Associate Professor Ben Golder
Ben Golder teaches courses on law and Social Theory, on Public law, and on the Politics of Human Rights, in the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales. He holds undergraduate Law and English literature degrees from UNSW and a doctorate in Legal Theory from the University of London. Prior to joining the faculty, Ben taught law at the University of East London, University College London, Birkbeck College and New York University in London.
- EMAIL Ben
- Phone: +61 2 9385 1843
- Room 225, Level 2, The Law Building, UNSW Sydney, UNSW Kensington Campus, Sydney NSW 2052, Australia, (Access via Gate 2 off High Street)
Golder B, 2015, Foucault and the Politics of Rights, Stanford University Press
Golder B, 2012, Introduction: Re-reading foucault on law, power and rights, http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203094563
Golder BJ; Fitzpatrick P, 2009, Foucault`s Law, Routledge, Oxon, http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203880562
Golder B, (ed.), 2019, Imperatives for Legal Education Research Then, Now and Tomorrow, Routledge, https://www.crcpress.com/Imperatives-for-Legal-Education-Research-Then-Now-and-Tomorrow/Golder-Nehme-Steel-Vines/p/book/9781138387805
Golder B; Steel A; Nehme M; Vines P, (eds.), 2019, Imperatives of Legal Education Research, Routledge, London, https://www.routledge.com/Imperatives-for-Legal-Education-Research-Then-Now-and-Tomorrow/Golder-Nehme-Steel-Vines/p/book/9781138387805
McLoughlin DP; Golder B, (ed.), 2017, The Politics of Legality in a Neoliberal Age, routledge
Golder BJ, (ed.), 2013, Re-reading Foucault: On Law, Power and Rights, Routledge, London and N.Y., http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203094563
Golder BJ; Fitzpatrick P, (ed.), 2010, Foucault and Law, Ashgate Publishing Limited, Farnham, Surry, England, http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&isbn=9780754628668&lang=cy-gb
Golder B, 2020, 'Killing Time: Law Like Death', Law, Culture and the Humanities, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1743872120969196
Golder B, 2019, 'Thinking Human Rights Through Metaphor', Law and Literature, vol. 31, pp. 301 - 332, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2018.1558756
Whyte J, 2019, 'The Morals of the Market Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism', CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL THEORY, http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/s41296-020-00383-8
Golder B, 2018, 'On the Stakes of Legal Performativity', Australasian Journal of Legal Philosophy, vol. 43
Golder BJ, 2016, 'On the Genealogy of Human Rights: An Essay on Nostalgia Nostalgia', Australian Journal of Human Rights, vol. 22, pp. 17 - 36, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1323238X.2016.11910940
Golder BJ, 2014, 'Beyond Redemption?: Problematizing the Critique of Human Rights in Contemporary International Legal Thought', London Review of International Law, vol. 2, pp. 77 - 114, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/lril/lru001
Golder BJ, 2013, 'The Responsibility to Protect: Practice, Genealogy, Biopolitics', London Review of International Law, vol. 1, pp. 158 - 165, http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/lril/lrt001
Golder BJ, 2013, 'Foucault, Rights and Freedom', International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, vol. 26, pp. 5 - 21, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11196-012-9259-8
Golder B, 2012, 'Magnus Hornqvist, Risk, Power and the State: After Foucault (Abingdon: Routledge-Cavendish, 2010)', International Journal of Law in Context, vol. 8, pp. 535 - 537
Golder B, 2011, 'Foucault's Monsters and the Challenge of Law', MODERN LAW REVIEW, vol. 74, pp. 639 - 642, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2011.00865-2.x
Golder BJ, 2011, 'Human Rights Contra Critique: Preliminary Notes on the Politics of Interpretation', Australian Journal of Human Rights, vol. 17, pp. 185 - 214
Golder BJ, 2011, 'Foucault`s Critical (Yet Ambivalent) Affirmation: Three Figures of Rights', Social and Legal Studies, vol. 20, pp. 283 - 312
Golder B, 2010, 'Panu Minkkinen, Sovereignty, Knowledge, Law (Abingdon: Routledge-Cavendish, 2009)', Law, Culture and the Humanities, vol. 6, pp. 457 - 458
Golder BJ, 2010, 'What is an Anti-Humanist Human Right?', Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, vol. 16, pp. 651 - 668, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2010.509570
Golder BJ, 2010, 'Foucault and the Unfinished Human of Rights', Law, Culture and the Humanities, vol. 6, pp. 354 - 374, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1743872110374262
