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02 August 2014
JOURNAL: Global Jurist New Issue
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31 July 2014
CALL FOR PAPERS: 10th International Workshop for Young Scholars
TOPICS: Contributions are invited on relevant topics identified by the applicant, including the following non exhaustive themes:
Global Risk Regulation and Domestic Institutions and Processes
- How to source expertise (closed vs open source models, conflict of interest, etc)
- How to integrate expertise (institutional design issues)
- Multi-level Governance
BOOK: Comparative Law and International Organisations
We're pleased to note the publication of Colin Picker, Lukas Heckendorn Urscheler, and Daria Solenik (eds), Comparative Law and International Organisations: Cooperation, Competition and Connections (2014) by Schulthess.The book was the fruit of a symposium held at the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law in 2010, a spin-off of our Juris Diversitas Conference there in 2009 (resulting in Comparative Law and Hybrid Legal Traditions):
As international organizations consist of member states with different legal orders and are generally active in many different legal systems, it seems obvious that comparative law is of relevance. Furthermore, with the growing importance of international organizations, analyzing the interrelationship between the two is therefore of utmost importance....
The symposium brought together academic scholars, including international organization and comparative law experts, and participants from the European Court of Human Rights, European Commission for the Efficiency of Justice, Hague Conference on Private International Law, ICC Commission on Arbitration, International Criminal Court, and the UND.
Recommended. SPD
30 July 2014
SEMINAR: Pluralism, Religious Diversity and Methodology
Click here for the program of the seminar.
Click here for further information about JPs
29 July 2014
BOOK: Halpérin's Five Legal Revolutions Since the 17th Century: An Analysis of a Global Legal History
Jean-Louis Halpérin's Five Legal Revolutions Since the 17th Century: An Analysis of a Global Legal History (Springer) has been published:
This book presents an analysis of global legal history in Modern times, questioning the effect of political revolutions since the 17th century on the legal field. Readers will discover a non-linear approach to legal history as this work investigates the ways in which law is created. These chapters look at factors in legal revolution such as the role of agents, the policy of applying and publicising legal norms, codification and the orientations of legal writing, and there is a focus on the publicization of law.
The author uses Herbert Hart’s schemes to conceive law as a human artefact or convention, being the union between primary rules of obligations and secondary rules conferring powers. Here we learn about those secondary rules and the legal construction of the Modern state, and we question the extent to which codification and law reporting were likely to revolutionize the legal field.
These chapters examine the hypothesis of a legal revolution that could have concerned many countries in modern times. To begin with, the book considers the legal aspect of the construction of Modern States in the 17th and 18th centuries. It goes on to examine the consequences of the codification movement as a legal revolution before looking at the so-called “constitutional” revolution, linked with the extension of judicial review in many countries after World War II. Finally, the book enquires into the construction of an EU legal order and international law.
In each of these chapters, the author measures the scope of the change, how the secondary rules are concerned, the role of the professional lawyers and what are the characters of the new configuration of the legal field. This book provokes new debates in legal philosophy about the rule of change and will be of particular interest to researchers in the fields of law, theories of law, legal history, philosophy of law and historians more broadly.
Recommended. - SPD
BOOK: Common Law Legal English and Grammar
Lord Denning, an influential but controversial English
judge, stated that 'Words are the lawyer's tools of trade'. This course book
reflects that conviction as it focuses on words, the language of the law - legal
terms, expressions, and grammar - introduced systematically with relevant
aspects of the law, and examined in context through analytical reading
activities based on original legal texts selected for their interest and
importance in different branches of the common law system. This book explores
constitutional law, criminal law, tort, and contract; yet includes international
legal contexts, with a particular focus on human rights and European
law.
