The Constitution of India

A Contextual Analysis

By Arun K. Thiruvengadam

This book provides an overview of the Indian Constitution by situating it within its broader socio-political context. It focuses on the overarching principles and the main institutions of constitutional governance that the world's longest written constitution inaugurated in 1950. The nine substantive chapters of the book deal with specific aspects of the Indian constitutional tradition as it has evolved across seven decades of its existence as an independent nation. Starting with a focus on the pre-history of the constitution and its making, the book moves onto an examination of the structural features and actual operation of principal governance institutions, including the executive and the parliament, the institutions of federalism and local government, and the judiciary. An unusual feature of Indian constitutionalism is the role played by technocratic institutions such as the Election Commission, the Comptroller and Auditor General, and a set of new regulatory institutions, most of which were created since the 1990s. A considerable focus of the book is on provisions relating to rights and issues of multiculturalism. The final chapter deals with the important issue of constitutional change in India. The book employs a narrative form to describe the twists, turns, and challenges confronted across nearly seven decades of the operation of the constitution. It departs from conventional Indian constitutional scholarship by placing less emphasis on constitutional doctrine (as evolved in judicial decisions delivered by the High Courts and the Supreme Court). The focus, instead, is on highlighting the political bargains and extra-legal developments that have influenced constitutional evolution. Written for a general audience that is interested in understanding the complex yet fascinating challenges posed by constitutionalism in India, the book's unconventional approach to some standard issues will stimulate the more seasoned student of constitutional law and politics. (Series: Constitutional Systems of the World) [Subject: Constitutional & Administrative Law, South Asian Law, Comparative Law]

The Juris Diversitas Conference is Moved to April 2019

Though the Call for Papers for the Juris Diversitas 2018 Conference on Law, Roots and Space yields promising submissions, prospective participants regret that they face a dilemma, due to a number of worldwide comparative law events organized on several continents in a very active 2018 conference season. Limited resources force many of our members to choose participating in the World Congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law (July 22-28, Fukuoka, Japan), in Juris Diversitas (June 25-27, Potchefstroom, South Africa), or in the World Congress of the International Association of Constitutional Law (June 18-22, Seoul, Korea).

The Executive Committee of Juris Diversitas therefore resolved to postpone the 2018 Conference, moving it to April 15-17, 2019, in Potchefstroom, South Africa. Existing submissions will be reviewed, there shall be an extended call for papers, and participants will be invited, though not compelled, to communicate papers ahead of time, which may allow for the organization of a more dynamic event.

The Executive Committee also decided to move forward with the plan to organize biennial rather than annual large-scale events. This means that forthcoming large-scale conferences will be organized in odd years, leaving room for smaller more thematic events during even years. This will free time and energy for a better diffusion of our work, thereby enhancing collective publications under the Juris Diversitas name.  Our members are encouraged to come up with proposals and ideas, whether event or publication related, or both. Smaller theme events will be regarded a success if truly transdisciplinary, with a significant proportion of participants from outside the legal community.

The Executive Committee hopes that the biennial pattern will keep attracting comparative law scholars thinking out of the box and further the dialogue with a growing number of scholars from other disciplines, whether in hard sciences or humanities. 

For the Executive Committee,

Olivier Moréteau

President of Juris Diversitas

Religious Marriages in the Mediterranean

Religious Marriages in the Mediterranean

Venue and date: Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta, 20-21 March 2018 Within Mediterranean settings, religious marriage has functioned for centuries, together with conversion, as a means both of formal social incorporation and of exclusion of outsiders in relation to religiously-defined officially-recognised ethnic communities. Such an approach was an integral part of the Ottoman constitution; aspects of the millet system continue to have some posthumous existence in states like Lebanon and Cyprus. Over the last century or so, the development of secular or ‘quasi-secular’ nation-states throughout the region has generally meant the replacement of religious by civil marriage within state legal systems. Whether this has occurred via silent absorption or principled exclusion of religious unions, or even by the creation of dualist systems giving civil marriage pride of place, the juridical implications have been profound and range from the complete legal marginalisation of previously dominant religious traditions to the creation of ‘protected zones’ within secular jurisdictions within which religious law can operate. Everywhere religious courts have been
side-lined and have either been completely eliminated from the formal state’s radar, or compelled to accept a subordinate position within the state judicial hierarchy. At the same time, formally secular forms of marriage with religious conceptual roots have had to serve as important gate-keepers in granting or withholding access to citizenship and legal residence in states like Greece, Malta or Spain, which have been at the forefront of Mediterranean migrant flows.

