PANEL SESSIONS II TUESDAY JUNE 26 2018 9.00 AM – 10.30 AM

Room: CYTT 7.23

  • CONCEPTUALIZING AND OPERATIONALIZING IDENTITY: A CHALLENGE FOR PUBLIC LAW
    The conceptual framework of the panel concerns the role of public law in identity politics, in particular how law can conceptualize racial, gender and religious identities. One paper provides an overview of potential concepts through which the issue can be assessed, focusing in particular on the legal-administrative conceptualization of “choice“ and “fraud.“ Another explores how colorism operates in the Asian American community, and thereby yields important insights about how anti-Black prejudice is formed and deployed. Two papers focus on the legal conceptualization of being Jewish, one on constitutional identity in Israel, another on Slovak legal classification on Jewry in the holocaust and the interwar period. Another paper investigates the way the market defines race and gender, in particular on gamete markets and the purchase of racially marked sperm and eggs. One paper focuses on hate crimes and ‘nulla crimen sine lege certa‘.challenges.
  • Choice and fraud: Conceptualizing and operationalizing identity by public law
    The paper investigates the role of public law in identity politics, identifying potential angles to the scrutiny, such as (i) whether are there are existing legal definitions for the “source“ of identity; (ii) whether the definitions concern the majority community (or communities), or only minorities, and whether there are illuminative differences; (iii) how membership criteria are established in these communities; (iv) whether the dominant angle of legal conceptualization centers on subjectivity or objective criteria and definitions; (v) how constitutional identity surfaces in the state endorsing certain cultural values, and how the imposition of these norms actually affect individuals; (vi) the legal-administrative conceptualization of “choice“ and “fraud.“ Here a case study will is provided on whether international law recognizes the right to the free choice of identity.
  • Asian Americans and Racial Justice
    Exploring how colorism operates in the Asian American community yields important insights about how anti-Black prejudice is formed and deployed. As many Asian American groups arguably fall into an intermediary category labeled “Honorary White,“ under this system of pigmentocracy, inequality will actually worsen but creation of the intermediary category allows Whites to remain at the top of the social structure, and insulates them from race-based challenges to the equality gap. The paper investigates some ways in which Asian American groups assert agency both in constructing their own identities and also in, as Taunya Lovell Banks has said, “redeploy structures of racial oppression against others.“ Using the case study of affirmative action and movements for police accountability in the face of racialized violence targeting Black bodies, the paper explores opportunities for interracial coalition work for social justice.
  • Contracting Our Way to Inequality: Race, Reproductive Freedom and the Quest for the Perfect Child
    The paper investigates the way the market defines race and gender, in particular on gamete markets and the purchase of racially marked sperm and eggs. The issue has relevance for international debates because it involves multiple ART markets in different countries with different descriptions and different motivations when it comes to representing race. It has comparative elements as well as elements that involve the interplay and cannibalization of different nation‘s markets.
  • Constitutional Identity in Israel: Proposed Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People
    The paper article focuses on the definition of Israel as a Jewish state. It argues that while the debate on the Jewishness of the state has focused, for many years, on questions of religion and state, in recent years the focus has shifted from religion to nationalism, in a manner that makes it difficult to reconcile the two terms. The perception that recognition of an Israeli nation impedes the existence of a Jewish nation and poses a threat to the nature of Israel as a Jewish and Democratic underlies the current debated regarding the proposed: Basic Law: Israel as the Nation State of the Jewish People. The paper argues that the attempt to constitutionally entrench the Jewish nature of the state is intended to prevent any challenges to the exclusive identification of the state with the Jewish nation and to prevent Israel‘s Arab-Palestinian citizens from making any collective claims for recognition, which is difficult to be reconciled with basic notions of equality and democracy.
  • Legal Conceptualization of Jews in the Territory of Slovakia during the 20th Century
    The paper provides an analysis of the legal status of the Jewish community in Slovakia in the first half of the 20th Century. Czechoslovakia was the only European state at that time that provided an option for its citizens to declare Jewish nationality for the purposes of the census. The scrutinizes the legislative conceptualization of the Jewry in the interwar Czechoslovakia and the wartime Slovak State up until the imposition of Communist rule after the Second World War.
  • What is hate, and what is a hate crime? Targeted hostility, the criminal law and the principle of certainty
    Using Irish case law a starting point, the paper argues the principle of certainty is relevant in the context of hate crime in three key ways. First, in the context of the legislative definition of protected characteristics (i.e. does reference to “race“ in a statutory provision, for example, include bias articulated against the national origin of the individual). Second, a number of statutory provisions (eg, in Sweden, New South Wales, New Zealand and as recommended by ODHIR) include a ‘proviso‘ whereby the court is entitled to consider ‘similar characteristics‘ to those articulated in the legislation when determining whether a crime was hate motivated. Finally, in the absence of any legislation, the use of judicial discretion to consider a hate element as aggravating a sentence. The paper will explore these specific contexts, and consider the application of the principle to hate crime generally.