Call for Papers: Gender on the International Bench

PluriCourts and iCourts have issued a call for papers for a workshop on "Gender on the International Bench," to be held March 23-24, 2017, in Oslo. Here's the call:

Call for Papers: Gender on the International Bench

PluriCourts – iCourts Workshop

Oslo March 23-24 2017

At present, women make up an average of 17% of the judges of international courts and tribunals. There is significant variation in the proportion of women on the benches of different legal regimes. To better understand and assess this inequality, PluriCourts and iCourts invites papers for a workshop March 23-24 2017 in Oslo, Norway. PluriCourts and iCourts are Norwegian and Danish Centres of Excellence studying international courts.

The aims of the workshop are

• to better understand the current patterns of gender diversity and inequality on these international courts and tribunals,
• to critically assess reasons to be concerned with this gender disparity, and
• to identify challenges and ways to alleviate disparities that should be changed.

We invite papers in political science and philosophy, addressing such topics as

• What reasons are there to be concerned about the lack of gender diversity on international courts and tribunals? Candidate arguments may include substantive outcome, deliberative and other processes, procedures, social legitimacy, as well as representation.
• What are the factors driving (the lack of) gender diversity on international courts and tribunals?
• How can we explain variation in gender diversity between different areas of international law, such as international commercial and investment arbitration, trade law, law of the sea, and international human rights law?
• Is gender diversity on international courts and tribunals important for substantive outcomes and/or processes? If so;
  - in which substantive areas do we see such patterns?
  - what types of judicial outcomes and/or processes may be affected? This may include both individual and panel effects, including the quality of judicial deliberations, the interpretation of legal principles, facts, precedent, rules of procedure, rules of evidence, the direction of decisions on substantive policy scales (such as activism/restraint, liberal/conservative), the use of precedent as a legitimation strategy, the practice of publishing separate opinions, the behavior at oral hearings, etc.)
• Do women judges tend to have different background from male judges before their appointment to ICs and tribunals in terms of;
  - professional experience (e.g. legal training, previous positions, substantive area background)
  - national/regional background
• How can we address intersectionality and other kinds of diversity?
• How can we address international courts as gendered institutions;
  - what roles and positions are men and women awarded at the court
  (case assignments, positions as rapporteurs, presidents, etc)?
  - to what extent is homo-sociality a factor influencing judicial outcomes and processes (e.g. in citation practices)?
• Are there best practices in terms of selection procedures, nomination, mentoring, gatekeeping, and sponsoring women on the path towards the international bench?
• What are the empirical and theoretical challenges for this research theme, e.g;
  - too few women, or too few cases, to assess substantive effects of diversity in many contexts?
  - how can we do research with “sex as a variable” without making simplified essentializing assumptions?
  - what can we learn about gender diversity in international courts and tribunals from existing research on domestic courts and other public and private institutions?

Please submit an abstract before January 20 to:

For political science: Daniel Naurin Daniel.naurin@jus.uio.no
For philosophy: Andreas Follesdal andreas.follesdal@jus.uio.no