In recent years, several faculty with interests and expertise on various aspects of law in South Asia have joined UW-Madison. They join long-time UW-Madison Professor Marc Galanter whose extensive work on law in South Asia has been extremely influential in both American scholarship and in South Asia.
In 2006, an informal working group was established to coordinate and promote events pertaining to South Asian legal studies and to facilitate intellectual exchange between faculty and students at the University with shared interests in the field. The disciplinary interests of the working group include political science, history, religious studies, and, within law itself, environmental law, human rights, Islamic law, constitutional law, discrimination, women’s studies, and legal profession. More complete descriptions of faculty interests are given on the respective websites for individual faculty listed below. Students or faculty interested in joining the occasional discussions of the working group are encouraged to contact any of the faculty listed below.Scholars affiliated with the Working Group
Atapattu, Sumudu – UW Law
School
Davis, Donald Jr. – Department
of Languages
& Cultures of Asia, UW-Madison
Galanter,
Marc – John
and Rylla Bosshard Professor of Law and South Asian Studies, UW-Madison
James Jaffe - Professor, College of Letters and Sciences, UW-Whitewater
Quraishi,
Asifa – UW Law
School
Sharafi,
Mitra – UW Law School, Legal Studies & Department
of History, UW-Madison
Sinha,
Aseema – Department
of Political Science, UW-Madison
Shubha Ghosh - Professor, UW Law School
Nilesh Patel - UW Law School
Activities
The group has been involved in several events including the pre-conference workshop on South Asia Legal Studies held on October 11, 2007 which was organized to coincide with the annual South Asia Conference. The group has initiated several activities including an internship program (details pending) and a roundtable at the Annual South Asia Conference, 2008.
Activities scheduled for fall 08
Thursday, October 16, 2008,
Lubar
In October 2007, the first South Asian Legal Studies pre-conference workshop coincided with a Madison meeting of contributors to Law and Hinduism: An Introduction, bringing together over 50 scholars based in the US and Asia. The workshop aimed to build a sense of community among scholars working on law—past and present—in the context of South Asia and its diasporas. In particular, the meeting aimed to facilitate contact between those working in law schools and those in the social sciences and humanities.
Sponsors: Global
Past events
Abstract: The prevailing modern vision of law as secular, instrumental, and positive is a chimera produced in and by European and American nation-states and their courts over the last two centuries. The broader history of law in other times and places reveals notions and practices of law that challenge accepted 'truths' about law's reach and role in human life. In this presentation, a case is made that law everywhere may be profitably seen as the theology of ordinary life. At every level, the laws by which we lead our lives encode assumptions and ideas about what we aspire to as human beings and what we presume about ourselves and others, especially aspects of things near to us such as family, birth, death, sex, money, marriage, and work. Texts of the Hindu law tradition provide the inspiration and the evidence for the presentation, and the lessons learned from Hindu legal texts will serve to begin a new kind of conversation about law and the humanities.
April 18, 2008: "Muslim Women and Divorce in India: Some Practical Implications of Legal Pluralism in the Sphere of Family Law, " by Professor Sylvia Vatuk, Professor Emerita, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois at Chicago, Lecture in the series Role of Law in Developing and Transitional Societies, 2:00-3:00pm, Lubar Commons (7200 Law), sponsored by the Global Legal Studies Center and co-sponsored by the Center for South Asia and the South Asia Legal Studies Working Group. QUestions? Contact Sumudu Atapattu (saatapattu@wisc.edu)
October
11, 2007:
Workshop
on South Asian Legal Studies ("Categories of Legal
Identity") to coincide with the South Asia Conference
held annually at UW-Madison, hosted by Professors Mitra
Sharafi and Marc Galanter of the UW Law School (details
pending). For more information, please go to http://southasiaconference.wisc.edu/preconf_2.html
March 30, 2007: “Crafting Land Policy and Legislation in
February 8, 2007:
"The Changing Horizon of Human
Rights in Sri Lanka: The Ethnic Conflict, the Role of the Supreme Court and
the influence of International Law" Sumudu Atapattu, Associate Director,
Global Legal Studies Center, Center for South Asia Spring Lecture Series,
sponsored by the Center for South Asia and co-sponsored by the GLSC, 2/8/07,
noon – 1.00, 206 Ingram Hall. For details contact Rachael
Weiss.
October
18, 2006:
"Law-Dependent Public Goods: A Proposed Strategic Framework
for a Results-Based Approach to Legal and Judicial Reform” by
Professor Mohan Gopal, Head, National Judicial Academy,
Bhopal, India, and formerly, Vice Chancellor, National
Law School, Bangalore, India and Legal Advisor, Operations
Policy, World Bank Wednesday, 10/18/2006 1.20-3.20 pm,
Lubar Commons (7200 Law), Hosted by Professor John Ohnesorge
and sponsored by GLSI, ILS, EALSC and CSA. Open to all,
no registration required. For details, contact Sumudu
Atapattu.
October
26, 2006:
"The Art of Forgetting and Other
Ways of Remembering: A Dialogue on Political Violence and
Memory,” documentary film on Sri Lanka and presentation
by Lisa Kois, human rights lawyer, writer and film maker,
the inaugural lecture in the series Law, War and Human
Security, hosted by Professor Heinz Klug, UW Law School
and Professor Helen Kinsella, UW Political Science, co-sponsored
by the Global Legal Studies Initiative, the Transnational
Feminism Research Circle and UW Political Science Department,
Thursday, 10/26/06, 3.30-5.00 pm, Room 3260 Law. Open
to all, no registration required.