ARTICLE: Ramsay on SSRN and Law Journals

Ian Ramsay's 'SSRN and Law Journals - Rivals or Allies?' is now available:

The author identifies and evaluates the respective merits of publication in law journals and publication on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) – the largest open access repository for legal scholarship. This evaluation leads to the conclusion that at this stage of the evolution of law journals and SSRN, there are advantages in authors publishing both in journals and on SSRN. However, publication on SSRN can have particular advantages for authors in smaller countries.

The article is, of course, accessible on SSRN here and will be published in the (2012) 40: 1 International Journal of Legal Information 134.

POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS: Mediterranean Research at Université d’Aix-Marseille

The Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme offers postdoctoral fellowships to researchers in the social and human sciences for periods of nine months as part of its “Fernand Braudel-IFER” (International Fellowships for Experienced Researchers) programme. This programme is supported by the European Union (Action Marie Curie – COFUND – 7th PCRD). 

This programme is also supported by the FMSH, the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research (Direction des relations européennes et internationales et de la coopération), the Fritz Thyssen Foundation (Köln, Germany), Princeton University (USA), The Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), the Ecole Centrale Paris, the Institut de recherche stratégique de l’Ecole militaire - ministère de la Défense (IRSEM), the Bruno Kessler foundation (Trento, Italy), the Labex Dynamite, Hastec, IEC, IPOPS, Med, OBVIL, OT-med, Resmed, Tepsis and TransferS. The programme is also carried out in collaboration with the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). 
 

The Fernand Braudel-IFER programme breaks down into two sections

BOOK: Stelmach, Brożek, and Hohol on The Many Faces of Normativity

Copernicus Center Press has published Jerzy Stelmach, Bartosz Brożek, Mateusz Hohol (eds), The many faces of normativity (2012). It is:

A collection of essays dealing with the issue of normativity from various academic and scientific perspectives. The Reader will learn how phenomena such as norms, morality and rule-following are described and explained in philosophy, biology, psychology, linguistics and neuroscience. In addition, a discussion of the naturalistic fallacy from the philosophical and ethical perspectives will be included.

The Table of Contents includes:

POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS: LSE Department of Anthropology - Inequality and Poverty in India

The London School of Economics and Political Science offers Postdoctoral Fellows (up to five positions) on a Programme of Research on Inequality and Poverty in India. 

Fixed term for up to three years and to ideally commence in October 2013. 

Salary is not less than £32,469 pa inclusive (pro rata if part time)

The LSE Anthropology Department is pleased to invite applications to the above posts to be funded by the ESRC and the EU ERC. The positions offer an exciting opportunity to join an international research team working on inequality and poverty led by Dr Alpa Shah in collaboration with Dr Jens Lerche (SOAS), Dr Clarinda Still (Oxford), Professor Jonathan Parry (LSE) and Professor Barbara Harriss-White (Oxford). Successful candidates will benefit from engagement with a number of international experts as well as a number of in-house experts such as Mukulika Banerjee, Laura Bear, Stuart Corbridge and Deborah James. The aim is to develop perspectives of political economy within the discipline of anthropology by ethnographically investigating the persistence of poverty amongst adivasis and dalits in the belly of the Indian economic boom.

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS EXTENDED: Filling the Gaps - The Study of Judicial Creativity and Equity in Mixed Jurisdictions and Beyond

Filling the Gaps: The Study of Judicial Creativity and Equity in Mixed Jurisdictions and Beyond

Catania, Italy - May 27-28, 2013

NOTE THAT THE CALL FOR ABSTRACTS HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO MARCH 8, 2013 (SEE BELOW)

The Protection Project at the John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), in cooperation with the World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists (WSMJJ), and the Tulane University Law School Eason Weinmann Center for Comparative Law, invite the submission of papers for an international conference on "Filling the Gaps: The Study of Judicial Creativity and Equity in Mixed Jurisdictions and Beyond" scheduled take place in Catania, Italy on May 27-28, 2013: Our host for this conference is the Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche e sociali of the University of Catania.

The conference explores the sources, methods and approaches used by the courts in mixed jurisdictions when they face a lacuna in the law, ie when they arrive at a case of first impression without a legal rule.

