About the seminar
As the world enters an era of climate crisis, with emergencies and disasters becoming the order of the day rather than states of exception, the importance of adaptive governance (agile, responsive, flexible, and enabling) has been increasingly emphasized by urban resilience scholars. Similarly adaptive and dynamic legal standards, mechanisms, and principles should underly urban governance practices. Such standards should ensure stability and accountability whilst enabling context-specific and dynamic responses to a variety of threats and stressors. The need for adaptive public law was highlighted during the Covid-19 pandemic, when domestic systems of intergovernmental relations, executive accountability, and rights-protection frequently faltered. This seminar considers the adaptive capacity of socio-economic rights in an urban governance context, drawing on review standards, enforcement mechanisms and remedies associated with the domestic enforcement of the right of access to adequate housing in the 1996 South African Constitution.
During the seminar, Marius Pieterse will present a paper on standards associated with socio-economic rights in international law that shape urban governance, with examples from South Africa on ‘reasonableness’, ‘meaningful engagement’, and structural interdicts. He will examine how these standards might advance adaptive urban governance in times of crisis or flux.
About the speaker
Marius Pieterse is a professor in the School of Law at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa where he teaches urban and local government law, constitutional law, and human rights law. You can find more information about his research here: https://www.wits.ac.za/staff/academic-a-z-listing/p/mariuspietersewitsacza/
Event details
This will be a hybrid event. It is hosted by the research group on Global Challenges to Human Rights Law, Policy, and Practice.
You can find the Zoom link here: https://uio.zoom.us/j/63983083530
Light refreshments will be served.