Violence: Counter-Narratives From An Anthropological Imagination
Peter Fitzpatrick, The Laws Of Empire
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, On The Nature And Limits Of Judicial Authority
Upendra Baxi, Peregrinations: The Catastrophic Lives Of The ‘Modern’ Law

Friday, 9th January, 2009
9.30 – 10.00 am: Tea @ SSS1 Auditorium
10.00 – 12.00 noon: Plenary
Conversations on Law and Fear
Venue: SSS1 Auditorium
Chair: Julia Eckert
Panelists:
Jean Comaroff, Detective Fictions: Law, Longing, and the Search for Sovereignty in the Postcolony
Veena Das, Law, Fear and the Obligation to Obey: On the Cremation Grounds of Delhi
Comments by: Lawrence Liang & Stewart Motha

12.00 – 1.30 pm: Lunch @ CSLG

1.30 – 3.15 pm: Session 1
1.1 Citizenship and Its Dilemmas 1, @ the Centre for Sanskrit Studies, Seminar Room
Panel Coordinator: Niraja Gopal Jayal
Chair and Discussant: Neera Chandhoke
Panelists:
1. Evelina Dagnino, Disputing Citizenship: the Brazilian experience
2. Shirin M. Rai, Risks and Agency: Dilemmas of Citizenship
3. Ted Svensson, Another Kind of Violence: Rupture and Closure in the Constitution of Citizens
4. Anupama Roy, Unravelling the Aleph: Mapping the Topology of Citizenship in India

1.2 Terror, Law and Bio-politics: Exploring Extraordinariness, 1,
@ the Centre for Sanskrit Studies, Class Room
Panel Coordinators: Ujjwal Kumar Singh and Julia Eckert
Chair and Discussant: Gautam Navlakha
Panelists:
1. Shylashri Shankar, Human Rights and the Medical Jurisprudence of Terror
2. Rubina Saigol, Rule of Law or Law of the Ruler: Black Coats Struggle For An Independent Judiciary
3. Sam Adelman, The Unexceptional Exception: Sovereignty and Biopolitics

1.3 Of Love, Hate and Gossip in the Shadow Worlds of Law
@ the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Committee Room
Panel coordinator: Lawrence Liang
Chair And Discussant: Ravi Vasudevan
Panelists:
1. Shohini Ghosh, Cinema and the Fear of Hate
2. Anuj Bhuwania, Mediation and the Impossibility of Justice
3. Lawrence Liang, Kanoon Ke Haath Bahut Lambe Hote Hain
4. Sivamohan Sumathy, Gendered Fictions: Media and the Making of the Malaiyaha Identity

1.4 Dalits and the Law
@ the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Seminar Room, First Floor
Panel Coordinator and Chair: Balakrishnan Rajagopal
Panelists:
1. Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Globalizing Caste: The Dalit Movement as a Global Justice Movement
2. Kalpana Kannabiran, Sociology, Law and the Caste System or the Problem of the Crooked Mirror
3. Anupama Rao, Rights, Recognition, Redistribution: Thoughts on Caste and the Juridical
4. Martin Macwan, Looking beyond the law
5. Gopal Guru, Indian Law, If Caught, It Bites, If Left Alone, It Runs Away: On Theorizing Dalit Dilemma

1.5 The Bright Lines and Rhetorics of Intellectual Property, 1,
@ the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Classroom, Ground Floor
Panel Coordinators: Brenna Bhandar and Dwijen Rangnekar
Chair and Discussant: graham dutfield
Panelists:
1. Rajshree Chandra Ahuja, ip rights: excluding other rights of other people
2. Rosemary Coombe, Works in Progress: Civilization and its Cultural Others
3. VG Hegde, Towards Regaining Territorial Notions of Creativity in IPRs
4. Dwijen Rangnekar, The Exclusion of Clubs: GIs and the Dilemmas of Collective Action

3.15 pm - 3.45 pm: Tea

3.45 pm – 5.30 pm: Session 2
2.1 Citizenship and Its Dilemmas, 2,
@ the Centre for Sanskrit Studies, Seminar Room
Panel Coordinator: Niraja Gopal Jayal
Chair and Discussant: Manoranjan Mohanty
Panelists:
1. Hester Betlem, Between Victim and Perpetrator: Citizenship, Law and the Devadasi Woman
2. Catalina Smulovitz , Legal Mobilization and Judicialization in Latin America: Political Consequences of a Newly Discovered Tool
3. Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Secularism and citizenship in India: The View from Literature
4. Niraja Gopal Jayal, In but not Of the State: Social Citizenship in Western India

2.2 Terror, Law and Bio-politics: Exploring Extraordinariness, 2,
@ the Centre for Sanskrit Studies, Classroom
Panel Coordinators: Ujjwal Kumar Singh and Julia Eckert
Chair and Discussant: Bimol Akoijam
Panelists:
1. Julia Eckert, Pota and the Categories of Danger
2. Radhika Singha, ‘Desperate and dangerous': The Bad-livelihood Sections of the Criminal Procedure Code, 1861-1898
3. Ujjwal Kumar Singh, Free and Voluntary? Confessions, the Right to Silence and the Construction of ‘Voluntary’ Truth

2.3 Queer perspectives on the law: Developments since 2006,
@ the Centre for Sanskrit Studies, Classroom
Panel Coordinator and Chair: Arvind Narrain
Discussant: Deepak Mehta
Panelists:
1. Alok Gupta, Keeping the closet doors shut: Shame, Secrecy and Blackmail
2. Mayur Suresh, Possession is 9/10ths of the Body: Law, Land and Hijra Identity
3. Padma Govindan & Aniruddhan Vasudevan, The Razor’s Edge of Oppositionality: Exploring the Politics of Rights-Based Activism by Transgender Women in Tamil Nadu
4. Arvind Narrain, Towards a subaltern queer perspective: Reflections on Law and Society Scholarship in India

2.4 Law, Justice and Politics in South Asia, 1,
@ the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Seminar Room, FF
Panel Coordinator: Alex Fischer
Chair and Discussant: Lavanya Rajamani
Panelists:
1. Varun Gauri, A Systematic Examination of Public Interest Litigation in India
2. Susan Visvanathan, The Arunachala Mountainscape Tiruvannamalai, South India: An oral
history inscribed in memoirs, newsletters and court records
3. Rinku Lamba, The State For Women? : An Examination Of The Judicial Discourse Leading Up To The Daniel Latifi Judgment

2.5 Critical Pedagogies
@ Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Committee Room, FF
Panel Coordinators: Jennifer Beard and Sandhya Pahuja
Chair And Discussant: Kamala Sankaran
Panelists:
1. Jennifer Beard and Sundhya Pahuja, Constituting the Global Legal Subject
2. Jason Keith Fernandes, Requiem for a Dream: The National Law School and the Interpellation of the National Subject
3. Sandipto Dasgupta, The Student before the Law: An Examination of Student Politics in National Law School and the Language of Legal Activism
4. Ponni Arasu, The New Law Schools: Boon or Bane

Saturday, 10th January, 2009
9.30 am – 11.15 am: Session 3

3.1 Labour rights and Livelihoods In Colonial and Contemporary India, 1,
@ the Centre for Sanskrit Studies, Classroom, FF
Panel Coordinators: Prabhu Mohapatra and Kamala Sankaran
Chair and Discussant: Tca Anant
Panelists:
1. Jaivir Singh, Who is a Worker? : Normative Implications for Indian Labour
2. Kamala Sankaran, Legislating for the Self Employed: Have We Reached the Limits of Labour Law?
3. Christian Strümpell, 'Producing Adivasi Workers': Ethnicity And Inequality In Rourkela, Orissa

3.2 Interrogating the Governance of Intimate Violence: Social Movements, State Presences, Legal Processes, 1, @ the CSLG Committee Room, FF
Panel Coordinator: Srimati Basu
Chair and Discussant: Tanika Sarkar
1. Uma Chakravarti, The Law as a Horizon: Challenging Impunity, Pursuing Justice
2. Srila Roy, Sexual violence in/and the Logic of Resistance
3. Flavia Agnes, Who Speaks for the Victim - Movements, Agency, and Legal Provisions
4. Rukmini Sen, Family Endorsing Silenced Affliction and Intervening Sexual Violence: Disjuncture between Legal Rhetoric and Subjectivities of Suffering

3.3 The Bright Lines and Rhetorics of Intellectual Property, 2,
@ the CSLG Classroom, GF
Panel Coordinators: Brenna Bhandar and Dwijen Rangnekar
Chair and Discussant: Kaushik Sunder Rajan
Panelists:
1. Donatella Alessandrini , GMOs and the Crisis of Objectivity: Nature, Science and the Challenge of Uncertainty
2. Brenna Bhandar , Controlling Interests: The Salience of Law in New Regimes of Ownership
3. Graham Dutfield, Who Invents Life: Intelligent Designers, Blind Watchmakers, or Genetic Engineers?

