18 February 2025 | University of Edinburgh

Theme: Global Law, Community and Solidarity

The Law Schools Global League (LSGL) is delighted to announce its forthcoming Academic Conference to be hosted by Edinburgh Law School in Scotland. LSGL faculty members, researchers, and Ph.D. students are cordially invited to submit their research papers and participate in stimulating discussions on global law and global legal education. The conference will provide a platform for the exchange of ideas and perspectives on the theme of Global Law, Community, and Solidarity.

Global Law, Community and Solidarity

Community and Solidarity are important concepts of our time as we collectively face climate crises, energy and economic instability, and violence and conflict around the globe. During one of the most significant challenges faced in many lifetimes, the Covid-19 pandemic, we saw the globalisation of solidarity and community – but also alienation, suspicion and disunity.

The aim of this conference is to explore community and solidarity in more detail, seeking to understand and discuss their importance, histories, legal application, legal practice, and role in global legal education and global governance.

We welcome contributions that explore the legal underpinnings, forms, substance, and consequences of notions of solidarity and community. To give instances of such inquiries: Is there such a thing as a global community or society and, if so, who is part of the global community? Who is included and excluded from this community, and how are those boundaries policed? Can “solidarity” be legally meaningful as an expression of the ties that bind us at a global level – or is it best understood in non-legal registers such as the ethical, symbolic or political? What sort of relationships between different societies does legal solidarity constitute, produce, and foreclose? How does solidarity operate in different contexts as a legal concept, principle, or political goal? How has solidarity been interpreted as a legal category in different jurisdictions and legal fields? Are solidarity and community realised through specific legal processes such as class and collective actions or pro bono work? Is it possible to realise solidarity between the human and non-human to avert a climate crisis? Is solidarity, for example, with nature legally realisable? And how can these ideas and concepts be embedded in global legal education?

We welcome abstracts from all approaches, including critical, doctrinal, analytical, conceptual, reflexive, post-critical and speculative traditions of law, and all fields of law, that enable a serious scholarly reflection on this broad topic. We also welcome transdisciplinary papers reflecting on this topic, such as, but not limited to, geography, history, economics, anthropology, and global studies.

Guidelines

Applicants are invited to submit an abstract of up to 500 words, together with a short CV in the same word document. Submissions should be sent to law.events@ed.ac.uk by 8 November 2024 with the email subject clearly marked “Abstract Submission LSGL Academic Conference”.

Proposals will be reviewed by a panel consisting of the current LSGL co-presidents and faculty members from Edinburgh Law School. Selected presenters will be informed by 18 November 2024.

Papers of up to 8,000 words inclusive of footnotes should be submitted in advance of the conference by 31 January 2025. There will be an opportunity for publication after the conference in the Edinburgh Law School SSRN Legal Research Paper Series.

Expenses for Participation

The conference cannot provide funding for participant expenses. Researchers submitting paper proposals are responsible for covering their own travel and accommodation expenses.

About Law Schools Global League

LSGL brings together law schools that share a commitment to the globalisation of law and to integrating global law in their teaching and research. The purpose of the League is to promote legal education and scholarly research in relation to the globalisation of law by, among other things, fostering academic debate on the impact of globalisation on law and setting a research agenda for this. The League’s agenda is broad and inclusive, covering all fields of law where globalisation and interdependence are an issue.