28 June 2013

EVENT: LLB Open Day - The Institute of Law - Jersey

BannerI just noticed the following message (LLB Open Day - The Sequel) for The Institute of Law - Jersey on Facebook:

Following the success of last month's open day, the Institute is holding another open day for anyone interested in finding out more about studying for a law degree in Jersey with the University of London International programmes. All the teaching and exams take place in the Island. To find out more, come along to the Institute between 1 pm and 6 pm, and meet the Director of Studies, Professor Andrew Le Sueur.

COMPETITION: APLA Graduate Student Paper Prize Competition

American Anthropological AssociationPlease take note that the deadline to submit a paper centering on the analysis of political and legal institutions and processes to the APLA Graduate Student Paper Prize Competition is July 1st, 2013.

Authors must be enrolled in a graduate program through at least May 1, 2013. Papers should not exceed 8,000 words (including notes and references) and should follow the style guidelines of PoLAR, which are detailed in the American Anthropological Association Style Guide.


Submissions and questions should be sent to Jennifer Hamilton at jhamilton@hampshire.edu.

More details can be found on the APLA website: http://aplaorg.org/about/prize/.

CALL FOR ESSAYS/CHAPTERS: Maintaining Law and Order: Essays on Law and Society in History

'Maintaining Law and Order: Essays on Law and Society in History’
Edited by Alan Sked and Tony Murphy.

This volume looks at different ways in which society has been regulated historically. It covers public law, codes of honour and social mores, examining the challenges offered to legal order by social elites, social misfits and social outlaws. It looks, in short, at the mechanisms employed in the past to retain social discipline or to create order out of disorder or social breakdown. Essays on a range of topics, covering different centuries and different countries are all welcome for consideration.
Essays should offer original individual interpretation and research on a given topic and be in excess of 8,000 words. If you are interested in contributing, please do get in touch as soon as possible. You will then need to submit a 500 word abstract and a 200 word biography before Monday July 15th. If commissioned, you would then be given 12 months to write the essay.
We look forward to receiving abstracts.
Kind regards
Alan Sked, Professor of International History, London School of Economics and Political Science

Tony Murphy, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Sheffield Hallam University

27 June 2013

BLOG/POST: The law.arts.culture Blog on Legal Fiction

I just found out about the law.arts.culture Blog

The most recent post is:


CONFERENCE: Fifth National Spanish Conference on Legal Education

Fifth National Spanish Conference on Legal Education
Transformations in Legal Teaching and Learning ”
11-13 september 2013
Valencia, Spain
The School of Law, Universitat de Valencia, with the support of the Human rights Institute, announces that registration is now open for the Fifth National Spanish Conference on Legal Education. The Conference will be held at School of Law, Campus dels Tarongers, Valencia (Spain).

The title of the Conference is “Transformations in Legal Teaching and Learning ” and the following sub-themes will be explored:

1. Competence-based teaching methodology in Criminology, Legal and Political studies
2. Quality in learning and teaching Law, Criminology, and Political Sciences and Public Administration
3. Active methodologies for learning/teaching Law, Criminology and Political Science and Public Administration
4.Learning from reality and experience: legal clinics
5. Ubiquitous learning: ICT for education, e-learning, social networks, teaching platforms…
6. Teaching Law through films and literature
7. Learning assessment
8. Teaching/learning for society: social function of Universities, pro bono activities, public interest strategies in Law….
9. Implementing Degrees and Postgraduate studies in the Bologna Process of a European Higher Education Area
10. Teaching and research internationalization
11. Scientific dissemination of Law, Criminology, and Politicial Science teaching
12. Training the trainers

NOTICE: COMPARATIVE LEGAL HISTORY (the Journal)

The first issue of Comparative Legal History (CLH), a journal I edit with a very fine staff and international board, has now been published. 

Closely connected to my work in Juris Diversitas and beyond, the journal:

is a peer-reviewed international and comparative review of law and history. Its articles explore both internal legal history (doctrinal and disciplinary developments in the law) and external legal history (legal ideas and institutions in wider contexts). Firmly rooted in the complexity of the various Western legal traditions worldwide, it also provides a forum for the investigation of other laws and law-like normative traditions around the globe. Scholarship on comparative and trans-national historiography, including trans-disciplinary approaches, is particularly welcome. 

CLH is also the official publication of the European Society for Comparative Legal History (ESCLH) and is published by the forward-thinking, helpful folks at Hart Publishing. Members of the ESCLH receive a free subscription to CLH.

The preface introducing the journal is available here; a sample article is available here.