Golder B, 2009, 'Jennifer L. Culbert, Dead Certainty: The Death Penalty and the Problem of Judgment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008)', Law, Culture and the Humanities, vol. 5, pp. 164 - 166
Golder BJ; Ridler V; Wall I, 2009, 'Editors` introduction: `The politics of the border/the borders of the political`', Law and Critique, vol. 20, pp. 105 - 111, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10978-009-9044-3
Golder B, 2008, 'Margaret Davies, Asking the Law Question, 3rd ed. (Sydney: Thomson Lawbook Co., 2008)', Alternative Law Journal, vol. 33, pp. 124 - 124
Golder B, 2008, 'Foucault and the Incompletion of Law', Leiden Journal of International Law, vol. 21, pp. 747 - 763, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0922156508005293
Golder B, 2007, 'Foucault and the Genealogy of Pastoral Power', Radical Philosophy Review, vol. 10, pp. 157 - 176
Golder B, 2006, 'Ronnie Lippens, ed., Imaginary Boundaries of Justice: Social and Legal Justice across Disciplines (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2005)', Modern Law Review, vol. 69, pp. 129 - 131
Golder B, 2006, 'Ian Ward, Introduction to Critical Legal Theory, 2nd ed. (London: Cavendish Publishing, 2004)', Social & Legal Studies, vol. 15, pp. 154 - 157
Golder B, 2006, 'Defining the debate [2]', Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 62, pp. 5 - 6, http://dx.doi.org/10.2968/062003002
Williams G; Golder BJ, 2006, 'Balancing National Security and Human Rights: Assessing the Legal Response of Common Law Nations to the Threat of Terrorism', Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, vol. 8, pp. 43 - 62
Golder B, 2005, 'Prue Vines, Law and Justice in Australia: Foundations of the Legal System (Melbourne: OUP, 2005)', Sydney Law Review, vol. 27, pp. 181 - 183
Golder B, 2005, 'Elaine C. Hagopian, ed., Civil Rights in Peril: The Targeting of Arabs and Muslims (London: Pluto Press, 2004)', Current Issues in Criminal Justice -Sydney-, vol. 1, pp. 168 - 170
Golder B, 2005, 'Michael Ratner and Ellen Ray, Guantánamo: What the World Should Know (Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 2004) and David Rose, Guantánamo: America's War on Human Rights (New York: New Press, 2004)', Sydney Law Review, vol. 27, pp. 579 - 583
Golder B, 2005, 'Eduardo Mendieta and Jeffrey Paris, eds., 'Biopolitics and Racism', Special Issue of Radical Philosophy Review 7(1) (2004)', Foucault Studies, vol. 3, pp. 121 - 126
Golder BJ, 2004, 'The Homosexual Advance Defence and the Law/Body Nexus: Towards a Poetics of Law Reform', E Law: Murdoch University Electronic Journal of Law, vol. 11, pp. 1 - 20
Golder BJ, 2004, 'Law, History, Colonialism: An Orientalist Reading of Australian Native Title Law', Deakin Law Review, vol. 9, pp. 1 - 18
Golder BJ, 2004, 'Rethinking the Subject of Postmodern Feminist Legal Theory: Towards a Feminist Foucaultian Jurisprudence', Southern Cross University Law Review, vol. 8, pp. 73 - 95
Golder BJ, 2004, 'From McFarlane to Melchior: Love, Sex and Commodification in the Anglo-Australian Law of Torts', Torts Law Journal, vol. 12, pp. 1 - 27
Golder B; Williams G, 2004, 'What is Terrorism? Problems of Legal Definition', University of New South Wales Law Journal, vol. 27, pp. 270 - 295
Golder B; Steel A; Nehme M; Vines P, 2019, 'Legal Education Research As an Imperative', in Imperatives for Legal Education Research Then, Now and Tomorrow, Routledge, pp. 3 - 11, http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780429426070
Golder B, 2018, 'Human Rights Trouble? Judith Butler and the Performative Refusal of Human Rights', in Schippers B (ed.), , Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, pp. 25 - 45
McLoughlin DP; golder B, 2017, 'An Introduction to the Politics of Legality in a Neoliberal Age', in Golder B; McLoughlin D (ed.), The Politics of Legality in a Neoliberal Age, Routledge, pp. 1 - 15
Golder BJ, 2017, 'Contemporary Legal Genealogies', in Desautels-Stein J; Tomlins C (ed.), Searching for Contemporary Legal Thought, Cambridge University Press, pp. 80 - 98, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/9781316584361.005
Golder BJ, 2017, 'On the Varieties of Universalism in Human Rights Discourse', in Agha P (ed.), Human Rights Between Law and Politics The Margin of Appreciation in Post-national Contexts, edn. Modern Studies in European Law, Hart Pub Limited
Golder BJ, 2016, 'Theorizing Human Rights', in Hoffman F; Orford A (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Theory of International Law, edn. Oxford Handbooks, Oxford University Press, pp. 684 - 700
