NOTICE: The Concept of 'law' in Context: Comparative Law, Legal Philosophy, and the Social Sciences Conference (21-22 October 2011 - Lausanne, Switzerland)

Juris Diversitas has, with the Swiss Institute of Comparative law (SICL), organised a conference on The concept of 'law' in context: comparative law, legal philosophy, and the social sciences to be held from 21-22 October 2011 at the Institute in Lausanne, Switzerland.

In addition to the 'interventions' of Werner Menski (SOAS) and William Twining (UCL and Miami), many others will participate:

Marc Amstutz (Fribourg), Gerhard Anders (Edinburgh), Mauro Bussani (Trento), Seán Patrick Donlan (Limerick), Baudouin Dupret (CNRS) Julia Ekert (Berne), Lukas Heckendorn Urscheler, (SICL), Alessio Lo Giudice (Catania), Emmanuel Melissaris (LSE), Alexander Morawa (Lucerne), David Nelken (Cardiff and Macerata), and Mark van Hoeke (Catholic University Brussels).

The conference themes are explained as:

 

The coexistence of the laws of the state and other normative orders, in the Western past and the global present, is a challenge to both modern legal philosophy and comparative law. The continuing importance of non-state norms, trans-national and sub-national, undermines the state-centred focus of much contemporary jurisprudence. It also problematises the neat division of complex and dynamic legal traditions into discrete families of closed legal systems.

Our project on Legal Philosophy in Context will also be discussed and a volume will be published based on papers delivered at the conference.

In addition, the collection from Juris Diversitas' previous conference with the SICL in 2009—Comparative law and hybrid legal traditions—is now available for free online at http://www.e-collection.isdc.ch/ (it's volume 67).

NOTICE: New Issue of Opinio Juris in Comparatione

The new issue of Opinio Juris in Comparatione is available online.

NOTICE: Newest Issue of PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review

The newest issue of PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, including a symposium on Bureaucracy, is accessible online.

Journal of Civil Law Studies: Volume 4 Issue 1 (May 2011) is Online

The Center of Civil Law Studies at the LSU Law Center announces the publication of Volume 4 Issue 1 of the Journal of Civil Law Studies (JCLS). All volumes are freely accessible online, at http://www.law.lsu.edu/jcls.

Articles:

• Is the Pre-20th Century American Legal System a Common Law System? An Exercise in Legal Taxonomy, Jacques Vanderlinden


• Juridical Personality and Intimacy, Michael McAuley


• Transition without Transformation: Legal Reform in the Democratization and Development Processes, Ermal Frasheri


• Interspousal Claims at the Crossroads of Tort Law and Family Law: The Delicate Balance between Family and Individual, Biagio Andó


• Legal Protection of Minority Shareholders of Listed Corporations in Brazil: Brief History, Legal Structure and Empirical Evidence, Bruno Meyerhof Salama & Viviane Muller Prado


• The Slaves and Slavery of Marie Claire Chabert: Familial Black Slaveholding in Antebellum Louisiana, Mitra Sharafi

Book Review:
N. Whitty & R. Zimmermann, Rights of Personality in Scots Law, Olivier Moréteau

RE: Legal Pluralism in Europe

The following article, now available on SSRN, might be of interest:

Nils Jansen, "Legal pluralism in Europe: national laws, European legislation, and non-legislative codifications"

The paper compares the present state of European private law with the plural structure of early modern law in Europe. This comparison reveals – despite important differences – important structural similarities. Perhaps the most striking one is the structural parallel in the piecemeal political legislation of the acquis communautaire on the one hand, and medieval Canon law and early modern local legislation on the other hand. The resulting fractions between the formal acquis communautaire and the informal acqus commun are an expression of a new plural structure of modern European private law that resembles the plural structure of the earlier ius commune, itself based on an informal and a formal body of law (Roman law viz Canon law).

NOTICE: Laïcité in Comparative Perspective

The Center for Law and Religion at St John's School of Law (US) has recently published a collection of papers drawn from its inaugural conference, Laïcité in Comparative Perspective:

At this conference, held in June 2010 at the St. John's Paris campus, American and European scholars presented papers and participated in robust roundtable discussions that compared the French model of church-state relations, laïcité, with models that exist in other countries, including the United States, Italy and Spain. Professor Douglas Laycock of the University of Virginia gave the Conference Introduction. The proceedings are now available at 49 Journal of Catholic Legal Studies 1 (2010).

The Center for Law and Religion at St. John's School of Law provides a forum for an open dialogue on, and the in-depth study of, law and religion from domestic, international and comparative perspectives. We also offer our students a unique opportunity to examine the interplay between law and religion in our local and global communities. For more information about the Center and our programs, please visit our website or contact us at clr@stjohns.edu.

NOTICE: Fulbright Scholar Awards in the Middle East and North Africa, 2012-13

Fulbright Scholar Awards in the Middle East and North Africa, 2012-13

The Fulbright Scholar Program is now accepting applications for awards to teach and/or carry out research in the Middle East and North Africa in the 2012-13 academic year for periods of from 3 to 10 months.

