NOTICE: 66th Session of the Société Internationale ‘Fernand de Visscher’ pour l’Histoire des Droits de l’Antiquité (SIHDA) - On the Reception of Law

The following notice on 66th Session of the Société Internationale ‘Fernand de Visscher’ pour l’Histoire des Droits de l’Antiquité (SIHDA) will take place from 18-21 September 2012 in Oxford. The theme, of special interest to our members, is the Reception of Law.

The notice reads:

First circular
Oxford
14 December 2011

Dear colleages,

I am very pleased to invite you to the 66th Session of the Société Internationale ‘Fernand de Visscher’ pour l’Histoire des Droits de l’Antiquité (SIHDA), which will take place from 18 to 21 September 2012 in Oxford. In accordance with the decision taken by the last General Assembly, the theme of the congress will be Reception of Law.

In this First Circular I shall provide you with general information regarding the congress. In the course of January you will receive a Second Circular with information on how to registration.

The congress will start in the afternoon of Tuesday 18 September and end on Friday 21 September with the General Assembly. A Banquet dinner is foreseen for that Friday night, and excursions are planned for Saturday 22 September.

The theme is ‘Reception of Law’. It is a wide theme, which covers, e.g., the reception of Assyrian law by the Mesopotamians, Greek law by Egyptians, Roman law by the Greeks in the 4th and 5th century, by the Gallic population in the 6th century, but also, as the name of our association implies (‘Histoire des droits de l’Antiquité’), the reception of Roman law after 1100, and I welcome particularly contributions concerning the reception of Roman law after 1100 in Europe, the ‘Civil Law’. Yet, as is the custom of our association, papers on other themes than the proposed are of course always welcome and appreciated, in one of the five accepted languages (French, English, German, Italian and Spanish).

Oxford as a city is well known and needs no further recommendation. Its colleges, of which those in the centre are centuries old, are a major tourist attraction, as is the Radcliffe Camera, the Sheldonian Theatre and the Ashmolean Museum. And of course it is always interesting to combine the congress with a visit or short stay at London. London itself has several airports, of which Heathrow and Gatwick have a regular and direct bus connection with Oxford. Likewise the train connection is very good with the Eurostar going straight from Paris to London-St Pancras through the Channel Tunnel; and a taxi or underground will take you from there to Paddington Station for a good train connection to Oxford.

The congress will be held in St Catherine’s College. It is a college, built in 1962 in splendid Sixties style after the design of Arne Jacobsen and it is excellently suited for a congress of the size of SIHDA. Actually, it is, of all the colleges in Oxford, the only one with sufficient conference accommodation for us; all its rooms have a private shower and toilet. You will receive with the Second Circular the possibility to book an arrangement for the congress in the college.

I hope I have provided you with enough information for the moment. If there are any questions, I am happy to answer these, but otherwise I would like to ask you to wait till the Second Circular when more information will be provided. All further communications will be done through email. If you happen to know of somebody who is or might be interested but has not received this circular, please let me have their email address and I shall take care that he or she is included in the address list and will receive this and further notifications. Likewise I would appreciate it greatly to know of changes in email addresses.

All that remains for me now is to wish you a good Christmas holidays and an auspicious New Year,

Best wishes,

Boudewijn Sirks
Regius Professor of Civil Law
University of Oxford

CALL FOR PAPERS: Law and Legal Cultures in Germany

The German Studies Association  (GSA) Network on Law and Legal Cultures is putting together an interdisciplinary series of panels for its Thirty-Sixth Annual Conference to be held from 4-7 October 2012, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The organisers are Sace Elder (Eastern Illinois) and Timothy Guinnane (Yale). The Call for Papers reads:

For the 2012 German Studies Association annual meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, October 4-7, 2012, we will be convening a series of panels on the law in all aspects of society, culture, and the economy. We envisage a broad set of topics, from the development of specific legal practices and cultures in Germany to the function of law in wider cultural fields. From the philosophy of law to the legal cultures and literatures that extend from medieval to modern periods, these panels are intended to foster an extended conversation on the law across humanities and social science disciplines.

