CALL FOR PAPERS
JURIS DIVERSITAS
6th 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.
