Prof Costas Douzinas (Birbeck University)

ABSTRACT

This talk will examine the approach to revolution of classical German idealism and legal positivism and will argue that such a right exists philosophically despite its disavowal by (legal) philosophers and always returns preventing the sclerosis of law.

SPEAKER

Costas Douzinas is Professor of Law and Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London. Educated in Athens, London and Strasbourg, Costas has taught at the Universities of Middlesex, Lancaster, Prague, Athens, Griffith and Nanjing. Costas is a founding member of the Critical Legal Conference; founding member of the Birkbeck Law School and the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities; founding member and managing editor of Law and Critique: The International Journal of Critical Legal Thought and managing director of the publishing house Birkbeck Law Press.

Costas has written extensively in legal and political philosophy, human rights, aesthetics, literature, art and critical theory. His books include Postmodern Jurisprudence; Justice Miscarried; Law and Psychoanalysis; The End of Human Rights; Critical Jurisprudence; Nomos and Aesthetics; Human Rights and Empire; Resistance and Philosophy in the Crisis. He has edited or co-edited the collections Law and the Image; Adieu Derrida; The Idea of Communism; New Critical Legal Studies; The Cambridge Companion to Human Rights Law; The Meaning(s) of Human Rights. His 'What Are Human Rights' and 'Radical Philosophy of Right' will be published in 2015. His books have been translated in twelve languages.