We encourage submissions from scholars on all aspects of the law (criminal, civil, international) in Germany and are especially interested in both methodological and temporal breadth. Topics might include

-the development of the Rechtsstaat
-legal cultures and the adjudication of criminal and civil law
-the development of business law and legal integration in the nineteenth century
-the culture of the courtroom and the legal profession
-popular perceptions of the law and legal norms
-the law and the regulation of violence
-sex and sexuality in law and legal culture
-property law and economic development
-liberal legal philosophy and the development of civil and criminal law
-law and authority in Germany’s twentieth-century dictatorships
-the emergence and enforcement of human rights law in national and international contexts
-law and immigration

We encourage submission of individual papers; while the GSA prefers complete panels, we hope to combine papers sent to us into complete panels and send them along to the GSA organizers. Complete panels are, of course, also welcome.

The deadline for submissions is January 20, 2011, and should be in the form of an abstract for proposed paper and/or entire panel (150-200 words). Papers in German or English are welcome.

Please submit abstracts and direct inquiries to the organizers at gsa.law.culture@gmail.com

CALL FOR PAPERS: Mixed Legal Systems, East and West

Our cousins in the World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists have co-organised a Mediterranean conference to take place in Malta from 14-15 May 2012 on “Mixed Legal Systems, East and West: Newest Trends and Developments”.

The announcement reads:

The Protection Project at The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), in cooperation with the World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists, and the Tulane University Law School Eason Weinmann Center for Comparative Law, invite the submission of papers for an international conference on “Mixed Legal Systems, East and West: Newest Trends and Developments,” scheduled to take place in Malta, on the dates of May 14-15, 2012.

The conference aims to break new ground in the study of mixed jurisdictions, focusing on the intersections and interplay between Western and Eastern legal systems, including in particular the study of those countries where common and civil law interact and/or co-exist side-by-side with Islamic law; as well as an examination of the influence of religious law on statutory law. The conference will focus on such topics as “The Integration of Religious Law into the Fabric of Law,” “The Lingering Impact of Colonialism on Contemporary Legal Systems,” “Internal Patterns of Legal Mixing,” and similar. The conference organizers invite scholars especially from mixed jurisdiction countries to submit abstracts, so that experiences of civil-common law mixed jurisdictions may be compared with those legal systems where Islamic law is present.

We invite you to submit a 2-3 page abstract of your paper by email to the selection committee c/o Ms. Anna Koppel, Director of Research and Development, The Protection Project (akoppel1@jhu.edu) no later than January 15, 2012; authors of accepted abstracts will be notified by February 1, 2012, and invited to present their papers at the conference; all conference participation expenses will be covered by the organizers. Conference proceedings will be jointly published by The Protection Project, the World Society of Mixed Jurisdictions Jurists, and the Eason Weinmann Center for Comparative Law.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Juris Diversitas colloquium - Doing Justice: Official and Unofficial ‘Legalities’ in Practice

Doing Justice: Official and Unofficial ‘Legalities’ in Practice

Juris Diversitas is organising, with the Centre Jacques-Berque (Rabat, Morocco), a colloquium to be held in Rabat from 15-16 June 2012. As a follow-up to last year’s launch of the Mediterranean Hybridity Project, its theme will be the relation of the diverse and lived ‘legalities’, both official and unofficial, in the region.

The event will also serve as the 2012 Juris Diversitas Annual General Meeting. Proceedings will be in English and French.

The Mediterranean Hybridity Project

The extraordinary legal and normative hybridity of the Mediterranean region was produced in a complex history of conquest, colonisation, and social and legal diffusion across shifting and porous political boundaries.

The objective of the Mediterranean Hybridity Project is, through a collaborative international and interdisciplinary network of experts, to produce and publish a comparative or cross-cultural collection on these ‘legalities’. On the basis of a questionnaire agreed with the participants, the outcome will be more accurate, useful, and accessible account of Mediterranean hybridity. The presentations made at the colloquium will assist us in this Project.

A draft discussion of the Mediterranean Hybridity Project is available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1874095; a revised version will appear shortly in the Journal for Civil Law Studies.

Proposals and costs

While the primary focus of the colloquium is on the region, especially with respect to the Mediterranean Project, related proposals on ‘legalities’ beyond the Mediterranean are also welcome. Those interested in making a presentation should send a short (250 word) proposal to Baudouin Dupret (baudouin.dupret@cjb.ma) by 7 February 2012.

In general, transportation and accommodation costs are not paid by the organisers. There are, however, no conference fees for Juris Diversitas members and other invited speakers. The conference fee for other attendees will be €100. The Centre will support the costs of several invited speakers coming from Arab countries.

Spread the word!

