12th Annual Carleton Graduate Legal Studies Association Conference

• In-person event
• Conference Rooms (2220-2228), Richcraft Hall, Carleton University
• 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6

The Game of Law: Rules, Fools, and Cheats

View the full program here.

Canada’s adversarial legal system features two parties in contest with one another. One way of viewing this system is as a game bound by a series of rules. These rules regulate not only individual players such as the Judge or the Crown, but society more broadly. As with all games, there are those who follow the rules and those who break them. We would like to take this opportunity to invite interdisciplinary proposals to analyze and discuss the many auspices of law and its game-like nature. How can the metaphor of a game aid us in thinking outside the box on legal, political, and social problems? How does understanding individuals as pieces in a larger game impact our understanding of governing subjects, their subjective experiences, and the affects of the law more broadly? What parallels can be drawn between seeing law as a game and aspects of criminalization and justice?

To facilitate this interdisciplinary exchange we encourage participants from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds to play a round with us by presenting on the similarities between games and law and the players involved in them. Paper topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Games as allegory (Monopoly, Clue, Papers Please, Her Story, etc.)
• Socio-legal analysis of video, board, or any other medium of games
• Making and breaking rules
• Playing with representations of crime, criminals, and justice
• Advocacy, solidarity, playmates, and queer theory
• Unboxing international law
• Policing and the enforcement of rules
• Games of governance and regulation
• Ludonarative dissonance and affect in games of law

In association with  FPA Research Month
Funded by the Department of Law and Legal Studies, the Faculty of Public Affairs, the Graduate Student Association, and the Faculty of Graduate & Postdoctoral Affairs.