Coel Kirkby

Barbarous Borders: The Imperial Constitution and 'Native' Enfranchisement in the Canadian and Cape Colonies, c. 1880�1900

In the mid-1800s, British armies had put down the last great rebellions by indigenous peoples in the self-governing colonies. In Canada the newly formed North-West Mounted Police put down the Métis and Cree resistance, while Imperial armies annexed Griqualand East and defeated the Zulus across Natal’s border. By 1900, all indigenous peoples were segregated from the ‘white’ public space of the new nations through a myriad of laws, regulations and practices. My dissertation traces the legal ideas of ‘segregation’ that national bureaucrats used to justify this relatively short transformation of indigenous peoples from self-governing polities subject to the British Crown, to ‘native’ populations segregated within new self-governing ‘white’ Dominions.

Start Date: 2008/09.

End Date: 2012/04.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) candidate - 2008-11
University of Cambridge, Faculty of Law
Supervisor: Dr. Paul McHugh
John Peters Humphrey and SSHRC Fellow; Commonwealth and Duke of Edinburgh Scholar; Modern Law Review Scholarship

Masters of Laws (LL.M.) - 2006-08
McGill University, Institute of Comparative Law, Faculty of Law
Montréal, Canada
Thesis title: 'Exorcising Matovu’s Ghost: Legal Positivism, Pluralism and Ideology in Uganda’s Appellate Courts'
Supervisor: Roderick Macdonald
Canadian Masters Scholarship-SSHRCC; McGill Graduate Studies Fellowship

Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) - 2002-05
Queen’s University, Faculty of Law
Kingston, Canada

Bachelor of Arts, Honours (B.A. Hons.) - 1997-2001
Philosophy & Mathematics
Queen’s University, Faculty of Arts and Science
Kingston, Canada

Articles in refereed journals

"A Critical Survey of Subnational Autonomy in African States" (2008) 38 Publius: The Journal of Federalism 248 (co-authored with Yonatan Fessha).

"Towards a More Cooperative Local Government: The Challenge of District Intergovernmental Forums" (2007) 22 Public Law 143 (lead author with contributions by Nico Steytler & Janis ).

"Rwanda's Gacaca Courts: A Preliminary Critique" (2006) 50 Journal of African Law 94 [selected as the lead article in the JAL 50th anniversary volume].

Chapters in books

"Canadian State Lethality Towards Indigenous Peoples," in States of Violence: War, Capital Punishment, and Letting Die, eds. Jennifer Culbert & Austin Sarat (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) (co-authored with Mark Antaki).

"Sub-Saharan Africa" in Asymmetrical State Design as a Tool of Ethnopolitical Conflict Settlement, ed. Marc Weller (University of Pennsylvania Press, forthcoming 2010) (co-authored with Christina Murray).

Book reviews in refereed journals

Book Review of The Grand Experiment: Law and Legal Culture in British Settler Societies by eds Foster et al. (2010 forthcoming) Modern Law Review.

Book Review of Defending Rights in Russia: Lawyers, the State and Legal Reform in the Post-Soviet Era by Pamela Jordan (2007) 19 Revue québécoise de droit international 361.

Conference papers

"Two Ideas of the Public at the British Empire's Barbarous Borders" (Paper presented at the 'Public in the Law' Doctoral Colloquium, Glasgow, 28-29 April 2009).

"Listening to the Elders: Teaching Indigenous Laws in Canadian Law Schools" (Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the Law and Society Association & Canadian Law and Society Association, Montréal, Canada, 29 May - 1 June 2008) (co-authored with Karen Crawley).

"The Economics of Recognition: How Private Economic Law Informs Indigenous Self-Determination" (Paper presented at the Conference on Recognition and Self-Determination of the Indigenous Peoples and Governance project, Victoria, Canada, 28 February 2008) (co-authored with Thomas McMorrow).

"Linking Popular Participation and Democratic Representation in Constitution-Making in Eastern and Southern Africa" (Paper presented at the VIIth World Conference of the International Association of Constitutional Law, Athens, Greece, 11-15 June 2007) [unpublished].

"Transcending 'Deep Legal Pluralism': Methods of Judicial Interpretation of African Constitutions" (Paper presented at the Canadian Association of African Studies, Toronto, Canada, 17-20 May 2007) [unpublished].

"The 'Two Publics' and Deep Legalism Pluralism in African Constitutional Law" (Paper presented at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, Canada, 4-5 May 2007) [unpublished].

"Victim's Reparations: Restoring the Rights-Respecting State" (Paper presented at the CLAIHR "Global Generations" Conference at the University of Ottawa, February 2007) [unpublished].

Dr. Paul McHugh