{"id":1233,"date":"2016-12-13T10:10:47","date_gmt":"2016-12-13T10:10:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/?p=1233"},"modified":"2019-11-08T10:53:06","modified_gmt":"2019-11-08T10:53:06","slug":"lassnet-conference-2016-fourth-edition-thinking-with-evidence-seeking-certainty-making-truth-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/2016\/12\/13\/lassnet-conference-2016-fourth-edition-thinking-with-evidence-seeking-certainty-making-truth-2\/","title":{"rendered":"LASSnet Conference 2016, Fourth Edition, Thinking with Evidence: Seeking Certainty, Making Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The only conference of its kind in South Asia, the fourth edition of\nthe Law and Social Sciences Research\nNetwork <\/em>(LASSnet) took place on 10-12 December 2016 in Delhi. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

10-12 December 2016, India Habitat Centre, Delhi:<\/strong> LASSnet is a virtual network anchored at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University. LASSnet was established in order to bring together scholars, lawyers and doctoral researchers engaged in research and teaching of issues of law in different social sciences in contemporary South Asia in 2007. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fourth edition of the LASSnet conference was organised by the\nCentre for the Study of Law and Governance (JNU), O.P. Jindal Law School (O.P.\nJindal Global University), National Law University Delhi, Azim Premji\nUniversity, Ambedkar University Delhi, the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi,\nand the Dickson Pool Transnational Law Institute at the Kings College, London. These\ninstitutions have been at the forefront of interdisciplinary research on law\nand have engaged with the role of law in the making of contemporary South Asia.\nMore than 500 participants from all over the world attended the conference over\n60 sessions, and three featured panels engaged with what it means to think with\n\u201cevidence\u201d in law and outside law. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evidence has increasingly become an important category in our everyday\nlives, be it in the familial, political, or historical domain. The contested\nnature of evidence in law and life found animated debate at the conference. The theme of this conference, \u2018Thinking\nwith Evidence: Seeking Certainty, Making Truth\u2019 pertains to the question of\nevidence and its role in legal and social research. For initiatives such as\nLASSnet, the imperative of thinking with evidence \u2014 in these times of virtual\nvirality, forensic imaginaries and ephemeral archives \u2014 serves as a fertile\nground on which we can stage discussions of the perils, pleasures, meanings and\nmethods of inter-disciplinarity. \u2018Thinking with Evidence\u2019 allows engaging the\npossibilities of legal and social world, and how they invite discussions on our\nchanging world and possible futures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conference was graced by many luminaries including C Raj Kumar,\nRanbir Singh, Shyam Menon, Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Niraja Jayal, Julia Eckert,\nRavinder Kaur, Vrinda Grover, Rebecca John, Peer Zumbassen, Shirin Rai,\nLawrence Liang, Kalpana Kannabiran, Tarunabh Khaitan, Jawahar Raja, Abhinav\nChandrachud, Shalini Randeria, Ashok Agrwaal and Shireen Hassim. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

LASSnet\nhas highlighted the fact that although the domain of law has primarily been\neither a site of legal practice or of scholarship by lawyers alone, the\nemergence of LASSnet demonstrates how exciting and important it is to have\nconversations about law and justice from a range of disciplines. Scholarship in\nthe field of law has grown to encompass a wide array of disciplines,\nmethodologies, political perspectives and conceptual overlaps. If the initial\nmovement was predominantly led by sociologists and then by scholars of literary\nstudies, it now includes an ever expanding terrain of social science and\nhumanities disciplines, including anthropology, digital studies, film and\nhistory. LASSnet has always seen law as an immensely fertile site to examine\nthe social, the historical and the political. Previous\nLASSnet conferences were held in 2009, 2010 and 2012 at the Jawaharlal\nNehru University (JNU), the Foundation for Liberal and Management Education\n(FLAME) in Pune and at the Department of Law, University of Peradeniya, Sri\nLanka.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The opening talk at the 2016 conference was delivered by the eminent\npolitical theorist from Yale University, with Professors Shiv Visvanathan, Ramin\nJahenbegloo, and Gitanjali Surendran on Gandhi\u2019s ideas on non-violence. The\nclosing contemplated the evidence of hope by crafting a discussion between the eminent\nlegal scholars Indira Jaising, Babloo Loitongbam, Usha Ramanathan, Upendra\nBaxi, and Julia Eckert. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three memorial panels were organised to recognise the contribution\nof the work and lives of three young academics, all of whom passed away in\n2015. The panel dedicated to Dwijen Rangnekar marked his pathbreaking work in\nthe field of geographical indicators. Another panel remembered Priya\nThangarajah, a young Sri Lankan lawyer and researcher who made invaluable contributions\nto deepening our understanding of law and violence in times of conflict. And\nfinally tribute was paid to U.S. based Pakistani scholar late Nasser Hussain\nwhose work on law and emergency remains one of the most important contributions\nto the field in the region. The three panels engaged with the work of these\nscholars as a way of acknowledging their deep learning across histories,\nborders, disciplines and friendships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conference witnessed discussions around six books by emerging\nscholars from the LASSnet community on themes ranging from public interest litigation\nin India to debates around sentencing in criminal cases. One of the panels\nfocused on a discussion around law and disability following the recent release\nof The India Social Development Report<\/em>.\nThe Indian Law Review<\/em>, an academic\njournal on Indian law, was launched at the conference, also a product of the\nconversations at LASSnet over a decade. A syllabus workshop designed between\nKing\u2019s College London and O.P. Jindal Global Law School was held where mid-career\nteachers were invited to submit a syllabus of their own design for feedback and\ndiscussion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The only conference of its kind in South Asia, the fourth edition of the Law and Social Sciences Research Network (LASSnet) took place on 10-12 December 2016 in Delhi. 10-12 December 2016, India Habitat Centre, Delhi: LASSnet is a virtual network anchored at the Centre for the Study of Law Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsroom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1234,"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233\/revisions\/1234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jgu.edu.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}