Election of Juris Diversitas Officers: Call for Nominations

 

Because of postponing our General Conference and General Meeting due to the coronavirus pandemic, the election of Juris Diversitas officers (Executive Committee Members) is now overdue. All positions are up to renewal: President, Vice President for Projects, Vice President for Conferences, General Secretary, and Treasurer. Here are the current officers:

• Olivier Moréteau, President: Director, Center of Civil Law Studies, Louisiana State University Law Center (USA): moreteau@lsu.edu
• Ignazio Castellucci, Vice President (Projects) and Book Series Editor: University of Teramo (Italy): ignazio@castellucci.eu
• Salvatore Mancuso, Vice President (Conferences): University of Palermo (Italy): salvatore.mancuso06@unipa.it 
• Lukas Heckendorn Urscheler, Treasurer: Vice-Director, Swiss Institute of Comparative Law (Switzerland): lukas.heckendorn@isdc-dfjp.unil.ch
• Christa Rautenbach, General Secretary: North-West University (Potchefstroom, South Africa): christa.rautenbach@nwu.ac.za
• Emmanuel Didier, Communication Officer: Avocat, Ottawa (Canada): emmanuel.didier.diversitas@gmail.com  

Note that the Communication Officer is not an elected position, but members may want to volunteer to join the Executive Committee in a non-elected position, indicating what activity or plan they would like to serve or promote.

We kindly invite you to nominate candidates for all positions available for election. Self-nomination is acceptable, noting that nominees may only run for one office in each election. Note that all present holders of renewable positions have indicated that they are available to be reelected in the position they presently occupy. They are with this nominated for this position by the effect of this message, but they will have to be elected by the members in any case. I do not write this to dissuade nominations, but I know that some of you will ask, or that we might not receive any nominations for a specific position. Our Colleague Prof. Alessandra Pera has kindly accepted to act as Election Officer, in compliance with article 9 of the Juris Diversitas Constitution. You may access the Constitution by a click on this link. Please email your nomination to alessandra.pera@unipa.it by February 18, 2021.

The only condition to make a nomination is to have your dues paid for 2021 or commit to pay them, preferably by the election date. Payments can no longer be via PayPal due to discrepancies between Paypal’s requirement and the regulatory framework in Switzerland, where our accounts are located. Your nominations will be accepted if you certify in your message that you will do due diligence to pay the 2021 dues, if possible before the date of the General Meeting. 

The General Assembly shall be held on Saturday February 27, at 5:00 pm Swiss (Lausanne) time. A Zoom link will be posted in due course.

THE 2021 CONFERENCE WILL BE HELD ONLINE

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Juris Diversitas conference on The Dark Side of the Law will be held online, on June 9-11, 2021. 

More information will be shared with members and participants in the weeks to come, by email and on our Events page: stay tuned! 

Jacques Vanderlinden (1932-2021)

 

It is with great sadness that we learn that Jacques Vanderlinden passed away on January 22, 2021 in Brussels. He was a Member of the Advisory Council of Juris Diversitas. Officers and members of Juris Diversitas express their deep sympathy to his wife Jenny, their two sons Jacques Jr. and Jean-Paul, and their children.

Professor Emeritus Jacques Vanderlinden received his PhD degree in law from Brussels Free University (Belgium) in 1956, then his Agrégation de l’Enseignement supérieur in 1967 when he published his world acclaimed Le concept de code en Europe occidentale du XIII^e au XIX^e siècle, after the publication by the Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences of Belgium of his Essai sur les juridictions de droit coutumier dans les territoires d'Afrique centrale in 1959.  He started his teaching career at the Free University of Brussels in 1958, where he also served as Dean of the Faculty of Law, and concluded it in 1992. He then started teaching law at the University of Moncton (New-Brunswick, Canada), where he has held honorary positions such as Academic Advisor of the Centre international de la common law en français. He is currently Professor Emeritus of both universities. He is a full elected fellow of the Royal Academy for Overseas Sciences, of the International Academy of Comparative Law and a Foreign Fellow of the National Academy of Italy (Accademia nazionale dei Lincei).

He has published some 200 articles and some 30 books and monographs, especially in the fields of African laws, comparative law, legal history, and legal theory, more specifically and recently legal pluralism. Here are a few samples, showing the diversity of his scholarship: Anthropologie juridique, Paris, Dalloz, 1996; Bibliographie de droit africain, 1987-1989, Bordeaux, 1991; “À propos de la création du droit en Afrique - Regards d'un absent”, La création du droit en Afrique, Paris, Karthala, 1997; Pierre Ryckmans (1891-1959) - Coloniser dans l'honneur, Brussels, De Boeck-Wesmael, 1994; “What Kind of Lawmaking in a Global World – The Case of Africa”, Louisiana Law Review, 67 (2007); “Analyzing Property in Different Societies”, Journal of Civil Law Studies, 1 (2008); “À la rencontre de l'histoire du droit en Acadie”, Revue de l'Université de Moncton, 28 (1995); “La réception des droits européens au Canada”, Revue de la common law en français, 1996; Se marier en Acadie française, Moncton, Éditions d'Acadie, 1998; “Vers une conception nouvelle du pluralisme juridique”, Revue de la Recherche juridique - Droit prospectif, vol. XVIII (1993); “Trente ans de longue marche sur la voie du pluralisme juridique”, Cahiers d’anthropologie du droit, II (2004); “Religious laws as systems of law : a comparatist's view”, Religion, Law and Tradition : comparative studies in religious law (A. Huxley, ed.), London, Routledge, 2002; “Une lecture du système normatif de l’Église catholique par un pluraliste comparatiste aux personnalités multiples”, McGill Law Review, 50 (2005); Comparer les droits, Brussels, Kluwer, 1995; La structure des sytèmes juridiques, (with Olivier Moréteau), Brussels, Bruylant, 2003; “Qu’est-ce qu’un code ?”, Les cahiers de droit, 46 (2005).

His most recent publications count a chapter revisiting the concept of custom, in Comparative Legal History, O. Moréteau, A. Masferrer & K. Modeer eds., 2019), and “French Jurisdictional Complexity on the Fringe— Acadia 1667-1710”, Journal of Civil Law Studies, 12 (2019). With O. Moréteau and Agustín Parise, he wrote the final chapter (1900-Present) of Western Legal Traditions (Seán Patrick Donlan, Remco Van Rhee & Aniceto Masferrer eds., Ius Commune Series, Hart, forthcoming).

He has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Abidjan, Addis Ababa, Bordeaux, Boston, Edinburgh, Kigali, London, Louisiana State University, Paris, South Carolina and has given lectures at many other Universities.