The Network for Interdisciplinary Studies of Law (NISL) explores law and law-related life by drawing on insights and research from various disciplines in law, the humanities and social sciences.
The NISL provides a platform for the exchange and development of ideas, primarily by holding regular research seminars on interdisciplinary subjects. The seminars are well attended by not only members of the Law & Justice faculty, but also from other departments and schools in UNSW, other universities in Sydney and internationally.
Recent seminar presentations include:
- Wojciech Sadurski (Challis Professor of Jurisprudence, University of Sydney) on his book Poland’s Constitutional Breakdown in conversation with Professor Rosalind Dixon, A/Professor Adam Czarnota and Professor Martin Krygier (UNSW Law & Justice) and Dr Michał Stambulski (Executive Director, Centre for Legal Education and Social Theory, University of Wrocław).
- Hans Lindahl (Professor of Legal Philosophy, Tilburg University, the Netherlands, Professor of Global Law, Law Department of Queen Mary University of London) on ‘Constituent Power and the Constitution’.
- Geoffrey Brahm Levey (A/Professor, Political Science, UNSW) on ‘The Bristol School of Multiculturalism’ in discussion with Tariq Modood (Professor of Sociology, Politics and Public Policy and Foundation Director of the Centre for the Study of Ethnicity and Citizenship, University of Bristol), Varun Uberoi (Senior Lecturer, Political Theory and Public Policy, Brunel University) and Tim Soutphommasane (Race Discrimination Commissioner, Australian Human Rights Commission).
- John Gardner (the late John Gardner FBA was a Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and Professor of Law and Philosophy, University of Oxford) on ‘From Personal Life to Private Law’ in conversation with Dr Michael Crawford (Lecturer, UNSW Law).
- Paul Schiff Berman (Walter S. Cox Professor of Law at The George Washington University Law School) on ‘Cosmopolitan Pluralism, Authoritarian Nationalism, and the Future of Liberal Governance’.
Projects
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This ARC Discovery Project aims to explain and evaluate constitutional populism, as evidenced by the global trend of ‘populist’ parties coming to power by challenging traditional regimes. The project will examine the legal and constitutional aims of these populist regimes and the institutional solutions they adopt. It will explore whether they respect the forms of democracy, or just pay lip service to the principles of the rule of law and constitutionalism, while working to subvert such principles. The project will analyse what ‘new populists’ do with power once they have it, what the consequences are for a global view of democracy, and how Australia’s geopolitical engagement with such regimes may be affected.
Members
Adam Czarnota, Associate Professor
Martin Krygier, Professor
Professor Wojciech Sadurski (University of Sydney)
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Legal education is part of the social process of reproduction. It is goal-oriented, modelling actors ready to play its professional roles. Transmission of knowledge is a value-oriented action, aiming to model perception of reality. This process aims to neutralise, and therefore legitimise reality, in which future legal practitioners will operate. The official (overt) curricula need to be coordinated with the so-called ‘hidden curricula’. The notion of a hidden curriculum is based on the premise that the means of achieving the official goal of an educational process are as important as the goal itself and its justification.
The hidden curriculum in lawyers’ training guarantees the effectiveness of education, but is counterproductive in terms of its usefulness. Such training contradicts its official as well as political and philosophical claims. Thus, lawyers’ training, whose aim is to ‘shape’ socially desirable competencies, becomes dysfunctional and often achieves the opposite results.
In light of these problems, the project aims to present the basic problems of legal education against the background of political changes in Central Eastern Europe after 1989.
Member
Adam Czarnota, Associate Professor
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This project combines political science and legal-doctrinal research methods to study the politico-legal dynamics of constitutional judicial review, particularly in new democracies. The project assumes that systems of constitutional judicial review draw on and influence societal ideas about the relationship between law and politics. Under certain conditions, these ideas can stabilise in the form of comprehensive legitimating ideologies about the appropriate law/politics relationship. This project draws on comparative historical analysis (CHA) from political science to examine these processes. It also seeks to reflect on contemporary debates within comparative constitutional law and politics about the feasibility of integrating law and social science.
Member
Theunis Roux, Professor
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The rule of law is perhaps regarded as the central legal value. However, conventional accounts of it have two pervasive limitations. First, while the idea is too important to reject or ignore – as thrown around in contemporary discussions – it is too confusing. If it is to be revived, it needs to be re-imagined. Secondly, it is too often regarded as a fundamentally legal ideal, to be approached in terms of lawyers’ understandings of the workings of legal orders.
The argument of this project is that while the rule of law is indeed a legal ideal, it is equally a political and social ideal. Any attempt to achieve it must understand these political and social conditions, dimensions and consequences of the rule of law. It, therefore, needs to draw on insights that go well beyond those found in legal scholarship. It needs to reach out to disciplines that focus on society and politics, not to mention philosophy – since it is an ideal we're talking about – particularly political and social philosophy.
Member
Martin Krygier, Professor
Network co-directors
Adam Czarnota, Associate Professor
Martin Krygier, Professor
Theunis Roux, Professor
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