We are pleased to announce the publication of the latest paper from our drugs and human rights project, co-authored by GLaD research team members, Dr Sean Mulcahy and Prof Kate Seear, entitled ‘A “tick and flick” exercise: Movement and form in parliamentary human rights scrutiny’, and published in the Dance Research Journal.
The Queensland Human Rights Commissioner, Scott McDougall, has raised concerns about the parliamentary human rights scrutiny process becoming a ‘perfunctory “tick and flick” exercise’ in which decision-makers perform the ‘dance steps to [rights] derogation’, a concern that has been emulated by others. Taking this notion of ‘tick and flick’ literally, the paper explores the usage of ticks and other formatting devices in parliamentary human rights scrutiny reports.
Drawing from Marie Jacob’s notion of calligraphic practices in legal documents and Jacob and Anna MacDonald’s notion of lines in legal documents as material, somatic and metaphorical forms, the paper analyses the choreology of calligraphic forms in these reports alongside interviews with those involved in creating these forms and what they say about how human rights are conceived of in legislative scrutiny processes. We argue that the forms themselves have bearing on the process of human rights scrutiny, and that forms shape substance of the reports.
The paper was first presented in London at the Global Meeting on Law and Society in Lisbon. We thank all those who provided feedback throughout its development and acknowledge the interviewees who gave so generously of their time to be part of it.