Events from 2017 to 2018

What's Wrong with Rights? Social Movements, Law and Liberal Imaginations

June 28, 2018 - McGill University, Faculty of Law 

 
Organized jointly by the LLDRL and the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, a launch of O'Brien Fellow in Residence Dr. Radha D'Souza's newest book What's Wrong with Rights? Social Movements, Law and Liberal Imaginations (Pluto Press, 2018) took place at McGill University's Faculty of Law. Her book maps, for the first time, the transformations in the regime of international rights to the transformations in post-World War capitalism. The event was chaired by Dr. Lorena Poblete (O'Brien Fellow in Residence). Readers, Professor Mark Antaki (Faculty of Law), Professor Adelle Blackett (Faculty of Law) and Prof Aziz Choudry (Faculty of Education), shared their insightful comments on the book. 

Radha D’Souza is a critical scholar, activist, barrister, and writer, who has lived and worked in India, New Zealand and the UK. She is currently a Reader in Law at the University of Westminster. Her research straddles legal studies, development studies, sociology, geography, theory, comparative philosophy and history. D’Souza’s work is well-known for its interdisciplinary breadth and for critically engaging theories and practices within social movements. 

Humans as a Service: the Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy 

May 14, 2018 - McGill University, Faculty of Law 

The LLDRL welcomed Jeremias Prassl, Fellow of Magdalen College, Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law of Oxford University, for a special presentation of his most recent book Humans as a Service: the Promise and Perils of Work in the Gig Economy (Oxford University Press, 2018). Professor Prassl's research interests are in the field of employment law and technology. Jeremias read law at Oxford, Paris, and Harvard, and regularly advises public and private sector organisations around the world on regulating the gig economy. He tweets about the future of work @JeremiasPrassl.

During this lecture, Professor Prassl offered an engaging account the implications of "on-demand work" for employment law and workers. In addition to addressing how to ensure decent working conditions, protect consumers and foster innovation amidst the rise of the "gig economy," Professor Prassl also used this opportunity to debunk popular myths about the gig economy's "algorithmic boss" - explaining that gig economy platforms, such as apps, are not mere digital intermediaries between tasks and individuals and create a unique set of challenges for employment law. During his lecture, Professor Prassl also stressed the need to remember the humans and the work so often hidden behind glossy apps and technology.

This event took place as part of the LLDRL Speaker Series. 

Whereto for Third-World Approaches to International Law Scholarship?

26 avril 2018 - Faculté de droit, Université McGill

Le Centre pour les droits de la personne et le pluralisme juridique de McGill, en collaboration avec le LLDRL, a eu le plaisir d'organiser  un exposé par la docteure Radha D’Souza, boursière en résidence O'Brien, sur les théories tiers-mondistes du droit international (TWAIL). L’analyse tiers-mondiste est devenue populaire parmi les étudiant-e-s et les jeunes chercheurs et chercheuses qui recourent aux TWAIL pour aborder un large éventail d’enjeux sur la scène internationale : justice, guerres, droits de la personne, environnement, développement, négociations commerciales, etc. Dans sa présentation, la docteure D'Souza a examiné les critiques relatives aux TWAIL et les défis auxquels cette approche devra faire face à l’avenir.

Radha D'Souza est chercheuse critique, activiste, avocate et écrivaine. Elle a vécu et travaillé en Inde, en Nouvelle-Zélande et au Royaume-Uni. Elle est actuellement chargée de cours en droit à l'Université de Westminster. Ses recherches chevauchent les études en droit et en développement, la sociologie, la géographie, la théorie, la philosophie comparée et l'histoire. Le travail de la docteure D'Souza est réputé pour son envergure interdisciplinaire et pour sa critique des théories et pratiques au sein des mouvements sociaux.

Equity Matters in Quebec Universities: a Conversation Between Malinda Smith and Sirma Bilge

February 22, 2018 - McGill University, Faculty of Law 

In continuance of the celebration of Black History Month and of the conversation on equity in Canadian universities, the LLDRL organized a lecture with Professor Malinda Smith and Professor Sirma Bilge. The scholars discussed equity in Quebec universities, the language barrier that may be hindering solidarity and equity across Canada and Quebec, and the need to transform university campuses and work cultures.

