Past Event! Note: this event has already taken place.
Sensing Law & Justice: A 3-paper symposium
May 31, 2018 at 12:30 PM
| Location: | D492 Loeb Building |
| Cost: | Free |
Susanne Verheul, “Material and Sensory Courtrooms: Observing the ‘Decline of Professionalism’ in Harare’s Magistrates’ Courts”
This paper engages with scholarship on how multiple, at times competing, understandings of law and the state are constructed through the physical and symbolic orderings of courtrooms, with a focus on Zimbabwe’s Magistrates’ Courts in Harare. I draw on courtroom observations and interviews conducted with human rights lawyers and their clients between 2009 and 2014 to show how the country’s deteriorating political and economic situation after 2000 shaped the material and sensory conditions in the courts. These conditions featured centrally in the courtroom interactions between human rights lawyers, their clients, and the State. I argue that, in these interactions, human rights lawyers called into question not the authority of law, but the control certain state actors exerted on and over the bodies and emotions of Zimbabwean citizens.
Susanne Verheul (Oxford) is a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow in the Department of International Development, University of Oxford, United Kingdom. She holds a DPhil and MPhil in International Development from the University of Oxford, and has taught at Oxford and at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. Her current research focuses on histories of professionalism within a seemingly politicised and polarised judiciary in Zimbabwe.
Christiane Wilke, “High-Altitude Legality: Air Strikes on Trial”
Air strikes are a common and deadly form of military violence. While Western militaries assert that their bombs have become ‘smarter’ and more precise, the claim to more developed visual technologies is too easily equated with a claim to ethical and legal behaviour.What happens when air strikes by Western militaries are adjudicated in court? This presentation focuses on two intertwined issues that have prevented victims of NATO air strikes to obtain compensation: sight and jurisdiction. Air strikes are based on visual technologies that enable specific forms of sight from the aerial perspective. I show that courts not only privilege the aerial perspective on the conflict, but that they also privilege the readings of the visual feeds by specific interpreters even when the images where in fact contested. Courts typically base their jurisdiction on a mix between the nationalities of the persons involved and the location of the alleged crime or wrongful act. Where does bombing take place? The specific mobility of the bomber engaged in an air strike often escapes the understandings of law and jurisdiction.
Christiane Wilke (Carleton) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Law and Legal Studies. She received her MA and PhD in Political Science from the New School for Social Research and is a past book review editor and Managing Editor of the Canadian Journal of Law and Society. Her current research focuses on human rights, memories, and trials, as well as the relationship between visual technologies, military violence, and international law.
Michael S. Mopas, “An assault on the ears: Law, noise, emotion and the body”
Sounds are felt as much as they are heard. From the thumping bass inside a nightclub to the pounding shocks of a jackhammer, sounds can affect us physically through the vibrations they impose upon our bodies. Sounds can also touch us on an emotional and psychological level. Indeed, as anyone who has ever seen a horror movie can attest, the sounds that we hear—an eerie drone, a squeaking door, a loud scream—are often just as disturbing and terrifying as the images on the screen. This paper explores how law is used to limit and control the potentially harmful effects that sounds can have on us by looking closely at the example of noise and the ways in which it is governed. More specifically, I want to examine how law comes to know, understand, and regulate the impact of noise on the human body. In doing so, I want to address a number of key questions: First, what exactly is noise and how have our definitions of this concept changed over time? Second, how have we tried to control and limit noise and on what grounds have we done this? Lastly, how is law’s response to noise shaped by who is making the noise and who is being disturbed? More specifically, how is noise addressed differently in urban vs. rural settings?
Michael S. Mopas (Carleton) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Carleton University. He holds a PhD in Criminology from the University of Toronto. He specializes in the area of science, technology and law. His current research examines the role of sound experts and the use of audio evidence in the courtroom.