Dr Jennifer Balint

• Lecturer

• Convenor, Socio-Legal Studies Program

Jennifer Balint is on leave in Semester 2, 2008 and Semester 1, 2009

Ph.D., LL.B. (Hons), B.A. (Hons)
Phone: 8344 3352
Email: jbalint@ unimelb.edu.au
Location: Room 440, John Medley Building, Parkville Campus

Jennifer Balint joined the Criminology Department in 2002 and is convenor of Socio-Legal Studies. She has a BA (Hons) LLB (Hons) from Macquarie University, and a PhD from the Law Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.

Her research has been in the area of state crime and genocide. It has taken her to Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, Ethiopia, South Africa, and to the international criminal tribunals in The Hague and in Arusha. Her most recent project, In the name of the state. Genocide, state crime and the law, is a legal and socio-political analysis of the capacity of law to address genocide and other forms of state crime.

Dr Balint has been a visiting fellow at the Collegium Budapest Institute for Advanced Study, and a research fellow at the International Human Rights Law Institute at DePaul University, Chicago. She has participated in the United Nations Preparatory Commission meetings for the formation of the International Criminal Court in New York and the conference on the formation of the International Criminal Bar in Montreal, June 2002. Dr Balint attended the Steering Committee meeting of the International Criminal Bar in Paris, November 2002 as the invited Australian representative, and was the representative for Oceania on the ten member Advance team for the establishment of the International Criminal Bar. In that capacity she attended the First Assembly of the Bar in Berlin, March 2003.

Her research interests include the legal-societal interface, crime and the state, and the constitutive role of law. In particular, she is interested in the relationship between law and the reconstruction of post-conflict societies. She has sought to address matters that cut across legal, social and political theory. Her research is located at the intersection of legal institutions and social processes, utilising methods from the theory of law, social and political theory, the sociology of law, and political science.

Subjects Taught:

• 191-110 Law in Society
• 191-211 Law, Justice and Social Change
• 191-301 Law in Social Theory
• 191-537 Genocide, State Crime and the Law

Recent Publications and Papers

2003

Balint, J.   Invited participant, roundtable, East Timor and Accountability for International Crimes: Review of Past Efforts and Future Possibilities. Law School, University of Melbourne, 16- 17 January 2003.  Asia Pacific Centre for Military Law (APCML), the Institute for Comparative and International Law and the Asian Law Centre of the Law Faculty of the University of Melbourne, together with the Judicial System Monitoring Program (JSMP).

Balint, J. ‘Searching for Justice: Comprehensive Action in the Face of Atrocities’, Paper presented by invitation, York University, Toronto, Canada, December 4-6, 2003.

2002

Balint, J. Civic Liability: Institutional Accountability for State Crime. Paper presented at 16th Annual Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology, Preventing Crime and Doing Justice, Brisbane, October 1-3 2002.

Balint, J. Law's constitutive possibilities: genocide, state crime and reconciliation. Paper presented at the 11th International Conference of the Law and Literature Association of Australia - Mediating Law. Theory, Production, Culture, Melbourne University Faculty of Law, 29 Nov - 1 Dec 2002

Balint, J. Comment: The Cohesive Force of Forgetting - When Can We Forget and On What Terms? Unraveling Ties -From Social Cohesion to New Practices of Connectedness, Yehuda Elkana, Ivan Krastev, Elisio Macamo, Shalini Randeria (eds.), Frankfurt, New York: Campus Verlag, 2002

Balint, J. Montreal Conference on the Creation of the International Criminal Bar, June 13-15, 2002, Montreal Canada

Balint, J. One-day seminar, International Perspectives on Reconciliation, Theatrette, National Library of Australia, Saturday, September 21, 2002.

(i) Refereed papers as sole author

Towards the Anti-Genocide Community: The Role of Law, Australian Journal of Human Rights 1:1 (1994), pp 12-42.

The Place of Law in Addressing Internal Regime Conflicts, Law and Contemporary Problems, 59: 4 (1996), pp 103-126.*

Conflict, Conflict Victimization, and Legal Redress, 1945-1996, Law and Contemporary Problems, 59: 4 (1996), pp 231-247.*

(ii) Books

Co-editor, with Adam Podgórecki and Adam Czarnota, The Hidden Structures of the Law (forthcoming Oñati Press 2002).

(iii) Chapters (refereed)

Contributing editor, Encyclopedia of Genocide (2 vols.), edited by Israel W. Charny (Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO 1999):
· Definitions of Genocide (with Israel W. Charny), pp 11-15.
· United Nations Convention on Genocide, pp 575-577.
· Law Responds to the Holocaust and Genocide: Redress and Perpetration, pp 389-397.
· Trials for Genocide in Rwanda, pp 557-560.
· Rape as a Tool of Genocide, pp 491-492.