Dr. Malinda Smith is a 2018 Trudeau Foundation Fellow and Professor of Political Science at the University of Alberta, where she teaches in the fields of international relations, comparative politics, and gender and politics. Her current research, teaching, and scholarship explore questions of equity and antiracism in higher education, the coloniality of knowledge and decolonizing the curriculum, and nuances of blackness in the academy. She is the co-author of The Equity Myth: Racialization and Indigeneity at Canadian Universities (UBC Press 2017), the critically-acclaimed book which sparked a nation-wide conversation on equity and diversity in Canadian faculties and campuses.  

Dr. Sirma Bilge is a Professor of Sociology at Université de Montréal. She founded and directed the Intersectionality Research Unit at the Centre des études ethniques des universités montréalaises (CEETUM) from 2005 to 2010 and is elected board member of the Research Committee on Racism, Nationalism and Ethnic Relations (RC05) of the International Sociological Association (ISA). Her work engages with the intersections of social formations of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and class, and examines how notions of national/ethnic sameness and otherness articulate themselves through gender and sexual regulation. She is the co-author of Intersectionality with Patricia Collins (Polity Press, 2016).

This event was one of four impactful Black History Month events celebrating organized and co-sponsored by the LLDRL and Canada Research Chair in Transnational Labour Law and Development. A recap of these events is available here

'The Fierce Urgency of Now': Equity and Anti-Racism in Uncertain Times

February 21, 2018 - McGill University, Faculty Club

In continuance of the celebration of Black History Month, the LLDRL organized a special lecture with Professor Malinda S. Smith. During this lecture, Professor Malinda Smith led an urgently important discussion on the dire state of equity in Canadian universities, a discussion which emerges from her pivotal co-authored book The Equity Myth: Racialization and Indigeneity in Canadian Universities (UBC Press 2017). Professor Smith spoke frankly about equity and anti-racism and called for an "equity reality check" in Canadian Universities - that is, the enactment of equity policies which are concerned with intersectionality, racial literacy, the diversification of leadership, and the decolonization of the academy. 

Dr. Malinda Smith is a 2018 Trudeau Foundation Fellow and Professor of Political Science at the University of Alberta, where she teaches in the fields of international relations, comparative politics, and gender and politics. Her current scholarship explores questions of equity and antiracism in higher education, the coloniality of knowledge and decolonizing the curriculum, and nuances of blackness in the academy. Over the past two decades Dr. Smith has worked to advance equity in higher education as Vice President Equity Issues for the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, on CAUT’s Racialized Academic Staff Working Group, and as the Faculty Association’s Equity Advisor. 

This event was made possible thanks to the generous contributions of the Canada Research Chair in Transnational Labour Law and Development, the Henderson Fund of the Office of the Provost and Vice-Principal and McGill University's Faculty of Law, as well as the support of our partners, the SEDE Office, the McGill Senate Subcommittee on Racialized and Ethnic Persons, the Black Law Students Association, the Women of Colour Collective, and the Indigenous Law Association of the McGill Faculty of Law. 

This event was one of four impactful Black History Month events organized and co-sponsored by the LLDRL and Canada Research Chair in Transnational Labour Law and Development. A recap of these events is available here

The Egalitarian Free Labor Promise of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

February 15, 2018 - McGill University, Faculty of Law

As part of continued teaching initiatives on Slavery and the Law at the Faculty of Law (initially fostered via a 2016-2017 course by Professor Adelle Blackett by the same name), and in continuance of the celebration of Black History Month, the LLDRL hosted a lecture by Professor Rebecca Zietlow, Charles Fornoff Professor of Law and Values at the University of Toledo College of Law, on the 13th amendment of the US Constitution and its "egalitarian free labour promise." This lecture took place during a special plenary in the 1L Constitutional Law course, and, though the event was open to the public, all first-year law students enrolled attended the lecture in the context of their course. Professor Rebecca E. Zietlow is a visiting professor at Vermont Law School and Charles W. Fornoff Professor of Law and Values at the University of Toledo College of Law. She is the author of Enforcing Equality: Congress, the Constitution and the Protection of Individual Rights (NYU Press, 2006), and The Forgotten Emancipator: James Mitchell Ashley and the Ideological Origins of Reconstruction (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

Professor Zietlow's lecture traced the history and theory behind the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the amendment abolishing slavery, and its impact on civil rights and workers' rights in the United States. Drawing from her extensive research on the topic - which lead to the publication of her most recent book The Forgotten Emancipator: James Mitchell Ashley and the Ideological Origins of Reconstruction (Cambridge University Press, 2017) - Zietlow recounted how the antislavery movement and the nascent labour movement influenced the egalitarian free labour ideology of James Mitchell Ashley and his allies, the very vision that animated the 13th amendment. 

