Speaker: Prof. Jens M. Scherpe (Universities of Cambridge, Hong Kong and Aalborg)

Moderator:
Prof. Suen Yiu Tung (Director of Sexualities Research Programme, CUHK)

Registration:
https://bit.ly/2wXYghq

Abstract:

This talk questions the need of legal gender.

Gender, as a defining status element vis-à-vis the state, increasingly is under pressure. First, there is overwhelming evidence that the gender of a person cannot be conclusively determined at birth by looking at their body, and that therefore any legal allocation of gender on that basis may be false and in need of correction (as exemplified in the W v. Registrar of Marriages in Hong Kong, [2013] HKCFA 39). Second, an increasing number of jurisdictions have or will extend legal gender beyond the binary by allowing legal genders other than male or female. Taking into account these (and other) developments, and the fact that there is an increasing trend towards self-determination of gender internationally, the time may have come to begin to de-gender the law. While this is likely to be an incremental process and may not be appropriate (yet) in all legal areas, societies and cultures, we should start now by questioning existing legal provisions that refer to gender/have gender requirements.

Biograhy of Prof. Jens M. Scherpe

Jens is Reader in Comparative Law at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College/Cambridge, Cheng Yu Tung Visiting Professor at the University of Hong Kong and Honorary Professor at the University of Aalborg. He also is an Honorary Fellow of St. John's College/Hong Kong and an Academic Door Tenant at Queen Elizabeth Building/London. Jens has held visiting positions in many institutions, including Sydney, Auckland, London, Vienna, Leuven, Barcelona, Padova and Louvain-la-Neuve.

His publications include major comparative studies on cohabitation (2005), same-sex relationships (2000), the legal status of transgender and transsexual persons (2004 and 2015) and the legal status of intersex persons (2018), matrimonial property and marital agreements (2012), registered partnerships (2017) and on ‘Eastern and Western Perspectives on Surrogacy’ (forthcoming January 2019). In 2016 he also edited a four-volume book set on European Family Law, including a monograph on ‘The Present and Future of European Family Law'.