an open access journal of feminist legal scholarship

Imagined Law: The Governance of India's Surrogacy Markets – discussion with Prabha Kotiswaran 13 October 2016, 5-7pm Centre for Gender Studies, SOAS, London

17.9.2016

India has been the hub of commercial surrogacy for the past decade, fostering an industry that experts claim is worth US $2.4billion. Enabled by a permissive legal framework, entrepreneurial Indian fertility clinics seized the opportunity to cater to the burgeoning demand of commissioning parents from the world over with hundreds of babies being born every year to Indian surrogates. However, in a significant shift in policy the Indian government has recently proposed a ban on all forms of commercial surrogacy leading some to welcome the ban as signalling the end to reproductive trafficking while others have claimed that the proposed law is in fact anti-poor and anti-women. Click here for more information

Half-day workshop on 'Diversity and Legal Reasoning' 23 November 2016, 4 -7pm Queen Mary University of London

17.9.2016

Debates about the nature of legal reasoning tend to present legal reasoning as monolithic - as either objective and based on fundamental principles and shared values or as political and based on the interests of a dominant class. Neither side of this debate accounts for – or indeed allows for the possibility of – judicial diversity. What are the consequences for legal reasoning when decision-makers include the previously marginalised, when values are heterogeneous and when fundamental principles are contested from a range of perspectives? Contributors to this workshop will consider legal reasoning in the hands of a diverse judiciary and in response to multivocal claims for recognition and political and social inclusion. Click here for more information