Wednesday, January 2, 2013

If You're at AALS or AHA on January 5. . .

Consider attending either or both of two roundtables organized by LHB founder Mary Dudziak, Emory Law.  The roundtable at the AALS is at 3:30.  It is The Concept of Peace in Law, Culture and Society:
Legal scholars often focus on the impact of war on law and democracy.  But what about war’s assumed opposite: “peace”?  The flip side of war, peace is a concept that is more often assumed than interrogated.  As military conflict seems to ebb and flow, lacking sharp breaks between wartime and peacetime, perhaps the concept of peace is an anachronism.  This interdisciplinary round-table will take up whether peace is a coherent concept, and the ways the idea of peace figures in domestic and international law.

Serious study of the nature of war, peace and security is underway in other disciplines.  This panel seeks to illuminate the way perspectives from other fields can bring deeper critical inquiry to the legal study of war, peace and security.  Panelists will include scholars of international law and the law of armed conflict; legal scholars with expertise in history, anthropology, social science, and critical race theory; and a historian who studies peace.

The panel will address:

What is peace?  An idea?  An aspiration?  A material state of existence?
How does peace (its existence or nonexistence) affect domestic or international law?            
If contemporary war is less bounded, has the legal and conceptual need for peace dissipated?

The participants are:  

Moderator: Mary L. Dudziak, University of Southern California Gould School of Law
Speaker: Professor Petra Goedde, Temple University Department of History
Speaker: Mari J. Matsuda, Georgetown University Law Center
Speaker: John N. Moore, University of Virginia School of Law
Speaker: Kim Lane Scheppele, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Speaker: Mateo Taussig-Rubbo, University at Buffalo Law School
Speaker: Ruti G. Teitel, New York Law School
Mary's roundtable at the American Historical Association, is The Iraq War Is History? A Roundtable Discussion:
The year 2013 marks the 10th anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq and the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Now that American ground forces have largely departed from Iraq, it seems a propitious time to assess the historical importance of the American invasion and occupation.  This roundtable brings together four distinguished scholars to discuss the war's legacies from both the Iraqi and the U.S. perspectives. 
Chair: Mary L. Dudziak, Emory University

Panel:
Sinan Antoon, New York University
Dina R. Khoury, George Washington University
Melvyn P. Leffler, University of Virginia
Peter R. Mansoor, Ohio State University at Columbus