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Philosophical Counselling And Mediation Theory And Practice: Exploring A Pathway To Justice, Nayha Acharya

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This paper will demonstrate how philosophical counselling would invaluably contribute to the arena of conflict resolution via mediation and civil justice generally. Mediation is a conflict resolution process that involves a third party who facilitates disputants in arriving at a self-determined resolution. This process is being incorporated into civil justice systems globally, but how mediation should be conducted to achieve truly just outcomes needs immediate and thoughtful attention. At its best, mediation empowers parties to co-create a just and fair resolution to their conflict through a dialogical exploration of their interests, needs, and relevant norms and values. This is dramatically …

Feminist Relational Theory, Christine M. Koggel, Ami Harbin, Jennifer Llewellyn

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Accounts of human beings as essentially social have had a long history in philosophy as reflected in the Ancient Greeks; in African and Asian philosophy; in Modern European thinkers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx; in continental philosophy; in pragmatism; in Indigenous thought, and in contemporary communitarian theories. It can be said, then, that the language of relational theory has taken a variety of forms. That relational theory is broad and captures various threads in the history of philosophy is captured in the main title of this special issue, Relational Theory. That this special …

Animals As Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders, By Maneesha Deckha, Jodi Lazare

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Scholarship on animal rights has long been dominated by the widely held idea that justice for nonhuman animals will not be achieved until they are granted legal personhood. In Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders, Maneesha Deckha provides an alternative legal classification for nonhuman animals. “Beingness,” rooted in relational feminism, post-colonial theory, and critical animal studies, recognizes nonhuman animals’ inherent value, while avoiding some of the downsides to legal personhood, namely, its embeddedness in the imperialist liberal individualism that characterizes western legal systems. Given its anthropocentric nature, personhood must be displaced as the aspirational classification for animals. …

J. Krishnamurti And The Contemporary World Crises: Scholars’ Panel Two Session Four, Ashwani Kumar, Nayha Acharya

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In this presentation, I describe my journey with Krishnamurti’s existential inquiry at a personal level and in the context of my academic life. I was introduced to Krishnamurti’s work during my Bachelor of Education program in India in 2004. While Krishnamurti was quite peripheral to the curriculum, he became a central focus of study for me during the Bachelor of Education, Masters of Education, and during my PhD. His insights have had a deep impact on how I view personal, educational, and social problems and how I approach teaching and research. His work is central to the four pedagogical and …

Transforming Restorative Justice, Jennifer Llewellyn

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From the global pandemic to the Black Lives Matter, the Me Too/Times Up and Indigenous reconciliation and decolonisation movements, the systemic and structural failures of current social institutions around the world have all been brought to our collective consciousness in poignant, painful and urgent ways. The need for fundamental social and systemic transformation is clear. This challenge is central to the work of dealing with the past in countries undergoing transition and in established democracies confronting deep structural inequalities and injustices. Rooted in lessons from the application of restorative justice across these contexts, this article suggests that grounding restorative justice …

J. Krishnamurti And The Contemporary World Crises: Introduction To The Conference Proceedings, Ashwani Kumar, Nayha Acharya

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We, Ashwani Kumar and Nayha Acharya, are excited and honoured to share the conference proceedings of the J. Krishnamurti and the Contemporary World Crises International Online Conference. The conference took place at the end of February 2021. It was free for anyone to attend. In our introduction we share how the conference was conceptualized, why J. Krishnamurti is a relevant focus in today’s world, how the conference unfolded, and how attendees responded to this conference.

I, Ashwani Kumar, have spent much of my academic journey studying, applying, teaching, and engaging in dialogues about J. Krishnamurti’s insights into human consciousness and …

Relational Theory And Health Law And Policy, Jennifer Llewellyn, Jocelyn Downie

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Relational theory starts from an understanding of human selves as relational. This theory informs some significant current developments in the areas of philosophy, ethics and legal theory that re-envision key concepts including autonomy, equality, rights, justice, memory, trust, judgment and identity. In this paper we introduce relational theory and begin to explore some of its implications for health law and policy. In doing so, we hope to show the relevance of each field to the other and to persuade those interested in health law and policy to take up the challenge to pursue the transformative potential of relational theory through …

Counting Outsiders: A Critical Exploration Of Outsider Course Enrollment In Canadian Legal Education, Kim Brooks, Natasha Bahkt, Gillian Calder, Jennifer Koshan, Sonia Lawrence, Carissima Mathen, Debra L. Parkes

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In response to anecdotal concerns that student enrollment in "outsider" courses, and in particular feminist courses, is on the decline in Canadian law schools, the authors explore patterns of course enrollment at seven Canadian law schools. Articulating a definition of "outsider" that describes those who are members of groups historically lacking power in society, or traditionally outside the realms of fashioning, teaching, and adjudicating the law, the authors document the results of quantitative and qualitative surveys conducted at their respective schools to argue that outsider pedagogy remains a critical component of legal education. The article situates the numerical survey results …

Feminists, Angels, Poets, And Revolutionaries: What I'Ve Learned From Ruthann Robson And Nicole Brossard On What It Means To Be A Law Teacher, Kim Brooks

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This short piece was written as a tribute to the contributions Ruthann Robson has made to legal pedagogy, and was presented at a Symposium in her honor held at CUNY.

