Juris Diversitas is an international academic association
promoting the exploration of law and norms across and beyond traditional
boundaries, at the intersection of the humanities, the social sciences, and the
natural, physical, and life sciences. It organizes general and specialized conferences and publishes a book series.We are an international, worldwide scholarly association promoting
the exploration of law and norms across—and beyond—traditional boundaries. Originally
comparatists, we opened a dialogue with anthropologists, geographers,
historians, linguists, philosophers, sociologists, etc., both within the law
and beyond, making our exploration a great intellectual adventure.
We strongly believe that understanding law, as well as
applying it in practice, requires engaging with the cultural and social worlds
in which law emerges, evolves, and operates. In our view, the fields
traditionally considered to be “at the margins” of comparative law are among
the most powerful keys to understanding the role of law today.
We are interested in how law interacts with space, time,
religion, philosophy, literature, music, food, technology, physics and
mathematics—and with every other field of human knowledge and experience.
We welcome members, young and seasoned, from around the
world. We organize general and specialized conferences and partner with institutions and like-minded organizations on all continents. We publish a book
series featuring edited volumes and monographs that showcase the work of our members and the wider scholarly community.
We co-organised, with the Swiss Institute of Comparative law (SICL), a conference in Lausanne in September 2009 on hybrid legal traditions. A selection of articles generated by that event was published as E Cashin-Ritaine, SP Donlan, and M Sychold (eds), Comparative law and hybrid legal traditions (2010).
We co-organised, with the Department of Civil Law and the Mediterranean Institute, both of the University of Malta, a symposium on 'Mediterranean Legal and Normative Hybridity' in Malta in June 2010. At the symposium, the Mediterranean Hybridity Project was launched; a project roundtable was held in Catania in October 2010. The papers presented in Malta were published in the Journal of Civil Law Studies.
2011 A conference on The concept of 'law' in context: comparative law, legal philosophy, and the social sciences was co-organised with the SICL and held on 21-22 October 2011. A collection of articles from, or inspired by, the conference--Concepts of law: comparative, jurisprudential, and social science perspectives--was published with Ashgate as part of the Juris Diversitas Book Series.
A colloquium on Doing justice: official and unofficial ‘legalities’ in practice was co-organised with the Centre Jacques-Berque and held in Rabat (Morocco) from 18-19 June 2012. The participants met again in March 2013 and a collection on the conference's themes was published.
2013
A workshop entitled Crossroads East and West: visions of the economy in the Islamic and Western legal traditions was co-organised with The Protection Project and held in Turin (Italy) from 4-5 February 2013. Our first annual conference, Diffusion: an international, interdisciplinary conference, was held in Lausanne at the SICL in June 2013. Proceedings are published in the Juris Diversitas Book Series.
2014
The second annual conference was held in Aix-en-Provence in July 2014. The theme was Comparative Law and... with presentations in English and in French. Proceedings were published in Le droit comparé et... Comparative Law and... (A. Albarian/O. Moréteau eds.), Presses universitaires d'Aix-Marseille (2016).2015
The third annual conference was held in Limerick, in June 2015. The theme was The State of/and Comparative Law.
2016
The fourth annual conference was held at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, in May-June 2016. The theme was Unity and/or Diversity, with presentations in English and in French.
