Law, Language, and the Words that Bind
A Law & Anthropology seminar with Marianne Constable, University of California, Berkeley. (Prof. Constable is also giving a public lecture the prior evening). Those who attend the seminar will be expected to read a pre-circulated chapter from the book. RSVP by November 1, 2015 to confirm your place in the seminar and receive the book chapter: constableatmcgill [at] gmail.com, with 鈥楽eminar鈥� in the subject line.
Abstract
Marianne Constable will give a seminar for graduate students and faculty on her 2014 book Our Word is our Bond: How Legal Speech Acts. In this book, Constable argues that both law and language bind us, and that attending to law鈥檚 language enables us to recognize law not primarily as a matter of rules but of speech. Constable draws on Austin, Cavell, Reinach, Nietzsche, and others to show how claims of law are performative and passionate utterances or social acts that appeal implicitly to justice. Those who attend the seminar will be expected to read a chapter from the book. In the seminar, Constable will talk about how her work on legal rhetoric informs her new project on Chicago鈥檚 husband killers and will lead a discussion about the pre-circulated chapter.
About the speaker
Marianne Constable is Professor of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley and author of The Law of the Other: The Mixed Jury and Changing Conceptions of Citizenship, Law and Knowledge (winner of the Law & Society Association J. Willard Hurst Prize in Legal History); Just Silences: The Limits and Possibilities of Modern Law; and Our Word is Our Bond: How Legal Speech Acts (finalist for two Socio-Legal Studies Association (UK) book prizes).
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Constable earned her B.A. in political science and philosophy, her JD, and her Ph.D. in Jurisprudence & Social Policy, from University of California, Berkeley.听 As demonstrated through her publications and service in sociology, political science, anthropology, history, literature, and philosophy, she is committed to the study of law in its broadest sense. She was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in 2005-2006, taught a short course on law and language at Melbourne University in 2012, and was the Lenore Annenberg and Wallis Annenberg Fellow in Communication at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University in 2014-2015. She is the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, including the James Boyd White Award from the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities (LCH).
Organized by Professor Mark Antaki (McGill Law) and Professor Katherine Lemons (McGill Anthropology).
Sponsors: Cr茅peau Centre for Private and听Comparative Law, Katharine A. Pearson Chair in Civil Society and听Public Policy,听Dean of Arts Development Fund,听Legal Theory Workshop,听Centre for Human Rights and听Legal Pluralism, Department of Anthropology, Critical Social Theory,听Institute for the Public Life of Arts and听Ideas.