Mapping Legal Theory, Richard F. Devlin Frsc

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In this essay, the author briefly outlines recent trends in Canadian jurisprudence. Beginning with a brief overview of the classical jurisprudential debate between natural lawyers, legal positivists, and legal realists, the author then provides an introduction to a new theoretical tradition which he terms "Artifactualism", as well as a survey of contemporary ''Artifactualist Jurisprudence". He argues that there has been a significant theoretical shift away from the classical conceptualization of law as morality (as embodied in natural law, and challenged by legal posltlvism and legal realism), toward the conceptualization of law as politics (as promulgated by artifactualism). This new conceptualization …

Law, Postmodernism And Resistance: Rethinking The Significance Of The Irish Hunger Strike, Part Ii, Richard F. Devlin Frsc

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In recent years legal scholars have drawn upon the insights of postmodernism and deconstruction as methods for the interpretation of legal texts. In this article the author attempts to assess the work of Baudrillard, Derrida and Lyotard not merely as interpretative strategies but as potential socio-legal theories. In order to ground the analysis, the author locates the assessment in the context of the hunger strike by Irish prisoners in 1981. Drawing on the insights of postmodernism and deconstruction the author proposes that the fast can be understood as the erruption of a pre-colonial juridical consciousness by means of which the …

Law, Postmodernism And Resistance: Rethinking The Significance Of The Irish Hunger Strike, Part I, Richard F. Devlin Frsc

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In recent years legal scholars have drawn upon the insights of postmodernism and deconstruction as methods for the interpretation of legal texts. In this article the author attempts to assess the work of Baudrillard, Derrida and Lyotard not merely as interpretative strategies but as potential socio-legal theories. In order to ground the analysis, the author locates the assessment in the context of the hunger strike by Irish prisoners in 1981. Drawing on the insights of postmodernism and deconstruction the author proposes that the fast can be understood as the erruption of a pre-colonial juridical consciousness by means of which the …

Doubting Donald: A Reply To Professor Donald Galloway's 'Critical Mistakes', Richard F. Devlin Fsrc

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In a recent article Professor Galloway has argued that supporters of the Critical Legal Studies perspective make five fundamental errors in their analyses of liberal theory and as a result have failed in their deconstructive agenda. In this essay Professor Devlin replies to these criticisms and posits that Galloway's essay in retrieval is itself subject to the very same errors of which he accuses the "crits". Moreover, it is argued that the nature of Galloway 's partial defence of liberalism confirms rather than denies the accuracy of critical assessments.

Nomos And Thanatos (Part B): Feminism As Jurisgenerative Transformation, Or Resistance Through Partial Incorporation? Part Ii, Richard F. Devlin Frsc

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In Part A of this essay, "The Killing Fields", I developed a critique of the disciplinary impulses that underlie modern law and legal theory. Invoking a number of perspectives and a plurality of analyses, I proposed that male-stream legal theory and contemporary law both assume as inevitable, and legitimize as appropriate, the funnelling of violence through law. The problem with a funnel, however, is that it does not curtail or reduce that which is channelled through it. On the contrary, to funnel is to condense and to intensify. Viewed from this perspective, interpreted from the bottom up, law and legal …

Nomos And Thanatos (Part B): Feminism As Jurisgenerative Transformation, Or Resistance Through Partial Incorporation? Part I, Richard F. Devlin Frsc

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In Part A of this essay, "The Killing Fields", I developed a critique of the disciplinary impulses that underlie modern law and legal theory. Invoking a number of perspectives and a plurality of analyses, I proposed that male-stream legal theory and contemporary law both assume as inevitable, and legitimize as appropriate, the funnelling of violence through law. The problem with a funnel, however, is that it does not curtail or reduce that which is channelled through it. On the contrary, to funnel is to condense and to intensify. Viewed from this perspective, interpreted from the bottom up, law and legal …

Nomos And Thanatos (Part A), The Killing Fields: Modern Law And Legal Theory, Richard F. Devlin Frsc

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The essay is to be published in two parts. Part A, "The Killing Fields .. . ", is a criticai inquiry into the way in which the "disciplines" of law and legal theory rationalize violence. I begin my discussion with a Celtic triptych - a series of three narratives - that is designed to provide the reader with some background information in order that he or she may acquire a sense of the perspective and experiential context from which this essay emerges.

Next, I briefly outline the central role which violence has played in structuring our received tradition of jurisprudential …