Golder BJ; Michaelsen C, 2014, 'Political Criminals, Terrorists, and Extra-Criminal Regimes of Punishment', in Jenkins F; Nolan M; Rubenstein K (ed.), Allegiance and Identity in a Globalised World, Cambridge University Press, pp. 267 - 290, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139696654.018
Golder BJ, 2012, 'Re-reading Foucault on Law, Power and Rights', in Re-reading Foucault: On Law, Power and Rights, Routledge
Golder BJ, 2012, 'The Distribution of Death: Notes Towards a Biopolitical Theory of Criminal Law', in Stone M; Wall IR; Douzinas C (ed.), New Critical Legal Thinking: Law, Politics and the Political, Routledge, UK, pp. 91 - 111, http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203114469
Golder BJ; Fitzpatrick P, 2010, 'The Laws of Michel Foucault', in Golder B; Fitzpatrick P (ed.), Foucault and Law, edn. First, Ashgate Publishing Limited, Farnham, Surry, England, pp. xi - xxvi, http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&isbn=9780754628668&lang=cy-gb
Golder B; Williams G, 2008, 'What is "Terrorism"? Problems of Legal Definition', in Malleswari VB (ed.), Anti-Terrorism Laws: Global Scenario, ICFAI Amicus Books, Hyderabad, pp. 1 - 37
Golder BJ, 2004, '"It forced me to open more than I could bear": HAD, Paedophilia, and the Discursive Limits of the Male Heterosexual Body', in Kenyon AT; Rush P (ed.), An Aesthetics of Law and Culture: Texts, Images, Screens, Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp. 53 - 72, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(04)34003-2
Golder B; Lynch A; Michaelsen C; McGarrity N, 2009, Submission to the National Human Rights Consultation, Australia
Golder B; Lynch A; McGarrity N; Michaelsen C; Santow E; Teeger B; Williams G, 2009, Submission to the National Security Discussion Paper, Australia
Golder B, 2002, Submission to Senate Employment, Workplace Relations, Small Business and Education References Committee Inquiry into the Capacity of Public Universities to Meet Australia's Higher Education Needs
Golder B, 2002, Submission to the Department of Education, Science and Training on the Ministerial Discussion Paper, Higher Education at the Crossroads
Golder B, 2002, Submission to NSW Legislative Council Standing Committee on Social Issues Inquiry into an Equal Age of Consent
Golder B, 2000, Submission to NSW Law Reform Commission Review of Part 10 of the Legal Profession Act 1987
Golder B, 2000, Submission to NSW Legislative Council Select Committee on the Increase in Prisoner Population
Golder B, 2015, Discussant on Session 1 of Data Associations in Global Law and Policy, UNSW Law, Sydney
Golder B, 2015, Panellist on ‘Legal and Biological Norms’ at Society for the Study of Bio-political Futures and Biopolitical Studies Research Network Workshop, University of New South Wales, Sydney
Golder B, 2015, Discussant at Author-Meets-Reader Roundtable on Irus Braverman, Wild Life: The Invention of Nature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015), University of New South Wales Law School, Sydney
Golder B, 2014, Discussant at Encountering the Author session on Joseph Slaughter, Human Rights Inc. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), University of Western Sydney, Sydney
Golder B, 2012, Discussant on session 'The Political Economy of Human Rights', University of New South Wales, Sydney
Golder B, 2012, Discussant at Author-Meets-Reader Session on Anne Orford, International Authority and the Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), Sydney Centre for International Law, University of Sydney, Sydney
Golder B, Author-Respondent Participant in Book Panel on Foucault and the Politics of Rights, UNSW, Sydney
Conference Papers
Golder B; Joyce D, 2015, 'Teaching Human Rights Through Film', Australian National University, Canberra, presented at Human Rights Tertiary Teachers’ Network Workshop, Australian National University, Canberra, 18 February 2015 - 18 February 2015
Golder B, 2015, 'Contemporary Legal Genealogies', Seattle, presented at Law’s Promise and Law’s Pathos in the Global North and the Global South meeting of the Law and Society Association, Seattle, 28 May 2015 - 31 May 2015
Golder B, 2015, 'Contemporary Legal Genealogies', Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA, presented at Institute for Global Law and Policy Conference, Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA, 01 June 2015 - 02 June 2015
Golder B, 2015, 'The View from Critical Theory', Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, UNSW Law School, Sydney, presented at Engaging Constitutional History Workshop, Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, UNSW Law School, Sydney, 25 June 2015 - 25 June 2015
