What should be done about the cost of living? How should the media be reformed? What kind of healthcare system should we have? These are high-stakes political questions and we expect legislators and government to address them through familiar political processes. Yet as we know disillusion with politics is commonplace, including in mature democracies such as the UK or US whose electoral systems claim to be responsive to public needs. Elites entangle themselves in partisanised wrangling and positioning. And among the public, political attitudes tend to track group or party affiliations: ‘I’m a humanities professor – of course I vote Democrat!’ Too often, solutions that meaningfully advance our collective management of high-stakes political questions do not seem forthcoming. By comparison, we say that legal questions are addressed by independent and non-partisan courts through a process calibrated to be deliberative and evidence-driven. Prof. Hameed’s project asks: (i) can high-stakes political questions be addressed in more deliberative and impartial ways analogously to how courts address legal questions?; (ii) when, if ever, should political questions be so answered? This seminar focuses on (i).

About the Speaker: Prof. Asif Hameed, Associate Professor, CUHK LAW