The presentation of legal concepts and terminology in
context in each chapter is graded so that the course progresses, building on the
vocabulary and law encountered in earlier chapters. Each chapter, organized
thematically, includes a series of activities - tasks - to complete, yet the
book does not presuppose previous knowledge of legal English or of the common
law: full answer keys and reflective commentary on both legal and linguistic
aspects are given and sections marked 'Advanced' offer especially challenging
materials. Consolidation sections are designed to test students' global
comprehension of the legal texts analysed, including precise usage of legal
vocabulary in context, with solutions.
Common Law Legal English and
Grammar is
addressed to the non-native speaker of English, and in particular, intermediate
to advanced students who are studying law, or academics with a professional
interest in Anglo-American law. Practising lawyers will also find that the book
offers valuable analysis of the language of legal documents.
CONFERENCE: Diversity and the Courts: Judicial Pluralism in India
The conference will take place at The University of Turin, Italy on September 18th and 19th 2014.Click here for the program.
JOURNAL: The Theory and Practice of Legislation
The latest issue of The Theory and Practice of Legislation (Hart Publishing) is out.
It includes:
Introduction: The Legitimacy
of EU Secondary Legislation
Wim Voermans and
Josephine M.R. Hartmann
The Quest for Legitimacy in
EU Secondary Legislation
Wim Voermans,
Josephine M.R. Hartmann and Michael Kaeding
Abstract:
According to classic democratic theory legislative
decision-making presupposes some involvement of the people or their
representatives. Their involvement is a prerequisite for the legitimacy of
enacted legislation. At the same time, however, the lack of public involvement
is a weak spot of EU legislative decision-making. This represents a growing
problem because the European Union (EU) is built on and predominantly governed
by EU law that is enacted in EU-legislation without direct input from the
people. In fact more than 75% of EU legislation is currently enacted by the
European Commission (EC). This lack of democratic pedigree of so-called ‘EU
secondary legislation’ allegedly causes various legitimacy-related problems at
the EU level. With the introduction of a new system on delegated and
implementing acts by the Treaty of Lisbon, the EU however aims to address the
apparent democratic deficit. This contribution takes up this call and against
this backdrop answers the question whether the Lisbon ‘arrangements’ have,
indeed, changed ‘things for the better’. It presents a legitimacy review of the
post-Lisbon regime on delegated and implementing acts of the last four years. We
first look into the concept of legitimacy of EU secondary legislation to assess
the post-Lisbon developments. After focusing on the question of whether the
legitimacy of secondary legislation has increased since the Lisbon Treaty and in
what respect we then turn to the Lisbon institutional and procedural empowerment
of the European Parliament in the legislative procedure to see whether it has,
in reality, increased the Parliament’s influence and control of EU legislation
vis à vis the Council and the Commission. Our findings suggest that the high
expectations for improving the legitimacy of EU secondary legislation have not
(yet) materialized. Furthermore, facts and figures give cause for doubt as to
the feasibility of achieving this objective in the near future.
JOURNAL: Transnational Legal Theory
The latest issue of Transnational Legal Theory (Hart Publishing) is out.
It includes:
Transnational Human
Rights Litigation and Territorialised Knowledge: Kiobel and the ‘Politics
of Space’
Philip
Liste
Abstract: In Kiobel
v Royal Dutch Petroleum, Dutch and British private corporations were accused
of having aided and abetted the violation of the human rights of individuals in
Nigeria. A lawsuit, however, was brought in the United States, relying on the
Alien Tort Statute—part of a Judiciary Act from 1789. In its final decision on
the case, the US Supreme Court focused strongly on ‘territory’. This use of a
spatial category calls for closer scrutiny of how the making of legal arguments
presupposes ‘spatial knowledge’, especially in the field of transnational human
rights litigation. Space is hardly a neutral category. What is at stake is
normativity on a global scale with the domestic courtroom turned into a site of
spatial contestation. This paper explores the construction of ‘the
transnational’ as space, which implicates a ‘politics of space’ at work
underneath the exposed surface of legal argumentation. The ‘Kiobel
situation’ is addressed as a case belonging to a broader picture, including the
following contested elements of space: a particular spatial condition of modern
nation-state territoriality; the production of ‘counter-space’, eventually
undermining the spatial regime of inter-state society; and the state not
accepting its withering away. How are normative boundaries between the involved
jurisdictional spaces drawn? How does the ‘politics of space’ work underneath or
beyond the plain moments of judicial decision-making? How territorialised is the
legal knowledge at work and how does territoriality work in legal
arguments?
