Image source: Center for Comparative Conflict Studies (CFCCS)
The National Law School of India University, Bengaluru is organising a special lecture on campus on the topic “Smart and/or Just City? Evidence from a Southern Periphery” by Prof. Oren Yiftachel, Professor of political and legal geography, urban planning, and public policy at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Beersheba, Israel.
The lecture will take place at 12.30 pm on April 8, 2024 in Room 106, Old Academic Block (OAB).
About the Speaker
Yiftachel is one of the main critical geographers and social scientists working in Israel. He studied in Australian and Israeli universities, and has previously taught in the urban planning, geography, political science and Middle East departments at a range of institutions including: Curtin University, Australia; the Technion, Israel; the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, and UC Berkeley, in the US; University of Cape Town, South Africa; and the University of Venice, Italy. He was a research fellow at RMIT, Melbourne; the US Institute of Peace, Washington DC; and the Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem.
Yiftachel is the founding editor of the journal Hagar: Studies in Culture, Politics and Place, and serves on the editorial board of Planning Theory (essay editor), Society and Space, IJMES, MERIP, Urban Studies , Journal of Planning Literature, and Social and Cultural Geography.
The National Law School of India University, and Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) are organising the inaugural edition of the Annual Arbitration Lecture on April 19, 2024 from 10 to 11 am at the NLS campus.
The lecture titled “Sunset Clauses in Bilateral Investment Treaties”, will be delivered by Dr. Claudia Annacker, Member, SIAC Court of Arbitration; Independent Arbitrator and Counsel.
Dr. Claudia Annacker is an independent arbitrator and counsel based in Paris. She specializes in international arbitration and public international law, in particular Investor-State disputes, inter-State disputes, disputes involving international organizations and human rights disputes.
Dr. Annacker has represented sovereign and private parties in more than 35 investment arbitrations, as well as in commercial and inter-State arbitrations. Dr. Annacker has also served as arbitrator in investment treaty and commercial arbitrations. She is a member of several arbitrator panels, including the ICSID Panel of Arbitrators and the SIAC Panel of Arbitrators. She is a member of the SIAC Court of Arbitration and the VIAC Board (President of the Investment Arbitration Committee).
Dr. Annacker received a Ph.D. with high honors and a venia legendi et docendi (habilitation) for public international law from the University of Vienna. Dr. Annacker is an adjunct professor at the University of Vienna and has been a visiting professor at the Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense University. She has published widely in the fields of international arbitration and public international law.
Mr. Promod Nair (NLS BA LLB 2001), Senior Advocate at the High Court of Karnataka, will be the moderator of the event.
This event is open to the public. Please note if you are outside of the NLS community, it is mandatory to register here for the event.
All press/media invitees who are interested to cover the talk are requested to please carry their ID cards.
NLS faculty Kunal Ambasta is delivering a keynote address on ‘The fight for LGBTI-Rights in India’ at the LGBTI-Rechte International (LGBTI Rights International) Conference on April 6, 2024, at 9 am (CET)/ 12.30 pm (IST). The conference is being organized from April 5-7, 2024 at the Theodor Heuss Academy, Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, Germany.
About the Foundation
Based on the principles of liberalism, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom offers political education in Germany and abroad. With its events and publications, it helps people become actively involved in political affairs. The Foundation also supports talented young students with scholarships. It is headquartered in Potsdam, Germany and maintains offices throughout Germany and in over 60 countries around the world.
To know more about the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, click here.
NLS faculty Mrinal Satish will present a paper titled “Sentencing as a Fair Trial Right”. Kunal Ambasta will be the discussant.
Abstract
The Supreme Court of India has in multiple cases attempted to define the elements of a fair criminal trial. It has articulated fair trial as development of norms to prevent miscarriage of justice, the opportunity to prove innocence, and importantly, as the main object of criminal procedure. However, scant attention has been paid to articulation of fair trial norms in the process of sentencing – where a court determines the appropriate punishment to be imposed on a person convicted of an offence after a criminal trial. In this paper, I explore and analyse the embodiment of fair trial rights in sentencing, focusing on the pre-sentence hearing process under the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (Cr.P.C). In doing so, I trace the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court on pre-sentence hearing, including the role of the court in such a hearing. I examine, and critique a recent trend where courts have sought “pre-sentence reports” from probation officers to assist the court in its sentencing function. I also deal with the role of defence lawyers, and what impact ineffective legal assistance should have on sentencing decisions. Through an analysis of these, and other allied issues, I attempt to identify fair trial norms in the sentencing process, and the manner in which they should be applied, in order to ensure due process in sentencing.
Prof. Matthias Mahlmann from the University of Zurich will be delivering a talk titled ‘The Arduous Pursuit of Dignity for All – Preserving Democracy and Human Rights in a World in Crisis’. Prof. Mahlmann is University Professor, and Chair of Philosophy and Theory of Law, Legal Sociology and International Public Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Zurich, Switzerland. He is also a Visiting Professor with the V R Krishna Iyer Chair on Public Law and Policy Choice at NLSIU. The talk will take place at the BIC, Domlur on April 10, 2024 from 6.30 pm to 8.30 pm.
This talk draws from Prof. Mahlmann’s recent critically acclaimed book, Mind and Rights: The history, law and psychology of Human Rights published in open access mode by Cambridge University Press in February 2023. The talk critically examines the growth of the concept of human rights, its roots in history and current human rights theories. It scrutinizes in particular the myth of the Western origin of the idea of human rights by highlighting the many roots of human rights in different cultures, including within the Global South and indigenous cultures.
