ICON S Conference 17 – 19 June 2016 Humboldt University Berlin

the second was authored by one of the administrative
judges of the Conseil d’Etat and depicts the trial of a
basque terrorist he had to deal with during his service.
Starting from these sources, Alphonse Clarou will try to
present a theoretical approach nourished by Gilles Deleuze
propositions in his book The Logic of Sense, and
the relationship between the both theatrical and philosophical
notions of catastrophe and event, through
which he’ll try to understand not only how public law is
fabricated over the body of “strangers”, but also how
this fabrication creates in turn “reality”.
Omer Shatz: Asylum seekers and the Israeli
Supreme Court
Omer Shatz will focus on the handling by the Israeli
Supreme Court of the fate of twenty-one Eritrean asylum
seekers he represented in one of the most famous
cases handled by the institution in the last decade. He
will theorize the case in order to better understand the
nature of the physical and legal encounter between
the rule – the pure sovereign, able to decide who is
authorized to enter its territory and who isn’t – and
its exception – the asylum demand – and the violent
provocation manifested by both the polity and the
stranger in such encounter. He will suggest that the
dissonance between the imposed presentation of the
physical body which is governed by natural law (‘human
rights’), and the subsequent representation of the legal
person which is governed by positive law, introduces
us with a new political entity – the Janus face of the
asylum seeker being neither a friend nor a foe, but a
third political species that is a mutant form of both.
Juan Branco: The International Criminal Court
and the Katanga case
Relying on his interviews with the main actors of
the case, including with the convict, Juan Branco will
show how the ICC was incapable to seize itself of a
body that was too extraneous to its social, legal and
cultural codes, therefore revealing the limits of the
cosmopolitanism the institution pretends to rely on.
Describing the kafkaïan life course of a former okapi
hunter that became an army General at 25, he will try
to explain why a Court of this importance invested so
much time and efforts in “policing” a body that should
have never crossed its path.
86 VIOLATED BORDERS: LAND GRAB-
BING AND GLOBAL GOVERNANCE
Land grabbing is a well-known phenomenon in global
economy and global politics. It consists of purchase or
long-term leasing of foreign lands for food and biofuel
production by state-owned and private corporations, as
well as private investors. Among the top investor countries,
we find Malaysia, Singapore, Arab Emirates, India,
Brazil, Saudi Arabia. The targeted countries are mainly African,
although many cases have also been registered in
Central and South America and in South-East Asia. Land
grabbing raises issues at the crossroads of public law and
private/commercial law, e.g. the wide range of contract
types; the complex and varied powers and structures of
companies; the weaknesses and the heterogeneity of
administrative procedures and land registry practice and
procedures. The panel aims at suggesting supranational
and national legal remedies, both in public law and in
investment and commercial law, and to stress the connections
between national and supranational institutions.
Participants Alessandra Paolini
Federico Caporale
Lorenzo Casini
Name of Chair Sabino Cassese, Marco D’Alberti
and Lorenzo Casini
Room DOR24 1.608
Alessandra Paolini: From a Debate about Water
Market to Water as a Speculative Commodity:
The Australian Case
Water grabbing is becoming a phenomenon which
interests not only developing countries: the gradual
“commodification” of water is quickly turning water into
a big global business.
An interesting observation point is provided by Australia,
one of the world’s driest continent. Neoliberal
economists claim that a water market will automatically
balance supply and demand, through the price
mechanism, turning into the best mean of allocating
water for increased efficiency and profit; on the other
hand, others argue that water should be allocated on
a more equitable basis, through the public intervention.
Australia has gone further along the path of water
markets than almost any other country, and its water
market was tested during the great Australian drought
of the first decade of the 21st century, with results subject
to divergent assessments.
However, some data are clearly emerging: Australia
set up a market-based water trading system; a “futures”
market is developing (thus transforming water from a
free and common property, to a money-denominated
commodity); an increasing amount of water is owned
purely for “investment purposes”.
Concurring panels 128