ARTICLE: Mootz on Hermeneutics and Law
Francis Joseph Mootz's 'Hermeneutics and Law', to be included in N Keane and C Lawn (eds), The Blackwell
Companion to Hermeneutics is available on SSRN:
This chapter will appear in a
forthcoming book on hermeneutics. After providing a hermeneutical phenomenology
of legal practice that locates legal interpretation at the center of the rule of
law, the chapter considers three important hermeneutical themes:
(1) the critical distinction between a legal historian writing aboout a law in the past and a judge deciding a case according to the law;
(2) the reinvigoration of the natural law tradition against the reductive characteristics of legal positivism by consturing human nature as hermeneutical; and
(3) the role of philosophical hermeneutics in grounding critical legal theory rather than serving as a quiescent acceptance of the status quo, as elaborated by reconsidering the famous exchanges between Gadamer, Ricoeur and Habermas.
I argue that these three important themes are sufficient to underwrite Gadamer's famous assertion that legal practice has exemplary status for hermeneutical theory.
(1) the critical distinction between a legal historian writing aboout a law in the past and a judge deciding a case according to the law;
(2) the reinvigoration of the natural law tradition against the reductive characteristics of legal positivism by consturing human nature as hermeneutical; and
(3) the role of philosophical hermeneutics in grounding critical legal theory rather than serving as a quiescent acceptance of the status quo, as elaborated by reconsidering the famous exchanges between Gadamer, Ricoeur and Habermas.
I argue that these three important themes are sufficient to underwrite Gadamer's famous assertion that legal practice has exemplary status for hermeneutical theory.
BOOK: Birks on The Roman Law of Obligations
*** Exclusive 30% discount from Oxford University
Press ***
Peter Birks
Edited by Eric Descheemaeker
Now:
£35.00 (was £50.00)
The Roman Law of Obligations presents a series of
lectures delivered by the late Peter Birks as an introductory course in Roman
law. Discovered in complete manuscript form following his death, the lectures
are published here for the first time.
Customers can claim the discount by visiting our website
at www.oup.co.uk/law , adding a book
to the shopping basket, and entering the code ALAUTH14 in the promotional
code box.
JOURNAL: Jurisprudence: An International Journal of Legal and Political Thought (Hart Publishing)
The latest issue of Jurisprudence: An International Journal of Legal and Political Thought (Hart Publishing) is available.
Its articles include:
The Jurisprudence Annual Lecture 2014—Law and the
Normativity of Obligation
Thomas Pink
Abstract: The paper examines the natural law
tradition in ethics and legal theory. This tradition is shown to address two
questions. The first question is to do with the nature of law, and the kind of
human capacity that is subject to legal direction. Is law directive of the
voluntary—of what is subject to the will, or what can be done or refrained from
on the basis of a decision so to do? Or is law directive of some other kind of
capacity? The second question is about the nature of ethical normativity, and
the relation within normativity of its directive and appraisive aspects. Is
direction primary, and appraisal to be explained in terms of a theory of
direction; or must a theory of ethical direction be based on a theory of ethical
appraisal? Both issues are introduced by reference to Hume’s ethical theory,
which raises them in a particularly sharp form. The natural law tradition, in
the form it reached by the early modern period, is shown to combine giving a
primacy to the appraisive in normative theory, with, in legal theory, a
detachment of law from any exclusive tie to the direction of the voluntary. At
the heart of the theory of natural law is the idea of law as a distinctive form
of normativity directive of a capacity not for voluntariness, but for
self-determination. Combined with a view of the state not just as a coordinative
authority but as a coercive teacher, this led to a distinctive and highly
controversial view of the scope of positive law. The paper ends with Hobbes’s
sharp opposition to this view of positive law—an opposition that focused, in
particular, on the coercive legal direction of
belief.
