Description

In this introductory two-day seminar, faculty members and Ph.D. students will have the opportunity to learn from renowned law and society scholars, Terence Halliday and David Nelken, about designing and conducting qualitative field research in the study of legal institutions and law-like processes, and how to develop and write law and society-oriented papers informed by such empirical work. Topics will include research design for single-country studies, on international organizations as well as for comparative and transnational work, methods such as interviews, surveys, ethnography and narratives, data analysis, and writing. Both Terence Halliday and David Nelken will draw from their own research – such as on everyday criminal practice in China, and the interconnection between state and global levels in global campaigns for change in law and rights, respectively – to illuminate the seminar discussions.

About The Speaker

Terence Halliday is Co-Director, Center on Law and Globalization; Research Professor, American Bar Foundation; Adjunct Professor of Sociology, Northwestern University; Adjunct Professor of Regulation, Justice and Diplomacy, Australian National University. Halliday directs three research programs on law and globalization. The first, with Sida Liu, undertakes intensive interviews and extensive media research on China’s five systems of coercive control, and the struggles of criminal defense lawyers and leading human rights lawyers to protect basic legal freedoms. The second, with Lucien Karpik and Malcolm Feeley, studies the role of the legal complex in the protection of basic legal freedoms. Fates of Political Freedom in the British Post-Colony: The Politics of the Legal Complex (Cambridge University Press, 2012) focuses on former British colonies in South East Asia, South Asia and Africa. The third program undertakes empirical research on global law-making for international trade. His book (with Bruce Carruthers), Bankrupt: Global Lawmaking and Systemic Financial Crisis (2009), won multiple prizes from the American Sociological Association for its examination of the role of international organizations following the Asian Financial Crisis in China, Indonesia and Korea. His current book, Global Legislators: The Crafting of International Trade Law, co-authored with Susan Block-Lieb, examines the politics and products of international trade law organizations.

David Nelken is Distinguished Professor of Legal Institutions and Social Change at the University of Macerata in Italy and Distinguished Research Professor of Law at Cardiff University, UK. He is also the Visiting Professor of Criminology at the Oxford Centre of Criminology (teaching a masters course on comparative criminology and globalisation) and a Visiting Professor at the Mannheim Centre of Criminology, London School of Economics. He is in demand as a speaker and teacher more widely, this summer teaching courses in Argentina. Nelken writes mainly about social theory and law (e.g. Beyond Law in Context, Ashgate, 2009); comparative legal culture (e.g. Comparing Legal Culture, Dartmouth,1996, Adapting Legal Culture, Hart, 200 and Using Legal Culture, Wildy,Simmonds and Hill, 2012; and comparative and transnational criminology (e.g. Comparative Criminal Justice: Making Sense of Difference, Sage, 2010, and Comparative Criminal Justice and Globalisation, Ashgate, 2011). Nine of his books have been or are about to be translated into Chinese by Tsinghua University Press. Nelken received a Distinguished Scholar award from the American Sociological Association in 1985 and the ‘Sellin- Glueck’ career award in 2009 from the American Society of Criminology. In 2009 he was made an Academician of the UK Academy of the Social Sciences, and in 2011 was awarded the ‘Podgorecki’ career prize by the International Sociological Association (RCSL).