LDR2023: Legal Design Roundtable Brussels, Belgium, February 17, 2023

Submission link	https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ldr2023
Abstract registration deadline	November 16, 2022
Submission deadline	February 10, 2023

Legal Design is an interdisciplinary area of research and practice that applies design methods to the domain of law.[1] Design thinking, understood as a problem-solving approach that seek to frame the issues around the user, has been by far the predominant creative process in legal design works. However, it does not exhaust the spectrum of design methods, practices, and strategies.[2]

Critical design[3], discursive design,[4] speculative design,[5] design fiction,[6] design-driven innovation,[7] reflective design,[8] adversarial design,[9] experiential design and guerrilla futures,[10] and are just some examples of practices and tactics that consider design a means towards a particular intellectual end. These forms of design aim to pose critical questions, spark discussion on controversial topics, question the status quo, reflect on the implications of emerging technologies, speculate about alternative futures and their potential consequences, etc.

Their conceptual approaches, mindsets, and processes can offer a valuable toolset for lawyers, legal researchers, and policy-makers.[11]

The goal of this call is to attract contributions that can help us map and critically discuss the current practices, trends, or proposals in the area of legal design beyond design thinking.

We welcome papers that will provide theoretical perspectives, critical insights, or provotypes on how design, broadly understood, can contribute to the legal domain (in terms of exercise of digital rights, policy-making, legal research, legal education, legal profession, access to justice, etc.). Contributions can focus on any branch of law, from private law to public law, from legal theory to history of law, from data protection law to criminal law, from legal informatics to environmental law. 

Submission Guidelines

All papers must be original and not simultaneously submitted to another journal or conference. 

Abstract submission: 31 of October 2022 15 of November 2022

Send the title and an abstract (1000 words maximum).

Authors of the selected papers are expected to present their work the day of the conference on the 17^th of February 2023. If they cannot travel, we will accommodate a limited amount of online presentations.

Notification of acceptance: 25 of November 2022

Authors of the selected abstract will be invited to send the full paper and present their work at the roundtable on the 17^th of February 2023. If they cannot travel, we will accommodate a limited amount of online presentations.

Submission of papers: 10 of February 2023

Send the paper (between 8,000 and 12,000 words, footnotes included) formatted according to the OSCOLA style (https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxlaw/oscola_4th_edn_hart_2012.pdf).

Papers will be subject to double-blind peer review for their inclusion in a collective volume. The outcomes will be notified to authors by the 31 of March 2023. Selected papers will be published in open access during the course of 2023.

 

Other organisational information

There are no conference fees for participating to the Legal Design Roundtable. However, authors are expected to cover for their travel and accommodation expenses.

 

Scientific Committee

• Rossana Ducato, University of Aberdeen and UCLouvain
• Alain Strowel, UCLouvain and Université Saint-Louis - Bruxelles
• Enguerrand Marique, Radboud University and UCLouvain

 

Contact

All questions about submissions should be emailed to rossana.ducato@uclouvain.be

 

Acknowledgement

The Roundtable is organised within the framework of the Erasmus+ Jean Monnet Module “Clinic on EU Digital Rights, Law, and Design”. The event is made possible thanks to the support of the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.