Changing Law Rights, Regulation and Reconciliation

Originally published in 2005. Law has a complex relationship to the phenomenon of change; it is an instrument, a cause and an inhibitor of change. Law has both effected and been affected by extraordinary changes, particularly in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This interdisciplinary collection addresses, from a range of perspectives, the theme of 'changing law'. The essays cover historical and contemporary issues of social, political and legal change, including human rights, security, law reform, changes in knowledge production in universities and specifically in the legal academy, and the legal oppression/protection of racial minorities. The chapters are grouped into three sections around shared focuses on states, institutions and justice, and collectively address common concerns of rights, regulation and reconciliation: key legal problematics of the early twenty-first century.

Contents: Introduction, Rosemary Hunter and Mary Keyes. Part I Changing States, Changing Rights: Human rights, sovereignty, humanism, Costas Douzinas; Some history on the back of the security envelope, David Saunders; Governing security: the age of diversity, Clifford Shearing. Part II Changing Laws, Changing Institutions: Frozen Chooks revisited: the challenge of changing law/s, Reg Graycar; Restructuring the Universities, remaking the (legal) academy? the law school, 'Knowledge Economy' and uncertain future of (critical) socio-legal studies, Richard Collier; Changing the academic subject, Erica McWilliam. Part III Achieving Justice: Terra Nullius and the possessive logic of patriarchal whiteness: race and law matters, Aileen Moreton-Robinson; The relevance of the rights agenda in the age of practical reconciliation, Larissa Behrendt; Conscientious participation: working the law back to its bones, Andrea Durbach; Index.