2016 Social Policy
Association Annual
Conference
Belfast Metropolitan
College, Titanic
Quarter, Belfast
4th-6th July 2016
Conference Theme: ‘Social Policy: Radical, Resistant,
Resolute’.
Symposium:
The transnational judicialisation
of social policy
Call for
papers
The aim of the
symposium is to explore the increasing significance of
transnational courts and
processes of judicialisation for social policy and related areas
of public
policy. By transnational judicialisation, we mean processes
where decision
making authority and jurisdiction lies with courts and/or legal
actors that
stand ‘above’ or ‘outside’ of nation states. These include legal
processes
created by trade and investment agreements, such as
investor-state dispute
settlement (ISDS) processes and the World Trade Organisation’s
dispute
settlement process, as well as world-regional legal systems such
as that of the
European Court of Justice within the European Union (EU).
Although these
processes have attracted significant attention in other fields
of the social
sciences, they have done less so within social policy. The
symposium therefore
aims to contribute towards filling this gap through the
exploration of how
transnational courts and processes of judicialisation are
increasingly
redrafting and rescaling power asymmetries for actors (such as
individuals,
collective actors, small-medium enterprises, governments,
multinational
corporations) and
locales (nation states,
international markets). The role of transnational legal
processes has become
increasingly important for the governance of transnational
market integration
in emerging (e.g.
Trans-Atlantic Trade
and Investment Partnership) and existing (North American Free
Trade Agreement)
trade agreements, as well as for the expansion of internal
markets within
transnational regional entities (e.g. the European labour market
within the EU).
In doing so, transnational courts are increasingly called to
resolve disputes
between public and private law, social and market rights,
sovereign national
governments and multinational corporations (e.g. Canada vs Eli
Lily, Australia
vs Philip Morris). The challenges that arise from these
processes are at least
twofold. First, they undermine the traditional capacity of
nation states to
exercise their sovereignty over key areas of social and public
policy such as
taxation, health and labour law. Second, and relatedly, they
raise questions concerning
democracy and accountability, as private or otherwise
unaccountable actors increasingly
take precedence over democratically elected representatives.
We invite papers
that address these questions as they relate to any transnational
judicial process
affecting any area of social policy or related public policy,
for one or more
symposia to be submitted to the 2016 SPA conference.
Please
send
a title and abstract of 200-400 words to Chris Holden ([log in to unmask]) and Antonios Roumpakis ([log in to unmask]) to express your
interest in
participating.
The
deadline
for expressions of interest is February
29th .
Best
regards,
Chris
and Antonios
-- Dr Antonis Roumpakis Lecturer in Comparative Social Policy Deputy Director of Graduate School Department of Social Policy & Social Work University of York YO10 5DD Tel: 01904 32 1298 http://www.york.ac.uk/spsw/staff/antonios-roumpakis/ -- Email disclaimer: http://www.york.ac.uk/docs/disclaimer/email.htm