‘Forcible Alternatives to War’
Date: 5-6 September, 2014
Location: Merton College, Oxford, UK
Description: No political order is sustainable without a mechanism for the legitimate use of force. The only legitimate such mechanism for maintaining the international order is waging war – in self-defence, with a mandate by the UN Security Council or possibly for a just cause. However, the practical obstacles to conducting war without extensively violating individual rights seem insurmountable. The global rise of human rights norms and the emerging consensus that even state-centred international law is ultimately meant to benefit the individual, therefore, render war ever less acceptable.
Scholars across disciplines acknowledge this but merely focus on changing war. Our aim is to think beyond ‘traditional’ violence in international relations and find forcible alternatives to war. Papers will systematically establish why it is impossible that war meets individual rights standards and explore alternative forms of legitimate international violence, such as enforcement of international law directly vis-à-vis individual leaders and targeted humanitarian rescue missions by global police forces.
The workshop will yield new ideas and investigate the normative and institutional implications of those usually dismissed as unrealistic. Its objective is to achieve a paradigm shift in the study of force and prepare the ground for the transcendence of war in international relations.
Registration: Anaïs Rességuier at [email protected], copying [email protected].
Additional Information: http://www.politics.ox.ac.uk/index.php/details/34901-forcible-alternatives-to-war.html
‘The Legitimate Role(s) of Human Rights Courts in Environmental Disputes’
Date: 8-9 September, 2014
Location: University of Oslo, Norway
Description: Recently, an increasing number of cases concerning environmental issues are being heard before international human rights courts and tribunals. Matters concern the effects of environmental degradation and pollution, climate change, indigenous peoples environmental rights, an independent right to a healthy environment – just to name a few. This phenomenon raises the question whether human rights courts are the right venue for such cases. The symposium will inquire the following questions in the context of legitimacy of human rights courts and tribunals when hearing “environmental cases” in the context of human rights protection.
- Do environmental cases require a special expertise and, if so, do human rights courts/judges have such expertise?
- Are rules on jurisdiction, procedures, evidence etc. adequate when confronted with the complexities of environmental issues?
- What is the role of environmental law before human rights courts and tribunals?
- Are human rights courts effective “instruments” for environmental protection?
- Are human rights courts more suitable for protection of some environmental problems than other, for example local rather than global challenges?
- What are the legitimate roles, functions and effects of human rights courts in cases concerning environmental issues?
Confirmed speakers:
- Dinah Shelton, George Washington University
- Alan Boyle, University of Edinburgh
- Margrette May Macaulay, former Judge, Inter-American Court of Human Rights
- Helen Keller, Judge, European Court of Human Rights
Additional Information: http://www.jus.uio.no/pluricourts/english/news-and-events/events/2014/201409environmenthr.html
‘Ethical Underpinnings of Climate Economics’
Date: 11-13 November, 2014
Location: Centre of Excellence in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki, Finland
Description: The debates around climate change have renewed the interest in the relation between ethics and economics. The most recent indication of this is the Working Group III report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which takes the ethical foundations of climate mitigation policies explicitly into consideration. For the first time, influential climate ethicists were invited to be among the authors of the report. The aim was to connect the economic evaluation of climate policies to the discussion of the ethical issues.
While recognising the role of economics in climate policy choices, the IPCC report stresses the limits of economics in addressing some ethical values and considerations of justice that cannot be easily monetized. The report also emphasises how economic methods – even when monetizing is possible – implicitly involve significant ethical assumptions.
This workshop will bring together scholars from both disciplines to discuss the interrelation between climate ethics and economics. Proposals for papers dealing with any aspect of this relation are welcome. In particular, the workshop aims to focus on (1) ethical assumptions underpinning the methodological choices of economics and (2) the ways that economics might accommodate those ethical considerations that seem to challenge the standard way of doing economics. Confirmed speakers:
- John Broome (University of Oxford)
- John O’Neill (University of Manchester)
Submission: To have a paper considered for presentation, please submit a 500-1000 word abstract, along with your name, institutional affiliation and email address to ethicalunderpinnings(at)gmail.com. Deadline: 17 August 2014. The authors selected for presentation will be notified by 5 September.
Additional Information: http://philevents.org/event/show/14943
‘The Sixth Annual Arizona Workshop in Normative Ethics’
Date: 15-17 January, 2015
Location: Tucson, Arizona, USA
Description: Normative ethical theory addresses general questions about the right and the good and attempts to answer such questions as: What sorts of actions are right or wrong and why? What sort of person ought one to become and why? Normative ethical theories, including, for instance, versions of consequentialism, deontology, contractualism, natural law theory, and virtue ethics address such questions. Keynote Speakers:
- Stephen Darwall – Andrew Downey Orrick Professor of Philosophy, Yale University
- David Schmidtz – Kendrick Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona
- Susan Wolf – Edna J. Koury Professor of Philosophy, UNC, Chapel Hill
Registration: To register for the workshop, send an email to the conference organizer, Mark Timmons ([email protected]).
Additional Information: http://ethics.arizona.edu/