The Texas International Law Journal & the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice present:
Representing Culture, Translating Human Rights
November 3–4, 2005
Continuing the Rapoport Center’s focus on exploring the local and the global together, this multidisciplinary conference will consider how international human rights law and discourse migrate and how, in the process, issues of culture emerge. It will consider invocations of both rights and culture in the North as well as in the South, the West as well as the East. Are human rights meant to protect individuals from their culture or to facilitate a right to culture? What is meant by both “rights” and “culture,” how are they mutually constituted, and how do those meanings change as human rights law and advocacy travel?
The conference will consist of an opening and closing keynote and three panels. Each panel will include one or two principal papers and a number of commentators. Each will also invite approaches from a variety of disciplines, including law, anthropology, sociology, and literature.
The event will be co-sponsored by the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the Center for East Asian Studies (UT), the Humanities Institute (UT), the South Asia Institute (UT), the Teresa Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies (UT), and the American Constitutional Society for Law and Policy (UT Law Student Chapter and Austin Lawyer Chapter).
Jump to: Speakers | Schedule | Sponsors
Speakers
- Antony Anghie, S.J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah
- Srinivas Aravamudan, Duke University
- Gaurav Desai, Tulane University
- Sheldon Ekland-Olson, University of Texas
- Karen Engle, University of Texas School of Law
- Florian Hoffmann, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro Faculty of Law
- Derek Jinks, University of Texas School of Law
- David Kennedy, Harvard Law School
- Ranjana Khanna, Duke University
- Gregor Noll, Lund University Faculty of Law
- Charles Piot, Duke University
- Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Philippe Sands, University College London Faculty of Law
- The Honorable Surakiart Sathirathai, Deputy Prime Minister, Thailand
- Shannon Speed, University of Texas
- Gerald Torres, University of Texas School of Law
- Ernest Young, University of Texas School of Law
Schedule
Thursday, November 3
4:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m.
Eidman Courtroom
- Welcome and Introduction by Professor Karen Engle
- Opening Keynote Address by Professor Philippe Sands: “Lawless World? The Cultures of International Law”
- Commentary by Professor Ernest Young
6:00 p.m.
Reception at UT Law
Jamail Pavilion
Friday, November 4
8:30 a.m.–9:00 a.m.
Registration and Breakfast at UT Law
Jamail Pavilion
9:00 a.m.–10:30 a.m.
Panel I: Translating Human Rights
Eidman Courtroom
What might we learn from studying how human rights discourse is used in various contexts? What does translating human rights mean, and what are the (often hidden) epistemological assumptions of translation attempts? Need human rights necessarily be embedded in Western-style (neo-)liberalism, or, as they travel, might they take on new meaning and power? How would/do such meanings affect traditional conceptions of human rights? What constitutes “progress” for human rights, and what final vision or utopia is implied in human rights discourse? What would it mean to think of human rights discourse as a means rather than an end? How would such thinking affect human rights activism?
- Shannon Speed (chair)
- Florian Hoffmann
- Derek Jinks (commentator)
- Balakrishnan Rajagopal (commentator)
10:30 a.m.–11:00 a.m.
Break
11:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m.
Panel II: Sovereignty
Eidman Courtroom
Sovereignty and self-determination continue to play a surprisingly significant discursive and political role in today’s human rights discourse. The concepts are invoked by countries like the United Sates and the U.K., as well as by some developing countries and by certain ethnic and indigenous groups. What might the different invocations have in common, and what might we learn by comparing them? What, if any, is the relationship between internal theories of sovereignty (relationship of the state to its own people) and external notions of sovereignty (state vis-à-vis other states)?
- Gerald Torres (chair)
- Antony Anghie
- Srinivas Aravamudan
- David Kennedy (commentator)
12:30 p.m.–2:00 p.m.
Lunch at UT Law
Jamail Pavilion
2:00 p.m.–3:30 p.m.
Panel III: Asylum
Eidman Courtroom
Those who claim asylum in one state generally need to prove that, if returned to their home country, they will suffer persecution based on a variety of prohibited classifications. Thus, they argue that the regimes they flee are repressive. In recent years, the basis of such oppression is often attributed to the dominant “culture” of the country of origin and the state’s complicity in what is argued is a repressive culture. To what extent do such claims reinforce essentialized understandings of culture and of the populations that live in particular states? What are the effects of (mis-)representations of culture with regard to individual claims, the development of asylum jurisprudence and political relations among states, as well as political struggles within them? Might they lead to claims of fraud against individuals who would hope to stay in the United States for reasons other than the fleeing of the persecution of their “culture”?
- Karen Engle (chair)
- Ranjana Khanna
- Gregor Noll
- Charles Piot (commentator)
- Gaurav Desai (commentator)
3:30 p.m.–4:00 p.m.
Break
4:00 p.m.–5:30 p.m.
Eidman Courtroom
- Welcome by Provost Sheldon Ekland-Olson
- Introduction of the Honorable Surakiart Sathirathai by Professor David Kennedy
- Closing Keynote Address by the Honorable Surakiart Sathirathai: “Peace and Security: The Challenge and the Promise”
5:30 p.m.–6:30 p.m.
Reception at UT Law
Sheffield Room
Sponsors
Baker Botts, L.L.P.
Vinson & Elkins, L.L.P.
Patrons
Andrews Kurth, L.L.P.
Bracewell & Giuliani, L.L.P.
Jackson Walker, L.L.P.
King & Spalding, L.L.P.
McKool Smith, P.C.
Strasburger & Price, L.L.P.
Winstead, Sechrest & Minick, P.C.
Friends
McGinnis, Lochridge & Kilgore, L.L.P.