The first issue includes:

SCHOOL: International School of Ius Commune

Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture
 International School of Ius Commune

Direttori della Scuola: M. Bellomo – K. Pennington – O. Condorelli
 33rd Course, Erice, 5-11 october 2013
  
Social crisis and science of law in medieval and modern world

Director of the 33rd Course
Andrea Padovani (Università di Bologna)


Sponsored by: The Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research – Sicilian Regional Government – Catholic University of America, Washington D.C. – University of Catania –Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Imola – Fondazione CEUR, Bologna

Purpose

Human history fluctuates unceasingly between two opposite poles: violence and disorder on one side, and demands for settlement and peace on the other: that is a quest for rules, establishing uniformity and predictability for social behaviors. Between the two poles, a lawless society (anomia) and an order established by a legal system, there is embedded a combat between a stubborn defense of antiquated privileges and new claims of freedom. This struggle occurred again and again in European society from the time of Irnerius at the beginning of the twelfth century in different contexts and with different problems that jurists were asked to resolve. When confronted with these issues, from time to time the jurists wisely imposed limits on human behavior with the imposition of norms from positive law or from higher norms such as natural law. They imposed the ‘dogmata iuris’ to regulate the spontaneous but disordered emerging of vigorous new energies that were then adopted for common good of society.

Lecturers and topics

26 June 2013

OPPORTUNITY: Professor/Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer - University of Swaziland

File:Uswazlogo.jpgApplications are invited from suitably qualified candidates to fill the following vacant position at the University of Swaziland: Professor/Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer in the Department of Law

QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE:  PhD /LLD

DUTIES:
  • To teach Jurisprudence, Clinical Legal Education, Introduction to Law.
  • To supervise students research.

LOCAL CANDIDATES
Permanent and Pensionable service after successful completion of two years on probation; Recruitment and Retention Allowance, Housing Allowance and a Medical Aid.

EXPATRIATE CANDIDATES
A two-year contract which will attract Gratuity, recruitment Allowance a Medical Aid contribution and relocation expenses. 

APPLICATIONS AND CLOSING DATE
Applications with detailed CV, certified copies of academic and professional qualifications and names of three referees should be sent to 

The Registrar
University of Swaziland
Private Bag 4
Kwaluseni 
Email: sar-hr@uniswa.sz via the Apply button below.

Closing date: 12th July 2013

OPPORTUNITY: Fulbright Visiting Chair in Private and Comparative Law

The Faculty of Law at McGill University, in conjunction with the Paul-André Crépeau Centre for Private and Comparative Law, is delighted to announce that applications are being received for a Fulbright Visiting Chair in Private and Comparative Law for 2014-15. This is an opportunity for an established US scholar to spend one semester at McGill during that academic year. It carries a stipend of $25,000 and so provides a generous opportunity for someone who is benefiting from sabbatical or other paid leave. The deadline to apply is 1 August 2013.

A description of the Chair is at:
A description of the Fulbright Visiting Research Chairs program, including a video covering eligibility and how to apply, is at: http://www.fulbright.ca/programs/american-scholars/visiting-chairs-program.html 

25 June 2013

BLOG POST: Law and The Senses: Symposium, Performance, Phenomenon?


A recent ‘uncon­fer­ence’ entitled ‘Law and the Senses’ proved to be an import­ant event that dis­covered not only novel ways to regard the rela­tion­ship of law and the senses but also its relevance.

CALL FOR PAPERS: From Diffusion of Practices to Practices of Diffusion.

The following Conference Call for Papers, similar in many ways to the Juris Diversitas Conference just held, was just announced. SPD

From Diffusion of Practices to Practices of Diffusion: Workshop on the Circulation of Ideas, Procedures and Regulations in Culture, Law and Economy
Warsaw, 12-13 May 2014

Organizing Institutions: Polish Sociological Association: Sociology of Law Section & Warsaw Department

Key-note Speaker: Marie-Laure Djelic -- ESSEC Business School

Call for Papers: The problem of diffusion situates us at the junction of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches of various research fields in social sciences. The common tendency of recent sociological treatments of diffusion is the zooming in on the processes taking place when ideas and objects circulate – such as mobilization, adaptation, theorization, dis-embeddedness and re-embeddedness, construction, hybridization and editing. Such focus is considered to link diffusion with heterogeneity and to challenge the institutional isomorphism perspective which depicted it as leading to homogeneity in organizational fields. It is also an approach to diffusion which advances a deeper, more ethnographic and descriptive analysis of the phenomenon.
The Workshop depicts this theoretical turn as the evolution of research interest from the diffusion of practices to practices of diffusion. The formula is suggestive as it also catches the nowadays research interest in diffusion as a social phenomenon in itself, and not just as one of the stages within a sequential process. The Workshop wishes to discuss and reconsider these theoretical developments on the basis of diffusion studies pertaining to the circulation of ideas, rules, procedures, regulations, classification systems and standards in culture, law and economy. The research of practices diffusion across organizations and legal systems evolved from the study of diffusion paths and means to the content and form of the ideas circulating. In addition to these developments, the Workshop also aims to consider diffusion processes at various levels of formalization, unsuccessful circulation processes, as well as efforts aimed at curbing the spread of certain practices and regulations.
The Workshop welcomes papers dealing with such topics as:
  • Theories and models of diffusion in social sciences;
  • Mediation, abstraction, transformation and editing of ideas, procedures and regulations during their implementation phase;
  • Diffusion of practices and the construction of cultural categories of adopters;
  • Social and cultural embeddedness of diffusion processes;
  • The relationship between diffusion and institutionalization;
  • The relationship between diffusion and institutional isomorphism;
  • Unsuccessful diffusion phenomena in legal, organizational and economic fields
  • Anti-diffusion activities and processes in legal, organizational and economic fields.

