Consortium of Undergraduate Law & Justice Programs

Annual Meeting

June 1st & 2nd, 2007

University of Toledo • Toledo, OH

 

Friday, June 1st

 

4:00 to 6:00                  Conference Registration

                                    Location to be announced

 

7:00 to 9:00                  Watching, Witnessing, and Teaching Law & Justice

                                    Toledo Museum of Art

As a group we will watch a short documentary film relating to issues of law and justice and then discuss the ways in which we can and do make use of visual materials in teaching undergraduates.  Following the film and discussion, attendees will be able to take advantage of the Toledo Museum of Art’s “It’s Friday” program, including music, storytelling, gallery tours, and other entertainment.

 

Saturday, June 2nd

All sessions to be held at University of Toledo

 

8:00 to 9:00 a.m.          Registration, coffee and tea

 

9:00 to 9:15 a.m.          Welcome and Introductions

Austin Sarat, Amherst College and CULJP President

 

9:15 to 10:45 a.m.        Panel One: “Baby Law Schools” and “Cop Shops”: Is this who we are?

                                    This panel takes a close look at the common critique of undergraduate law & justice programs as “baby law school” and “cop shops.”  To what extent are we fulfilling these monikers?  In what ways does our work challenge those ideas?  And how do we let the world know what it is we’re doing in our research and teaching?

        • Annie Bunting, Law & Society, York University (chair)
        • Wes Pue, University of British Columbia
        • Jon Suggs, Justice Studies, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
        • Patrick Timmons, Justice Studies, San Jose State University

 

10:45 to 11:00 a.m.      Break

 

11:00 to 12:30 p.m.      Panel Two: Law and War: New Questions, New Answers Six Years After 9/11

This panel will address a possible tension that arises for, and within, the rule of law ideal in a time of crisis, specifically, in a time of war.  This tension, sometimes characterized as a moment of ‘exception,’ has become a feature of contemporary jurisprudential discussion.  For example, Giorgio Agamben, contends that we have yet to adequately theorize the state of exception which, for Agamben, is “the legal form of that which cannot take on legal form: a legal category describing the absence of law.”  In other words, the exception marks the temporary abrogation of the rule of law, a displacement itself set into motion by the law.  The urgency for Agamben on this point is related to the post-September 11 actions of the Bush Administration and the specter of a temporary displacement of law becoming the normal practice of governance.  The ‘war on terror,’ then, provides but the most recent context in which the nature of this tension has been articulated.  This panel seeks to contribute, from the interdisciplinary vantage point of the Consortium, to what has become a very robust scholarly debate.

        • David Wallace (chair), United States Military Academy
        • Mark Welton, International & Comparative Law, United States Military Academy
        • Bill Rose, Political Science, Albion University
        • Julie Novkov, Political Science, State University of New York at Albany

                                   

12:30 to 1:30 p.m.        Lunch

 

1:30 to 3:00 p.m.          Roundtable: The Life Cycles of Paradigms

                                    This roundtable will engage the group in a discussion of the paradigms that mark the study and teaching of law and justice such as “law and literature,” “legal consciousness,” “law and economics,” and “law and social control.”  Over the course of this session we will explore how these paradigms of understanding our fields enter our thinking, influence our work, and fade away.  We hope participants will bring to the table a desire to explore the ways in which intellectual paradigms can both inform and constrain our work. 

                                   

3:00 to 3:15 p.m.          Break

 

3:15 to 4:30 p.m.          Business Meeting of the Consortium

 

6:00 to 9:00 p.m.          Conference Banquet

                                    Reflections on Teaching Law & Justice

Austin Sarat

 

Program Committee

Annie Bunting, York University

Thomas Hilbink, University of Massachusetts

Ben Pryor, University of Toledo

Bill Rose, Albion College

Mark Welton, United States Military Academy

 

CULJP Officers

Austin Sarat, President

Michael McCann, Secretary

Ann Lucas, Treasurer