Golder B, 2015, 'On the Genealogy of Human Rights: An Essay on Nostalgia Nostalgia', Australian National University, Canberra, presented at Aspirational Rituals: Promises and Utopias in Human Rights, Centre for International Governance and Justice, RegNet, Australian National University, Canberra, 30 July 2015 - 31 July 2015
Golder B, 2015, 'What is Critical about a Genealogy of Human Rights?', Monash University, Melbourne, presented at Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, Monash University, Melbourne, 23 September 2015 - 23 September 2015
Golder B, 2015, 'Foucault and the Politics of Rights', University of Sydney, presented at Julius Stone Institute, University of Sydney, 26 November 2015 - 26 November 2015
Golder B, 2014, 'Human Rights and the Exhaustion of Critique', University of Melbourne, Melbourne, presented at Human Rights Tertiary Teachers’ Workshop, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 21 February 2014 - 21 February 2014
Golder B, 2013, 'How Should we Teach the History of Human Rights?', Australian Human Rights Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, presented at Human Rights Tertiary Teachers’ Network Workshop, Australian Human Rights Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 25 February 2013 - 25 February 2013
Golder B, 2013, 'The Critique of Human Rights in Contemporary International Legal Thought', University of New South Wales, Sydney, presented at Law School Seminar Series, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 30 April 2013 - 30 April 2013
Golder B, 2013, 'The Critique of Human Rights in Contemporary International Legal Thought', University of Nottingham, Nottingham, presented at Second Annual Junior Faculty Forum for International Law, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, 29 May 2013 - 30 May 2013
Golder B, 2013, 'Theorising Human Rights', University of Melbourne, Melbourne, presented at Oxford Handbook of International Legal Theory Melbourne Authors’ Workshop, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 09 August 2013 - 09 August 2013
Golder B, 2012, 'Discussant on Anthony Langlois, 'Institutionalizing Human Rights: The Meaning of Rights in the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights'', Whitlam Institute at the University of Western Sydney, presented at The Politics of Citizenship in the Era of Human Rights: An International Research Workshop, Whitlam Institute at the University of Western Sydney, 27 August 2012 - 29 August 2012
Golder B, 2012, 'On How to do Things with Critical Legal History: Human Rights, Reconsidered', University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, presented at Law Research Seminar Series, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, 12 September 2012 - 12 September 2012
Golder B, 2012, 'What Does the Recent History of Human Rights tell us about its Future?', University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, presented at Receiving Laws/Giving Laws, 31st Annual Australian and New Zealand Legal History Society Conference, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, 10 December 2012 - 12 December 2012
Golder B, 2011, 'Foucault's Critical Affirmation: Three Figures of Rights', University of Alberta, Banff, presented at 2011 meeting of the Foucault Circle, University of Alberta, Banff, 25 May 2011 - 27 May 2011
Golder B, 2011, 'The Limits and Possibilities of a Foucauldian Politics of Rights', Birkbeck College, London, presented at Foucault Effect: 1991-2011, Birkbeck College, London, 03 June 2011 - 04 June 2011
Golder B, 2011, 'Limits to Critique', UTS Faculty of Law, Sydney, presented at Law and Culture Symposium, UTS Faculty of Law, Sydney, 01 July 2011 - 01 July 2011
Golder B, 2011, 'Foucault and the Politics of Human Rights', Seattle, presented at The Politics of Rights, American Political Science Association Conference, Seattle, 01 September 2011 - 04 September 2011
Golder B, 2011, 'Foucault, Rights and Freedom', University of Wollongong, Wollongong, presented at Legal Intersections Research Centre, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, 05 October 2011 - 05 October 2011
Golder B, 2010, 'Foucault's Critical (Yet Ambivalent) Affirmation: Three Figures of Rights', University of Melbourne, presented at Institute for International Law and the Humanities, University of Melbourne, 26 October 2010 - 26 October 2010
Golder B, 2010, 'Foucault's Critical (Yet Ambivalent) Affirmation: Three Figures of Rights', University of Technology Sydney, presented at Law Research Seminar Series, University of Technology Sydney, 27 October 2010 - 27 October 2010
