CNLH Presents: What Is the Rule of Law Made of?

Event Description

Come hear Professor Anat Rosenberg talk about the liberal rule of law coming into being through battles waged across mediascapes in the era of autocratic legalisms. The talk will be followed by a conversation with the audience and conveners of the Canadian Network of Law & Humanities (CNLH). Please join us!

What is the rule of law made of? 

The liberal rule of law in the era of autocratic legalisms is coming into being through battles waged across mediascapes, both digital and physical, which introduce temporalities and emotional registers foreign to the styles and myths of liberal legalism.

This talk draws on a contemporary history of autocratic legalism in Israel as a case study of this process. When the country’s 37th government came to power at the close of 2022 and announced a regime overhaul on 4 January 2023, citizens confronted an illiberalism that had been years in the making, and turned to mass resistance. Drawing on an archive of nine months of unprecedented protests leading up to October 7, I examine the challenges of comprehending and responding to the autocratic threat, and the forms of affective attunement to the rule of law that emerged in the course of this struggle.

Email info@cnlh.ubc.ca for Zoom link.

Speaker

Anat Rosenberg is Professor of Law and the Humanities at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, where she leads the Law and Humanities Hub (LHub). She graduated with her LLB (magna cum laude) from Hebrew University and received her PhD in 2011 from Tel Aviv University. Anat studies the history of modern capitalism, liberalism, and media, drawing on multidisciplinary methods in Law and the Humanities, including law and materiality, law and visuality, and law and literature. Her recent book, The Rise of Mass Advertising: Law, Enchantment, and the Cultural Boundaries of British Modernity (OUP 2022), addresses the formative era of advertising c. 1840-1914 and its legal shaping.