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Plenary 2: Scales of Brexit

Wednesday, July 12, 2017
9:50 AM - 10:20 AM
Steele 03-206 (Plenary)

Overview

Prof Antonia Layard


Speaker

Prof Antonia Layard
University of Bristol

Scales of Brexit

9:50 AM - 10:20 AM

Abstract Text

Brexit is one of the most proposed striking geopolitical shifts in living political memory, with repercussions for the world. It is a profoundly spatial exercise, redrawing the boundaries of the European Union, even possibly within the United Kingdom. Yet the process of leaving the EU is a series of legally framed political acts. Brexit emphasises the relevance of geographical literatures on scale but also illustrates the intertwining - for legal geographers - of scale with jurisdiction and legal pluralism. While the 1972 European Communities Act that ceded sovereignty to the EU can be undone in a relatively simply regulatory step, it is the separating of over 44 years of shared governance that is proving so complex. Brexit illustrates the insight by legal pluralist scholars that there is no longer a single legal system, instead systems are "sedimented terrain" (de Sousa Santos, 2002) with co-presence. This paper will interrogate these interrelationships between scale, jurisdiction and legal pluralism, bringing a legal geographical focus to the Brexit debates.


Chairperson

Thomas Sigler
Lecturer In Human Geography
The University of Queensland

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