3.4 Mobility and Movement in South Asian Legal History
@ the Centre for Sanskrit Studies, Seminar Room, FF
Panel Coordinator: Renisa Mawani
Chair and Discussant: Aparna Balachandran
Panelists:
1. Binyamin Blum, Doctrines without Borders? The Rejection of the Indian Codes of
Procedure in the Mandates of Iraq and Palestine
2. Kunal Parker, Law and History in the English Utilitarian Imagination of India
3. Renisa Mawani, ‘Habitations of Sovereignty’: Migrations of Legality from British India to the Dominion of Canada
4. Mitra Sharafi, The Marital Patchwork of Colonial South Asia: Forum Shopping from Britain to Baroda
5. Gail Pearson, First Steps in Global Rules: Making the Indian Contract Act

3.5 Law, Justice and Politics in South Asia, 2, @ the CSLG Seminar Room, FF
Panel Coordinator: Alex Fischer
Chair and Discussant: Justice Dr. S. Muralidhar, Delhi High Court
Panelists:
1. Marc Galanter and Alexander Fisher, Competing Equalities after India’s Silent Revolution
2. Ridwanul Hoque , The Recent Emergency and the Politics of the Judiciary in Bangladesh
3. Martin Lau, Constitutionalism in Pakistan: The Musharraf Years
4. Renu Addlakha and Saptarshi Mandal, Pathways to Inclusion: Disability, Law and Social Change

11.15 – 11.30 am: Tea @CSLG and CSS

11.30 am - 1.15 pm : Session 4

4.1 Labour rights and Livelihoods in Colonial and Contemporary India, 2,
@ Centre for Sanskrit Studies, Classroom, FF
Panel Coordinators: Prabhu Mohapatra and Kamala Sankaran
Chair And Discussant: Sabyasachi Bhattacharya
Panelists:
1. Prabhu Mohapatra, A Moving Target: The Worker in the Mirror of Law in Colonial India
2. Aditya Sarkar, Questions of Entitlement: The Tensions of Early Factory Law in India
3. Srinivas Chokkakula, Poetics and Politics of Survival: State and Law in Everyday Lives of Daily Wage Labourers

4.2 Interrogating the Governance of Intimate Violence: Social Movements, State Presences, Legal Processes, 2, @ the CSLG Committee Room, FF
Panel Coordinator: Srimati Basu
Chair And Discussant: Jean Comaroff
Panelists:
1. Srimati Basu, Compensation and Harm, Violence and Intimacy in the Staging of Rape and Divorce Cases
2. Pratiksha Baxi, The Hostile Witness and Public Secrecy in Rape Trials in India
3. Shaheen Sardar Ali , Let the Field Speak: Law’s Violence and Narrative of the ‘invisible’
4. Vasudha Nagaraj, Adjudicating Illness and Capacity : Notes from a Custody Trial

4.3 Law’s Violence, @ the Centre for Sanskrit Studies, Seminar Room, FF
Panel Coordinator: Bikram Jeet Batra
Chair and Discussant: Veena Das
Panelists:
1. Mayur R. Suresh, Law like Love: Living in the Place of Law’s Devastation
2. Priya Thangarajah, Kanamalponor, Athurudhanovan (those who are lost), Disappearances: Memory and the disappeared body in Sri Lanka
3. S. Vivek and Kalyani Ramnath, Rumour Has It
4. Bikram Jeet Batra, Playing God? Decision Making on Mercy Petitions in India
5. David T Johnson, State Killing in Asia: On the Relationship between Judicial and Extra-Judicial Executions

4.4 Water Law Reforms in India: An Analysis, @ the CSLG Classroom, GF
Panel Coordinator: Philippe Cullet
Chair and Discussant: Navroz K Dubash
Panelists:
1. Usha Ramanathan, Eminent Domain, Sovereignty and Water
2. Philippe Cullet , Water Law Reforms, Access to Drinking Water and the Human Right to Water
3. Sujith Koonan, Groundwater: An Analysis of Legal Reforms in India
4. Shripad Dharmadhikary, Groundwater: Water Sector Reforms in India: Privatisation and Public Resistance

4.5 Political Theologies and the Postcolonial State, @ the CSLG Seminar Room, FF
Panel Coordinator: Stewart Motha
Chair: Kalpana Kannabiran
Discussant: Stewart Motha
Panelists:
1. Peter Fitzpatrick, Legal Theology: Law, Modernity and the Sacred
2. Manas Ray, Talal Asad and the Critique of Liberal Secularism
3. Deepak Mehta, Words that wound: Archiving hate in the making of Hindu and Muslim publics in Bombay

1.15 pm – 2.15 pm: LUNCH

2.15 pm - 4 pm: Session 5
5.1 Transition and Transformation: Law, Politics, and the State, 1942-52,
@ the Centre for Sanskrit Studies, Seminar Room, FF
Panel Coordinator: Arudra Burra
Chair and Discussant: Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Panelists:
1. Rohit De, Judges, Nationalists and The Colonial State in South Asia: Courts And the Quit India Movement, 1942
2. Rebecca Grapevine, Ambedkar, Moderated: Dr. Bhim Rao Ambedkar in the Indian Constituent Assembly, 1946-19510
3. Arudra Burra, Arguments from Colonial Continuity: The Constitution (First Amendment) Act, 1951
4. Devika Sethi, The Censored Turns Censor: Press Censorship in India in the First Decade after Independence
5. Hans Dembowski, Academic Freedom Only For The Online Avatar?: Calcutta High Court Puts Limits on Sociological Debate

5.2 Contesting Notions Of The Community In State And Non-State Law
@ the Centre for Sanskrit Studies, Class Room, FF
Panel Coordinator: Rinku Lamba
Chair And Discussant: Susan Visvanathan
Panelists:
1. Mekhala Krishnamurthy, Between ‘Community’ And ‘State’: An Ethnographic Glimpse Of Nari Adalats In Rural Gujarat
2. A. Suneetha, Dispute Resolution among Muslims in Hyderabad: Mufti as a 'Juridical' Figure
3. Malavika Kasturi, Legal Engagements And ‘Shared’ Sacred Space: Debates Over The
Bodh Gaya Temple Bills, 1915-1950

5.3 Bodies In Law
@ the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Classroom, GF
Panel Coordinators: Shrimoyee Nandini Ghosh And Namita A. Malhotra
Chair and Discussant: Mary John
Panelists:
1. Mayur R. Suresh, Pendulous Penises And Couture Clitorises: What Medical Men Do To Intersex Infants
2. Namita A. Malhotra, The Curious Disappearance Of The Orgy Of Bodies: A Legal Mystery
3. Nitya Vasudevan, When The Spots Appear: A Rethink Of Oppositions In Sexuality Politics
4. Shrimoyee Nandini Ghosh , The Unvictimlike Body Of The Dance Bar Girl

5.4 The Germinal Contribution Of J.M. Duncan Derrett To The Study Of South Asian Comparative Law And Social Change
@ the CSLG Seminar Room, FF
Chair And Panel Coordinator: Upendra Baxi
Panelists:
1. Werner Menski, Situating Duncan Derrett In The Landscape Of Postmodern Hindu And Indian Law
2. Oliver Mendelsohn, Professor Derrett, Indian Marriage, And The Proponents Of A Uniform Civil Code: Whose Is The "Progressive" Position?
3. Vasudha Dhagamwar, Two Cheers for the UCC, None for Other Options: Professor JDM Derrett on Codification and Code - Hindu or Uniform
4. Alex Fischer, Revisiting Derrett’s “Death of a Marriage Law” – The Living Dead Or Avatars Of Hindu Law?
5. Upendra Baxi, Duncan Derrett And The Comparative Method

5.5 Normality Of Custodial Violence: Collusive Strategies Of Policing Desires, 1, @ the CSLG Committee Room, FF
Chair and Panel Coordinator: Uma Chakravarti
Panelists:
1. Sara Hossain, Protecting Our Bodies, But Respecting Our Choices
2. Usha Ramanathan, Restoration And Return: The Silent Questions
3. Niti Saxena, Custodians And Guardians: Examining The 'Protective' Face Of State, Family And Community
4. Perveez Mody, The Construction Of Marital Rights In Delhi

4 - 4.30 pm: Tea @ SSS1

4. 30 pm 0 6.30 pm: Plenary 3
Law’s Technologies: Critical enquires into the Domains of Science, Capital, and Regulation
@ the SSS1 Auditorium
Chair: Brenna Bhandar
Panelists:
Suman Sahai, Ownership and Regulation of Transformative Technologies
Rosemary coombe, Intellectual Property and its Cultures: Informational Capital and Cultural Resources in a Neoliberal Era
Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Intellectual Property, Pharmaceutical Logics, and Ideologies of Innovation
Sheila Jassanoff, Natural or Naturalizing? – Law and Knowledge in a Constitutional Moment

