Coffee and Comparative Law with... Professor René Provost

Room 102

For this session, we have the privilege of enjoying “Coffee and Comparative Law with... Professor René Provost” - a respected member of McGill's faculty who teaches and conducts research in public international law, international human rights law, international humanitarian law, legal theory and legal anthropology.

Prof. Provost will join us in discussing his "Cannibal Laws" - a fascinating piece in which he explores the tension in the association of law and cannibalism as a way of unpacking our understanding of law as a social practice. In it, he suggests there are three ways of interrogating that tension, three different 'cannibal laws' that each illustrates a unique facet of our understanding of law. He writes:

"The first cannibal law is the law that seeks to repress the practice of cannibalism. In this relation, law constructs the practice as an object to be regulated. This is an étude on the theme of regulation, and its motif is legal positivism. The second cannibal law is the law that the cannibals make. In this relation, law offers a normative framework for understanding the practice of cannibalism not merely as an irrational or depraved act, but as a part of a system of norms that fulfils a specific function. This is an étude on the theme of normative agency, and its motif is legal pluralism. The third cannibal law is the way in which legal discourse relates to other forms of social discourse. In this relation, cannibalism stands as a metaphor for the manner in which legal discourse consumes all other ways of understanding, which are digested and transformed to aliment legal analysis. This is an étude on the theme of representation, and its motif is the cultural study of legal hermeneutics."

Questions can be directed to jeffrey [dot] kennedy [at] mail [dot] mcgill [dot] ca