LASSnet Conference Inaugural

Peregrinations

At the Registration Desk, LASSnet Conference

REGRETS

We are deeply sorry to let everyone know that Srinivas Chokkakula and Alexander Fischer are not able to come to the LASSnet Inaugural Conference. They are as disappointed as we are. The panel coordinators and Chairs are requested to note these changes.

LASSnet Inaugural Conference: Announcements

This is to let all the participants of the LASSnet Inaugural Conference know that we are NOT circulating the papers on a CD, as we had originally wished to do. Please contact the panelist, if you wish to acquire a copy of any paper. Others have posted their papers on www.lassnet.org
You are welcome to post your writings as "background readings" on the LASSnet website.

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".