ARTICLE: MacMahon on Proceduralism, Civil Justice, and American Legal Thought

Paul MacMahon's 'Proceduralism, Civil Justice, and American Legal Thought' has appeared on SSRN:


American legal scholars spend a large proportion of their time debating and theorizing procedure. This Article focuses on American proceduralism in the particular field of civil justice and undertakes a detailed comparison with England, where procedural questions receive little academic attention. It finds that procedure is more prominent in America partly because Americans have been more willing than others to use private litigation as a tool for regulation. More significantly, procedural questions necessarily occupy more space in American debates because authority over civil justice is unusually dispersed among different actors; procedural rules allocate power among these actors. But American proceduralism runs deeper than these surface explanations allow, and a full account requires an examination of the history of American legal thought. I trace contemporary American proceduralism to a counter-intuitive source: the emergence of Legal Realism in the 1920s and 1930s.

Thanks, Eoin.

BLOG POST: Transnational Judicial Dialogue

The IntLawGrrls Blog recently posted the following notice:  

The MultiRIghts program at the University of Oslo in Norway hosted a conference on Transnational Judicial Dialogue which included participants from law, political science, and philosophy.  Papers addressed to what extent judges cite foreign and/or international case law and norms in their own decisions.  Courts from Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Canada were examined.  The idea of transnational judicial dialogue was portrayed as a cosmopolitan project, but concerns were raised about hierarchical tendencies and the impact of culture, language, power, or other factors impacting citation tendencies.  There was a panel of national judges, including Lord Carnwath of the UK Supreme Court (who explained how he faced appeals from different corners of the earth involving Maori law or the Napoleonic code), Andreas Paulus of the Bundesverfassungsgerecht (who noted that in a case involving the right of refugee children to education, there was no international authoritative guidance available so the court had to set the standard itself), and Rafaele Sabato of the Court of Cassation of Italy (who explained how contradictory positions among the different national courts rendered application of European standards impossible).  There was examination of the evolution of same-sex family law in Europe through vertical and horizontal dialogue, concern was raised that LBGT NGOs were more interested in the legislative process than the judicial path, complicating matters.  Finally, there was a panel with three judges from the European Court of Human Rights, Luis Lopez Guerra, Erik Møse, and Angelika Nussberger who gave insight as to the potential influence of other regimes, including international criminal law.  Beth Simmons of Harvard University reminded the participants that it is important to keep in mind the importance of identifying the intended audience of the judicial output- are judges seeking legitimacy among each other, are they seeking to convince the executive or the legislature, are they addressing the parties, or are they concerned with the view of the public at large?  Most striking to me was a paper by Azizat Amoloye-Adebayo who described limitations to the potential of transnational judicial dialogue due to ideological barriers in Islamic jurisdictions, leading one to consider whether the phenomenon is indeed most relevant to the Anglo-European legal community.  Lord Carnwath pointed out that judges are seeking to solve problems, and some are simply harder than others, leading one to seek assistance in identifying solutions beyond borders, hence there may not necessarily be a grand theory behind it all.

CALL FOR PAPERS: International Human Rights Law in Refugee Status Determination: Comparative Practice and Theory

CALL FOR PAPERS

International Human Rights Law in Refugee Status Determination: Comparative Practice and Theory
Venue:  Institute of Advanced Legal Studies
Date:  London, 13-14 November 2013

Dear Colleagues,

We write to share news of the forthcoming conference on ‘International Human Rights Law in Refugee Status Determination: Comparative Practice and Theory’ that will take place at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, London, on 13 and 14 November 2013.

This 1½ day conference brings together leading experts to reflect comparatively on the practical and theoretical impact of international human rights law upon refugee status determination. Three panels will explore comparative practice from around the world and one will be addressed to broader cross-cutting thematic issues. Some further details can be found in the outline below.

For the final thematic panel, we are keen to receive additional contributions, particularly on the following broad topics and their implications for our understanding of the scope of refugee definitions: sexual and gender identity; combatants and military service; permissible limitations to rights (such as the freedom to manifest one’s religion); and internal protection/flight alternative.

If you wish to propose a paper to be presented on this panel, please submit a short abstract of up to 300 words to bruce.burson@justice.govt.nz and david.cantor@sas.ac.uk by Friday **5 July 2013**.