ICON-S 2018 Annual Conference “Identity, Security, Democracy: Challenges for Public Law”

The International Society of Public Law (ICON-S) is holding its 2018 Annual Conference in Hong Kong on June 25-27, 2018, under the auspices of the University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Law and its Centre for Comparative and Public Law – one of Asia’s foremost centres for the study of public law in all its varieties. This is the fifth Annual Conference of ICON-S, following the four Annual Conferences (Florence 2014, New York 2015, Berlin 2016, Copenhagen 2017) which have been overwhelmingly successful, thanks to the support of our Members.

The overarching theme of the Conference will be “Identity, Security, Democracy: Challenges for Public Law.”

Modern identity struggles and the search for constitutional and legal mechanisms that can accommodate diversity occur at many levels including the national, supra-national, local, individual, and collective; and also involve multiple dimensions: ethnic, racial, religious, gender, sexual, and cultural, to name but a few. In recent years, identity claims and security issues have taken centre stage in law and politics, prompting realignment of domestic, regional and international orders. Technological advancement has to some extent countered traditional security concerns, but has given rise to new ones as well as to issues of privacy and political control. At the same time, democracy, a widely revered political ideal for addressing differences and realizing human aspirations, is facing challenges in many parts of the world. How should public law respond to these changing circumstances? Asia – with some of the most diverse cultures in the world, where domestic and regional security threats and human rights violations loom large, and where democracy is a relatively recent and at times fragile phenomenon or still under experimentation – offers a unique setting for fresh thinking on these and other closely-related themes.
The Conference will include a keynote address by The Rt Hon the Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, former President of the Supreme Court of the UK (2012-2017), as well as three plenary sessions featuring prominent jurists, intellectuals and judges, focused on the general themes of the Conference. At the heart of the Conference, however, are the concurrent sessions during the three-day conference which will be devoted to the papers and panels.

The final programme with the abstracts of the papers and room information for parallel sessions are available here: https://50.law.hku.hk/icon-s2018/programme/ You may also download the booklet of the conference from that webpage. Other useful practical information is available at the host’s dedicated website for the conference: https://50.law.hku.hk/icon-s2018/

See you at ICON-S Hong Kong 2018!

Gráinne de Búrca (NYU) & Ran Hirschl (University of Toronto)
Co-Presidents of ICON-S

Richard Albert (Boston College); Lorenzo Casini (IMT School for Advanced Studies, Lucca); Cora Chan (HKU); Albert Chen (HKU); Rosalind Dixon (University of New South Wales); Claudia Golden (NYU); Kelley Loper (HKU); Joseph Weiler (NYU); Simon Young (HKU)
Members of the ICON-S 2018 Organizing Committee