CALL FOR PAPERS: International Law and the Periphery Conference (Cairo, 16-18 February 2012)

International Law and the Periphery

Call for Papers and Panel Proposals –

Conference American University in Cairo Egypt

16-18 February 2012

 

One year on from the “Arab Spring”, join us in Cairo to explore contemporary geographies of international law. You are invited to reflect anew upon the “cores” and “peripheries” of international legal knowledge and practice in the face of recent structural shifts. Where (if anywhere) are they located today? Does international law project a disciplinary periphery, or several? Who or what occupies international legal peripheries today and what does peripheral status imply? What may be at stake in the mapping of cores and peripheries? Are there cores in the peripheral and vice versa? To what extent, if at all, do core-periphery dynamics in international law channel development and reform? Long associated with dependency theory, world systems theory and geographical analyses of trade, core-periphery schematics have nonetheless informed international legal thought, argument and policy-making in a wide range of ways. This conference will enable scholars of law and related disciplines to revisit core-periphery dynamics in global governance, in both their symbolic and their material dimensions, and contribute to their re-imagining for the current age.

NOTICE: 50th Anniversary Conference of the Center for the Study of Law and Society at Berkeley Law

The 50th Anniversary Conference for the Center for the Study of Law and Society at Berkeley Law will be held shortly:

THE FUTURE OF LAW AND SOCIETY
Great Hall, Bancroft Hotel
Thursday, November 3 & Friday, November 4, 2011

The Conference is free, but registration is required even if you are local. 
REGISTER HERE

In the 50 years since the founding of the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the University of California, Berkeley by Philip Selznick with funding from the Russell Sage Foundation, the field of law and society has been firmly established in research centers and academic associations, in doctoral programs and in the legal academy. But law and society may be at a time of transition, and the time to consider the future direction of the field is upon us. What are the key questions to ask moving forward? What will be the field’s substantive strengths? Its theories? Its methods? Its institutional homes? In this Conference we bring together law and society scholars at the forefront of a range of disciplines and ask them to consider the future of the field from the lens of their own research questions, theories and methods. Through their choices of topics, theory and methodology, and through their career paths and the direction of their students, they represent those who are shaping the future of the field.

NOTICE: International symposium on François Gény

An international symposium on François Gény will soon take place in Nancy and Metz:

« LA PENSEE DE FRANÇOIS GENY »

COLLOQUE INTERNATIONAL DES 20 ET 21 OCTOBRE 2011 - INSTITUT FRANÇOIS GENY

Jeudi 20 octobre 2011 à NANCY

9h00 : Allocutions de bienvenue de Martial Delignon, Président de l’Université Nancy 2, d’Eric Germain, Doyen de la Faculté de Droit, Sciences économiques et Gestion de Nancy et de François Fourment, Directeur de l’Institut François Gény

Matinée présidée par le Doyen Christian Baldus

9h30: François Terré, Professeur émérite de l’Université Panthéon-Assas : « Rencontre avec François Gény»

10h00: Michel Auberger, Ingénieur civil des mines, Dr. en sciences économiques : « La vie de François Gény : la doctrine et son époque »

10h30 Discussion et pause

11h00 : Pierre-Yves Gautier, Professeur à l’Université Panthéon-Assas : « L'actualité méthodologique de ‘Science et technique’ »

11h30 : Olivier Moréteau, Professeur à la Lousiana State University : « La traduction de l’œuvre de François Gény »

12 h00 : Déjeuner en salle du Conseil

NOTICE: World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists - New Website

The World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists (WSMJJ) has updated their website. Check it out.

The WSMJJ:

is an organization uniting jurists and comparatists around the globe. Its purpose is the study and advancement of the mixed jurisdictions which include South Africa, Scotland, Israel, Quebec, The Philippines, Puerto Rico, Louisiana and beyond.

It is composed of more than twenty law faculties from these countries, an international network of individual members, and several international organizations. The Society stimulates comparative law research, holds international conferences and congresses, and keeps its members abreast of interesting developments and new research in the field.

Membership information is available here.

NOTICE: The Legal Philosophy in Context Project

A Session on the Legal Philosophy in Context Project will take place on Friday, 21 October 2011 at the upcoming The Concept of 'Law' in Context: Comparative Law, Legal Philosophy, and the Social Sciences Conference in Lausanne.

The project is managed by Seán Patrick Donlan (Limerick), Alessio Lo Giudice (Catania), and Margaret Martin (Western Ontario). For additional information on the project, please contact me at sean.donlan@ul.ie. And, as always, spread the word.

