Law &: An exploration of the past, present, and future of interdisciplinary legal studies

The Centre for Interdisciplinary Legal Studies at the University of Hong Kong will host its inaugural “Law &…” conference on interdisciplinary legal research. This event will bring together researchers from around the world to examine, share, celebrate, and critique interdisciplinary approaches to legal studies. The conference will be held at the University of Hong Kong on May 22–23, 2024. It will feature a wide range of speakers, including a keynote presentation by Mark Suchman, Executive Director of the American Bar Foundation.

Legal scholarship’s long history of borrowing from the scientific and epistemic approaches of other scholarly disciplines has generated a variety of “Law and…” intersections between it and other scientific areas. These intersections have enriched both the study of law, and the study of complementary fields. The Centre for Interdisciplinary Legal Studies (CILS) has been founded to both study and facilitate these interdisciplinary intersections.

Date: May 22 – 23, 2024 (Wednesday and Thursday)

Time: 10am to 5:30pm

Venue: Academic Conference Room, 11/F Cheng Yu Tung Tower, The University of Hong Kong

Conference photos:  Day 1  |   Day 2

Program rundown

Day 1, May 22

10:00 am – Introduction & Welcome by Dr. Ryan Whalen and Prof. Hualing Fu, Dean of the HKU Faculty of Law

10:10 – 11:10 am – Keynote Presentation

11:30 am – 1:00 pm – Intersections 1 (Chair: Ying Xia)

  • Jaakko Husa – “Interdisciplinary Comparative Law – Between the Hammer and the Anvil?”
  • John Meixner – “Bridging the Psychological Science/Criminal Law Divide”
  • Jed Kroncke – “Law and Political Economy: The New Umbrella for Critical Interdisciplinary Legal Studies?”

1:00 – 2:00 pm, Lunch 

2:00 – 3:30 pm – Meta Interdisciplinarity (Chair: Aokai Yang)

  • Jianlin Chen – “Inter-Disciplinary for Intra-Multi-Disciplinary”
  • Deepa Das Acevedo – “Plural Publishing Personas, Or How To Write For Everyone”
  • Ryan Whalen – “Interdisciplinary Legal Studies and Academic Impact”

3:30-4:00 pm, Break 

4:00 – 5:30 pm – Technology (Chair: Xiaoping Wu)

  • Nicola SearleReflections on Interdisciplinarity: Perceptions of the Economics of IP”
  • Qin Ma, Sky – “Ignorance of Technology: Challenges and Solutions in Law and Technology Interdisciplinary Studies”
  • Cong Jiang – “The Origins of Law and AI Studies in China: Revisiting “The Computerization of Legal Work”

 

Day 2, May 23

10:00 – 11:30 am – Intersections 2 (Chair: Yang Gao)

  • Dan Priel – “Law and Philosophy: What Went Wrong, and What Can Be Done About It”
  • Xu Wang – “Preliminary Thoughts on the Interdisciplinary Research Between Mathematics and Law”
  • Nate Ela – “Law, Society, & Ecology”
  • Salmoli Choudhuri – “A history of law’s interdisciplinary life in India”

11:30 am – 1:00 pm – China (Chair: Xiaoyu Zhou)

  • Sixuan Lyu – “Struggles and Breakthroughs of Virtual Reality Technology in Chinese Legal Education”
  • Ziying Liang – “Public Interest Litigation and Wildlife Crimes in Mainland China”
  • Yuyao Yi – “Watchful Enlightenment” in Quasi-Total Institutions: Chinese University Students’ Legal Consciousness towards Campus Sexual Harassment”

1:00 – 2:00 pm, Lunch 

2:00 – 3:30 pm – Methods (Chair: Abeer Sharma)

  • Yu Zeng – “Bringing the Survey Back In: An Analysis of Judicial Behavior in China”
  • Lydia A. Nkansah – “A Framework for an Interdisciplinary Legal Research Methodology: A Proposed Step-by-Step Approach”
  • Maja Sahadžić & Erika Arban – “(Re)Claiming Legal Methodology in Legal Studies”

3:30 – 4:00 pm, Break 

4:00 – 5:30 pm – Intersections 3 (Chair: Ryan Whalen)

  • Jason Chin – “Threats to the credibility of empirical legal research”
  • Marco Wan – “The Paradoxes of Queer Visibility”
  • Raff Donelson – “Too Much Interdisciplinarity? The Case of Experimental Jurisprudence”

5:30 pm – Closing Remarks by Dr. Ryan Whalen

All conference enquiries should be addressed to Ms. Grace Chan at mcgrace@hku.hk or at (+852) 3917 4727.