More recently unregistered religious marriages have gone through a revival, proving also to be a useful vehicle for addressing mismatches between state legislation and the matrimonial strategies of couples. Thus the Mediterranean, a point of both intersection and mixing where ideas about the ‘West’ and its ‘other’, are re-produced and transformed, has witnessed how these transitions resulted in either a tense relationship between marriages regulated by formal, state laws and religious marriages celebrated according to informal, religious norms, or on the other end of the spectrum, civil marriages and (certain) religious marriages living harmoniously side-by-side and at times also being considered synonymous.

This multidisciplinary conference seeks to bring together researchers who have engaged in research on religious marriages in the Mediterranean. Papers may focus on, but are not limited to, one or more of the following themes:
1. Exploring the legal and social interaction between religious and civil marriages in the Mediterranean, whether contemporary or historical perspective (colonial and postcolonial).
2. Investigating the non-apparent connections between different religions within and without marriage legislation (Sunni, Shia, Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic, Jewish, Hindu…), including papers on mixed marriages.
3. How human/civil rights discourses blend and/or conflict with other forms of theological, moral and/or customary discourses on religious marriages.
4. Diverse ways of concluding and/or celebrating religious marriages in the Mediterranean.
5. Problematization and politicization of religious marriages in the Mediterranean.

Organizers:
Ibtisam Sadegh (University of Amsterdam)
David Zammit (University of Malta)
Susan Hirsch (George Mason University)

Papers (7,000-8,000 words), will be considered for publication in a special issue of the international, peer-reviewed Journal of Mediterranean Studies (ISSN: 1016-3476), published by the Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta and available electronically through Project Muse.

Upon request, limited travel and accommodation funds (two nights) may be available for short-listed candidates who cannot apply for funding from their own universities. Please submit your request for funding with your paper proposal.

Key note speaker:
Annelies Moors, Professor of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam

Deadline for abstract submission: 31 January 2018
Abstracts of 200-300 words are to be submitted via e-mail: i.sadegh@uva.nl with ‘abstract’
and your last name in the subject heading.

Timeline:
31 January 2018: Deadline for abstract submission
10 February 2018: Notification of acceptance
1 March 2018: Deadline for complete draft of paper between 5000 – 8000 words or a PowerPoint presentation.
20-21 March 2018: Conference hosted by the Mediterranean Institute
1 April 2018: Select participants will be invited to submit papers for consideration for publication in 2018 in the Journal of Mediterranean Studies

This two-day conference is organized by the University of Malta through the Department of Civil Law and the Mediterranean Institute research group on Belief, Identity and Exchange in conjunction with the ERC-funded research project on ‘Problematizing “Muslim Marriages”: Ambiguities and Contestations’ hosted by the University of Amsterdam.

See http://religionresearch.org/musmar2014/ 

Juris Diversitas 6th Annual Conference, Call for Papers

CALL FOR PAPERS
Prolonged till January 15, 2018

JURIS DIVERSITAS

6^th ANNUAL CONFERENCE

June 25-27, 2018

Potchefstroom, South Africa

In partnership with

Faculty of Law, North-West University, Potchefstroom & the Centre for Comparative Law in Africa

Law, Roots & Space

The Theme:

A couple of lawyers’ old friends: ‘Sources’ and ‘Jurisdictions’. In their parlance, these notions are often associated to modern, ‘positive’ law.

The idea of ‘Legal formants’ has been introduced to complete the picture, flexibilising it, making it more accurate, nuanced, realistic; an idea associated to comparative, socio-legal, anthropologic studies.