Sunday, 11th January, 2009
10.00-11.45 am: Session 6
6.1 Gender, Law And Agrarian Relations: Panel In Honour Of Jayoti Gupta, @ the CSLG Classroom, GF
Panel Coordinator: Brenna Bhandar
Chair And Discussant: Rajni Palriwala
Panelists:
1. Utsa Patnaik, A Comment On Jayoti Gupta's Early Work
2. Anand Chakravarti, The State, The Law, And The Agrarian Underclass In India
3. Kumkum Sangari, The Gendered Economies of Law and Labour
4. Glimpses Of Jayoti Gupta's Work: Video Extracts (A Compilation Of 15 Mins) will be screened. All the films have been Directed/Produced by Manjira Datta.
5. Brenna Bhandar, Comment on Seeds of Plenty, Seeds of Sorrow

6.2 Property Rights, Labour, And Displacement
@ the CSS Classroom, First Floor
Panel Coordinator: Karine Bates
Chair and Discussant: Dipankar Gupta
Panelists:
1. Karine Bates, An Anthropological Study Of Women’s Property Rights And Access To Justice In India
2. Rajendra Pradhan, Legal Fields, Inheritance And Family: Negotiating The Meaning Of 'Property' In The Netherlands
3. Ahilan Kadirgamar, Post-Coloniality, Armed Conflicts And The Vicissitudes Of The Question Of Land In Sri Lanka

6.3 Independent Regulatory Agencies In India: Origins, Politics And Practice
@ the CSLG Seminar Room, FF
Panel Coordinator: Navroz K Dubash
Chair and Discussant: Partha Mukhopadhyay
Panelists:
1. Tca Anant And Jaivir Singh, Indian Regulatory Bodies And The Social Costs Of Unbalanced Delegation
2. Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Regulation, Law And Governance
3. Rajat Kathuria, Does Regulation Matter? A Case Study Of Indian Telecom
4. Navroz K. Dubash, Regulation As Politics: How Indian Electricity Regulators Re-Institutionalize The Politics of Power

6.4 Assessing The 'Conservative Shift' In The Indian Supreme Court's 'PIL' Jurisprudence
@ the Centre for Sanskrit Studies, Seminar Room, FF
Panel Coordinator: Siddharth Narrain
Chair And Discussant: Sitharam Kakarala
Panelists:
1. Anuj Bhuwania, Public Interest Litigation: The Thing Itself
2. Siddharth Narrain and Prashant Iyengar, Courting Development: The Appellate Judiciary And Large Developmental Projects In The Nineties
3. Sruti Chaganti, More Than The Sum Of Its Parts: The Constitution In The Judicial Nineties
4. Arun K. Thiruvengadam, A Complex And Fluid Dynamic: Analysing The Relationship Between Social Movements and The Judiciary In India

6.5 Normality Of Custodial Violence: Collusive Strategies Of Policing Desires, 2,
@ th CSLG Committee Room, FF
Panel Coordinator: Uma Chakravarti
Chair And Discussant: Sara Hossain
Panelists:
1. Aisha Gill, “Honour”- Based Crimes And Violence Against Women In The UK
2. Shaheen Sardar Ali, ‘Fractured Modernities’, Politics Of Parallel Judicial Systems And Women’s Human Rights: A Case Study Of The North West Frontier Province Of Pakistan
3. Nighat Said Khan, Still In The Closet: Human And Women's Rights Responses To Sexualities, Gender and The Other
4. Priya Thangarajah And Ponni Arasu, Queer Women and the Law in India: The Writ of Habeas Corpus

11.45 -12.15 pm: Tea

12.15 - 2 pm: Session 7
7.1 Competing Images of Law, Regulation and Rights
@ the Centre for Sanskrit Studies, Classroom, FF
Panel Coordinator: Anusha Hariharan
Chair and Discussant: Usha Ramanathan
Panelists:
1. U C Jha, South Asian Military Legal Systems: Implementation of the International Human Rights Law
2. Anusha Hariharan, Analyzing Vishakha
3. Dania Thomas, Where have all the Women Gone? Rights, Private Ordering and the Economics of Sex-selective Abortions
4. Sangeeta Udgaonkar, India’s Regulations on Embryonic Stem Cell Technology

7.2 Learning from Gujarat 2002: Scope of the Criminal Justice System to address Mass Crimes
@ the Centre for Sanskrit Studies, Seminar Room, FF
Panel Coordinator: Anita Abraham
Chair and Discussant: Vrinda Grover
Panelists:
1. Vrinda Grover, Challenging Regimes Of Immunity And Violence: What Can We Learn From International Law And Criminal Jurisprudence?
2. Arvind Narrain, Global Justice in the era of the War against Terror: Learning from Gujarat 2002
3. Anita Abraham and Prita Jha, Interrogating Mass Violence And Mass Impunity
4. Mukul Sinha, Statutory Prevarication: Commission or Omission?
5. Indira Jaising , The Law Of Sovereign Immunity: A Critique [tentative title]

7.3 The Bright Lines and Rhetorics of Intellectual Property, 3,
@ the CSLG Classroom, GF
Panel Coordinators: Brenna Bhandar and Dwijen Rangnekar
Chair and Discussant: Rosemary Coombe
Panelists:
1. Lawrence Liang, Meet John Doe's Order: Piracy, Temporality and the Question of Asia
2. Nandan Nawn, Political Economy of Music Copyright: Challenges from Recent Technological Developments and the Survival of the Justificatory Rhetoric
3. BS Chimni, TWAIL Perspectives On “The Bright Lines And Rhetorics Of Intellectual Property”: A Comment

7.4 Rethinking the Regulation of Sex Work-Reflections on the Indian Sex Work Debates
@ the CSLG Committee Room, FF
Panel Coordinator: Prabha Kotiswaran
Chair and Discussant: Rajeswari Sunder Rajan
Panelists:
1. Svati P. Shah , Sex Work, Criminalization, and Biopolitics in the Informal Sector
2. Ashwini Tambe, Moral Panics Compared: Moments in the History of Colonial Prostitution Laws
3. Prabha Kotiswaran, Born unto Brothels: Towards a Legal Realist Ethnography of Sonagachi’s Sex Industry
4. Ashwini Sukthankar, Activist engagements with sex workers in India (and vice versa)

7.5 Conversations On Empire and Law
@ the CSLG Seminar Room, FF
Panel Coordinator: Ratna Kapur
Chair And Discussant: Nivedita Menon
Panelists:
1. Ratna Kapur, Human Rights: The Liberal Ruse of Power
2. Vasuki Nesaih, Delimiting Accountability: Writing History Out Of Transitional Justice
3. Peter Fitzpatrick, Interjections On Empire And Law

2 - 3.30 pm: LUNCH @CSLG

3. 30 - 4.30 pm: LASSnet - Mapping the Future
@ the CSLG Seminar Room
Moderated by: Pratiksha Baxi

Venue Information at a glance:
- All 3 Plenaries and the Closing will be held at the School of Social Sciences 1, Auditorium, JNU
- 3 Parallel Streams in each session will be held at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance (CSLG). In each panel, 2 parallel streams will be held in the Centre for Sanskrit Studies (CSS) next to the CSLG venue.
Please note that there are 35 panels i.e., 7 sessions and 5 parallel streams in all.

lassnet@gmail.com
Abstracts are hosted on www. lassnet.org

APARNA VISWANATHAN

Aparna Viswanathan received her Bachelor of Arts (A.B.) degree from Harvard University and her Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Michigan Law School. She is called to the Bar in three U.S. jurisdictions (New York, Washington D.C., California), in India and the Bar in England (of Lincoln’s Inn). She is fluent in French, Spanish and Italian and advises clients in these languages.

Ms. Viswanathan began her career as a corporate attorney with the law firm of Reid & Priest in New York City and prepared contractual agreements for European and Latin American companies doing business in the United States. Ms. Viswanathan subsequently worked as a litigator with the law firm of Hancock, Rothert & Bunshoft in Los Angeles and represented large U.S. companies in products liability and insurance coverage litigation in the California Superior Court and U.S. District Court. In 1994, Ms. Viswanathan began to assist Senior Counsel in the Supreme Court of India and, in 1995, founded Viswanathan & Co., Advocates with offices in New Delhi and Bangalore. Since then, she has advised over 100 major multinational companies doing business in India and also argues cases before several High Courts in India and various arbitral tribunals.

Ms. Viswanathan is a widely published lawyer. In addition to over 70 by-lines in the Indian press from 1989 to 1994, including The Times of India, The Economic Times, The Business Standard and The Financial Express, she has published over 75 law journal articles on topics of both Indian and English company law, intellectual property, IT law, employment law and other issues in leading international law journals including the International Business Lawyer, the International Financial Law Review, BNA’s World Intellectual Property Report, World Telecom Law Report, World Food Regulation Review, Tax Planning International E-commerce, World Data Protection Report), Employment Law Journal, International Commercial and Company Law Review, Asian Business Review and others. She is also author of the book, “Outsourcing to India: Cross-Border Legal Issues,” published by Lexis-Nexis Butterworths in June 2008.