Chewing Cud: Revisiting Hart and
Jurisprudence
Allan C Hutchinson
Abstract: The recent publication of a lost essay by
Herbert Hart is important for an historical appreciation of his work, but its
likely celebration is a sad testament to the poverty and lethargy of
contemporary legal thought. I use this occasion to review the state and
condition of contemporary legal theorising. After positioning Hart’s essay in
the prevailing jurisprudential milieu, I highlight the thrust and the failings
of the three main traditional approaches to contemporary legal theorising (ie,
positivism, naturalism and formalism) in regard to the nature and operation of
‘judicial discretion’. Then, I suggest an alternative approach to legal
theorising that recommends a more satisfying way of
proceeding.
Why Jurisprudence Is Not Legal
Philosophy
Roger Cotterrell
Abstract: The aim of this article is to describe and
defend jurisprudence as an enterprise of theorising about law that is distinct
from what is now understood as legal philosophy in the Anglophone world.
Jurisprudence must draw on legal philosophy but also from many other resources.
It should be an open quest for juristically (rather than philosophically)
significant insights about law. Its purpose is to inform and guide the juristic
task of making organised social regulation a valuable practice, rooted and
effective in the specific contexts and historical conditions in which it exists
but also aimed at serving demands for justice and security through regulation,
as these perennial values are understood in their time and place, and as they
might be further clarified and reconciled as legal
ideals.
Hobbesian Sovereigns and the Question of Supra-State
Authority
Sylvie Loriaux
Abstract:
Thomas Hobbes has often been portrayed as supporting a
‘realist’ view of international relations—a view in which everything is
permitted among states, in which the insecurity of the international sphere
justifies states in unrestrainedly pursuing the national interest. Yet, as this
paper aims to show, this interpretation is not without difficulties. It
overshadows both the advantages that Hobbes believes can be gained from
interstate cooperation and the fundamental role he attributes to a superior
common authority in making cooperative ventures stable and lasting. More
specifically, this paper brings into relief the important limitations that
Hobbes’s natural law theory places on sovereigns’ freedom of action. It also
argues that the most frequently advanced disanalogies between the Hobbesian
interpersonal and interstate states of nature fail to explain why it would be
irrational for Hobbesian sovereigns to submit to a supra-state authority; the
main obstacle is instead to be found in Hobbes’s (questionable) absolutist
conception of sovereignty.
JOB: Tenure-track Assistant Professor of Criminology and Law Studies at Marquette University
Marquette University (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) is searching for a tenure-track
Assistant Professor of Criminology and Law Studies. A doctorate in criminology,
criminal justice, sociology or a related field is required. The position
announcement is attached. Queries can be addressed to department chair, Jane
Peterson by email at jane.peterson@marquette.edu.
Review of candidates will begin on October 1, 2014.
JOB: Tenure-track position in Public Law/Law & Society
The Division of Politics, Administration and Justice at the California
State University, Fullerton (CSUF) is seeking a tenure-track colleague in Public
Law/Law & Society. We welcome applications from candidates from all areas of
specialization within Public Law/Law & Society. Thematically, we are
particularly interested in reviewing application materials from
individuals whose teaching and research speak to: gender, race, law, inequality,
and subordinated identities; culture, ancestry & political status; and
international perspectives (e.g. global human rights); religion, sexual and
gender identity. We welcome applications from all methodological traditions but
prefer candidates who are experienced and open to a mix of quantitative,
qualitative, and interdisciplinary methodologies.
More information at http://diversity.fullerton.edu/jobs/ft/public_law.asp
Deadline for applications is October 1, 2014.