Golder B, 2009, 'Foucault and the Unfinished Human of Rights', Melbourne, presented at Annual Australian Society of Legal Philosophy Conference, Melbourne, 05 June 2009 - 06 June 2009
Golder B, 2009, 'Foucault and the Unfinished Human of Rights', University of Sydney, presented at Julius Stone Institute, University of Sydney, 24 September 2009 - 24 September 2009
Golder B, 2009, 'Foucault, anti-humanism and human rights', in Foucault: 25 Years On, Hawke Research Institute, University of South Australia, Underdale, SA, presented at Centre for Post-Colonial and Globalisation Studies Conference, Foucault: 25 Years On, Adelaide, 25 June 2009, http://www.unisa.edu.au/hawkeinstitute/publications/foucault-25-years/
Golder B, 2008, 'Foucault and the Subject of Human Rights', London, presented at Birkbeck College School of Law Staff Workshop, The Laws of Michel Foucault, London, 02 May 2008 - 02 May 2008
Golder B, 2007, 'Critical Ontology as Law', Colchester, presented at 8th Essex Graduate Conference in Political Theory, Multitude, People, Resistance, Colchester, 21 June 2007 - 22 June 2007
Golder B, 2007, 'Foucault on Ethics and Law', Berlin, presented at Law and Society in the 21st Century: Transformations, Resistances, Futures, Berlin, 25 July 2007 - 28 July 2007
Golder B, 2007, 'Foucault's Law: Part One', Walls, London, presented at Critical Legal Conference, Walls, London, 14 September 2007 - 16 September 2007
Golder B, 2006, 'Racism and the Murderous Function of the State: Law and Sovereign Power in Foucault's 'Society Must Be Defended'', Gloucester, presented at 3rd Texas Wesleyan University School of Law Conference, 'Too Pure an Air': Law and the Quest for Freedom, Justice and Equality, Gloucester, 18 June 2006 - 20 June 2006
Golder B, 2005, 'Democracy's Definitional Disavowal, or The Semantic Economy of Political Violence', Colchester, presented at 6th Essex Graduate Conference in Political Theory, Difference, Borders, Others, Colchester, 13 May 2005 - 14 May 2005
Golder B, 2005, 'Legal Definitions of Violence: The Symbolic Politics of Counter-Terrorism', Canterbury, presented at Critical Legal Conference, Resistance, Canterbury, 02 September 2005 - 04 September 2005
Golder B, 2002, ''[I]t forced me to open more than I could bear': HAD, paedophilia, and the discursive limits of the male heterosexual) body', Melbourne, presented at Mediating Law: Theory Production Culture, Melbourne, 29 November 2002 - 01 December 2002
Golder B, 2002, 'Provoking Hatred: The Homosexual Advance Defence and the Politics of the Body', Wollongong, presented at Opening Law: Making Links – Crossing Boundaries, 20th Annual Law and Society Conference Australia, Wollongong, 09 December 2002 - 11 December 2002
Associate Professor Ben Golder works at the intersection of Political and Legal Theory, and is interested in the areas of Public Law and Human Rights. He is currently researching critical and historical approaches to contemporary human rights discourse and, more specifically, the relationship between human rights and postfoundationalist thought. He has recently published a book with Stanford University Press, entitled Foucault and the Politics of Rights, which explores the late work on rights and human rights of the French philosopher, Michel Foucault. He is currently at work on a book about the relationship between various schools of postfoundationalist thought (in political theory and philosophy) to Human Rights. Ben is an Associate Editor of the journal, Contemporary Political Theory, a member of the Editorial Committee of the UK-based journal, Law and Critique, a member of the Editorial Board of the Australian Journal of Human Rights, and a member of the Editorial Board of the radical, open access publisher, Counterpress.
Ben welcomes applications to supervise undergraduate research theses and postgraduate research in these, and related, fields. He has supervised PhD projects to completion on the topics of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency; therapeutic jurisprudence; and, post-humanist critiques of human rights law. He is currently co-supervising doctoral projects on the protection of Indigenous cultural expressions via intellectual property law; the doctrine of indivisibility in human rights law; earth jurisprudence and Australian constitutionalism; neoliberalism and human rights; indigenous peoples and the norm of free prior and informed consent in international law; and the sexual and racial dynamics of Prohibition.
Golder B; Williams G, 2005, Rights and Wrongs: On How to Define Terrorism
Golder B; Williams G, 2005, The Tricky Problem of Defining Terrorism', On-Line Opinion