Ms. Viswanathan has been lecturing on U.S., Indian and English law at international for nearly two decades. In the early 1990s, Ms. Viswanathan gave a series of lectures on American law under the auspices of the Government of India, the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce, the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII), the PHD Chamber of Commerce, the Computer Society of India and others. Since the year 2000, Ms. Viswanathan has lectured at conferences organized under the auspices of the International Bar Association, the Practicing Law Institute, New York, LAWASIA, the British Institute for International and Comparative Law, London, the Computer Law Association/ITECHLAW, and the Paris Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Paris. She is also an Officer of the Technology Committee of the International Bar Association.

JANE KELSEY SPEAKS IN JNU

Centre for the Study of Law and Governance
Jawaharlal Nehru University

Fifth Annual Distinguished Lecture

By

Professor Jane Kelsey
Auckland University, New Zealand


Embedding Neoliberalism in a Post-neoliberal World:
The role of free trade agreements

Chair
Professor B.S. Chimni
Chairperson, Centre for International Legal Studies, School of International Studies, JNU

Friday, 28 November 2008, 5.00 PM

School of Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium
Jawaharlal Nehru University

“Outsourcing to India – Cross-Border Legal Issues” by Aparna Viswanathan

BOOK LAUNCH IN NEW DELHI
“Outsourcing to India – Cross-Border Legal Issues” by Aparna Viswanathan

Lexis Nexis Butterworths Wadhwa cordially invites you to the celebration of the launch of the book, “Outsourcing to India – Cross-Border Legal Issues” by Aparna Viswanathan, a definitive reference guide to issues involved in drafting outsourcing contracts, including private international law, contract law, taxation, SEZs, data protection, IPRs, IT policy and industry-specific regulations for the telecom, financial services and other sectors.

Guest of Honor: Mr. Som Mittal, President, NASSCOM

Chief Guest: Professor Upendra Baxi, Professor of Law in Development, University of Warwick, England

Guest Speaker: Mr. Prasanto Kumar Roy, Chief Editor, Dataquest.

Date: Monday, November 24, 2008
Time: 6 p.m. onwards
Venue: Alliance Française, 72 Lodi Estate, New Delhi 110003.

RSVP: ishu.oberoi@lexisnexis.com

Introducing Sonali Chitalkar

Sonali Chitalkar, lecturer in education, Amity Institute of Education, Amity University ,NOIDA. I am currently interested in Critical Race theories and their application to education (Curriculum and Pedagogy).

Introducing Professor Mortimer Sellers

Mortimer Sellers is Regents Professor of the University System of Maryland and Director of the University of Baltimore Center for International Law. He was educated at Harvard (A.B., J.D.) and Oxford (B.C.L., D.Phil.) and has written many books and articles on international law, constitutional law, and legal theory (see http://law.ubalt.edu/template.cfm?page=680). Professor Sellers was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and a Frank Knox Fellow of Harvard University.

The Center for International and Comparative Law publishes the Springer Verlag book series "Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice" and cooperates with the American Society of International Law in editing the Cambridge University Press book series "ASIL Studies in International Legal Theory". The Center has research initiatives in human rights, democratic institutions, environmental law, competitive markets, intellectual property, and commercial transactions.

The University of Baltimore School of Law offers a J.D. concentration in International Law and a one-year LL.M. program for foreign law graduates on the Law of the United States, which mights be of particular interest to lawyers in India who wish to gain expertise in United States law.

Professor Sellers can be reached by email at mortimer.sellers@gmail.com.

FEEDBACK ON LASS AND ITS FUTURE

We would like to collate your feedback on LASSnet through posts and comments on the LASSnet blog. We would really appreciate it if you could please send us your comments, ideas and expectations about the LASS network - its organizational structure, its future activities and the nature of commitment you could bring to the network. This would help us plan the closing session of the LASS Inaugural and include all those friends who are unable to attend the conference in January. Please do post your comments on the blog, or email us at lassnet@gmail.com

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

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).

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

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.

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.

Dr Nimushakavi Vasanthi

Dr Nimushakavi Vasanthi has been teaching at the NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, A.P, India for the past 8 years. She has taught a range of courses in Constitutional law, Administrative law, Criminal law, Contracts II, Property law, Poverty and law, Labour law, Taxation and Clinic courses. She is currently teaching the Legal methods and Taxation course and a seminar in Discrimination Law. She has over nine years experience in litigation prior to joining the university. She is a graduate of Osmania University and has also taught part time at the university. Her LLM was in Constitutional law. She took her Doctoral Degree in 2005. Her publications include a book titled Constitutional Policy and Environmental Jurisprudence in India. She has interests in gender, disability and clinical legal education. She co-chaired the panel on labour rights in a Session: Resurrecting/renegotiating labour rights in a globalising world and presented a paper "Critical theory and contract labour" at the CLC Hyderabad in Sept 2006.

Mostafa Mahmud Naser

Mostafa M. Naser is currently teaching in the Department of Law of the University of Chittagong, Bangladesh as a Assistant Professor. He completed LLB (Hons.) and LLM from the same University. His research interests include International Human Rights Law, International Humanitarian Law, Refugee and Migration Law.

Veena Das

Veena Das is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology and Professor of Humanities at the Johns Hopkins University. Her most recent book is Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary, California University Press, 2006. She has worked on themes of violence, social suffering, health and disease, and anthropology of the everyday. Currently she is engaged in a longitudinal study of urban neighbourhoods in Delhi. Das is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Academy of Sciences for Developing Societies. She has received several honours including the Andrez Retzius Prize of the Swedish Society of Anthropology and Geography and an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from the University of Chicago.

Deepak Mehta

Deepak Mehta is Reader at the Department of Sociology. He is the author of Work, Ritual, Biography: A Muslim Community in North India, 1997 (OUP) and co-author of Living With Violence: An Anthropology of Events and Everyday Life, 2007 (Routledge). He is currently working on the afterlife of the destruction of the Babri Mosque.

Introducing Professor George H. Gadbois, Jr

Professor George H. Gadbois, Jr is professor emeritus (political science) at the University of Kentucky. Over the years he has published extensively dealing mainly with Indian Supreme Court. At present, Professor George H. Gadbois, Jr is completing a book-length manuscript dealing with the first 93 judges (1950-1989).

SEMINAR POST

WOMEN'S STUDIES PROGRAMME
and
CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF LAW AND GOVERNANCEinvites you to a seminar

"Playing Off Courts: Negotiating Divorce and Violence In Courts, Police and Mediation Boards in Kolkata"


by

Dr. Srimati Basu
Associate Professor, Gender & Women's Studies
University of Kentucky


DATE: 30TH SEPTEMBER, 2008
TIME: 3.00 P.M.
VENUE: COMMITTEE ROOM NO.2, SSS-II.



The Indian State's management of divorce and domestic violence is enacted through a number of potentially contradictory fora, including civil and criminal remedies and formal and informal mediation. This paper focuses on Section 498 of the Indian Penal Code which legislates against "torture" and has been the primary criminal law governing domestic violence. It is a criminal provision of legendary notoriety, believed variously to be emblematic of the crux of feminist dystopia or of toothless symbolic legislation. Analyzing the discourse of litigants, judges, police and mediators in Family Courts, Women's Grievance Cells and Mediation Boards, this paper delineates the significance of domestic violence in the political economy of marriage: the tensions between looking to marriage for economic sustenance and undoing marriage through invocations of violence, the salience of social class in claiming the harm of violence, and the radical potential of laws of gender justice that may be contrarily deployed to secure dominant notions of domestic order. Existent criminal provisions may be used to leverage socioeconomic needs, but simultaneously, litigants construct violation differently than legal categories and seek complex remedies.


ALL ARE WELCOME

SEMINAR POST

Centre for International Legal Studies
School of International Studies
JNU
cordially invites you to a talk
on
The Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention
by
Dr. Namrata Goswami
Associate Fellow
IDSA
Time: 11 a.m.
Date: 19 September 2008 (Friday)
Venue: Room No. 117 (First Floor), SIS
All are cordially invited
:

SEMINAR POST

Centre for International Legal Studies
School of International Studies
JNU
cordially invites you to a talk
on
The Ethics of Humanitarian Intervention
by
Dr. Namrata Goswami
Associate Fellow
IDSA
Time: 11 a.m.
Date: 19 September 2008 (Friday)
Venue: Room No. 117 (First Floor), SIS
All are cordially invited
:

James Jaffe: Introducing Myself

I received my Ph.D. From Columbia University in New York in 1984 with a specialty in modern European history. Since then, I have written two books on industrial relations in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Britain and edited a third, the diary of a famous political activist from that period. This work helped to develop a special interest in the history of alternative dispute resolution, especially the history of arbitration, which is now the focus of my research. I have published on the history of arbitration in Britain, but more recently I have spent the last two years expanding this research into the history of arbitration in colonial India. Currently, I am working on a monograph exploring the adaptation and contestation of Indian and British forms of arbitration to resolve civil disputes in colonial Bombay. More generally, the monograph will address competing and complementary concepts of justice and fairness during the colonial era.

