The 27th Annual BILETA Conference will be hosted by Northumbria Law School on 29th – 30th March 2012. The conference theme, ‘Too many laws, too few examples’, is taken from the words of the French revolutionary, Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just. They go to the heart of a long debate about regulation – how best to regulate human activities, and inspire good conduct. Saint-Just was in no doubt: he states the case in words that echo a complex debate about the nature of regulation in human affairs that stretches back over two millennia, and which is central to the technological issues of the twenty-first century.
Participants at the BILETA 2012 Conference (law.unn.ac.uk/bileta) will be to enter the debate with reference to law, technology and legal education. Do too many laws stifle human aspiration and creativity? Or do we have the wrong laws? Is legal regulation the only way to achieve justice in our technological societies? Are our lives happier because we have ever more laws governing our use of technology? In relation to legal education, regulators internationally themselves are opening debate on their regulatory regimes – how best can technology be regulated for educational and ethical purposes in learning Justice?
Conference papers, or abstracts (approximately 300 words), should be submitted by the deadline of 10th January 2012. All submissions will be reviewed by Stream Chairs and presenters will be notified of Chairs’ decisions by 14th February 2012.
Key areas for streams include:
• Legal education, regulation and technology-enhanced learning
• Regulation of ISPs
• E-commerce and e-governance
• Internet censorship and surveillance
• Computer and internet crime
• ICANN and domain names
• Intellectual property
• Privacy
• Internet access and human rights
• Social networking
E-mail any submission (full paper or abstract) or expression of interest to convene a stream by 10th January 2012 to Abhilash Nair: abhilash.nair@northumbria.ac.uk
