2nd Global Conference
Monday 8th December - Wednesday 10th December 2003
Vienna, Austria
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Conference Programme
Session 7: Dispute,
Self-Image and Visions of Insanity
Chair: Christopher Finlay
Outsourcing of Justice as a Form of Legal Transformation:
The Place of International Alternative Dispute Resolution in International
Economic Relations and in International Law
Noemi Gal-or
Chair, Political Science Department, Acting Director, Institute for Transborder
Studies, Kwantlen University College, Surrey, B.C., Canada
This paper proposal is part of an emerging kaleidoscopic
literature applying a transdisciplinary approach to grapple
with the elusive transformations generated by globalisation. It will
address the
role of law and legal processes ,and appeal systems as well as control
of knowledge, anonymity and privacy, public awareness ,lobby and pressure
groups, and the role of the intelligentsia in reference to access
to justice under regional and global trade liberalisation regimes.
In
earlier studies, I addressed the theoretical frameworks and practical
solutions to improve access to justice both in the Pacific Northwest
as well as in larger free trade transborder regions (e.g. EU, NAFTA,
WTO) . This paper will take those studies one step further by both
introducing additional analytical detail and evaluating the role of
alternative dispute resolution (ADR) in commercial and trade matters
in the context of regional market integration and global trade liberalisation
institutions. It will continue to elaborate on the underlying proposition
advanced in my earlier research, namely,
that the contours of the "benefit" of regional and global
market integration encompass vital questions of justice, and that lack
of universal access to justice at these levels amounts both to a non-tariff
barrier (NTB) to trade, and to a "trade barrier to justice" (TBJ).
The paper will apply the fairness test as developed by Thomas M. Franck
in Fairness in International Law and Institutions (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1995).
I will employ this two-legged test of legitimacy
and distributive justice to evaluate a sample of early, mid-term, and
most recent NAFTA arbitral awards. I will juxtapose the NAFTA awards
with the trend evolving in the WTO jurisprudence in order to examine
whether, and to what extent, have the WTO DRU and the NAFTA Chapter
11 dispute resolution mechanism been institutionalising and mutually
re-enforcing each other's institutionalisation and consequently, transforming
the underpinnings of public international law.
As
I am arguing in "Private
vs. Public International Justice: The Role of ADR in Global and Regional
Economic Treaties" (48pp, NACS Text Series , forthcoming
end 2003, temporarily available on the web site of the Canadian Swedish
Business Association (CSBA)
Download Full Conference Paper - 
Several Pages of Madness: The Changing Face of Insanity in Cinema
Peter Remington
Eastern Mediterranean University, N.
Cyprus.
Whilst madness has a strong subsidiary role in the horror and fantasy genres, there also exists a number of films, central to which is the representation of insanity in more “everyday”, “realist” contexts. Concentrating chiefly on American cinema, my paper identifies two major strands in this latter category: firstly the “social” strand, utilising the theme of insanity as a metaphor for the investigation of society. A common trope here is that of the asylum-as-microcosm ( Shock Corridor , Cuckoo's Nest , etc.), reflecting the insanity of society at large. The second “mental” strand (e.g., A Beautiful Mind ) places greater emphasis on the experience of the psychotic. This strand also frequently leads on to questioning society, but usually more directly around issues of mental health and the treatment of those diagnosed insane. Both tendencies coexist, sometimes within the same picture, throughout this entire body of films. Starting with films such as The Snake Pit (1948), and concluding with Cronenberg's (2002) Spider my paper provides an overview of their inter-relationship, and suggests that the “mental” strand has tended to predominate in recent years. I further suggest that this trend may represent the embodiment of a popular unease at the ability of a rationalist discourse of diagnosis to maintain its categories in a society that many experience as increasingly irrational and incoherent. I hope by the end of the paper to have clarified my own ambivalence towards this latter argument's dependence on asserting a continuity between insanity, as currently defined, and a fragmented postmodern self. Some hope!