Dr Ramanatham Memorial Meeting 2008

Peoples' Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) invites you for the

Dr Ramanatham Memorial Meeting 2008

On
6th September 2008 (Saturday)
At:
INDIAN LAW INSTITUTE (opposite Supreme Court, Bhagwan Dass Road)
From:
3.30 pm to 6.30 pm


Friends,
Each year, PUDR has been conducting an annual public meeting in honour of Dr Ramanatham, Vice President of the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee
(APCLC) and popular medical doctor, who was killed by the police in 1985.
This year, we are organizing a meeting on


JUDICIARY AND WORKERS' RIGHTS


The decade of the 1990s witnessed anti-poor economic reforms,
'globalization', greater contractualization and casualization of labour in
India, changing production practices, an attempt to undermine labour laws
and frequent physical attacks on struggling workers. This was accompanied by
a series of judgements and orders by the Supreme Court and lower courts -
including on the right to strike and to call for a bandh - that taken
together constitute the most serious political attack on workers' rights in
decades.

Our speakers will share their experience in their own areas, what how
workers and unions have coped with and responded to this assault by the
judiciary. The presentations will be followed by a discussion.


SPEAKERS:

1. SUDHA BHARADWAJ, CMM (Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha)
2. SANJAY SINGHVI, TUCI (Trade Union Congress of India)
3. ANIMESH DAS, IFTU (Indian Federation of Trade Unions)
4. NGR PRASAD, Advocate (Labour Lawyers Practioners Association, Chennai)

The meeting will be chaired by
KAMALA SANKARAN, Faculty of Law, Delhi University.

Please do attend and pass the word around.

In solidarity,

Nagraj Adve, Harish Dhawan
Secretaries, PUDR

Prem Chowdhry: A brief biographical note

A product of Delhi University ; Ph. D from the Jawaharlal Nehru University; taught in Miranda House, University college for women from 1966 to 1988 ; a senior fellow of the Indian Council of Social Sciences, 1983-85; a University Grants Commission fellow at Jawaharlal Nehru University from 1988-1994; a fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti, New Delhi from 1994- 2006; author of Contentious Marriages, Eloping Couples: Gender, Caste and Patriarchy in Northern India, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2007; Colonial India and the Making of Empire Cinema: Image, Ideology and Identity, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2000; The Veiled Women: Shifting Gender Equations in Rural Haryana, 1880-1990, Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1994; and Punjab Politics, Vikas Publications, Delhi, 1984; Other publications include research articles on politics, society, popular culture and gender both in colonial and contemporary India, in edited works and reputed national and international journals.

Introducing Rishabh Sancheti

Rishabh Sancheti is presently an Associate at the Office of Assistant Solicitor General of India at the High Court of Judicature for Rajasthan. He is also a part-time faculty of law at the National Law University, India where his teaching portfolio includes Company Laws, Corporate Restructuring & Governance and Securitization laws. He has been a Law Trainee-cum-Research Assistant to Hon'ble Justice N. Santosh Hegde, at the Supreme Court of India. He completed European Master in Law and Economics with a full scholarship from the European Union as an Erasmus Mundus Scholar. He received LL.M. from University of Hamburg, Germany, Diploma di Master Universitario di I livello in Law and Economics from University of Bologna, Italy and LL.M. from University of Vienna, Austria. He graduated cum laude from the National Law University, India with S.R. Bhandari Memorial Gold Medal qualifying for B.B.A.-LL.B. (Hons.) with a specialization in the area of International Trade and Investment laws.

CALL FOR PAPERS

International Conference on Feminist Constitutionalism

Date: February 28 – March 1, 2009

Location: Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

This conference intends to follow current debates in the intersection between constitutional law, constitutionalism, and feminist theory, both domestically and internationally. The discussions will address both rights and institutional issues and will welcome also the use of comparative methods and analysis.

Topics to be discussed include, but are not limited to: constitutional interpretation, popular constitutionalism, human rights, access to justice, multiculturalism, reproductive rights, and social and economic rights.

Key Note Speakers:

Professor Catherine MacKinnon, University of Michigan
Professor Reva Siegel, Yale University
Professor Jennifer Nedelsky, University of Toronto

The conference committee is seeking submissions of academic abstracts not exceeding 500 words. Our intention is to consolidate the papers presented and publish them in the format of an academic book (but the final decision on this will be made after the papers are submitted).

Please send abstract submissions to one of the conference organizers (below) by email.

Submission Deadline:
September 30, 2008

Notification of Acceptance:
October 15, 2008

Conference organizers:

Professor Beverley Baines, Queen’s University (bainesb@queensu.ca)
Professor Daphne Barak-Erez, Tel-Aviv University (barakerz@post.tau.ac.il)
Professor Tsvi Kahana, Queen’s University (kahanat@queensu.ca)

Invitation to the 12th International Consumer Law Conference, 25th to 27th February, 2009

We cordially invite you to participate in the "12TH INTERNATIONAL
CONSUMER LAW CONFERENCE jointly organized by International Association
of Consumer Law and NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad. The
conference will be held from 25th -27th February 2008 at NALSAR
University of Law, Hyderabad.

About the Conference:

The theme of the conference is 'CONSUMER LAW - GLOBALIZATION, POVERTY
AND DEVELOPMENT' and consumer law scholars from all parts of the world
are invited to participate. The general theme of the conference
includes numerous sub-themes. In the following some of the sub themes
are mentioned.

 Creating a Legal Infrastructure to Protect Consumers in a Global Economy
 Green and Ethical Consumerism in the Global Economy
 Vulnerable Consumers and Poverty as an Issue of Consumer Law
 Rights and Responsibilities of Service Providers, including Financial Services
 Adjudicating Bodies and Consumer Redress in a Global Economy

The description is not meant to be exhaustive, and other perspectives
to the issue at hand are welcome as well. The structure and programme
of the conference will be finalized after the deadline of the call for
papers.

This conference is organized once in every two years. Previous
conferences were held in various parts of the world including Brazil,
Malta, South Africa and various other European countries. This
conference is of international acclaim and has had participation from
the policy makers and renowned academicians around the world.

Interested participants can send in a short summary (½ page) of their
paper to the organizing committee in Hyderabad. Papers are to be sent
to Dr. Vidyullatha Reddy, (e-mail 12consumerconference@gmail.com/
vidyullathareddy@gmail.com ), as well as to the President of the IACL,
Professor Thomas Wilhelmsson (thomas.wilhelmsson@helsinki.fi ).

Final deadline for abstracts is September 30, 2008. Those selected
will be informed as soon as possible after submission of their
proposals. Finalized papers should be provided before December 31,
2008. The registration fee, that includes the conference material,
lunches during the conference and a dinner, is 250 USD for
participants from abroad and 5000 Indian rupees for participants from
India. Details of the conference venue and reasonable accommodation
facilities are provided at www.nalsar.ac.in.

About Hyderabad:

Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh consists of twin cities of
Hyderabad and Secundrabad and is a bustling 400 year old metropolis
which is famous as the former seat of the fabulously wealthy Nizams of
Hyderabad. Major attractions include the following:

 Charminar:
It consists of four graceful minarets, forty four prayer spaces and a
mosque. Charminar was built around 1591 at the centre of the original
city layout. It is as much the signature of Hyderabad as Taj Mahal is
of Agra and Eiffel Tower is of Paris.
 Golconda Fort:
It is one of the famous forts in India. It is famous for its
acoustics, palaces, ingenious water supply system and the famous
fatheh rahben gun, one of the canons used in the last siege of
Golconda by Aurangzeb, to whom the fort finally fell. Its past is
narrated effectively with the unique Sound and Light Show which shows
the past of Golconda.
 Mecca Masjid:
A two hundred yards south west of Charminar it is so named because the
bricks were brought from mecca to build the central arch. Mecca Masjid
is poetry in stone with a magnificent wall and 15 graceful arches.
Towards the southern end of the mosque lie the marble grave of the
members of the Azam Jahi Dynasty
 Birla Mandir:
This white marble temple of Lord Venkateswara floats on the city
skyline, on Kala Pahad. The idol in the temple is the replica of one
at Trirupati.
 Hussain Sagar Lake:
Excavated in 1562 by Hussain Shah Wali, the lake has one of the
world's tallest monolith statutes of the Buddha standing on the rock
of Gibraltar in the middle of the lake.
 Salarjung Museum:
This museum houses one of the biggest one-man collections of antiques
of the world by Mir Yousuf Ali Khan, Salarjung III. The objects
include Persian Carpets, Mughal miniatures, Chinese porcelain,
Japanese lacquerware, famous statutes including Veiled Rebecca and
Marguerite and Mephistopheles, a superb collection of jade, daggers
belonging to Queen Noor Jahan and Emperors Jahangir and Shah Jahan,
Aurangzeb's sword and many other fabulous items.
 Shiparamam Arts and Crafts village:
Situated at Madhapur is this 30 acre village which showcases arts and
crafts of the country. It hosts annual bazaars, artists and artisans
from all over the country exhibit their talent.
 Ramoji Film City:
A dream world created for the celluloid on a sprawling 1000 acres with
every imaginable set and location. Visitors can go around in conducted
tours.
 Other major destinations include Qutb -Shahi Tombs, Archeological
Museum, Nizam's Silver Jubilee Museum, Chow – Mohalla Complex, and
Lumbini Park

Hyderabadi Cuisine

Hyderabad was known for the spectacular way its aristocracy
entertained. The cuisine owes its origin to the Mughali style of
cooking of the Asaf Jahi Period. There is a variety of Biryani's (rice
and meat preparation seasoned with spices and flavoring) kababs in
many different styles such as Boti, Jhammi, Kalmi, Shikampur, Sheek
and Legan- ke kababs, Dum- ke- kababs, Kurmas and Lukhmi (pastry).

Soliciting your participation at this Conference

Yours Sincerely

Dr. Vidyulatha Reddy

For, Organizing and Co-ordinating Team
12th International Consumer Law Conference
NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad, India

Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya

Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya is a Fellow in Political Science at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. He works on issues related to democracy, governance, and the politics of the Left in India. His fieldwork primarily takes shape in rural West Bengal. At present, he is also working on a study that compares Kerala and West Bengal on various aspects including social mobilization, political participation and institutional performance especially in relation to the population below the poverty line.

POSITIONS AVAILABLE

The Cultural and Material life of Media Piracy is a three year project carried out by the Sarai programme of the CSDS in collaboration with the Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore. We begin with the premise that piracy is widespread in places where a media-saturated modernity meets severe inequalities of purchasing power for books, software, recordings, videos and other knowledge products. One of the key aims of this research project will be to understand this media environment as it unfolds itself in diverse contexts. The main research node is in India with comparative work in China and Pakistan. The Sarai-ALF teams of researchers work in tandem with an international project on media piracy with fellow researchers in Brazil, South Africa and Russia. The larger study is coordinated by the SSRC (New York).

The project seeks to open different debates on piracy other than simply that of enforcement and criminality. Through research, we hope to generate discussions of cultural needs, community practices of sharing and circulation in societies of high inequality. We will also look at media industry approaches to piracy and enforcement strategies. In addition, there will be ethnographic and quantitative work on media use in neighbourhoods. The study of piracy offers a unique vantage point to study the media environment, through the sites of media and its movement across limits set by law, the complexity of user-bases, and the diversity of cultural delivery platforms.

We are looking for bright, energetic and qualified researchers who can work in collaboration with a regional and international team. Applicants must demonstrate abilities to research and write on the subject. A familiarity with the debate on piracy and the creative commons is preferable. Social science and Humanities applicants should have completed post graduate degrees and law students a four year programme.

Researcher One: Delhi
The researcher will be looking at fieldwork material on media piracy in the Sarai archive, as well as conduct neighbourhood surveys slate to begin in 2009. Work will include research papers presentations and collaborative work with the team.



Researcher Two: Mumbai
The researcher will be looking at the range of piracy strategies pursued by media industries in the film and music sectors. Research will span the larger media companies as well as the smaller companies. Work will include research papers presentations and collaborative work with the team. Applicants from outside Mumbai are also welcome to apply for this position, although Mumbai based work will be significant.



Remuneration will be Rs 28000/ a month. Interested applicants may send their CV and a written research sample to researchjobs@sarai.net by September 20, 2008.
Applications without a written research sample will not be entertained.



Links
SSRC piracy project: http://programs.ssrc.org/ccit/ip/
Sarai, CSDS : http://www.sarai.net/research/knowledge-culture/knowledge-and-culture
ALF: www.altlawforum.org
_____________________________________
The Newsletter of the Sarai Programme,
29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054, www.sarai.net
Info: dak@sarai.net.To subscribe: send a blank email to
newsletter-request@sarai.net with subscribe in the subject header.
Directions to Sarai: We are 10 minutes from Delhi University, and 5 mins. from the Civil Lines Metro Station.

See Calendar and Newsletter online:
http://www.sarai.net/about-us/newsletter

From the Indian Express: Visas to Visiting Scholars

Indian missions to bypass MHA, provide visas to visiting scholars
Anubhuti Vishnoi
Posted online: Thursday, August 07, 2008 at 0132 hrs IST
New Delhi, August 6
The Indian missions will now be the interface point for foreign research scholars applying at Indian educational institutes instead of the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry. As per directions by the Government, the visa rules for foreign researchers have been revised to enable them to apply directly to Indian missions abroad instead of applying to the HRD Ministry, as has been the case so far. While the move does not mean the application process will be overhauled, it is expected to cut down the waiting time for researchers by 3-4 months with the HRD ministry unable to add to the red tape.
The Indian Express had earlier reported how delays on part of the HRD ministry were keeping foreign scholars waiting for months together. Now, foreigners who desire to undertake research in India should apply to the Indian missions (concerned) abroad with the brief synopsis of the research project to be undertaken in India, the details of places to be visited, previous visits, whether the scholar has secured admission into a recognised or reputed institution and evidence of financial resources, the HRD Ministry has communicated to institutes in the country late last month. So far, universities keen to get any visiting faculty from other nations had to apply atleast three months beforehand with the HRD ministry.
Indian missions abroad will also issue visas to foreigners to attend conferences and workshops that are being organised in India “by a ministry or department of the Government of India, state governments, public sector undertakings, central educational institutions, public funded universities or an organisation owned and controlled by the Government of India or state governments, United Nations or its specialised agencies or a reputed non governmental organisation”.
The step comes as a series of measures co-ordinated by the Ministry of External Affairs with the Home Ministry and the HRD Ministry have been initiated of late to liberalise and simplify the current system for granting visas to international students.
As of now, the HRD Ministry is the nodal ministry in these matters. For instance, in case of US scholars, the ministry gets the visa applications through the United States Educational Foundation in India (USEFI). It then sends each scholar’s file to Ministry of External Affairs and Home Ministry which, in turn, asks the Intelligence Bureau for clearance. Sometimes, even the Ministry concerned is asked to vet the subject.

Request for information on rape and sexual violence in BMER communities

Dr Aisha Gill (Roehampton University) would like to invite you to submit anonymised cases studies of rape and sexual violence in the BMER community that your organisation or you have dealt with in your work on issues related to violence against women (VAW) as advocates and support caseworkers. The findings will be used to build a case for the importance of specialist service provision for such women and young girls. The intended aim of this request for information of this kind is to also influence government policy across a range of VAW areas in the BMER sector. It is an opportunity for those of us working with violence against women’s issues to have an input into an important national debate about the need for specialist services that is long over due. This invitation is to also to ask you what you think are the big questions and issues for BMER women experiencing a range of abuses in their lives. For example I am interested in:

1. What are the particular issues facing BMER women in terms of reporting rape and sexual violence to the criminal justice system?
2. What are some of the main concerns for BMER women in terms of the experience of rape and sexual violence?
3. What challenges do BMER women face in relation to accessing specialist support related to rape and sexual violence?

I would like to know where gaps in knowledge and resources are and what evidence is missing to effectively lobby for change in this sector. In return for your time to send me case studies I intend to make available a policy briefing paper which can be used for lobbying purposes for the BMER VAW sector.

Please also feel free to pass this invitation on to others you think would be interested.
For more information about this piece of work contact me on a.gill@roehampton.ac.uk or call 0208 392 3893.

Your time is truly appreciated and I very much look forward to your
response. I do hope you will be able to input.

Aisha Gill

Dr Aisha Gill
Senior Lecturer in Criminology
School of Social Sciences,
Roehampton University, Roehampton Lane,
London, SW15 5SL
Tel: +44 (0)208 392 3893/ 07956 116278
Email: a.gill@roehampton.ac.uk

Gaia Von-Hatzfeldt

Gaia Von-Hatzfeldt is doing a masters in 'law and society' at the LSE. Gaia is currently working on a dissertation which is focusing on 'jan sunwais' as promulgated by MKSS, a social movement fighting corruption in rural areas of Rajasthan.

Geetanjoy Sahu

Geetanjoy Sahu is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development(CISED), Bangalore, India.
Geetanjoy recently completed Ph.D in Political Science at the Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore. Geetanjoy Sahu's doctoral research is on Environmental Governance and Role of Judiciary in India.

Wing Commander U C Jha (Retd)

Wing Commander U C Jha (Retd) worked in the Indian Air Force for 24 years. After taking pre-mature retirement Wing Commander Jha enrolled at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, JNU as Ph D student in July 2002. He submitted his thesis tilted "Military Justice System in India" in July 2007.

He has worked as Consultant (Legal) with National Human Rights Commission for three years. He has been visiting faculty at Indian Law Institute, the Indian Society for International Law, and the United Services Institute, New Delhi. He is also a resource person for the International Committee of the Red Cross on International Humanitarian Law.

Rohit De

Rohit De is a graduate student at the Department of History at Princeton. His primary interest is in South Asian legal history and he is particularly interested in studying the courtroom as a space where the relationship between the state and the citizen is mediated. His recent research focuses on Muslim family law, gender and the discourses of modernity in late colonial India. Rohit graduated with a B.A, LL.B (Hons) degree from the National Law School of India University and completed his LL.M at the Yale Law School in 2006. Before starting at Princeton, Rohit spent a year as the Fox International Fellow at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University

Swethaa Ballakrishnen

She is a '04 graduate of the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research and a recent ('08) graduate of Harvard Law School (where she did an LL.M with a shared focus in international finance and the sociology of legal education).


