We are pleased to announce that our next WALTA meeting will be featuring Dr Alex Deagon of the Queensland University of Technology.
Dr Deagon’s topic for the evening will be:
‘It’s Not Just Courtesy, it’s the LAW’: (Not) Giving Way to Alienation
Abstract:
In Queensland the law generally requires drivers to give way to buses in urban areas. This requirement is depicted on the back of many buses with a diagram including the phrase ‘it’s not just courtesy, it’s the law’. This paper argues the contrast between ‘courtesy’ and ‘law’ assumes a positivist distinction between law and morality. More perniciously, ‘law’ in this context is framed as keeping peace through fear and coercion, or violently alienating members existing in a community. Instead, the paper proposes that law ought not to ground its authority in an ability to produce a spurious peace through the threat of violence. Rather, courteous conduct in a broader context of harmonious community can be achieved through ‘the law of love’.
About the Author:
Dr Alex Deagon graduated from Griffith University in 2011 with a Bachelor of Laws (First Class Honours) and a Bachelor of Science majoring in Physics. Dr Deagon is currently a Senior Law Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at Queensland University of Technology. His teaching areas include Theories of Law, Constitutional Law and Evidence. His own Christian faith in conjunction with an interest in the interaction of Contemporary Philosophy, Theology and Legal Theory led him to successfully undertake a PhD with the Griffith Law School entitled “Using Christian Theology and Philosophy to Construct a Jurisprudence of Truth”. The thesis examines how the secularisation of reason through the distortion and/or rejection of faith and theology leads to violence in law. The thesis argues in response that the way to remove this violent ontology is through the revelation of truth in the Incarnation, which reconciles faith and theology with reason, and provides the foundation for a Christian ontology of peace in law through the Pauline ‘law of love’. The thesis was published as the book ‘From Violence to Peace: Theology, Law and Community’ in August 2017 with Hart Publishing, Oxford.
Please join us at 6:00PM on 25 October 2018 at:
We look forward to seeing you there.