NOTICE: Transnational Legal Theory

Volume 2, Issue 2 of Transnational Legal Theory has been published. A special issue on 'onflicts Law as Constitutional Form in the Postnational Constellation', it contains:

A New Type of Conflicts Law as Constitutional Form in the Postnational Constellation

Christian Joerges, Poul F Kjaer and Tommi Ralli

United They Diverge? From Conflicts of Law to Constitutional Theory

Agustín José Menéndez

Democratic Juridification Without Statisation: Law of Conflict of Laws Instead of a World State

Florian Rödl

The Opium of Democracy: A Comment on Florian Rödl’s Theory of Democratic Juridification without Statisation
Marc Amstutz

The Political Foundations of Conflicts Law
Poul F Kjaer

Global Governance and Conflict of Laws from a Foucauldian Perspective: The Power/Knowledge Nexus Revisited
Martin Herberg

The Limits of the ‘Conflicts Approach’: Law in Times of Political Turmoil
Michelle Everson

NOTICE: Lo Giudice on European Identity and Legitimacy

Our member, Alessio Lo Giudice (Catania) has recently published Istituire il postnazionale: Identità europea e legittimazione (Giappichelli, Torino, 2011):

The historical-conceptual presuppositions of the European Union (EU)’s institutional project excludes either a narrow local perspective or an illusory globalist scheme. To rediscover Europe’s cosmopolitan vocation, a process of political and institutional unification must be developed that overcomes the existing national paradigm. Indeed, the crisis of legitimating the resources of EU Member States opens a post-national horizon of a denationalized and autonomous Europe built around spheres of intense, but not totalizing, political, legal and social unity.

In this context and with the necessity to create conditions for the establishment and legitimacy of a social link between strangers, the question of the institutional identity of the EU has great relevance for scholarship in legal philosophy. ‘Solidarity between strangers’ actually develops within the construction of a web of rules, projects and principles meant to fill reciprocal existential deficits; it develops, in fact, within the construction of a shared identity.

In this book, institutional questions about the construction of a European identity are discussed. But the conditions of the theoretical-semantic visualisation and of the pragmatic possibility of such an identity are also dealt with in order to avoid the reduction of the European ideal to rhetorical illusions or vain emotional compensations.

In addition, I want to draw your attention to the University of Catania's Teoria e Critica della Regolazione Sociale. The journal's programme is discussed in English and Italian here. Each issue begins with a central text, often in English, and responses are solicited. This year's central text is Margaret Gilbert's 'Foundations and consequences of collective moral responsibility'. The last issue and earlier issues are available online.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Privatization and Social Responsibility

CALL FOR PAPERS

PRIVATIZATION AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

February 17th and 18th, 2012

Emory University School of Law, Atlanta, Georgia

This workshop explores from a cross-cultural perspective how privatization impacts contemporary feminist and social justice approaches to public responsibility. Feminisms have long problematized divisions between the private and the political, partly in reaction to the unprecedented privatization of state responsibilities and public welfare over the past 30 years. Recent critical legal scholarship on vulnerability, state negligence, and resilience can complicate and deepen our understanding of the problems generated by privatization in the 21st century.

We invite papers that explore the effects of diverse forms of privatization from national and cross-national perspectives. Privatization can take the form of outsourcing public activities to private corporations, denationalizing state industries, or deregulating policy. It is evident when social service systems shift from defined benefits programs such as pensions to defined contribution plans such as IRAs. A common denominator is the shifting of social responsibility from public governmental institutions to individual families and privatized entities, such as charities and corporations. There is also a shift in what and who are regarded as the proper objects of state regulation and intervention; subsidizing private property interests or military intervention while withdrawing from broader public obligations such as education and healthcare.

CALL FOR PAPERS: 18th Annual Conference on Language, Interaction, and Culture

CALL FOR PAPERS

18th Annual Conference on Language, Interaction, and Culture

May 10-12, 2012

University of California, Los Angeles

Presented by The Center for Language, Interaction, and Culture Graduate Student Association (CLIC-GSA) at the University of California, Los Angeles and The Language, Interaction, and Social Organization Graduate Student Association (LISO-GSA) at the University of California, Santa Barbara

Plenary Speakers

• Penelope Eckert, Anthropology and Linguistics, Stanford University
• William Hanks, Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley
• Jenny Mandelbaum, Communication, Rutgers University
• Cheryl Mattingly, Anthropology and Occupational Science and Therapy, University of Southern California

Submissions should address topics at the intersection of language, interaction, and culture. Approaches include, but are not limited to, conversation analysis, discourse analysis, ethnography of communication, ethnomethodology, interactional sociolinguistics, language ideologies, and language socialization.