With ‘Roots’ and ‘space’ geographers, historians, political scientists get involved. These are certainly less frequent notions in legal circles: we may still wish to make friends with them, to enrich our perception of legal phenomena.

‘Roots’ is often associated to history of law and related discourses – if legal formants may complete a picture, legal roots do complete the movie, so to speak.

‘Space’: an open notion, perhaps a non-notion in modern legal discourse, generic enough to include every spatial dimension of legal phenomena: dissemination of movie theaters and other forms of diffusion of the various show-biz products could be the appropriate metaphor here, including space law and virtual property.

A legal discourse that goes beyond the checkboards, or the series of juxtaposed swimming pools – Tetris-style – containing water from their respective individual sources, produced by modern, Westphalian conceptions of the law. It goes, instead, to normative forces producing their effects without a precise geographic boundary: like radio stations, magnetic or gravitational fields. Or like intricate sets of rivers, lakes, canals, ponds, infiltrated wetlands, oceans, weather, all contributing to a locally diversified but still unitary eco-system and bio-sphere of water, landscape, vegetation, fauna.

A discourse on normative forces and the fuzziness of their historic and geographic reach.

Submissions:

Panel proposals and interdisciplinary presentations are strongly encouraged, as is the participation of doctoral students and scholars from outside of the discipline of law. While parallel sessions featuring three presentations of twenty-minute each will be the pattern, we welcome creative arrangements.

Proposals should be in English or in French. Proposals of circa 250 words (or 1000 words for panel proposals with three or more speakers) should be submitted to Professor Salvatore Mancuso at: Salvatore.Mancuso@ac.ac.za or Professor Christa Rautenbach at: Christa.Rautenbach@nwu.ac.za by January 15, 2018, with a short biography paragraph listing major or relevant publications. Make this a single Word document with minimal formatting, so that proposal and biography can be copied easily into the conference program.

Registration Fees:

€200 or €125 for Juris Diversitas members paid up for 2018. 

Special rate for young scholars under the age of thirty coming the first time and for scholars in developing nations: €150 or €75 for Juris Diversitas members paid up for 2018.

Note that fees do not cover travel, accommodation, or the conference dinner (€25).

Additional Information:

Information regarding accommodation options, travel, other conferences in South Africa, payment methods, etc. will be provided soon.

Le droit talmudique saisi par le droit comparé

22 & 23 novembre 2017, Nancy.

Download the conference program / Téléchargez le programme du colloque

Call for Papers - Flags, Identity, Memory: Critiquing the Public Narrative through Color

Flags, Identity, Memory: Critiquing the Public Narrative through Color

Anne Wagner and Sarah Marusek (eds)

In our project, the identification of “identity” employs culturally specific color codes and images that conceal assumptions about members of a people comprising a nation, or a people within a nation. Flags narrate constructions of belonging that become tethered to negotiations for power and resistance over time and throughout a people’s history. Bennet (2005) defines identity as “the imagined sameness of a person or social group at all times and in all circumstances”. While such likeness may be imagined or even perpetuated, the idea of sameness may be socially, politically, culturally, and historically contested to reveal competing pasts and presents. Visually evocative and ideologically representative, flags are recognized symbols fusing color with meaning that prescribe a story of unity. Yet, through semiotic confrontation, there may be different paths leading to different truths and applications of significance.

Knowing this and their function, we should investigate these transmitted values over time and space. Indeed, flags may have evolved in key historical periods, but contemporaneaously transpire in a variety of ways. We should therefore investigate these transmitted values:

- Which values are being transmitted?

- Have their colors evolved through space and time? Is there a shift in cultural and/or collective meaning from one space to another?

- What are their sources?

- What is the relationship between law and flags in their visual representations?

- What is the shared collective and/or cultural memory beyond this visual representation? Considering the complexity and diversity in the building of a common memory with flags, we would suggest our contributors interrogate the complex color- coded sign system of particular flags and their meanings attentive to a complex

configuration of historical, social and cultural conditions that shift over time.