NOTICE: The Concept of 'Law' in Context: Comparative Law, Legal Philosophy, and the Social Sciences

Juris Diversitas has, with the Swiss Institute of Comparative law (SICL), organised a conference on The concept of 'law' in context: comparative law, legal philosophy, and the social sciences.

The conference will be held from 21-22 October 2011 at the SICL in Lausanne:

The coexistence of the laws of the state and other normative orders, in the Western past and the global present, is a challenge to both modern legal philosophy and comparative law. The continuing importance of non-state norms, trans-national and sub-national, undermines the state-centred focus of much contemporary jurisprudence. It also problematises the neat division of complex and dynamic legal traditions into discrete families of closed legal systems.

Werner Menski (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) will present a keynote paper. Additional speakers include:

• Marc Amstutz (University of Fribourg)
• Gerhard Anders (University of Zürich and Edinburgh)
• Mauro Bussani (University of Trieste and the International Association of Legal Science)
• Seán Patrick Donlan (University of Limerick)
• Baudouin Dupret (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France)
• Julia Eckert (University of Berne)
• Andrew Halpin (Swansea University)
• Lukas Heckendorn Urscheler (Swiss Institute of Comparative Law)
• Alessio Lo Giudice (University of Catania)
• Salvatore Mancuso (University of Macao)
• Emmanuel Melissaris (London School of Economics)
• Alexander Morawa (University of Lucerne)
• David Nelken (University of Cardiff and Macerata)
• Mark Van Hoecke (University of Ghent)

A volume will subsequently be published consisting of articles based on the conference papers as well as a small number of additional papers related to the theme of the conference.

For addition information, please contact Lukas Heckendorn Urscheler at info@isdc.ch or +41 21 692 49 11. A registration form is available at http://www.isdc.ch/.

Finally, note that the Juris Diversitas project on Legal Philosophy in Context will also be discussed on Friday, 21 October 2011. For additional information on the project, please contact Seán Patrick Donlan at sean.donlan@ul.ie.

Juris Diversitas and the SICL previously cooperated on a conference in 2009 on 'Comparative law and hybrid legal traditions'. The collection produced after that event is available free online at http://www.e-collection.isdc.ch/ (it's volume 67).

Law & Religion: Call for Papers

Call For Paper Proposals / Save the Date Notice

“The Competing Claims of Law & Religion: Who Should Influence Whom?”
Pepperdine University School of Law, Malibu, California
February 23-25, 2012

On February 23-25, Pepperdine will host the third Religious Legal Theory conference. We will deal with: “The Competing Claims of Law & Religion: Who Should Influence Whom?” Some speakers will address the topic as a matter of constitutional law, some as a matter of “good citizenship,” some as a matter of religious faith. The speakers who have already agreed to speak at the conference include:

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na‛im (Emory)
Caroline Corbin (Miami)
Marc DeGirolami (St. John’s)
Mohammad Fadel (Toronto)
Marie Failinger (Hamline)
Chad Flanders (St. Louis)
Richard Garnett (Notre Dame)
Fred Gedicks (BYU)
Michael Helfand (Pepperdine)
James Davison Hunter (Virginia)
Andrew Koppelman (Northwestern)
Samuel Levine (Touro) Barry McDonald (Pepperdine)
Michael Moreland (Villanova)
David Opderbeck (Seton Hall)
Michael Paulsen (St. Thomas)
Lisa Shaw Roy (Mississippi)
Shelley Saxer (Pepperdine)
Mark Scarberry (Pepperdine)
Ayelet Shachar (Toronto) (acceptance pending)
Steven Smith (San Diego)
Suzanne Last Stone (Cardozo)
Nelson Tebbe (Brooklyn)
Eugene Volokh (UCLA)

Please join us. Details will appear at: http://law.pepperdine.edu/nootbaar/
If you would like to speak at the conference or organize a panel, we welcome paper and panel proposals on any law and religion topic. Please submit proposals by September 15, 2011 to: lauren.hartley@pepperdine.edu

The conference will be the basis of a spring 2012 Pepperdine Law Review symposium edition. Papers submitted by January 7, 2012 will be considered by the law review for publication. Submission of presentations is optional and publication is not guaranteed.