A particular goal of the talk is to engage with the so-called cognitive revolution and to investigate the relationship between human cognition and human rights. The talk will argue that insights gained from modern theories of the mind can deepen our understanding of the foundation of human rights. The talk also seeks to answer the question whether the current attacks on democracy can be countered through the use of human rights and its underlying political ethics of egalitarian dignity. Finally, the talk will contend that the pursuit of the human rights idea, with its achievements and tragic failures, is key to understanding what kind of beings humans are. Such self-knowledge is crucial in times in which the human species has put its own survival at risk.
The talk will be followed by a conversation between the author, Matthias Mahlmann, and NLSIU faculty Dr. Rinku Lamba. This will be followed by a moderated Q&A session with the audience.
Registration for the event is on a first-come first-serve basis. To register, click here.
NLSIU is hosting the Trilateral sports tournament from March 27-29, 2024, where teams from NALSAR, Hyderabad and NUJS Kolkata will be competing in a 3-way contest with NLSIU Bangalore.
Trilateral is a sports fest aimed at developing camaraderie between three law schools – NLSIU, NALSAR and NUJS. It is conducted on a rotational basis, and NLSIU is hosting it this year.
The sports meet is spread over three days and features multiple sports including basketball, football, cricket, kabaddi, lawn tennis, table tennis, volleyball and athletics. Events will start at 8 AM in the morning and continue until 10 PM at night.
NLS faculty Manish will present a paper titled “Protecting journalism from national security: the aftermath of Madhyamam Broadcasting”. Radhika Chitkara will be the discussant.
Abstract:
The Supreme Court of India has, in its jurisprudence over the last seven decades, evolved an interpretation of Articles 19(1)(a) and 19(2) of the Constitution that reads the right broadly and the restrictions narrowly, especially where press freedom is concerned. Despite this, journalists reporting on national security issues face challenges ranging from lack of information to heavy penalties. In recent years, governments have often invoked national security to restrict journalism, using anti-terror laws which carry stringent penalties and threat of long pre-trial incarceration without bail. These and other national security laws have been upheld by the Supreme Court, which has, in contrast to its press freedom jurisprudence, adopted a ‘minimalist’ approach and refused to closely scrutinise them for infringement of fundamental rights. In this context, I contrast the Court’s free speech jurisprudence with its national security jurisprudence, and argue that the Court needs to import its exposition of the ‘chilling effect’ from the former into the latter, and evaluate executive actions and statutory procedures involving the media in the context of their ability to impact press freedom. I suggest that the Court’s 2023 judgment in Madhyamam Broadcasting v. Union of India is a first step towards ensuring that national security is not loosely used to curtail press freedom.
The Shri Narayan Rao Melgiri Memorial National Law Library at NLSIU is organizing a book exhibition and sale on March 26, 2024, from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM.
This event is being organized in collaboration with the MPP House, Bengaluru, and promises to be an enriching experience for all book enthusiasts.
The exhibition will feature a diverse selection of books from various publishers, providing a unique opportunity for everyone to explore new literary works and contribute suggestions for potential additions to the library collection. Additionally, those attending the exhibition will have the chance to purchase books for their personal collection, with exclusive discounts offered by the vendor.
In this week’s faculty seminar, Dr. Atreyee Majumder will present a paper titled “Considering the Soul and its Ways for the Practice of Anthropology”, on Wednesday, March 20th, 2024. Dr. Karthick Ram Manoharan will be the discussant.
Abstract
In anthropological commonsense, we often take for granted some easy theses about where the self is located and when and where and how it can be accessed by the researcher? In this essay, I reflect on Jonardon Ganeri’s examination of a corpus of religious texts of Vedic Hinduism and Buddhism and consider the question of their potential implications for anthropological understanding of the self. I use his theses based on the study of religious texts – like the Upanishadic texts from two thousand years ago that decisively shape Indic philosophy – as philosophy or theory. I take these texts to be equivalent to a Foucault, Agamben, or Benjamin, whose work would generally smoothly pass muster as theoretical tools for the purposes of theorising in anthropology. I introduce in this essay, a different axis , of what constitutes Theory for the purposes of anthropological methods, from the domain of Religion, but not necessarily religious.
The 4th Sri. Hunasikote Abdul Ghaffar Annual Memorial Lecture is being organised on March 15, 2024 from 2.30 – 4.30 pm. The lecture titled “Castes and Minorities: State and Constitution in a Majoritarian Electocracy,” will be delivered by our guest speaker Prof. Satish Despande.
About the Lecture Series
This memorial lecture was initiated by the Institute of Public Policy with the support of Prof. Adbul Aziz, Chair on Religious Minorities, NLSIU in memory of his father Sri. Hunasikote Abdul Ghaffar. Mr. Ghaffar passed away in 1982 in Hunasikote at the age of 74.
The first lecture in this series was delivered by Prof. Karkala Seetharam on April 3, 2019 on the topic “Human Rights as Public Policy.” The second lecture was delivered by Shri. Cyril Diengdoh, IAS, on April 4, 2022 on the topic “Challenges of NREGA in Sixth Schedule Areas.”
About the Speaker
Prof. Deshpande currently is Prof. M.N Srinivas Chair Professor at the Institute of Social and Economic Change, Bangalore. He has worked as a Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. He has also worked at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies and the Institute of Economic Growth (both in Delhi) and the University of Hyderabad. His research interests include caste and class inequalities, higher education today, politics and history of the social sciences, issues of language in academia and contemporary social theory. He has various national and international publications to his credit.
