W G HART LEGAL WORKSHOP 2011
Sovereignty in Question

Venue: Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, 17 Russell Square, London WC1B 5DR
Tuesday 28 June – Thursday 30 June, 2011

The W G Hart Legal Workshop 2011 will explore the multi-faceted concept of sovereignty. In a
pivotal study ‘Questioning Sovereignty’, Professor Neil MacCormick (in whose memory the
workshop is dedicated) argued that in the face of regional and international developments former
understandings of state and nation and of sovereignty were increasingly outdated. At a supra-
national level this idea has already raised the spectre of a new legal order based on a European
‘super state’ with the potential further to transcend traditional views of sovereignty and the
sovereign state. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom for example, established constitutional doctrine
in the form of Parliamentary Sovereignty has also now to be considered against the backdrop of the
Human Rights Act, the devolution of power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the
creation of a Supreme Court. Equally however, comparative constitutional discourse confirms the
continuing appeal of the concept of sovereignty and its great capacity for reinvention, whether this is
in the context of a powerful pull of ideas about local identity (plurinational democracies) or the
determinedly globalising guise of international organisations. Focused both on the internal and
external aspects, the workshop will aim to consider these various dimensions of sovereignty,
examined from a legal, theoretical, political and historical perspective.

See the link below for further information:

http://ials.sas.ac.uk/events/docs/WGH 2011 Call for Papers draft to Avrom-v2.pdf