AELA and the Southern Cross University are pleased to invite AELA members and colleagues from academia, legal practice and the judiciary to participate in an exciting new project called The Wild Law Judgment Project.
- An overview of the project is set out below
- Please also visit the Southern Cross University’s website for this project, by clicking here.
- If you’re interested in this project, please contact Michelle Maloney, AELA - convenor@earthlaws.org.au or Dr Nicole Rogers, Southern Cross University – nicole.rogers@scu.edu.au. Please write ‘Wild Law Judgments Project’ in the email subject heading.
PROJECT NEWS
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
Interested contributors are invited to submit a 300-500 word abstract, by Monday 2nd March, to aela@earthlaws.org.au. For information about how to submit an abstract, please click here.
PROJECT WORKSHOP - NOVEMBER 2014
The first workshop to develop the parameters of this project was held on 12 November 2014, at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.
The Honourable Brian Preston SC, Chief Justice of the New South Wales Land and Environment Court, gave an opening presentation at the workshop, followed by Professor Heather Douglas of the University of Queensland, who was one of the project leaders from the Australian Feminist Judgment Project.
For a copy of Judge Preston’s speech at the workshop, please click here.
Notes from this workshop are available by emailing our National Convenor at aela@earthlaws.org.au.
OVERVIEW OF THE PROJECT
As part of AELA’s commitment to the development of alternative legal narratives, we are pleased to be working with the Southern Cross University to support a new, collaborative judgment re-writing project. We are inviting academics, practitioners and judges to participate. We will also be offering limited places for student participation at the first workshop, so please get in touch if you are an undergraduate or postgraduate law student, and this is of interest.
The aim of the project is to produce a body of jurisprudence that offers an earth centred perspective of key common law decisions. The Australian Wild Law Judgment project, which draws its inspiration from various feminist judgment projects, poses a unique critical challenge to the dominant human-centred focus of the common law. This project will open up Australian judicial decision-making to critical scrutiny from a wild law perspective.
The challenge for each participant is to choose an Australian judgment and to re-write it from a wild law perspective. The original judgment might be found in any area of law, including constitutional law, torts, corporations law, property law, contracts, criminal law and taxation law.
There are a number of feminist judgment projects including the Women’s Court of Canada, the United Kingdom Feminist Judgments project and the ongoing Australian Feminist Judgments project. In these projects, existing judgments have been and are being re-written through a feminist lens.
The Wild Law Judgment project requires us to re-write judgments through a wild law lens, putting all life and life’s support systems at the centre of judgments. In doing this, we are mounting a challenge to the hegemony of anthropocentrism in the common law.
HOW TO GET INVOLVED
This project is a joint initiative of AELA and the School of Law and Justice, Southern Cross University. Please contact Michelle Maloney, convenor of AELA or Dr Nicole Rogers, School of Law and Justice, Southern Cross University if you are interested in participating.
Michelle’s email address is aela@earthlaws.org.au
Nicole’s email address is nicole.rogers@scu.edu.au
RESOURCES
Nicole Rogers and Michelle Maloney, 'The Australian Wild Law judgment project' (2014) 39(2) Alternative Law Journal 172.
Rosemary Hunter, Clare McGlynn and Erika Rackley (eds), Feminist judgments: from theory to practice (Hart Publishing, 2010).
Heather Douglas, Francesca Bartlett, Trish Luker and Rosemary Hunter (eds), Australian feminist judgments: righting and re-writing law (Hart Publishing, 2014).
Thomas Berry, The Great Work: Our Way Into the Future (Bell Tower, 1999).
Cormac Cullinan, Wild law: A manifesto for earth justice (Green Books, 2003).
Michelle Maloney and Peter Burdon (eds), Wild law: in practice (Routledge, 2014).
Peter Burdon (ed), Exploring Wild Law: The Philosophy of Earth Jurisprudence (Wakefield Press, 2011).