The following questions are meant to be suggestive, not exhaustive.

• What differences exist in the approaches to gap-filling in mixed, civilian and common law systems?
• What differences in technique exist within the mixed jurisdictions themselves, eg between codified systems and uncodified systems?
• To what extent is the borrowing of common law solutions taken to be "equity" or gap-filling? Is this considered a legitimate form of equity?
• To what extent is "equity" understood as a civilian concept? Is it fully divorced from the "Equity" of the common law?
• How are gaps defined, revealed or recognized? Is their existence a precondition of equitable activity? Is there a taxonomy of gaps?
• Is there an established procedure, a Directory Provision, a hierarchy of sources to be consulted, or is the process of gap-filling left entirely to the discretion of the judge?
• To what extent is this form of judicial activity synonymous with the production of seminal and leading cases?
• Which substantive fields of the law are particularly fertile for gap-filling?

Papers that explore gap-filling in either single or multiple fields of private or public law are welcome.

We invite you to submit a 1-2 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 March 8, 2013.

Authors of accepted abstracts will be notified by March 15, 2015, and invited to present their papers at the conference. The expenses of conference speakers 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.

JOURNAL: The German Law Journal

The latest German Law Journal includes: 

• The Development of German Corporate Law to 1990: An Historical Reappraisal - PDF - Peter Muchlinski
• Innovative Governance in EU Regional and Monetary Policy-Making - PDF - Ingeborg Tömmel & Amy Verdun
• The Law Before It is law: Franz Kafka and the (Im)possibility of the Law’s Self-Reflection - PDF - Gunther Teubner

ARTICLE: Cunneen on Colonial Processes, Indigenous Peoples, and Criminal Justice Systems

Chris Cunneen's 'Colonial Processes, Indigenous Peoples, and Criminal Justice Systems' has been published on SSRN:

This chapter considers the interaction between colonial processes, Indigenous peoples and criminal justice systems. The commonalities in the experiences of Indigenous peoples in white settler societies (Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US) provide the focus for an exploration of the implications of the colonial process for understanding Indigenous contact with western criminal justice systems across a number of domains. A fundamental point derived from this exploration is that the politics and outcomes of colonization are not simply of historical interest. Rather, the contemporary relationship between Indigenous people and crime, punishment, and justice is structured by these longer term relationships.

RIP: Franz von Benda-Beckmann

We received the following sad news recently from the Commission for Legal Pluralism: 

Franz von Benda-Beckmann died unexpectedly in Amsterdam on 7 January 2013. His death is a great loss to those of us in the legal anthropology community.

He was one of the most influential international scholars in the field of legal anthropology and was an early member and long-time supporter of the Commission on Legal Pluralism. During his prolific career, he produced 29 edited books and volumes, and more than 266 articles, reviews, commentaries and invited lectures. Many of these were coauthored with his wife, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, also a prolific scholar. He wrote and co-edited several books on issues of property rights, social (in)security, and legal pluralism in developing countries and on legal anthropological theory. Recent influential volumes include: with Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Julia Eckert “Rules of Law and Laws of Ruling” (Ashgate 2009); with Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Anne Griffiths “Spatializing Law” (Ashgate 2009); with Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Anne Griffiths “The Power of Law in a Transnational World” (Berghahn 2009); with Keebet von Benda-Beckmann and Melanie G. Wiber “Changing Properties of Property” (Berghahn 2006); with Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, “Social Security between Past and Future: Ambonese Networks of Care and Support” (LIT Verlag 2007). He was a wonderful mentor and the thesis supervisor of many leading scholars in legal anthropology, particularly in the expanding field of legal pluralism. 

