Call for Papers: Relational Responsibility and Autonomy in Criminal Law, Hybrid Workshop on 20 May 2025

“As we re-envision legal structures of accountability, responsibility, protection, security, and political freedom, we can no longer rely on the flattened, bounded fiction of the individualized person that our legal tradition has taught us. The inadequacy of individualism becomes especially apparent when we attempt to understand legal responsibility for harm in societies shaped by deep structural inequalities. Our embeddedness in complex networks of relation—social, institutional, ecological—makes traditional concepts of agency and blame increasingly implausible.” (Nedelsky 2025)

Possible themes include, but are not limited to:

• Relational or structural accounts of autonomy in criminal liability

• Collective and institutional dimensions of responsibility for harm

• Limits of individual blame in the face of systemic or historical injustice

• Legal responses to harms embedded in corporate, bureaucratic, or state contexts

• Feminist, postcolonial, or critical legal approaches to criminal responsibility

• Theoretical tools for conceptualizing shared or diffused culpability

Submissions may engage theoretical, doctrinal, or interdisciplinary approaches. Contributions from legal philosophy, criminal law theory, critical legal studies, feminist jurisprudence, and sociology of law are warmly encouraged.

Publication Opportunity

Selected contributions will be invited for inclusion in a peer-reviewed anthology or special issue. More information will be provided at the workshop.
Abstract Submission Deadline: 5 May 2025
Notification of Acceptance: 6 May 2025
Submit Abstracts (300–500 words) to: [email protected]