Before coming to Harvard, she was a corporate lawyer with the Mumbai offices of Amarchand Mangaldas and a research associate and lecturer at the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (where she taught parts of the legal methods and family law courses and offered for senior students a seminar in international finance). At HLS, she worked closely with the Harvard History Project (her graduate thesis was a paper on the history of South Asian law students at HLS) and was on the board of the South Asian Law Students Association (SALSA).

MADHAV KHOSLA

I am a recent graduate of the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, and have begun work as a Research Assistant to Prof. Madhava Menon at the Commission on Centre-State Relations, Government of India. My primary areas of interest and public law and human rights. Last year, I had the opportunity to work at the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University where I analyzed the operation of the right to health during the United Nations Mission in Haiti (UNMIH, 1993-1996) and the problems experienced as a result of the Mission's narrow mandate that privileged civil-political rights over socio-economic rights. I have also been a Junior Ethics Fellow at the World Health Organization, Geneva, where I researched on substantive equality and the allocation of scarce medical resources. In addition, I have clerked with Justice SB Sinha and Justice HS Bedi at the Supreme Court of India, as well as worked with organizations such as Lawyers Collective, Pratham and the World Bank. My published in journals such as the International Community Law Review, Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice, Judicial Review, Economic & Political Weekly and so on.

DOUGLAS HAY

B.A., Toronto (1967), Ph.D. (Warwick, 1976). Teaches legal and social history at Osgoode Hall Law School and the Department of History at York University, Toronto. Visiting appointments as Professor of Canadian Studies at Yale and as SSRC Professorial Fellow in Socio‑legal Studies at the University of Warwick; visiting scholar at Centre for Criminology University of Toronto and Columbia University Law School. Co‑edited and contributed to Albion's Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth‑Century England (1975), Labour, Law and Crime in Historical Perspective (1987), Policing and Prosecution in Britain 1750‑1850 (1989), Friends of the Chief Justice: The William Osgoode Correspondence (1990), Eighteenth‑Century English Society (1997) Masters, Servants, and Magistrates in Britain and the Empire (2004); articles and chapters on English and Canadian legal history appear in other collections and in history and law journals. Elected to the Board of Directors of the American Society for Legal History 1985‑88 and for the term beginning 2000, and member of the board of Law and History Review from 1983‑1992. Service on committees, boards, or journals of the Law and Society Association, the Canadian Historical Association, and the Social Science History Association. The Chorley Lecturer (London School of Economics), the Iredell Lecturer in Legal History (University of Lancaster), The Hugh Alan Maclean Lecturer (University of Victoria Faculty of Law), the Weir Memorial Lecturer (University of Alberta School of Law) the Annual Lecturer for the American Society of Legal History 2002, the Hugh Fitzpatrick Lecturer in Legal Bibliography. Co-director of the York International Master and Servant Project on employment law in what was the British Empire from the 16th to 20th centuries; current work also includes studies of the administration of English criminal law and of the court of King's Bench in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Courses taught include History of Canadian Law, Law and Social Change in an Age of Freedom of Contract, Western Legal Histories, Law Property and Freedom in Britain and its Empire, History of Criminal Law and its Administration, History of Canadian Legal Institutions, Law and Social Justice. On sabbatical leave 2008-2009.

LASS INAUGURAL CONFERENCE 2009

WE ARE REALLY GRATEFUL FOR THE WONDERFUL AND OVERWHELMING RESPONSE TO THE CALL FOR PAPERS FOR THE LASS INAUGURAL CONFERENCE

THE CALL FOR PAPERS IS OFFICIALLY CLOSED AND WE ARE EXTREMELY SORRY THAT WE ARE UNABLE TO ACCOMODATE MORE PAPERS.

THIS IS TO FORMALLY THANK YOU ALL AND APOLOGISE TO EVERYONE WHO HAS WRITTEN SINCE WE CLOSED OUR CALL FOR PAPERS.

WE WILL BE IN TOUCH WITH EVERYONE WHO SENT AN ABSTRACT SOON. THANKS

LASS CONFERENCE STEERING COMMITTEE

SC blasts Gujarat on FIR against Nandy

"Nothing in the article is objectionable," a Bench headed by Justice Altamas Kabir said, while restraining the Narender Modi Government from arresting Nandy
New Delhi: The Supreme Court today rebuked the Gujarat government for initiating criminal proceedings against political analyst Ashis Nandy for writing an article in a national daily allegedly having communal overtones.
"Nothing in the article is objectionable," a Bench headed by Justice Altamas Kabir said while restraining the Narender Modi Government from arresting Nandy.
"Concerned authorities and officials of the Gujarat Government will not take any steps to arrest Nandy in respect of the proceedings arising from the FIR registered in relation to the article," it said.
However, hours after the order was pronounced, Nandy's counsel Rakesh Khanna and Gaurang Kanth informed the bench that the scholar has been served with a summons notice by the Gujarat Police to appear before Satellite police station officials in Ahmedabad on July 8.
Taking their submission on record, the Bench cancelled the summons and said "Any further summons issued against Nandy in future relating to the case will stand quashed."
During the hearing, the Bench disapproved the prosecution of 71-year-old scholar for the article saying "there is no ground for harassing a journalist."
"Let him live in peace. You (Gujarat) are prosecuting this man for his article," the Bench said referring to the article on post-assembly election analysis.
"There are worst things happening in this country," it said expressing anguish over the state government's move to register an FIR on a private complaint.
The apex court was also critical of V K Saxena, President of the Ahmedabad-based NGO, National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL), on whose complaint the FIR was registered under section 153A (promoting communal disharmony) and 153B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration) of Indian Penal Code. "What is the grievance of the complainant. How does it (article) bother him. Is he a staunch nationalist," the Bench observed, questioning the motive behind filing the complaint.
"People coming from the land of Gandhiji have become so intolerant that they can't even tolerate an article," the Bench, also comprising Justice G S Singhvi observed.
"They look for a soft target to catch but not even a single politician or small municipal councilors are caught ...," the Bench further said refusing to consider the submission of Gujarat government counsel Hemantika Wahi that the investigation was in initial stages.
The apex court was hearing the petition filed by Nandy against the order of the Delhi High Court which had refused to provide him an interim protection against arrest.
The High Court will now hear his writ petition in which he has sought quashing of the FIR.
In the FIR, it was alleged that Nandy's article related to assembly election results disturbed communal harmony between Hindus and Muslims.
However, Nandy contended that the FIR was registered out of malafide intention. He said that the FIR was aimed at penalising and depriving him of expressing his bonafide views.
His counsel said that the state government has picked up a line from the article published in a national daily and accused him of promoting communal disharmony.

Recognize sexwork as legitimate work

Recognize sexwork as legitimate work
Criminalizing sexworkers or clients is counter productive
National Day of Action1st JULY 2008 (Tuesday),
Bangalore
Don't destroy the livelihood of Sexworkers by criminalizing their clients
Drop Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act amendment process Immediately
Karnataka State Coalition Against ITPA(Constituent Organizations: Aneka, Ashodaya Samithi, Jyothi Mahila Sangha,Karnataka Sexual Minorities Forum, Karnataka Sexworkers Union, LesBiT,Samara, Sangama, Sangram, Suraksha, Swathi Mahila Sangha, Veshya AnyayMukthi Parishad, Vijaya Mahila Sangha) invites you to the 3 PM PUBLIC RALLY from Chikka Lalbagh (Majestic) to Mysore BankCircle 5 PM PUBLIC MEETING at Mysore Bank CircleSitamarhi, Bihar: Mob attacks sexworkers and burns down 250 houses infront of policeCalicut, Kerala: Sexworkers evicted from their homes and their housesburnt by the cadres of the ruling partyChannapattana, Karnataka: Goondas (supported by police) brutally attacksexworkers who had gathered to peacefully demonstrate for rightsDelhi: Police forcibly pick up 70 adult sexworkers in Delhi, in grossviolation of their basic rights and detain them in jails and protectivehomes of Andhra Pradesh, under the guise of rescuing/ helping/ reformingsexworkersThese are not isolated incidents but witness to the growing intoleranceand prejudice against sexworkers. Sexworkers face constant policeviolence, goonda violence and extreme social rejection. Hounded by thegoondas and constantly harassed by the police, sexworkers are in danger ofnot only getting marginalized but also becoming far more vulnerable toHIV-AIDS. As sexworkers are forced to run from street to street, adoptingsafer sex practices, accessing health care services or even using condomsbecomes almost impossible in spite of their best efforts to save theirlives. As a large part of their earnings go to police, goondas and theGovernment (as court fines), they are forced to work long hours, servemore clients and often put themselves at risk. Constantly they are coercedto compromise with everyone because of the fear of false cases beingfoisted on them, as well as being insulted and humiliated in public anddenied even basic dignity and respect.The Immoral Traffic Prevention Act (ITPA) criminalizes most aspects ofsexwork by equating 'voluntary adult sexwork' with trafficking.Trafficking - the business of forcing children and adults against theirwill into various forms of work including sexwork, is totally unacceptableto us. Sexworkers have been struggling against the unfairness in ITPA.Police make use of ITPA to harass, abuse and extort money from sexworkersmost of who are disadvantaged in many waysTo make matters worse the Central Government has proposed to amend theITPA to punish the clients of sexworkers. The logic behind the move issupposedly to prevent trafficking of people into sexwork by reducingdemand for sexwork. There is enough evidence from numerous countries thatcriminalizing clients of sexworkers doesn't help in combating traffickingbut only pushes sexwork underground making sexworkers more vulnerable toviolence and HIV infection. The Central Government is planning to go aheadwith this in spite of protests from sexworkers and human rights activistsfor the last few years. This process will deny sexworkers basic right forsurvival and livelihood. In a democracy, the government must duly consultall concerned and affected people before amending any law. But the Uniongovernment has been ignoring the voices of the sexworkers in the ITPAamendment process. The role of the government should be to enable sexworkers to access their social entitlements and rights.Sexworkers have broken their long silence. They have been forming theirown organizations, strengthening their communities, engaging with thesociety at large and supporting Governmental efforts in combatingHIV-AIDS. They have been extending solidarity and support to the strugglesof various marginalized people including women, dalits, adivasis,minorities, the poor, workers and others.We request all citizens to join hands with us to demand that thegovernment drop the ITPA amendment process immediately.

