Socio-Economic Human Rights in the Aftermath of the Eurozone Debt Crisis and the Neoliberalisation of International Law

This seminar is hosted by the Centre for Human Rights and the School of Law Research Seminar Series. Our series offers exciting insights into ongoing research projects within the law school and conducted by our external research partners. We often feature work from our three research centres (the Centre for American Legal Studies, the Centre for Human Rights, and the Centre for Science, Law and Policy). Our work is often transdisciplinary, dealing with law's relationship with broadly defined social justice, policy-making, science and much more. Join us for invigorating discussion!

In this session, we hear from Dr Emma Scali. Emma Luce Scali holds a Doctorate in Law from the University of Nottingham. She is currently Lecturer in Law at Birmingham City University (UK) and Visiting Lecturer in International Law at Roma Tre University (IT), where she teaches a course on the ‘crisis’ of human rights. Her current research interests and publications centre around human rights, sovereign financing, and the global economic order. Her monograph on Sovereign Debt and Socio-Economic Rights Beyond the Crisis: The Neoliberalisation of International Law is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press (February 2022).

In this session, Dr Scali will give the following presentation, followed by an interactive Q&A:

Socio-Economic Human Rights in the Aftermath of the Eurozone Debt Crisis and the Neoliberalisation of International Law

Abstract

Taking the cue from a larger research project investigating the meaning of indebtedness in the current, predominantly neoliberal, global economic order, and the actual implications of ever-increasing public indebtedness for the Welfare State and the realisation of human rights, this presentation argues that the neoliberalisation of international law has been advanced in the aftermath of the Eurozone debt crisis. It makes its case drawing not only on a) the use, also in Europe, of conditionality as a tool of economic reordering, but also, more generally, on b) the post-crisis reform of the legal framework for economic and fiscal policymaking in the Economic and Monetary Union, and c) neoliberal legal reasoning by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the European Court of Human Rights. After briefly introducing its understanding of neoliberalism and neoliberalisation, this research presentation will discuss in particular developments under point c).

If you have any questions, contact Iyan Offor, the Research Seminar Series leader, at iyan.offor@bcu.ac.uk.

This seminar has now concluded but it is available on demand here. If you find that you do not have access, you can email the research seminar series leader at iyan.offor@bcu.ac.uk in order to gain access.