This conference is sponsored by the Nootbaar Institute on Law, Religion, and Ethics and co-sponsored by the Glazer Institute for Jewish Studies. If you have questions about the substance of the conference, contact robert.cochran@pepperdine.edu or michael.helfand@pepperdine.edu For questions about the details of the conference, contact lauren.hartley@pepperdine.edu

NOTICE: The “Political Arithmetick” of Empires in the Early Modern Atlantic World, 1500–1807

I received word last night about a conference on 'The “Political Arithmetick” of Empires in the Early Modern Atlantic World, 1500–1807'. It's Sponsored by the Department of History, University of Maryland, College Park, and the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. It'll take place from March 17–18, 2012 at the University of Maryland, College Park.

I know that a number of you are interested in the legal and normative hybridity of empires:

This conference takes its title from the celebrated pamphlet of Sir William Petty published in 1690. The organizers are particularly eager to receive submissions from scholars working on subjects that Petty and his contemporaries believed formed the basis of the new concept of “political economy,” especially as these related to the Americas from the sixteenth century through the eighteenth.

Petty’s pamphlet was largely devoted to the question of how best to construct an English empire within which trade, people, and nation would flourish. His calculations involved not only economic factors but also issues of authority, hierarchy, and justice. The purpose of this conference is to examine the many components, economic as well as cultural, that cohered and/or fractured empires in the early modern Atlantic world between 1500 and 1807.

The organizers encourage papers that examine the religious, cultural, or economic components that shaped the formation of imperial structures in the early modern era. Topics such as religious conformity or the lack thereof, paper money, credit, agriculture, manufacturing, trade, piracy, and monopoly as they related to the creation and expansion of empires are appropriate. So, too, are demography, slavery, the Native American presence, and the migration of labor, whether free or indentured. Finally, the organizers welcome proposals on the ideological character of domestic and international law and the role of ideas in determining the configuration of early modern empires. These subjects may be addressed by focusing exclusively on a single empire or within a comparative context.

Proposals consisting of a maximum of 300 words must be received electronically no later than July 31, 2011. Please include a two-page c.v. that contains your current mailing and e-mail addresses and your telephone number. Materials may be submitted online at the conference Web site, http://oieahc.wm.edu/conferences/political/cfp.cfm. All submissions will be acknowledged by e-mail. If you do not receive an acknowledgement, please resubmit or contact Kim Foley (kawahl@wm.edu).

CALL FOR PAPERS: Law and Culture - The Present is the Living Past (Vanuatu)

Note that the organiser of the 'Law and Culture 2011: The present is the living past' conference has informed me that late abstracts can be accepted. The conference will be hosted by the University of the South Pacific School of Law, Emalus Campus, Port Vila, Vanuatu from 29-31 August 2011.

For further information, including the abstract submission form and presentation and poster guidelines see the conference website http://www.paclii.org/law-and-culture/. Abstracts should be submitted as soon as possible via email to lawandculture2011@gmail.com.

CALL FOR PAPERS: 'Law and Culture 2011: The present is the living past'

Unfortunately, I only just discovered the following information on a very interesting conference on 'Law and Culture 2011: The present is the living past' to be hosted by the University of the South Pacific School of Law, Emalus Campus, Port Vila, Vanuatu from 29-31 August 2011. The conference follows last year's confrence on 'Law and Culture: Meaningful Legal Pluralism in the Pacific and Beyond'.

This year's call for papers and posters (now officially past) reads:

The question of how to make law operate effectively whilst remaining culturally appropriate is critical for all Pacific islands. This question arises, in large part, due to the particular colonial histories of Pacific countries. In order to appreciate how law operates in the current post-colonial environment and the current paths of development that we are following, and that shape our laws, we need to understand where our laws and systems have come from.

The issues that this conference theme give rise to are not only legal, or historical. Understanding the place and operation of laws is inherently interdisciplinary, and requires conversations across a range of disciplines. Pacific scholars from other subject areas, including anthropology, development studies, governance and political studies are encouraged to attend this conference.

• Papers and posters that explore how the historical context shapes contemporary Pacific legal systems are invited.
• Papers addressing any aspect of Pacific legal studies or post-colonial legal studies more generally are also welcomed.

People who wish to organise and chair a themed session or workshop should submit their proposals as soon as possible.

The conference organisers are committed to the development of young Pacific scholars and students and early career researchers from a range of disciplines are particularly encouraged to participate.

Abstracts are due by 12 July 2011 and should be submitted via email to lawandculture2011@gmail.com.

For further information, including the abstract submission form and presentation and poster guidelines see the conference website http://www.paclii.org/law-and-culture/