For the reference book:

Abstracts should be submitted by April 1, 2018 to Anne Wagner (valwagnerfr@yahoo.com) and Sarah Marusek (marusek@hawaii.edu). Acceptance will be sent by May 31, 2018 with other instructions.

A PRELIMINARY CONFERENCE WILL BE ORGANIZED FROM 7 TO 9 February 2018 at the Université de Lille 2 (France). 

Should you wish to participate to this conference, please send an abstract by 2 January 2018 at the latest to Anne Wagner (valwagnerfr@yahoo.com).

Further information about registration fees will be sent afterwards.

Anne Wagner, Ph. D., Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches - Qualifiée

Associate Professor, Université du Littoral Côte d'Opale (France)

Correspondante LANSAD/CRL - CGU CALAIS

Centre Droit et Perspectives du Droit, Equipe René Demogue - Université de Lille II (France)

Research Professor, China University of Political Science and Law (Beijing - China)

http://fr.linkedin.com/in/annewagner

http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-90-481-9322-6/page/1

Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - http://www.springer.com/law/journal/11196

Series Editor, Law, Language and Communication - Routledge (https://www.routledge.com/series/ASHSER1363)

President of the International Roundtables for the Semiotics of Law - http://www.semioticsoflaw.com/

New Publications from Klaus Schwarz Verlag, Berlin

New Publications / Neuerscheinungen

Klaus Schwarz Verlag New releases / Neuerscheinungen 2017/2018

Gábor Hamza

Studies on Legal Relations between the Ottoman Empire/the Republic of Turkey and Hungary, Cyprus, and Macedonia

Selected Essays in Hungarian, English, German, and Turkish

With a foreword by Kinga Hazai, a postface by J. Hóvári, and a devotement by György Hazai
Berlin 2017, Hardcover, 240 pp., 978-3-87997-463-4 € 48,00

Gábor Hamza's studies contribute immeasurably to the understanding of the history of civil law, the different codification processes and its cross-border influence. Comparative legal studies such as his are not only invaluable for fathoming the various ways in which society can exist but also pave the way for future legal experts to one day achieve the long desired co-existence and mutual respect between differencing cultures and religions.

Şuayip Seven

Traditionelle Hadith-Hermeneutik

im Zusammenhang mit modernen Ansätzen der Ankaraner Schule

Islamkundliche Untersuchungen 335

Berlin 2017. Hardcover, 337 S., 978-3-87997-470-2 € 49,80

Şuayip Seven stellt die Gedankenstrukturen zweier Ausrichtungen der traditionellen Hadithwissenschaften, der traditionalistischen und der teleologischen, gegenüber und setzt sie zu modernen Ansätzen der Ankaraner Schule in Beziehung. Er plädiert dafür, in der modernen Hadith-Hermeneutik an diese bis heute wenig beachtete sinn- und zweckorientierierte Gelehrsamkeit in der traditionellen Hadithwissenschaft anzuknüpfen.

Please find here a complete list of our new and forthcoming publications.
Hier finden Sie eine vollständige Liste unserer neuen und in in Vorbereitung befindlichen Publikationen:

Klaus Schwarz Verlag New releases / Neuerscheinungen 2017/2018

Juris Diversitas 6th Annual Conference, Call for Papers

CALL FOR PAPERS

JURIS DIVERSITAS

6^th ANNUAL CONFERENCE

June 25-27, 2018

Potchefstroom, South Africa

In partnership with

Faculty of Law, North-West University, Potchefstroom & the Centre for Comparative Law in Africa

Law, Roots & Space

The Theme:

A couple of lawyers’ old friends: ‘Sources’ and ‘Jurisdictions’. In their parlance, these notions are often associated to modern, ‘positive’ law.

The idea of ‘Legal formants’ has been introduced to complete the picture, flexibilising it, making it more accurate, nuanced, realistic; an idea associated to comparative, socio-legal, anthropologic studies.

With ‘Roots’ and ‘space’ geographers, historians, political scientists get involved. These are certainly less frequent notions in legal circles: we may still wish to make friends with them, to enrich our perception of legal phenomena.