Approximately 50 awards will be offered to scholars in any field of the arts, humanities, sciences, technology, social sciences, law, business and education. A PhD or terminal degree, a record of teaching and research and U.S. citizenship are required. Foreign language proficiency is not required for most teaching.

Deadline for applications is August 1, 2011.

For more information, visit http://catalog.cies.org/ or contact Gary Garrison, ggarrison@iie.org, 202-686-4019.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Biennial Conference of the Canadian Initiative in Law, Culture and Humanities (Ottawa, 20-22 October 2011)

The Biennial Conference of the Canadian Initiative in Law, Culture and Humanities (CILCH) will be held in Ottawa, Canada from October 20-22, 2011. Its theme is Dis/Locating Law:

Dislocation is a phenomenon of space, place and time. To dislocate something is to upset, complicate, or displace it. It involves getting things out of place, out of order, and out of time, or to question if things are indeed in their ‘right’ place and time. Dislocating, then, can be disorienting; it can dislodge comfortable assumptions, and it can unsettle, perhaps even painfully, what has gone before. Dislocation invites different perspectives, produces new cartographies, disrupts teleologies. This conference will feature papers and presentations which unsettle the place of law in relation to political, ethical, social, cultural or symbolic orders.

The Canadian Initiative in Law, Culture and Humanities (CILCH) invites you to participate in its 2011 conference on the theme of dis/locating law. The conference is interdisciplinary, drawing together scholars whose research addresses the intersections among culture, the humanities and law, including but not limited to studies of law and literature, law and film/television, cultural practices of regulation, mediation and law, intersections of cultural theory and the legal, alternative visions of legally coded practices, and so on.

This year’s theme is intentionally broad in order to provide an open-ended focus for exploration. The conference is hosted with the goals of stimulating conversations among diverse scholars with shared interests, of continuing to foster the growing community of law, culture and humanities scholars in Canada, and of contributing to a global network of scholarship in these areas.

If you are interested in giving a paper, hosting a roundtable, or offering another form of presentation (either almost finished works or works in progress), please submit a proposal to CILCH@carleton.ca, as follows:

- title of proposed paper/presentation
- 200 word biography of presenter(s)
- contact information for presenter(s)
- an abstract outlining the paper/presentation of a maximum of 300 words
- detail on any technical requirements (data projector, sound system, etc.)

We very much look forward to receiving your proposal and to yet another productive and thought-provoking CILCH gathering.

The deadline for submission is June 15, 2011.

REMINDER: Third International Congress of the World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists

The Third International Congress of the World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists will be held 20-23 June 2011 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

Registration closes on 31 May 2011.


The theme is 'Methodology and Innovation in Mixed Legal Systems':

Mixed legal systems, both the classical ‘mixed jurisdictions’ combining common law and civilian law and more exotic hybrids, are increasingly important touchstones for comparative law. The Third Congress of the World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists focuses on legal methodology and innovation in mixed systems in the twenty-first century: Investigating past experiences, exploring present practices, and predicting future possibilities

For additional information, including the (very diverse) provisional programme, see the conference website.

NOTICE: Transnational Legal Theory

The latest issue of Transnational Legal Theory has been released.

It includes

Articles

The Dual Foundation of Universal Jurisdiction: Towards a Jurisprudence for the ‘Court of Critique’

Itamar Mann

Civilising Globalism: Transnational Norm-Building Networks as a Lever of the Emerging Global Legal Order?
Ulrich Mückenberger

Reviews

Legality’s Frontier: A review of Keith Culver and Michael Giudice, Legality’s Borders: An Essay in General Jurisprudence
WJ Waluchow

Integration and Function: Taming Governance in the EU? A review of Poul F Kjaer, Between Governing and Governance: On the Emergence,Function and Form of Europe’s Post-National Constellation
Sarah Kahn-Nisser and Gianluigi Palombella

The Law of Laws: Reviews of Yuval Shany, Regulating Jurisdictional Relations between National and International Courts and George Letsas, A Theory of Interpretation of the European Convention of Human Rights
Pavlos Eleftheriadis

Locating the Limits of Negotiation: Islam, Human Rights, and Citizenship: A review of Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na’im, Islam and the Secular State: Negotiating the Future of Shari’a
Mohamad Al-Hakim

Critical Notice: A Liberal Theory of International Justice: A review of Andrew Altman and Christopher Heath Wellman, A Liberal Theory of International Justice
Idil Boran

What’s New, and What’s Different? On the Republican Contribution to Political Theory: A review of Samantha Besson and José Luis Martí (eds), Legal Republicanism: National and International Perspectives
Cécile Laborde

Adapting to Climate Change: A review of Jane McAdam (ed), Climate Change and Displacement: Multidisciplinary Perspectives
Benjamin J Richardson