Event Description
Kim Lane Scheppele has recently identified a new phenomenon she calls “autocratic legalism,” where authoritarian governments appear to embrace law rather than reject it. Her analysis emphasizes the illiberal dimension of new authoritarians, which is incompatible with fundamental liberal values of democratic constitutionalism. Beyond their rejection of liberal values, however, is there something wrong with autocratic legalism as a theory of law—and if so, what exactly? And if such legalism represents indeed a defective and harmful theory of law, perhaps prone to authoritarianism, whence can we draw the resources for a “non-legalistic” and democratic conception of law instead?
This is a hybrid event. Please contact eventassistant@allard.ubc.ca if you would like the Zoom link. Requests for the Zoom link must be submitted two days prior to the lecture. If you are a UBC faculty, staff or student, you must provide your department or CWL email address.
Speaker
Julen Etxabe is Canada Research Chair in Jurisprudence and Human Rights and joined Allard Law as Assistant Professor in July of 2019. His current research combines legal and literary theory to identify a new model of dialogical judgment emerging in the area of human rights, which is transforming inherited notions of reasoning, rights, authority, and law in the post-national and diverse societies of the 21st century.
Grounded on cultural and humanistic approaches to law, Etxabe is the author of The Experience of Tragic Judgment (Routledge, 2013) and has edited Cultural History of Law in Antiquity (Bloomsbury, 2019). He is also the co-editor of Rancière and Law (Routledge, 2018) and Living in a Law Transformed: Encounters with the Works of James Boyd White (Michigan, 2014). From 2012 to 2017 he was editor-in-chief of No-Foundations: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Law and Justice and is a member of the editorial committee of Law & Humanities. He is one of the founders of the Canadian Network of Law & Humanities.
- Allard School of Law
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- Research Talks
