Conferences, Workshops, and Projects

Australasian Society of Legal Philosophy Annual Conference 2023

In July 2023, the Centre hosted the Australasian Society for Legal Philosophy Annual Conference, which returned to NZ for the first time since 2017. Across two days, we welcomed over 50 participants from around New Zealand, Australia, Europe, North America and Asia, discussing 30 papers. The event was preceded by workshop for PhD students. Highlights of the conference included Keynote presentations from Professor Ruth Chang, Chair of Jurisprudence at the University of Oxford, on ‘Hard Choices in Law’; and Professor Martin Krygier, Gordon Samuels Professor of Law and Social Theory at the University of New South Wales, on ‘Well-tempered Power: “A Cultural Achievement of Universal Significance”’. The conference concluded with a Book Symposium on Rosalind Dixon’s Responsive Judicial Review: Democracy and Dysfunction in the Modern Age with commentaries from Jeff King, Aileen Kavanagh, and Vanessa McDonnell, as well as the author’s reply.

A number of Centre members participated throughout the conference, which included paper presentations from Exec members Stephen Winter (Philosophy), ‘Rosseau’s Republican Judges’; Arie Rosen, ‘The Constitutional Structure of Contract Law’; Jesse Wall, ‘Is it possible to have a theory?’ and Nicole Roughan, ‘A Recognition Model of Legality.’

The Idea of Office: perspectives from Private Law, Public Law, and Jurisprudence

This two-day workshop in June 2019 was a collaboration between Nicole Roughan and Larissa Katz of the University of Toronto, jointly sponsored by the University of Toronto Press and NZCLPT. A two-day workshop in Toronto featured discussion of eleven papers including Janet McLean, “Between Sovereign and Subject: the Constitutional Position of the Official,” Arie Rosen, “Office and Profession” and Nicole Roughan “Office-Holding and Officiality.” Papers appeared in a symposium issue of the University of Toronto Law Journal in 2022 .

Law and Recognition: persons, institutions, and plurality

The Law and Recognition project examines the relationship between recognition of statuses and recognition of persons, featuring an exchange of ideas amongst those who work on theories of inter-personal recognition, political struggles for recognition, law’s practices of recognition, and recognition between legal orders.

The project was a collaboration between Nicole Roughan from the University of Auckland, and Hans Lindahl from Tilburg University. In 2018 a workshop brought together leading international and New Zealand scholars whose work draws attention role of recognition in legal theory. Contributors, including senior judges and a number of scholars from Auckland law school, an explored topics including law’s recognition of personhood, the significance of inter-personal recognition in legal institutions, and recognition of tikanga by state law.