ARTICLE: De-Gioia Carabellese on Diachronic and Comparative Reflections in the Matter of the Concept of the Arrha
The abstract reads:
A jurisdiction such as the Scottish one, reputedly with solid Roman roots, is practically bereft of the fundamental concept of a deposit in the concluding passage of the missives. Alternatively, the relevant "ancestor" (Roman law) has been profoundly permeated, throughout the course of its history, by the notion of an arrha (the earnest) in the conclusion of a contract annexed to the transfer of heritable properties. Moreover, in contemporary times and outwith Scotland, a Continental jurisdiction (the Italian one) is resolutely lingering on the Roman caparra penitenziale while, ironically, the English system (comprehensively "un-Roman" in its formation) has expressly adopted the "deposit" as part of the closing particulars.
These asymmetries and crossovers, brim-full with inviting legal ingredients, seem, in the present work, to conjure up an intriguing and captivating plot worthy of an Indiana Jones' film, where the lost treasure can be deemed replaceable, for the distracted reader, by the ancient Roman notion of an arrha, so evidently not inherited by the contemporary Scottish jurisprudence. Ultimately, the contribution engenders the usual unsettling query: in the light of the phenomenology of the arrha so neglected in Scotland in contemporary times, is Scottish law still a mixed legal system or, conversely, a jurisdiction progressively getting closer to the English common law counterpart?!!!
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Trade, Law and Development
The Board of Editors of Trade,
Law and Development [TL&D] is pleased to invite original, unpublished
manuscripts for publication in the Winter ‘14 Issue of the Journal (Vol. 6, No.
2) in the form of Articles, Notes, Comments, and Book
Reviews.
Manuscripts received by September 17,
2014 pertaining to any area within the purview of international economic law
will be reviewed for publication in the Winter ‘14
issue.
TL&D aims to generate and sustain a
democratic debate on emerging issues in international economic law, with a
special focus on the developing world. Towards these ends, we have published
works by noted scholars such as Prof. Petros Mavroidis, Prof. Mitsuo Matsuhita,
Prof. Raj Bhala, Prof. Joel Trachtman, Gabrielle Marceau, Simon Lester, Prof.
Bryan Mercurio, Prof. E.U. Petersmann and Prof. M. Sornarajah among others.
TL&D also has the distinction of being ranked the best journal in India
across all fields of law for three consecutive years and the
10th best trade journal worldwide by Washington and Lee
University,
School of Law [The
Washington & Lee Rankings are considered to be the most comprehensive in
this regard]]
For more information, please go through
the submission guidelines available at www.tradelawdevelopment.com or write to us
at editors[at]tradelawdevelopment.com
BOOK: Vanoverbeke, Maesschalck, Nelken, and Parmentier on The Changing Role Of Law In Japan
Elgar has published The Changing Role Of Law In Japan: Empirical Studies in Culture, Society and Policy Making:Edited by Dimitri Vanoverbeke, Professor of Japanese Studies, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium, Jeroen Maesschalck, Professor of Criminology, Faculty of Law, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium, David Nelken, Distinguished Professor of Legal Institutions and Social Change, University of Macerata, Italy and Professor of Comparative and Transnational Law, King’s College London, UK and Stephan Parmentier, Professor of Sociology of Crime, Law, and Human Rights, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium
‘The role of culture in the operation of Japanese law is one of the great questions of sociolegal studies. Discussions tend to polarize, between a simplistic view of cultural determinism and a more universalist approach that emphasizes institutions. This superb collection, with a diverse and accomplished set of contributors, takes culture seriously. It shows how legal institutions have both shaped and been shaped by Japanese legal culture. A state-of-the art assessment of Japanese law after more than a decade of reforms, this book is a must for anyone interested in understanding legal culture more broadly.’
–Tom Ginsburg, University of Chicago Law School, US
JOURNAL: The German Law Journal
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JURIS DIVERSITAS: Normal Service Will Resume Shortly
Our apologies.
The recent, and very successful, Juris Diversitas Conference has kept us occupied and delayed blog posts.
Normal service will resume shortly.