Panels at LSA Conference in Lisbon

“Documentary filmmaking as socio-legal research: Creative treatments of law’s actuality as reckoning and remedy?”

Abstract: This session brings together scholars involved in making or researching documentary film to reflect about documentary as a way of doing and communicating socio-legal research. If documentary is the “creative treatment of actuality” (John Grierson), how can it capture both the normativity of law and its messy actuality? How can it function as method of legal research, or even as ethnographic and aesthetic means of reckoning and remedy, contesting injustices without falling for its own representational pitfalls and imagined authenticities? How can it deal with law’s own claims over reality and justice? What can progressive practice of documentary film-making look like today? Films produced by the presenters will be shown in snippets during the session and will be made available to the audience in full online before and after the session.

Participants: Patrícia Viera, Coimbra University; Ruth Buchanan, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University; Johanna Del Pilar Cortes Nieto, Univ. Rosario, Bogota; Michael Riegner, Erfurt University; Luis Eslava, Kent Law School; Cecilia Oliveira, Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies Potsdam

„Transformative constitutionalism and constituçao dirigente: Convergences and contexts”

Abstract: This panel investigates convergences and differences between transformative constitutionalism (TC), which has emerged as a Southern counter-concept to liberal constitutionalism in English-language comparative discourse since the 2000s, and the concept of the “constituçao dirigente”, debated by Portuguese and Brazilian constitutionalists long before the concept of TC came to international prominence. In what contexts did the two concepts emerge, and do they converge in some respects? What is their respective epistemic status – a constitutional doctrine, a normative theory of constitutionalism, an ideal-type for comparison? Why do the two discourses appear like ships passing in the night? And what might they contribute to a typological theory of globalized comparative constitutionalism?

Participants: Mariana Canotilho, Univ. Coimbra/Constitutional Court of Portugal; Luís Vale, Univ. of Coimbra; Teresa Violante, FAU Erlangen; Deo Campos, Univ. Juiz de Fora; Florian Hoffmann, PUC Rio; Michael Riegner, Univ. Erfurt; Philipp Dann, HU Berlin

Please read more about the converence here.