Events
CONFERENCE ON CORPORATE COMPLICITY IN HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
15 AND 16 DECEMBER 2009, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF LAW 10 WEST ROAD CB3 9DZ
The conference will discuss the legal implications of corporate involvement in human rights violations directly perpetrated by their joint venture partners in zones of weak governance. Discussion will centre around 4 themes:
- International Law and corporations
- The legal risks associated with corporate complicity in human rights violations (with a focus on the notable October 2009 judgment in Presbyterian Church of Sudan v. Talisman Energy)
- Soft Law mechanisms and whether or not they represent a developing legal framework regulating corporate responsibility for human rights
- Human rights due diligence and the corporate responsibility to respect human rights.
The conference will also present the tentative conclusions of the joint Lauterpacht Centre for International Law/first Africa research project on corporate complicity in human rights violations based at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law:
(http://www.lcil.cam.ac.uk/projects/corporate_complicity_project.php)
SPEAKERS INCLUDE:
Professor James Crawford SC: Whewell Professor of International Law at Cambridge University, Senior Counsel at Matrix Chambers and Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law
Jeremy Carver: President of the British Branch of the International Law Association, partner at Clifford Chance LLP, member of the steering committee of the OECD National Contact Point which monitors the adherence to the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises by British corporations.
Ingrid Gubbay: Of-Counsel at Hausfeld LLP and member of the legal team acting for the plaintiffs in Khulumani v Barclay National Bank Ltd., 504 F. 3d 254 (2d Cir. 2007).
Professor Sarah Joseph: Professor of Law and Director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights at Monash University. Her teaching and research interests lie in international human rights law and constitutional law. She has published a number of books including Corporations and Transnational Human Rights Litigation.
Ms Rae Lindsay: Partner and co-head of International Law at Clifford Chance LLP (London)
WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
Business executives, academics, representatives of legal and financial advisory firms, civil society and any other interested parties.
The cost of the conference in £75.00 and includes dinner at Clare College, Cambridge University and lunch at the Cambridge University Faculty of Law.
Directions to the venue are available at:
http://www.law.cam.ac.uk/about-the-faculty/how-to-find-us.php
Registration is essential, please contact Miss Vuyelwa Kuuya 01223 748 988 and vk264@cam.ac.uk as space is limited.
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Two new initiatives this year are the Poster Presentation and the Young Scholars Workshop. The Poster Presentation is modeled on the life sciences and presenters are expected to prepare a poster outlining the key ideas they wish to discuss. Conference delegates will be free to wander around the room and discuss posters that interest them with the respective authors on Day Two of the conference. The Young Scholars Workshop will be run as a seventh parallel session with two senior academics acting as chair and commentator.
The conference format remains broadly the same as last year: there will be five rounds of six parallel sessions over two days. The broad theme of the conference is “Law in a Pluralist Asia: Challenges and Prospects.” Asia is arguably the most pluralist region in the world and law has a critical role in accommodating and managing this plurality, which exists at so many levels.
Within the broad conference theme of “Law in a Pluralist Asia: Challenges and Prospects”, five of the parallel sessions will focus on selected sub-themes: (1) religion/religious laws (studying aspects of various religious laws, for example, Islamic (Shariah), Jewish, Hindu, Biblical in their historical contexts and application to modern life, as well as examining the place of religion in national legal systems); (2) norms, values and law (exploring competing social, cultural, religious, traditional norms as well as the balancing of minority and majority interests in society); (3) legal pluralism (examining the historical and contemporary phenomenon of the coexistence of different legal systems within various jurisdictions in Asia ); (4) law and economic development (examining different models of economic development in Asia and how law has a role to play in facilitating economic development and international trade taking into account the different stages of social and political development in Asia; (5) regionalization and law (looking at the role of law in developing regional institutions and common standards as well as the harmonization of legal and regulatory regimes. Session (6) will be a general one to include presentations that address the broad theme but may not fit comfortably within the subthemes, or may cut across subthemes, for example, conflict of law or comparative law.
Please visit our conference web site at http://law.nus.edu.sg/asli/7th_asli_conf/index.html details on the various panel sessions.
Click here for online submission of individual abstracts.
Click here for online submission of panels.
Click here for online submission of abstracts for Young Scholars Workshop.
Click here to register for the conference.
Downloadable copies of the forms are also available on the conference website.
The website, which will be updated periodically with the latest information on tentative panel sessions and programme schedule, also contains information on recommended conference hotels.
We regret that no subsidies are available for expenditures such as air flights, hotel charges and conference fees. A detailed and finalized programme (speaker panels, etc.) will be made available to all registered participants nearer the date of the conference.
We would very much appreciate your help in bringing this conference to the attention of your faculty/law school colleagues and PhD students, as well as to anyone whom you think might be interested in attending, whether as a paper presenter or otherwise.
For enquiries regarding the conference, please contact the ASLI Secretariat at asliconference@nus.edu.sg.
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