Desmond R.A. Manderson
Canada Research Chair in Law and Discourse
Tier 1 - 2002-07-01
Renewed:
2009-09-01
McGill University
Social Sciences and Humanities
514-398-2372
desmond.manderson@mcgill.ca
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Coming to Canada from
University of Sydney, Australia
Research involves
Re-examination of theories of law in light of current scholarship in the fields of philosophy, history, communications and music.
Research relevance
Development of inter-disciplinary scholarship in legal studies.
Living Law
Dr. Desmond Manderson believes that the study of jurisprudence and the evolution of legal theory have existed in an intellectual vacuum for too long. As a self-described "trans-disciplinary scholar," Dr. Manderson has, in his previous work, attempted to address contemporary legal problems of broad social and ethical significance. Over fourteen years, his work has spanned topics including mandatory sentencing, public health, indigenous sovereignty, immigration, genocide, war, and drug policy. All his work aims at connecting our legal understanding to the foundation disciplines of philosophy, history, and literature, and to vital social issues in public policy and cultural studies. One of his broad goals is to demonstrate that the theoretical paradigm shift toward post-modernism is not a dead end, but rather has specific contributions to make to our understanding of concrete and important legal issues.
As Canada Research Chair in Law and Discourse, Dr. Manderson will seek to reconfigure the field of jurisprudence in the light of changes that contemporary European thought has wrought to the foundation disciplines in the humanities; and to build stronger bridges between the work of theory and the central social debates of the modern world.
Specifically, Dr. Manderson has three key objectives over five years: to elaborate a new theory of the ethics of tort law, applying the work of philosopher and theologian Emmanuel Lévinas, a crucial influence in twentieth-century French thought; to explore the relation among aesthetics, ethics and law in the field of communications, with particular focus on discourse in the public sphere; and to create alliances between the disciplines of philosophy, history, music, literature and law by establishing McGill University as a centre for the inter-disciplinary study of law and the humanities.
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