The Law as a Conversation Among Equals

In a time of disenchantment with democracy, massive social protests, and the “erosion” of the system of checks and balances, The Law as a Conversation Among Equals proposes to reflect upon the main problems of our constitutional democracies from a dialogic perspective. It examines the structural character of the current democratic crisis and the way in which constitutions that were built around a “discomfort with democracy” created numerous restraints upon majority rule and collective debate.

Speaker: Roberto Gargarella

Lawyer and sociologist from the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA 1983-5); Doctor in Law (UBA, 1991). Master in Law (University of Chicago, 1992); Doctor in law (University of Chicago, 1993). Post-doctoral studies at Balliol College, Oxford (1995). Senior researcher at CONICET. He received a John Simon Guggenheim grant (1999) and also a Harry Frank Guggenheim grant (2002). He published numerous books and articles, including The Legal Foundations of Inequality (Cambridge U.P., 2010), Latin American Constitutionalism (Oxford U.P., 2013); Constituent Assemblies, with J. Elster et al (Cambridge U.P. 2018); The Oxford Handbook of Constitutional Law in Latin America, with C. Huber & S. Guidi (Oxford U.P.2020); and The Law as a Conversation Among Equals, Cambridge U.P. 2022

Discussants: Tarun Khaitan & Aileen Kavanagh

Tarun Khaitan is the Head of Research at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights & the Professor of Public Law and Legal Theory at the Faculty of Law (Oxford). He is also a Professor & Future Fellow at Melbourne Law School, working on a project on the resilience of democratic constitutions, with a focus on South Asia. He specialises in legal theory, constitutional studies, and discrimination law. He is the founding General Editor of the Indian Law Review, founder and Chief Advisor of the Junior Faculty Forum for Indian Law Teachers, and an Affiliate of the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights and an Associate of the Oxford Human Rights Hub. His monograph entitled A Theory of Discrimination Law (OUP 2015) has been cited by the European Court of Human Rights and reviewed very positively in leading journals. The book also won the Woodward Medal (with a cash prize of 10,000 Australian dollars) in 2019 for making ‘a significant contribution to knowledge in a field of humanities and social sciences.’ He is currently on the advisory board of the United Nation’s Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner’s effort to draft ‘A Practical Guide to Developing Comprehensive Anti-Discrimination Legislation’.

Aileen Kavanagh is Professor of Constitutional Governance at Trinity College Dublin and Director of TriCON (The Trinity Centre for Constitutional Governance).  She has written widely on UK and comparative constitutional law and theory.  She is author of The Collaborative Constitution (CUP, 2023, in press).