Call for Papers

INDIAN JOURNAL OF JUSTICE STUDIES – INVITATION FOR SUBMISSIONS

The National Judicial Academy, India (NJA) has been set up under the guidance of the Supreme Court of India for judicial education, policy and research, as a means for improving the quality of justice delivery in the country. As part of this mandate, the NJA has decided to publish a peer-reviewed annual journal for discussion, thinking and deliberation on the theme of "quest for justice"- broadly defined. Named the Indian Journal of Justice Studies, this journal aims to contribute to thinking on issues of justice, like, for example, the various and often competing concepts of justice; ideas and social, political, religious and economic forces shaping these concepts; struggles and social movements for justice; institutional frameworks and formal and informal networks influencing justice delivery; state policies, including developmental policies and their impact on justice; the role of judicial institutions in relation to justice; the role of the legal profession and legal education in the quest for justice; multidisciplinary approaches to justice; legal frameworks and their impact of justice, international and comparative approaches to justice, etc.
The Editorial Board of the Journal invites submissions for the 2007-08 issue, in keeping with the editorial policy provided below. The deadline for submission of manuscripts is July 25, 2008.
The editorial policy and the Call for Papers are also available at http://www.nja.gov.in/journal.html.

EDITORIAL POLICY

Objective

The Indian Journal of Law and Justice ("Journal") aims to foster thinking, research and writing centered on the theme of "quest for justice"- broadly defined. It encourages scholarship drawing on a variety of theoretical bases, research methodologies and disciplines.

The Journal welcomes submissions from judges, lawyers, academics as well as law students. In addition, given its policy of encouraging interdisciplinary scholarship, it also welcomes submissions from specialists from other disciplines.

Solicited and Unsolicited Articles, Review Procedure and Selection

The Editorial Board of the Journal may, at its discretion, invite articles, comments and reviews from individuals who are leaders in their fields. Apart from such solicited pieces, the Journal will also consider unsolicited papers that are submitted to it for publication. All articles, comments and reviews, whether solicited or unsolicited, will be reviewed by the Editorial Board to determine publishability. The decisions of the Editorial Board will be final and no request will be entertained for further review.

The Editorial Board will carefully consider all manuscripts received by it. All unsolicited pieces will be reviewed anonymously, without regard to the author's name, affiliation, prior publications, etc.

The editorial policy of the Journal seeks to afford substantial deference to authors. Therefore, the Journal only accepts manuscripts that are well written and completely argued at the time of submission, as it will not be possible for the Editorial Board to engage in detailed editing of the substantive content of the manuscripts. The changes that are suggested by the Editorial Board are intended to hone the ideas advanced by the author, not to replace them. Therefore, after the editing process, the Board will send the author a marked copy of the manuscript, highlighting the suggested changes. These changes are meant as reasoned suggestions, not editorial diktats, and the author's judgment regarding whether the changes should be made or not, will be respected.

Articles, Notes, Comments, Reviews, Essays

The Journal seeks to publish a variety of legal and other writings on the issue of justice. The only consideration is that the writing should be scholarly in nature. Based on the length of the piece and the merit of its substantive content, the Editorial Board will decide whether to publish the accepted pieces as articles, notes, comments, reviews or essays. Generally articles will be of 10,000 words or more and will either develop a theory, or apply theoretical and/or research findings from law and other disciplines to legal subject matter.

A comment is a shorter piece of about 5,000 words which discusses one particular issue of legal or policy significance in detail. A piece will be considered an essay if it is around 3,000 words and its primary purpose is to advance an idea, or to initiate or engage in analytical discussion.

Notes and reviews are descriptive pieces which summarize a recent legal or policy development like a new legislation, judicial decision or policy and place them in their wider legal and social context. The main purpose of such these writings is to familiarize the reader with current developments. The reviews section will also include book reviews.

Citation Style

The Journal follows the Blue Book citation style. (The Blue Book: A Uniform System of Citation (Columbia Law Review Ass'n et al. eds., 18th ed. 2005). However, the manuscripts need not necessarily comply with this citation format in draft form.

Exclusivity

The Journal will publish only original articles and research papers. Manuscripts are accepted for publication on the understanding that their contents, all or in part, have not been published elsewhere. Every contribution should be the author's own original work, and should not constitute a substantial repetition of work already published or to be published elsewhere.

Copyright

Submissions are considered for publication on condition that copyright in any material included in the Journal is assigned to the National Judicial Academy on the understanding that the Academy can re-publish the article elsewhere, or can allow third parties to publish the piece. Authors are free to use their own copyright materials in other publications, provided that the Journal is acknowledged as the original place of publication. The author also retains his or her moral rights in the submission.
Submission format

All submissions should be made in electronic format only, in a MS Word document. The manuscripts should contain footnotes and not endnotes. The manuscripts can either be e-mailed to: njabhopal@nja.gov.in (put the words "To the Editor" in the subject line) or be sent in a disk to: The Editor, Indian Journal of Juridical Studies, National Judicial Academy, Surajnagar, Bhadbadha Road, Bhopal- 462044, India. Please ensure that the disk is virus free, and is not corrupted.

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed in the Journal are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Editorial Board, the National Judicial Academy, or any other persons or institutions affiliated with it.

Lakshmi Arya

Lakshmi Arya is an Associate Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore. She has recently submitted a doctoral dissertation on rape laws and trials in colonial times (British India and princely Mysore, 1860 – 1947) at the history department in Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research interests lie in the field of gender, state and the law.

Narayan Chandra Sarangi

Narayan Chandra Sarangi is a Postgraduate in Law from Utkal University, Bhubaneswar –Orissa. Presently employed in a nationalized Bank as a middle management functionary in Legal Department, he was a faculty at University Law College, Bhubaneswar and a practicing advocate at Orissa High Court. He is also a research scholar in Law at Utkal University, Bhubaneswar –Orissa. His area of interest includes Labour and Industrial Law, Intellectual Property Law and Laws relating to Displacement. He has published a number of articles in various journals; presented papers at various UGC sponsored seminars and designed study materials for 5 year LLB course. His published articles include Intellectual Property Law and Banking Law.

Som Raj Choudhury

Som Raj Choudhury is a student of law at University College of Law, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar. His primary interests are to understand the relationship between law and governance. He seeks to do this by working on the policies developed by both Central and State Government, and how their implementation benefit the people, and becomes an welfare instrument for the society at large. He has undertaken a project on the study of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) programme and its implementation and the success of this project at the Zilla Parishad and Panchayat levels. He has presented a paper on “Geography of Crime and Justice” at the 14th International Annual Conference on Criminology held at Sacramento, California. At present, he is working on the theme of Resettlement and Rehabilitation with UNDP.

S. Vivek and Kalyani Ramnath

Vivek is an undergraduate student at the National Law School, Bangalore. His area of interest is public law and jurisprudence and in this context, the interlinkages between law, language and the state. Kalyani is also an undergraduate student at National Law School, Bangalore and she is, at this time, attempting to study the place of languages in the law and looking at contrasting legal interpretations in different settings – the courtroom and the classroom, for example. Both of them subscribe to the view that there is nothing as practical as a good theory.

Srinivas Chokkakula

Srinivas Chokkakula is a Ph D candidate at the Department of Geography, University of Washington, Seattle, USA. He is pursuing his doctoral research on interstate water disputes and democratization in India. He has his earlier degrees in civil engineering, environmental planning and geography. Before moving to US for doctoral studies, he worked in India for about ten years in the broad areas of development planning and environmental management in nonprofit settings. His research interests include local planning and governance in India, state-society relations, natural resource planning and development, and, disaster management.