This event was one of four impactful Black History Month events organized and co-sponsored by the LLDRL and the Canada Research Chair in Transnational Labour Law and Development.  A recap of these events is available here
 

Black Professors Speak: McGill Renaissance?

February 8, 2018 - McGill University, Faculty of Law 

In celebration of Black History Month, the LLDRL organized the first contemporary public panel of Black professors at McGill University. Professor Nii A. Addy (Desautels Faculty of Management), Professor Adelle Blackett (Faculty of Law), Dr. Anita Brown Johnson (Faculty of Medicine), Professor Lawrence Goodridge (Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences), Professor Patricia Hewlin (Desautels Faculty of Management), Professor Philip S.S. Howard (Faculty of Education), Dr. Momar Ndao (Department of Microbiology and Immunology) and Emeritus Professor Glyne Piggott all contributed to the conversation, sharing their thoughts on equity and diversity at McGill University and celebrating the work, dedication, and mentorship of these colleagues. This panel also took the opportunity to honour Emeritus Professor Glyne Piggott and to remember the first Black professor at McGill University, Dr. Ernest Melville Duporte. 

This event was co-sponsored by the LLDRL, the Canada Research Chair in Transnational Labour Law and Development, the Social Equity and Diversity Education (SEDE) Office, McGill University, and the Faculty of Law. 

This event was one of four impactful Black History Month events organized and co-sponsored by the LLDRL and Canada Research Chair in Transnational Labour Law and Development. A recap of these events is available here

Making International Trade more Equitable

January 29, 2018 - McGill University, Faculty of Law 

In the midst of renegotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the LLDRL welcomed Risa Schwartz to discuss progressive trade policies in Canada and their potential impact on Indigenous peoples. Risa Schwartz is a sole practitioner, whose focus is on international law and the intersections between trade law, environmental law, and Indigenous rights. She has held positions as counsel to the Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs in Ontario and the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, and worked as a legal officer at the World Trade Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. She was formerly a senior research fellow with CIGI's International Law Research Program, where she researched law and policy that supported increasing Indigenous peoples’ participation in international law and treaty making. 

During this lecture, practitioner Risa Schwartz argued that the renegotiation of NAFTA offers a unique opportunity to better align international trade and investment with international Indigenous and human rights law: the announcement that Canada is seeking the inclusion of an Indigenous peoples’ chapter in NAFTA as a priority is a bold step to protect Indigenous rights, while enhancing peoples’ increased participation in international trade. Schwartz importantly added that the inclusion on an Indigenous people's chapter should not merely be understood as part of Canada's "social agenda" - to suggest so, she argued, ignores the important Indigenous populations in the United States, Mexico as well as Canada, and the opportunity to advance their economic situation through progressive trade and NAFTA. 

This event took place as part of the LLDRL Speaker Series. 

Comparative Labour Law: Is it Still Useful?

November 1st, 2017 - McGill University, Faculty of Law 

In November 2017, the LLDRL invited former Director of the Legal Advisor's Office at the ILO and member of the LLDRL's Board of Advisory Ms. Anne Trebilcock to present on the uses and limits of comparative labour law. Having worked on issues of public international law, international labour standards, comparative labour law, fundamental principles and rights at work for almost 25 years in her capacity as Director of the Legal Advisor's Office at the International Labour Office, Ms. Trebilcock shared her expertise with a full house of students, practitioners and scholars. 

Anne Trebilcock's is currently associated with the Labour Law Institute at Georg-August University in Göttingen, Germany, and has lectured at various universities. She co-edited, with Professor Adelle Blackett, The Research Handbook on Transnational Labour Law, and is now preparing The Research Collection on Comparative Labour Law. She has written extensively on labour law, international law, and human rights. 

Ms. Anne Trebilcock's visit was sponsored by the Canada Research Chair in Transnational Labour Law and Development. 

This event took place as part of the LLDRL Speaker Series. 