‘Roots’ is often associated to history of law and related discourses – if legal formants may complete a picture, legal roots do complete the movie, so to speak.

‘Space’: an open notion, perhaps a non-notion in modern legal discourse, generic enough to include every spatial dimension of legal phenomena: dissemination of movie theaters and other forms of diffusion of the various show-biz products could be the appropriate metaphor here, including space law and virtual property.

A legal discourse that goes beyond the checkboards, or the series of juxtaposed swimming pools – Tetris-style – containing water from their respective individual sources, produced by modern, Westphalian conceptions of the law. It goes, instead, to normative forces producing their effects without a precise geographic boundary: like radio stations, magnetic or gravitational fields. Or like intricate sets of rivers, lakes, canals, ponds, infiltrated wetlands, oceans, weather, all contributing to a locally diversified but still unitary eco-system and bio-sphere of water, landscape, vegetation, fauna.

A discourse on normative forces and the fuzziness of their historic and geographic reach.

Submissions:

Panel proposals and interdisciplinary presentations are strongly encouraged, as is the participation of doctoral students and scholars from outside of the discipline of law. While parallel sessions featuring three presentations of twenty-minute each will be the pattern, we welcome creative arrangements.

Proposals should be in English or in French. Proposals of circa 250 words (or 1000 words for panel proposals with three or more speakers) should be submitted to Professor Salvatore Mancuso at: Salvatore.Mancuso@ac.ac.za or Professor Christa Rautenbach at: Christa.Rautenbach@nwu.ac.za by December 15, 2017, with a short biography paragraph listing major or relevant publications. Make this a single Word document with minimal formatting, so that proposal and biography can be copied easily into the conference program.

Registration Fees:

€200 or €125 for Juris Diversitas members paid up for 2018. 

Special rate for young scholars under the age of thirty coming the first time and for scholars in developing nations: €150 or €75 for Juris Diversitas members paid up for 2018.

Note that fees do not cover travel, accommodation, or the conference dinner (€25).

Additional Information:

Information regarding accommodation options, travel, other conferences in South Africa, payment methods, etc. will be provided soon.

The Santillana Codes, by Dan E. Stigall

The Santillana Codes: the Civil Codes of Tunisia, Morocco, and Mauritania. In that book, my objects of focus are the civil codes in force in Tunisia, Morocco, and Mauritania.  The book also explores the history of their “intellectual father” – a Jewish man from Tunisia named David Santillana (1855 – 1931) who was a masterful comparativist and an expert in both Islamic law and European legal systems.  It also touches on the importance of civil codes in facilitating stability in volatile regions.

These subjects are difficult and intriguing due to the persistent lacunae in the literature regarding the law and legal history of Maghrebian and Sahelian states—a veil of obscurity which has served to undervalue African, Islamic, and Jewish contributions to global legal development.  The aim of my forthcoming book is, therefore, to dispel this obscurity by illuminating the work of David Santillana, an influential jurist and lawyer who worked in North Africa and Europe during the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and his innovative approach to codification.  Beyond that, I aim to show how the legal histories and cultures of each relevant country contributed to this distinct class of uniquely African civil codes that are still in force today in a legal arc that extends from the Maghreb to the Sahel.

About the Author:

Dan E. Stigall is an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, Counterterrorism Section, National Security Division. He previously served on active duty in the U.S. Army JAG Corps from 2001-2009, serving in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States. LL.M., 2009, George Washington University School of Law; J.D., 2000, Louisiana State University, Paul M. Hebert Law Center; B.A., 1996, Louisiana State University.

Dan E. Stigall is a Contributing Fellow of the LSU Center of Civil Law Studies.

Additional Information:

This forthcoming book can already be ordered online. See: Friends of the Law Library of Congress

To download order form with 30% discount (valid until October 1, 2018), click here.

6th Annual Conference in South Africa: Mark your Calendar

Juris Diversitas will hold its 6th Annual Conference during the last week of June 2018 (25-29 June). 

Venue: 

Faculty of Law

North-West University

Potchefstroom

South Africa

Topic: 

Law, Roots & Space

Call for Papers to be sent shortly.