Johan van der Walt – The Law is Clumsy Because it is, Well, the Law

Johan van der Walt – The Law is Clumsy Because it is, Well, the Law

Le Groupe de recherche sur les humanités juridiques et le Centre Paul-André Crépeau de droit privé et comparé vous invitent à la prochaine conférence du nouveau cycle des Ateliers de droit civil, sur le thème « Maladroit : les maladresses du droit privé ».

La conférence, intitulée « The Law is Clumsy Because it is, Well, the Law », sera prononcée par le prof. Johan van der Walt (Université du Luxembourg) le vendredi le 28 février de 13h00 à 15h30 à la Faculté de droit de l’Université McGill (salle Scott (salle 16), Pavillon Chancellor-Day, 3644 rue Peel).

Résumé (en anglais) : The law is clumsy, because it is, well, the law, proposes the title of my talk.The suggestion is clearly that one cannot expect the law not to be clumsy. The discourse of law is always clumsy, not just sometimes, and lawyers (and the public served by law) have to live with this clumsiness, understand it, and work with it. For all of this to make sense one would also have to ask: Is there a discourse that is not clumsy? Because if all linguistic discourses are essentially clumsy, then none of them are really. At least some minimal element of comparison is required to render the statement “the law is clumsy” meaningful. My talk will propose a way of contemplating this comparative element from the vantage point of the difference between law and poetry. It will do so by relying on the essential line of argument developed in my book The Literary Exception and the Rule of Law (2023).

Biographie (en anglais) : Johan van der Walt is Professor of Philosophy of Law, University of Luxembourg. He is the author of the monographs Law and Sacrifice (2005), The Horizontal Effect Revolution and the Question of Sovereignty (2014), The Concept of Liberal Democratic Law (2019) and The Literary Exception and the Rule of Law (2023) and numerous journal articles and chapter contributions to edited volumes.

Date

vendredi 28 février 2025

Heure

1:00 pm - 3:30 pm

Lieu

Salle 16, Pavillon Chancellor-Day, Faculté de droit, Université McGill
3644 rue Peel, Montréal, H3A 1W9

Organisation

Centre Paul-André Crépeau de droit privé et comparé
Email
centre.crepeau@mcgill.ca

Autres organisateurs

Groupe de recherche sur les humanités juridiques
Email
info@humanitesjuridiques.org