You Shall Have the Body: Slavery, Property Rights and Resistance in Canada

September 12, 2017 - McGill University, Faculty of Law 

As part of continued teaching initiatives on Slavery and the Law at the Faculty of Law (initially fostered via a 2016-2017 course by Professor Adelle Blackett by the same name), the LLDRL hosted a lecture by Professor Barrington Walker on slavery, property rights and resistance in Canada. This lecture took place during a special plenary in the 2L Property Law course, and though the event was open to the public, all second-year law students enrolled in this course attended the lecture in the context of their course. Dr. Barrington Walker is a Professor in the History Department at Queen's University. His teaching and research foci are on the histories of Blacks, race immigration, and the law. His work seeks to illuminate the contours of Canadian modernity by exploring Canada's emergence as a racial state through its histories of white supremacy, slavery, colonization/immigration, segregation, and Jim Crowism. Professor Walker is concerned with the ways these practices were legitimized, and in some instances contested, by the rule of law and legal institutions.

During this plenary, students were provided with an overview of the social and economic history of slavery in Canada, and learned how the institution of slavery was supported by the law - and particularly by property law. Professor Walker also addressed the use of the law by slaves as a tool of resistance to the institution of slavery. Throughout the lecture, students were asked to consider the following questions: How do we define property and how has this shaped history over time? What do we mean when we say that property has been socially constructed? And finally, how have property laws been used to justify racist and discriminatory actions both in the distant and more recent past?

This event was co-sponsored by the LLDRL and the Canada Research Chair in Transnational Labour Law and Development. 

This event took place as part of the LLDRL Speaker Series. 

Labour Law and Development: The LLDRL at the 85th annual ACFAS Conference

11 mai 2017 - Faculté d'ingénierie, Université McGill

En mai 2017, de nombreux membres du LLDRL ont participé à un symposium d'une journée sur le droit du travail et le développement, organisé dans le cadre du 85ème congrès annuel de l'Association francophone pour le savoir (ACFAS). Ce symposium a lié le droit du travail et le développement économique par le partage de recherches récentes et en cours sur la réglementation du travail informel, rural et domestique. La responsabilité sociale des entreprises et la manière dont les micro-entrepreneurs sont régulés ont également fait partie des réflexions de la journée, ainsi que des conversations sur la justice sociale au travail.

 

Missed Opportunity in the Narrative of US Law: How Did American Workers Lose Legal Ground?

March 29, 2017 - McGill University, Faculty of Law 

In March 2017, the Faculty of Law Legal Theory Workshop and the LLDRL welcomed Josephine R Witte Chair Professor Lea VanderVelde for a lecture on the Master-Servant narrative in the United States and the impact of its cultural and institutional legacies on US labour law. Lea VanderVelde is a Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Iowa who writes in the fields of work law, property law, slavery and the law, American legal history, and constitutional law. She is also the principal investigator for The Law of the Antebellum Frontier project at the Stanford Spatial History Lab, where she is currently conducting digital research on American national expansion in the critical years before the Civil War. 

During this lecture, Professor VanderVelde, Constitutional Law Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Iowa, provided a compelling and timely perspective on slavery, labour law and constitutional law in the United States, as well as a contemporary commentary of her classic article "The Labour Vision of the 13th Amendment." 

This seminar was co-sponsored by the Labour Law and Development Research Laboratory and McGill University's Faculty of Law. 

This seminar was part of the LLDRL Speaker Series and the Faculty of Law Legal Theory Workshop. 

Transnational Labour Law and the Environment: Beyond the Bounded Autonomous Worker

March 15, 2017 - McGill University, Faculty of Law 

The LLDRL Speaker Series and the Canada Research Chair in Transnational Labour Law and Development hosted Professor Sara Seck, Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario Faculty of Law. Professor Seck's presentation explored how transnational labour and environmental law may come together to protect not only workers, but their families and communities from health and safety risks associated with "fast fashion" production. Professor Seck encouraged a cooperative and interdisciplinary approach to researching in the fields of labour law and environment law, explaining that the often siloed approach to study in these fields does little to protect workers and their communities who live in the vicinity of polluting factories and experience a “slow death” as a result of contaminated air and water.

This event was sponsored by the Labour Law and Development Research Laboratory, the Canada Research Chair in Transnational Labour Law and Development and McGill University's Faculty of Law.

This event took place as part of the LLDRL Speaker Series. 

 

 

 

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