Law's Constitutive Possibilities: Reconstruction and Reconciliation in the Wake of Genocide and State Crime, Lethe's Law. Justice, Law and Ethics in Reconciliation, edited by Emilios Christodoulidis and Scott Veitch (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2001), pp 129-149.

The Cohesive Force of Forgetting. When can we forget, and on what terms?, Unraveling Ties, edited by Yehuda Elkana, Shalini Randeria, Ivan Krastev, Elisio Macamo (Campus in Frankfurt am Main, St Martin's Press in New York, forthcoming 2002).

(iv) Book reviews

Book review: Leon Brittan, Europe: The Europe We Need and Desmond Dinan, Ever Closer Union? An Introduction to the European Community, Australian Journal of Political Science (1995).

Book review (with Alma Begicevic): Thomas Cushman and Stjepan G. Mestrovic (eds), This Time We Knew. Western Responses to Genocide in Bosnia, Contemporary Sociology (September 1998).

(v) Non-refereed papers

Another Genocide: Rwanda, Generation journal 4:3 (1994), pp 27-29.

Vienna: reflections, Generation journal (1995), pp 59-60.

There is no why here, International Network on the Holocaust and Genocide (Sept 1995) Issue 2-3, pp 8-10.

Was German society to blame?, The Australian Jewish News, June 7, 1996, p 22.

An Empirical Study of Conflict, Conflict Victimization and Legal Redress, in Reining in Impunity for International Crimes and Serious Violations of Human Rights: Proceedings of the Siracusa Conference 17-21 September 1997 (Christopher C. Joyner, Special Editor), Nouvelles Études Pénales, Association Internationale De Droit Pénal, 1998, pp 101-124.

(vi) Conference papers

Invited participation

Law and Regime Conflicts; A Draft Empirical Study on Conflicts (of an international and non-international character, civil conflicts, tyrannical regime victimization) and their outcomes since WWII
U.S. Meeting of Experts on Reining in Impunity for International Crimes and Serious Violations of Human Rights (convened by the International Human Rights Law Institute and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), Washington, 13 April 1997.

Law and Crimes of State: an expanding role
The Hidden Structures of Law. Workshop at the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law, 14-17 May 1997, Oñati Spain.

Problems in legal redress for state crime. Reconstitution, reconstruction and reconciliation: a preliminary discussion
Law, Ethics, and Political Transition: Appropriateness and Legal Judgement in Reconciliation (II). Workshop, Macquarie University School of Law, 18-19 November 1998.

The reconciliation imperative. A discussion of the role of the hidden in legal proceedings for state crime: a comparative analysis
The Theory of Law and the Hidden Structures of Law. Workshop at the Oñati International Institute for the Sociology of Law, 5-8 May 1999, Oñati Spain.

Invited participant, AGORA workshop: Bindung/Social Cohesion, Wissenschaftskolleg Zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study Berlin), 12-13 April 2000.

Characterising Genocide and State Crime
Academy of the Social Sciences Workshop, The Genocide Effect, The University of Sydney, 4-5 July 2001.

Other conferences

'Innocent Civilians': Genocide, Community and the Role of Law
"Debating Enzensberger: The Great Migration/Civil War", 1995 Sydney German Studies Symposium, 20-22 July 1995, Goethe Institute, Sydney Australia.

Towards Genocide Prevention: Community and the Rule of Law
"Legal Culture: Encounters and Transformations", 1995 Annual Meeting, Research Committee on Sociology of Law of the International Sociological Association, 1-4 August 1995, The University of Tokyo, Japan.

'That Odious Scourge'. Global, Local, and the action of genocide
"Globalisation and the Quest for Justice", Law and Society Association and Research Committee on Sociology of Law of the International Sociological Association, Joint Meetings, 10-13 July 1996, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland.

Genocide and anti-genocide. Mapping the global and the local
Postgraduate Conference on Social and Political Theory, 17-18 August 1996, Australian National University, Canberra Australia.

Negotiating the Past: State Crime and Legal Redress
AASCPCS/ANZSA 1998 International Conference on Communist and Post-Communist Societies (Formerly 1st ICCEES Regional Congress), 7-10 July 1998, Melbourne, Australia.

Restorative justice and state crime: is there a restorative role for law in addressing the past?
Restorative Justice and Civil Society. Reshaping Australian Institutions Conference, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, 16-18 February 1999.