Call for Papers -- Global Legal Education Approaches: Experiences for Palestine (Hebron, 1-3 October)

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May 4, 2013
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Call for Papers -- Global Legal Education Approaches: Experiences for Palestine (Hebron, 1-3 October)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Global Legal Education Approaches: Experiences for Palestine
1-3 October 2013
Hebron University, Hebron, West Bank, Palestine

Context

The HU Legal Clinic, UNITERRANEE, in collaboration with the Faculty of Law of Aix-en-Provence University, France, are organizing an international conference that would examine the trends on legal education systems and methodologies from global and comparative perspectives with the purpose to enhance the quality of legal education in Palestine. The conference is scheduled to take place from 1 to 3 October 2013 at the HU campus, Hebron, West Bank, Palestine.

As a result of different regimes that ruled Palestine since its separation from the Ottoman Empire in 1917, the applicable law in Palestine is mixed of various legal systems: Ottoman, British, Jordanian, Egyptian, Israeli and Palestinian. These regimes, in turn, derived their legal traditions from Islamic law, common law, and continental law. The mixed system has, naturally, influenced the legal education. Due to the fact that most law faculty graduated from Arab world and European universities, the teaching of law has been, by and large, based on the French model. Inspired by globalized trends and influenced by the tradition of career-oriented legal education, Palestinian law schools are increasingly shifting towards practical teaching methods, including clinical legal education, moot courts, and focusing on practical skills through the engagement with the legal profession, judges, prosecutors, official, non-governmental and international institutions. Yet, the legal education system, as the whole status of the country, remains in transition and its future is undetermined.

Due to the Israeli occupation, Palestinian universities were for long time prevented from initiating law programs. In 1986, HU was the first university to  teach law. After one year of instruction, Israel threatened to close down HU if the teaching of law would continue, concerned that the Palestinians would use the vehicle of law and courts to resist the human rights violations of the military occupation. The situation eased with the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority in 1994 after signing the Israel-PLO Oslo interim agreement. While the first law program started in Palestine in 1995, there are currently eleven universities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that teach law.

Hebron (30 km south of Jerusalem) is the largest district in Palestine, with over half a million people, some 15% of the State’s population. The old city of Hebron, which incorporates over 40,000 Palestinians and about 500 isolated settlers protected by similar number of soldiers, is still governed by Israel; the modern part of the city falls under the Palestinian self-rule. HU, which commenced with a single college in 1971, now incorporates nine colleges, 40 bachelor and seven masters’ programs, with 8,000 students. HU established the Department of Law in September 2008, offering a Bachelor of Laws, and the Legal Clinic in 2011. The Clinic seeks to build the capacity of students to practice law by applying their knowledge and providing pro bono assistance to marginalized groups. The Clinic has become a hub for legal information, conferencing, training and rights activism in Palestine.

Conference Topics 

Papers for the conference might be written on any of the following topics:

  • Continental and common law systems;
  • Practical legal vs. theoretical education;
  • Clinical legal education;
  • Teaching of Islamic law the curricula of law schools;
  • Thematic issues, such as teaching public and private international law, civil law, constitutional law, administrative law, criminal law, commercial law, legal writing, legal ethics (individual professors’ models on legal education are welcome);
  • Human rights education;
  • Teaching legislative drafting;
  • Reforming legal education management (government, bar associations, universities);
  • Relations between law schools and justice stakeholders, lawyers, judges, prosecutors and parliaments as well as governmental, civil society and international institutions.

Keynote Speakers

Keynote speakers include: Dr. Jean-Jacques Alexandre, Professor of Civil Law, France; Dr. James Apple, President, International Judicial Academy, Washington DC; Prof. Gérard Blanc, Professor of Commercial Law, France;  Prof. Frank Bloch, Executive Secretary, Global Alliance on Justice Education, and Professor of Law Emeritus, Vanderbilt University Law School, USA; Dr. Gil Charbonnier, Professor of Legal Philosophy, France;  Prof. David Chavkin, Professor of Law, Washington College of Law; Prof. Dr. Amin Dawwas, Professor of Law, American Arab University; Dr. Tonye Jaja, Editor, International Journal of Legislative Drafting, London; Dr. Philippe Mouron, Professor of Legal Information Technology, France; Dr. Jean-Baptiste Perrier, Professor of Criminal Law, France; Prof. Dr. Othman Takrouri, Professor of Law, Al-Quds University and Judge in the Palestinian Supreme Court; and Prof. Dr. Husain Tartouri, Dean, HU Faculty of Islamic Law.

Important Dates

  • Deadline for abstract’s submission: 30 June 2013
  • Deadline for full paper’s submission: 31 August 2013
  • Full paper approval notification: 12 September 2013

Paper Requirements

Papers, in MS Word, can be written in Arabic, English or French, should relate to one of the above topics, and  not be previously published. Style follows Oxford Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities. Abstracts should not exceed 400 words; papers range 5,000-10,000 words.

Selected papers of the conference will be referred and published in a collective book or in a peerreviewed journal. The last year’s conference papers were published by Cambridge Scholars, UK.

Conference Committee

  • Dr. Mutaz M. Qafisheh (PhD, Geneva), Professor of International Law, HU, President
  • Dr. Ratib Jabari (PhD, Morocco), Professor of Law, HU, Member
  • Dr. Loui Ghzawi (PhD, Glasgow, UK), Head, Department of Jurisprudence, HU, Member
  • Dr. Ahmed Swaitti (PhD, France), Head, Department of Law, HU, Member
  • Mr. Hendam Rjoub (MA candidate), Legal Researcher, HU Legal Clinic, Coordinator

Communications

If you wish to participate as speaker, please send a cover letter with your CV and full address to:

  • Abstracts and full papers in English or French can be submitted to: Dr. Mutaz M. Qafisheh, email: mmqafisheh@gmail.com
  • Abstracts and full papers in Arabic can be submitted to: Mr. Hendam Rjoub, email: hendamr@hebron.edu

Notes

  • Speakers coming from abroad as well as those arriving from outside Hebron or Bethlehem districts can be provided, upon request, with free hotel accommodation
  • There are no participation fees for the conference attendance
  • Participants should register via email with full address to: legalclinic@hebron.edu

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412