Dear friends, Dear colleagues,

To mark the 10th anniversary of the first graduating class from the integrated McGill Programme, the Faculty of Law and the Paul-André Crépeau Centre for Private and Comparative Law (formerly the Quebec Research Centre of Private and Comparative Law) will host an international conference on the future of the discipline of law. This event, which takes place 28-29 September 2012, will aim to foster a debate that critically assesses the latest developments in legal thought and innovative approaches to law, in the light of the challenge of globalization and the move away from a national paradigm for understanding law. It will also ask the question of how to integrate the insights so gained into the teaching of law. The concern is with law in all its dimensions: public and private, local and transnational, formal and informal. By being forced to abandon, at least in part, the posited law of the nation state as their lode star, legal education and legal scholarship have been presented with an opportunity to break the mould of centuries of legal nationalism: an opportunity that encourages new, transdisciplinary and transnational ways of thinking about law. In short, the goal is to re-assess and to re-imagine the discipline of law, its place in the university, and its role in society.

The conference web site has now been launched at:
http://www.mcgill.ca/stateless

The site includes the full programme, and you will see that it is possible to register for individual blocks (morning or afternoon), as well as for the whole event.

Confirmed speakers include:
- Professor Louis Assier-Andrieu (Sciences Po Paris)
- Professor George Bermann (Columbia University)
- Professor Michelle Cumyn (Laval University)
- Professor Hanoch Dagan (Tel Aviv University)
- Professor John Gardner (University of Oxford)
- Hon. Nicholas Kasirer (Quebec Court of Appeal)
- Professor Ralf Michaels (Duke University)
- Professor Annelise Riles (Cornell University)
- Professor Stephen Toope (University of British Columbia)
- Professor Ernest Weinrib (University of Toronto)
- Professor Frédéric Zenati-Castaing (Lyon III University)

I hope to see many of you here in Montreal for what promises to be an exciting intellectual event, and a precious opportunity to reflect on issues of fundamental importance to all of us.

Lionel Smith

James McGill Professor of Law / Titulaire d’une chaire James McGill en droit
Director, Paul-André Crépeau Centre for Private and Comparative Law /
Directeur, Centre Paul-André Crépeau de droit privé et comparé
Faculty of Law, McGill University / Faculté de droit, Université McGill
3644 Peel, Montréal, Québec
Canada H3A 1W9
Tél + 1 514 398 4670
Fax + 1 514 398 4659
lionel.smith@mcgill.ca
http://www.mcgill.ca/centre-crepeau/