BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Gender\, Craft\, Law and Politics: Notes for an Ethnography of Leg islative Drafting - Dr Emily Grabham (Professor of Law\, Kent Law School\, University of Kent) DTSTART;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20190225T163000Z DTEND;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20190225T180000Z UID: DESCRIPTION:How should we understand the work of legislative drafters in c ontemporary society? These highly skilled government lawyers draft primary legislation. Working in the Cabinet Office\, they show immense attention to legal detail\, syntax\, sentence construction\, coherence\, and grammar in a creative process that produces powerful legal documents and social e ffects. They constantly think about the wider public audience for their wr iting\, yet their everyday work remains largely hidden from public awarene ss and academic analysis\, even as the text of statute law becomes easier to access on the internet and debates rage in the media about the meaning of draft Bills (e.g. “Brexit” withdrawal legislation).\n\nIn this pape r\, I will present my current reseach on legislative drafting\, which take s the form of a multi-sited legal ethnography drawing on interviews\, obse rvation\, documentary and doctrinal analysis. I hope that this work may ev entually contribute new material to scholarly debates on legal technicalit ies\, the materiality of law\, and the 'making of law'\, which has yet to turn its gaze to drafters' everyday lives and their participation in wider socio-technical networks of law-making.\n\nAs part of this ongoing work\, my current research focuses specifically on the technical work of draftin g gender in statutes: the debates\, skills\, and political contestation in volved in 'gender neutral'\, 'gender inclusive' and 'non-binary' drafting. Working with colleagues in socio-legal studies and psychology from King's College\, Kent\, and Loughborough\, I'm part of an ESRC-funded three year study that aims to critically explore different ways of reforming legal g ender status in England & Wales: the Future of Legal Gender project. Study ing drafting as part of this interdisciplinary research raises tricky poli tical and epistemological questions for feminist legal scholars about the politics of legal form\, the location of gender politics within law\, and the political force of changing modes of legal expression. Within wider an d fraught debates about the role of gender in law\, what insights can we g ain from studying the experts who craft legal gender norms as a matter of statutory drafting? How much do shifts in drafting techniques really respo nd or contribute to legal change? Should feminist legal scholars care abou t drafting\, how much\, and why? My answer is yes we should care\, and the paper will aim to provide some reasons why.\nSpeakers:\nDr Emily Grabham (Professor of Law\, Kent Law School\, University of Kent) LOCATION:Manor Road Building (Seminar Room G)\, Manor Road OX1 3UQ URL: BEGIN:VALARM ACTION:display DESCRIPTION:Talk:Gender\, Craft\, Law and Politics: Notes for an Ethnograp hy of Legislative Drafting - Dr Emily Grabham (Professor of Law\, Kent Law School\, University of Kent) TRIGGER:-PT1H END:VALARM END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR