NOTICE: Congress on 'Constitutionism, Globalization, and the European legal tradition' (University of Enna 'Kore' - 1 December 2011)

A Congress on 'Constitutionism, Globalization, and the European legal tradition' will be held 1 December 2011 at the Università degli Studi di Enna 'Kore' in conjunction with the Ph.D. in Comparative Politics and Law of the Euro-Mediterranean Region programme.

Scholars from Brazil, Italy, Malta, and Spain will take part. Sessions will take place on:

* The hope of globalization, development, and abrupt awakenings
* Open legal systems, the theory of fundamental rights and the European legal tradition
* The constitutional dimension of the European process
* The economic crisis and the crisis of European constitutionality

The Italian text reads:

COSTITUZIONALISMO, GLOBALIZZAZIONE E TRADIZIONE GIURIDICA EUROPEA

NOTICE: Uzelac and van Rhee on The Landscape of the Legal Professions in Europe and the USA

Intersentia has published another volume in the Ius Commune Europaeum series. A Uzelac and CH van Rhee (eds), The Landscape of the Legal Professions in Europe and the USA: Continuity and Change

deals with recent developments in the legal profession in Europe and in the United States of America from a comparative and historical perspective. Apart from discussing the legal profession in general, specific attention is paid to the Latin Notary, the Advocates, the Rechtspfleger, the State Attorney, court experts, and mediators and arbitrators. Topics addressed include the decline of Big Law in the U.S., the classification of court experts as legal professionals in Italy, the demise of anticompetitive measures in the modern legal services market, as well as the question whether mediators should be classified as ‘new’ legal professionals given the fact that mediation services are currently being offered by many of the ‘old’ legal service providers. The volume concludes with a contribution on the collaboration of various legal professions in providing for the needs of legal practice.

The table of contents includes:

NOTICE: Transnational Legal Theory

The latest edition of Transnational Legal Theory has just been published.

Articles include:

• Susan Marks, 'Law and the Production of Superfluity'
• John McKay, 'Power Dynamics, Social Complexity and the Rule of Law in Development Aid: Why a (Social) Scientific View of Law should Turn our Focus to Power'
• Filippo Fontanelli, 'Santi Romano and L’ordinamento giuridico: The Relevance of a Forgotten Masterpiece for Contemporary International, Transnational and Global Legal Relations'

NOTICE: Oxford Law and Religion Conference

Oxford Law and Religion Conference

New Frontiers of Protection of Freedom of Religion or Belief Under International Law -

30 Years after the 1981 Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief

24 November - Balliol College, Oxford LR 23

10am– 5:30pm

Speakers Include:

• Heiner Bielefeldt (UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of or Belief)
• Malcolm Evans (University of Bristol)
• Christopher McCrudden (University of Oxford and Queen’s University Belfast)
• Nazila Ghanea (University of Oxford)
• Michael Wiener (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights)
• Ronan McCrea (University College London)

Registration: £25

Students and unwaged: Free

Registration enquiries: peter.petkoff@balliol.ox.ac.uk

The Conference is organised by the Oxford Society for Law and Religion, Focus on Freedom of Religion or Belief, School of Law University of Bristol, Law and Religion Research Group Brunel Law School, Religion, Law and International Relations Programme Regent’s Park College, Oxford, Centre for the Study of Religion and Public Life, Kellogg College, Oxford

NOTICE: The New Frontiers of Comparative Law

I'm pleased to note the following conference, which includes several of our members:

University of Macau

Macau Association of Comparative Law

International Conference

11 November 2011

THE NEW FRONTIERS OF COMPARATIVE LAW

***

9.30 – 9.50 Welcome Speeches

• Prof. Liu Gaolong, Interim Dean, Faculty of Law of the University of Macau
• Prof. Paulo Canelas de Castro, Associate Professor of European Union Law, University of Macau, Jean Monnet Chair
• Prof. Salvatore Mancuso, Associate Professor of Comparative Law, University of Macau; President of the Macau Association of Comparative Law

9.50 Photo group taking

10.00 – 11.15 1st Session: Comparative Law: methodologies and development
Chair: Prof. Salvatore Mancuso, Professor of Comparative Law, University of Macau; President of the Macau Association of Comparative Law

• Prof. Mauro Bussani, Professor of Comparative Law, University of Trieste, Italy: Comparative Law Beyond the Trap of Western Positivism
• Prof. Rostam J. Neuwirth, Associate Professor of Law, University of Macau: Law and the Mind: A New Role for Comparative Law?
• Prof. Sean Donlan, Professor of Comparative Law and Legal History, University Limerick, Ireland: The Ubiquity of Hybridity: Norms and Laws, Past and Present, and Around the Globe

Discussion/Q&A

CALL FOR PAPERS: Law in Translation

Call for Papers

Law in Translation

Special Issue of The Translator (Volume 20, Number 2, 2014)

Guest-edited by Dr Simone Glanert, Kent Law School, Canterbury, UK

The Translator, a peer-reviewed journal enjoying an international reputation in the field of translation studies, invites contributions for a special issue on Law in Translation to be published as Volume 20, Number 2, 2014.