Career 

Franz was born in 1941 and educated in the Gynmasium in Kiel.  After leaving school he studied law in Munich, Lausanne, and Kiel. After obtaining his first law degree at the High Court in Schleswig (1967), he went to Malawi for eleven months of field research on legal pluralism. In 1970, he obtained his PhD in law with his dissertation Rechtspluralismus in Malawi: Geschichtliche Entwicklung und heutige Problematik (Legal Pluralism in Malawi: Historical development and contemporary problems) at the University of Kiel. Between 1968 and 1972, he did practical legal training (Referendardienst) and obtained his second law degree at the High Court of Hamburg in 1972. In October 1972, he moved to Zurich together with his wife, Keebet von Benda-Beckmann, born Droogleever Fortuijn. He worked as an assistant at the Seminar for Social Anthropology of the University of Zurich. In 1974 and 1975, Keebet and he carried out sixteen months field research in West Sumatra, Indonesia, among the Minangkabau. His research focused on legal pluralism and property and inheritance. On the basis of this research, he obtained his Habilitation in Social Anthropology at the University of Zurich in 1979.

In late 1977 he moved to the Netherlands where he first worked at the University of Leiden, heading a small research institute dealing with law in the former Dutch colonies. In 1981, he was appointed professor for law and rural development in developing countries. In 1985 and 1986, Keebet and he carried out research in the Moluccas on rural social security and resource rights issues under conditions of legal pluralism. In the 1990s, they carried out legal anthropological research training courses for researchers working on water rights and management in India and Nepal, sponsored by the Ford Foundation. They also managed a larger research project on legal complexity, ecological sustainability and social (in)security in Indonesia.

In 2000, Keebet and he moved to Halle to establish and head the project group Legal Pluralism at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology together. In 2002 he was appointed Honorary Professor for Ethnology at the University of Leipzig and in 2004, Honorary Professor for Legal Pluralism at the University of Halle.

He served on many key advisory bodies. These included: the Advisory Council of the Social Science Research Council for the Tropics (1981-1988); the Dutch Steering Group of the Cultural Agreement between the Netherlands and Indonesia (1985-1992); IUAES Commission on Folk Law and Legal Pluralism (1981-2013); Executive Body of the Commission (1995-2013); Chairman of the Dutch-Belgian Association for the Social-Scientific Study of Law (1987-1999); the General Board of the Royal Institute for Anthropology and Linguistics, Leiden (1980s-1990s). He also served as associate editor for the Journal of Legal Pluralism, and on the Advisory Board for Law, Social Justice and Global Development (electronic law journal, Warwick University); Journal of REaD (Resources, Energy, and Development), New Delhi; the Australian Journal of Asian Law; the International Journal of Law in Context; Consulting editor of FOCAAL, European Journal of Social Anthropology.

Together with Keebet, Franz was part of the group that established the Commission on Legal Pluralism. They have remained involved in various capacities up to the present day. Franz’ ideas, suggestions and energy will be missed sorely in the Commission, whereas to many individual members his loss is that of a good friend.

JOURNAL: Journal of Legal Pluralism

The Journal of Legal Pluralism has become the official publication of the Commission for Legal Pluralism. Indeed, from this year it'll be published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis. 

Commission members will receive the journal in electronic form as part of their Commission membership fee, with the added option of purchasing print copies. The first issue is expected next month.

SUMMER PROGRAMME: Civil Law Intitiative

Les inscriptions pour l'Université d'été 2013 du droit continental sont ouvertes!


Si vous voulez approfondir vos connaissances en droit continental dans un cadre prestigieux et profiter d'un été parisien, n'hésitez pas à vous inscrire via notre site internet www.fondation-droitcontinental.org 

Partagez l'Université d'été autour de vous!

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Applications for the Summer University 2013 on continental law are open!

If you want to deepen your knowledge in continental law in a prestigious place and enjoy you summer in Paris, you can apply on our website www.fondation-droitcontinental.org 

Share the Summer University around you to your friends and colleagues!

BOOK: Brożek on Rule-Following

Copernicus Center Press has just published Bartosz Brożek, Rule-Following: From Imitation to the Normative Mind:

The book attempts to decipher the practice of rule-following with the use of the tools offered both by contemporary philosophy and neuroscience. The Author claims – in the Wittgensteinian spirit – that rule-following cannot be thought of in terms of individual mental states only: in order to explain what rules are, one needs to consider rule-following to be a communal practice. This stance is backed by some evolutionary scenarios and neuroscientific theories. The monograph culminates in an explication of rule-following in language, morality and mathematics.