When: Wednesday, March 20, 2024, 6:00 PM - 8:30 PMWhere: Lecture Theatre, Centre For Commercial Law Studies, 67-69 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, WC2A 3JB
With the globalist project immersed in conflicts and adversity, Post-Colonial Globalisation offers an insight into the actors who animate it and the power dynamics which run through it. Using the law as the prism through which these are examined, and fusing historical with contemporary perspectives, the book contributes to understanding the crisis in which we find ourselves as a moment of both existential danger and an opportunity.
This book is in two parts. The first part charters capitalism’s historical progression to globalism through the lens of the act of taking. Taking has risen to institutional prominence as a core concept in the legal lexicon of foreign investment protection to denote deprivation of private property. Post-Colonial Globalisation advances a broader notion of taking as a tool of social criticism. From enclosures to colonial settlement to an empire of unequal exchanges, to contemporary land grabs, private property, now so vigorously protected against taking, was itself born out of taking. The second part focuses on the ecological dimension of neoliberal globalisation and its hallmarks of unlimited growth and excessive extraction. It has negatively impacted the climate, the earth and its human and non-human inhabitants to the point of putting their continued existence at risk. Central to this is the deification of property. Our understanding of proprietary relations and the rights they confer must be revisited if our interface with the planet is to be reconfigured. The emerging doctrine of rights of nature offers one route which may lead us in this direction.
The two parts complement each other. One looks at taking by members of the human species from each other. The other looks at taking by the human species from nature.
Professor Malgosia Fitzmaurice
Professor Malgosia Fitzmaurice holds a chair of public international law at the School of Law, Queen Mary University of London. She has been a Member of the Institut de Droit International since 2019. In 2021 she was awarded the Doctorate Honoris Causa of the University of Neuchâtel. Professor Fitzmaurice specialises in and publishes widely on international environmental law, the law of treaties and indigenous people’s rights. She is the Editor-in-Chief of a book series entitled ‘Queen Mary Studies in International Law’ and International Community Law Review.
Dr Alison Cronin
Dr Alison Cronin, a barrister in law, teaches Corporate Crime at Bournemouth University where she is the LLM Program Leader. She also leads the Trusts Law units at undergraduate level. Dr. Cronin’s main research interests and publications are in the fields of corporate criminality, history and corporate liability for fraud. She is a member of Inner Temple, an Academic Fellow of the International Academy of Financial Crime Litigators and an active member of the Criminal Law Reform Now Network.
Dr Rebecca Bates (moderator)
Dr Rebecca Bates is a Lecturer in Environmental Law at Queen Mary University of London. Prior to arriving at Queen Mary, she held lectureships at the University of Sydney and Brunel University teaching in the areas of Environmental Law, Tort, Equity and Trusts and Public Law. Dr Bates’ research is focused on the area of International Environmental Law with a particular interest in International Water Law and Governance. She is currently writing a monograph for Cambridge University Press entitled ‘Global Water: A New Era of Governance’. It considers water governance from a multi-dimensional perspective examining existing intersections within the sphere of international water law. Outside academia, Dr Bates is admitted as a Solicitor of the Supreme Court of New South Wales.
Professor Janet Dine (author)
Janet Dine is Professor Emerita of International Economic Development Law at Queen Mary University of London and was Director of the Centre for Commercial Law Studies from 2005-2008. She qualified as a barrister in 1973 and practiced at the English Bar dealing with criminal and commercial cases. Her research focuses on the environment, transnational corporations and international trade and human rights. Professor Dine was awarded a British Academy Grant to visit Barbados and Mauritius to research the sugar industry from the time of slavery to the time of the WTO agreements. She is an active member of several networks including one of foreign debt and human rights. She is also a member of the European funded project on close companies.
Dr Yonit Manor-Percival (author)
Dr Yonit Manor-Percival, a solicitor of England and Wales, lectures at the Centre of Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London and is a Research Associate at the school of Oriental and African Studies. Her main research interests are in international economic law, the political economy of the People’s Republic of China and the interface between national and international law, society and corporations within the framework of the global political economy. Outside academia, Dr Percival practices with a Beijing law firm focussing on international commercial and investment arbitration. She is an arbitrator on the panels of the China International Economic and Trade Commission and the Hainan International Arbitration Court.