Ecole doctorale en sciences juridiques
Decentring, Subversiveness and Hospitability to Alterity in Legal Research
Horatia Muir Watt (Sciences Po Paris)
14 March 2025, 11am-5pm, UClouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles
Cycle Interdisciplinarités en droit
Language: English

Horatia Muir Watt is full professor of private international law and global governance, and researcher at Sciences Po Paris’s Law School, where she further leads the Private International Law as Global Governance (PILAGG) research project and co-directs the Global Governance Studies program. She is a member of the Institute of International Law and of the Institut universitaire de France, and she sits in the publication committees of several law journals, including as co-director of the Revue critique de droit international privé.
During this seminar, Horatia Muir Watt will present her recent book, The Law’s Ultimate Frontier: Towards an Ecological Jurisprudence, which offers an interdisciplinary and ecological approach to globalised law from the standpoint of private international law.
11am-12pm: Interview
Moderated by Anne-Lise Sibony / Gauthier Martens (/Christophe Lazaro si plutôt aspect “shaman” et algorithme)
12.15pm-1pm: Lunch
1pm-2pm: Presentation of The Law’s Ultimate Frontier
Considering that “private international law can be seen as a repository of normative ideas about the foreign”, Horatia Muir Watt’s latest book explores how the field might serve as a basis for a new heuristic approach to legal issues in a world characterized by increased interconnectedness between legal systems/orders and by intensifying crises, especially on the ecological front. Indeed, private international law’s attention to legal intersections, to ligatures, she argues, generates its potential power to transform law generally and globally.
Methodologically, Horatia Muir Watt uses Levi-Straussian “bricolage” to accommodate insights from a variety of sciences and thinkers, from ecology to political economy, from von Savigny to Latour.
She will present both the monograph’s content and methodology as well as their intersection, that is the ontological, epistemological, methodological and aesthetic dimensions of her proposed private-international-law-based heuristic technique.
2pm-2.30pm: Coffee Break
2.30pm-4pm: Discussion: Subverting Myths and Being Hospitable to Alterity to Decentre One’s Viewpoint
On the basis of the article referenced below, participants are invited to prepare a short (max. 5 min) opening statement to explain how they challenge conventional legality through their research’s objective, methodology and/or underlying assumptions. In particular, they should consider whether they subvert generally accepted ideas and principles, factor perspectives from elsewhere, and more generally try to decentre their vantage point. Do they use specific methodologies or incorporate other sciences? The objective is to discuss the difficulties and opportunities of shifting focus.
Reference: Horatia MUIR WATT, “Further terrains for subversive comparison: the field of global governance and the public/private divide”, in Pier Giuseppe MONATERI (ed.), Methods of Comparative Law, Edward Elgar, 2012, pp. 270-288.
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Location
To access the Salle du Conseil, enter via the main entrance: Bd du Jardin Botanique 43, 1000 Brussels.
Take the lift to the 4th floor. The room is across from the elevator.
Organizer: Gauthier Martens (UCLouvain-Saint-Louis-Bruxelles) gauthier.martens@uclouvain.be