CALL FOR PAPERS: Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly Special Issue

The following Call for Papers might be of interest:

CALL FOR PAPERS

Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly

Special Issue

Bench and Bar: The (Dis)appearance of Britain

We are compiling a Special Issue for the Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly (NILQ) on the topic of ‘Bench and Bar: The (Dis)appearance of Britain’. We wish to invite scholars with an interest in this broad theme to submit abstracts of around 250 words by Friday 31 December 2010. We will make a provisional selection by the end of January 2011 and then ask contributors to provide a full draft of their text by Tuesday 31 May 2011. These will then be refereed blind in the usual way. Final articles accepted for publication should be with the NILQ by November 2011 for publication in the first volume of 2012.


As the British Empire extended its reach during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Western (specifically British) concepts of law and justice were exported around the world. As the empire retracted in the twentieth century, a residual legal order was left in its wake: the common law. In many colonies and British territories, the early twentieth century was a time of uncertainty. As the roles of the imperial parliament and the judicial committee of the Privy Council changed, national legal systems began to emerge.

This Special Issue of the Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly seeks to address some of the issues which have arisen as a consequence of the (dis)appearance of British Imperialism.

Suggested topics include (but are not limited to):

• The role of national courts and legislatures in shaping ‘new’ legal orders
• How tension between old and new orders was resolved
• How the judiciary and legal community responded to the abolition of Privy Council appeals
• The role of law in the formation of new states
• How former colonies and dominions have diverged in their interpretation and development of common law principles
• The role of lawyers and legal professions in the transition from imperialism to independence
• Whether British systems of law and justice continue to exert influence over the legal systems of its former territories; and whether lawmakers in former colonies have looked and continue to look towards Britain for guidance
• The Bench and Bar in the UK and the colonies, for example:
• How was the English model exported?
• The extent to which the English model is still used?
• Whether ex-colonies made changes to their legal professions in the aftermath of independence?
• The influence of individuals who migrated from the English bar to the colonial bars?

Please send abstracts via email attachment to:

Dr Karen Brennan, Queen’s University of Belfast, School of Law, k.brennan@qub.ac.uk
Dr Niamh Howlin, Queen’s University of Belfast, School of Law, n.howlin@qub.ac.uk
Dr Sara Ramshaw, Queen’s University of Belfast, School of Law, s.ramshaw@qub.ac.uk