Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre for Social Sciences
Institute for Legal Studies
Research Group for Interdisciplinary Legal Studies
Call for papers for the workshop:
Rights Consciousness and Legal Cultures: Theoretical Perspectives
25 April 2018, Budapest, Hungary
With this call for paper we invite presentations for the kick-off workshop of the project ‘Lack of Rights Consciousness in the Legal Cultures of Central-Europe and Balkans. Myth or Reality?’. This project started in October 2017 and it is financed by a three-year grant of the National Research, Development and Innovation Office (NKFI FK-125520).
The main goal of the project is to reexamine a broadly accepted thesis of Socialist Hungarian sociology of law. Experts of legal sociology – for instance András Sajó or Kálmán Kulcsár – agreed that Hungarian legal culture was deeply pervaded by the lack of rights consciousness in the 80’s. That is, the relevance of legal arguments in ordinary disputes was drastically reduced, and people only referred to law if they intended to invite the state, as a strong source of authority in this period. One of the most intriguing questions of today’s socio-legal studies in Hungary is whether or not this already detected distortion still exists. If so, it may explain some deficiencies (like the low level of public trust in law, the pessimism in the work of the judiciary) of the post-transitory Hungarian legal culture. In addition, the question if this feature may be regarded as a regional peculiarity is also worthy of discussion as Central-European societies share rather similar experiences in this field.
This project starts with an international workshop dedicated to discuss theoretical dimensions of rights consciousness in legal cultures. Therefore, we kindly invite any theoretical contributions in the broadest sense covering one or more segments of this subject. In addition case-studies and comparative pieces with theoretical scope are also warmly welcomed.
The keynote speech of the workshop is delivered by Professor David Nelken (King’s College London): ‘Legal culture and the culture of legality’.
Abstracts, no longer than 250 words, are required to be sent by 1 March 2018 to Balázs Fekete, organizer of the project: Fekete.Balazs@tk.mta.hu. In case of any other queries please feel free to contact the organizer.
Selected participants will be informed by the mid of March 2018.
Workshop venue: Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre for Social Sciences Institute for Legal Studies 1097 Budapest, Tóth Kálmán utca 4.
Please note that there will be no registration fee, but participants are responsible for their own travel and accommodation. Coffee and refreshments will be provided during the event.