In an era marked by processes of economic and political integration that are arguably unprecedented in their range and impact, the translation of law, whether understood in its literal or metaphorical sense, has assumed a significance that can hardly be overstated. The following situations are typical. As the expression of a strong postcolonial commitment, various African states have decided to draft their legislation in more than one official language with a view to conferring equal authority to colonial and traditional languages. Elsewhere, an influential group of European lawyers is seeking to develop a civil code for the European Union that stands to be translated in 23 languages. Meanwhile, former political and military leaders are being prosecuted for genocide before the International Criminal Court, a body consisting of judges from many different legal backgrounds and operating according to a complex multilingual procedure. Controversially, the US Supreme Court has relied upon foreign law in order to assess the constitutionality of a Texas statute criminalizing certain forms of sexual behaviour.

NOTICE: New Law and Humanities

The Winter 2011 issue of Law and Humanities is now available online.

The articles include:

• Christian Biet, Law, Literature, Theatre: The Fiction of Common Judgment
• Mark Fortier, Education, Aesop, Roger L’Estrange, and Equity
• Melanie L Williams, Conceptions of Moral Luck, Culpability, and The Reader
• Martin A Kayman, The Bill of Rights: ‘Icons’ of Liberty and Law in the Early Twenty-First Century
• Helge Dedek, The Splendour of Form: Scholastic Jurisprudence and ‘Irrational Formality’
• Catrin Fflur Huws, What is the Significance of the Mortgage in Love’s Labour’s Lost?

NOTICE: Tucker Lecture (Louisiana State University)

The Center for Civil Law Studies of the LSU Paul M Hebert Law Center presents the 36th John H Tucker, Jr. Lecture in Civil Law:

"The Quest to Implant Civil Law Method and Restrain Judicial Lawmaking:

Tracing the Origins of Judicial Methodology in Louisiana"

Dr Vernon V Palmer

Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 5:30 pm

Louisiana State University Paul M Hebert Law Center

McKernan Auditorium

Reception to follow in the Tucker Room

RSVP by 10 November 2011 to ccls@law.lsu.edu or 225-578-7831

CALL FOR PAPERS: Entanglements in Legal History: Conceptual Approaches to Global Legal History

I've been asked to post the following, exciting Call for Papers related to (what I call) the historical 'diffusion' of laws:

Entanglements in Legal History:

Conceptual Approaches to Global Legal History

Conference of Legal Historian, Lucerne – 2-6 September 2012

Conference MPI, Frankfurt -

Global History, World History, Imperial History, Atlantic or Pacific History: the variety of transnational historiography is growing ever larger. Hitherto, legal historians have rarely participated in these discourses. On a favourable interpretation, one could argue that legal historians have always thought, researched and worked transnationally – yet this might have different reasons.

It is certain that, in legal history, the exchange and overlapping of different normative spheres beyond territorially-constrained statehood has been the norm: the tiered territorial and legal spheres of influence of antique empires, stratified societies with their regulations tied to civil status, the coexistence of secular normativity and clerical normativity intersecting the secular realm, and finally the complex processes of the period of the ‘Reception’ belong to the classic objects of legal historical research. It has also become clear that the encounter of two hitherto co-existing normative orders, through the intensified exchange and communication since the 16th and particularly during the 19th century in two waves of globalisation, has attracted the interest of legal history.

NOTICE: Dupret on Adjudication in action and Practices of truth

Our member Baudouin Dupret (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France) and Centre Jacques-Berque (Morocco)) has just released two books.

The first, published by Ashgate, is Adjudication in action: an ethnomethodology of law, morality and justice:

Adjudication in Action describes the moral dimension of judicial activities and the judicial approach to questions of morality, observing the contextualized deployment of various practices and the activities of diverse people who, in different capacities, find themselves involved with institutional judicial space. Exploring the manner in which the enactment of the law is morally accomplished, and how practical, legal cognition mediates and modulates the treatment of cases dealing with sexual morality, this book offers a rich, praxeological study that engages with 'living' law as it unfolds in action.

Inspired by Wittgenstein's later thought and engaging with recent developments in ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, Adjudication in Action challenges approaches that reduce the law to mere provisions of a legal code, presenting instead an understanding of law as a resource that stands in need of contextualization. Through the close description of people's orientation to and reification of legal categories within the framework of institutional settings, this book constitutes the first comprehensive study of law in context and in action.

The second, published by the John Benjamins Publishing Company, is Practices of truth: an ethnomethodological inquiry into Arab contexts:

The claim of this book is that truth is a matter of language games and practical achievements: it is a “member phenomenon”. To document this statement, it proceeds to the investigation of instances of truth-related practices in various Arab contexts. Bearing on the constitution of actions and events, on what is factual or objective, on predictability, consequentiality, intentionality, causality, and on the many ways people orient to them, such a varied set of questions appears thoroughly moral. The praxeological respecification this book undertakes leads to important considerations regarding the question of morality in ordinary reasoning, and the categories and categorizations on which that morality is based: moral values are publicly available; morality has a modal logic; moral values and conventions have an open texture; objectivity is a practical achievement carried out by members of society; the moral order is an omnipresent, constitutive characteristic of social practice.