CALL FOR PAPERS: Islamic Law: Society, Culture and State

The following announcement was on H-NET: We invite papers that deal with the intersection between Islamic law and society particularly as it pertains to such issues as: the status of women and/or family law, property rights, land tenure, criminal law, finance/economy, and inter-faith relations. Papers from all periods of history and all disciplines are welcome, as are papers that examine the impact of Islamic law in western contexts. Questions that are of particular interest include (but are not limited to) the following: - How is the law a 'living law'? To what extent have legal thinkers integrated custom into the lawmaking process? - To what extent has the law provided an arena for individuals of different religions to negotiate and/or settle their disputes? - What sort of relationship has existed between the various schools of law and have legal thinkers drawn upon schools of law other than their own in formulating laws? - To what extent have Western legal systems accommodated Islamic law? What impact has this had onnotions of citizenship and minority rights? - How have state law/secular law and shari'a overlapped and/or informed one another in the lawmaking process? How has this relationship evolved over time? Please submit your paper (6,000 to 10,000) in MS Word format to Sabrina.joseph@zu.ac.ae by December 30, 2012. Submissions should include a cover letter to the editor describing the work in approximately one hundred words. See also the Encounters website at http://encounters.zu.ac.ae.

NOTICE: International Journal for the Semiotics of Law

Volume 25 Number 4 of the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique is now available on SpringerLink. 

The volume is a special issue on 'Whose Reason or Reasons Speak Through the Constitution?'

NOTICE AND CALL FOR PAPERS: JURIS DIVERSITAS CONFERENCE (3-4 June 2013)

JURIS DIVERSITAS
CONFERENCE NOTICE 
& CALL FOR PAPERS

3-4 June 2013 - Lausanne, Switzerland 
 Swiss Institute of Comparative Law

Juris Diversitas is pleased to announce its first official, open Annual Conference, co-sponsored by the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law (SICL). 

While any proposal on comparative law will be considered, the conference’s primary theme is:

DIFFUSION

The conference will explore the diffusion—transplantation, reception, migration, contamination, etc, etc—of both laws and law-like norms, past and present and around the globe. A critical element in the creation of all legal and normative traditions, diffusion takes many forms. It may be overt or covert, voluntary or involuntary, concentrated or diffuse, colonial or neo-colonial, etc. 

Proposals may be case studies or theoretical analyses of diffusion; they may be general (at the level of legal traditions) or specific (trusts, family law, etc). Participants might analyse, among other topics, entangled legal histories, the diffusion of Western legal models outside of the West, the dominance and rationale for the present diffusion of Anglo-American legal forms, the relevance of legal origins and traditions on contemporary structures, practices, the place of ‘mixed’ and ‘micro’ legal systems, etc. 

Scholars from outside of the discipline of law are strongly encouraged to participate.

Proposals of @250 words (or @1000 words for panel proposals) should be submitted to Seán Patrick Donlan at sean.donlan@ul.ie by 15 January 2013.

Additional information will be posted shortly. 

Speakers and attendees are also strongly advised to visit the SICL Library by arriving early or remaining after the conference to conduct research.

NOTICE: Norchi and Proutière-Maulion on Piracy in Comparative Perspective

Charles H Norchi and Gwenaële Proutière-Maulion (eds), Piracy in Comparative Perspective: Problems, Strategies, Law (Hart Publishin, 2012)

 

This new work presents a comprehensive approach to an age old disruption of the order of the oceans that was known to ancient Greece, Persia, the first Indian Empire, the Han Dynasty of China and the early European maritime powers. Many of the norms proscribing piratical acts that are codified in contemporary international law are vestiges of those earlier periods. Yet contemporary maritime piracy is more complex and intense. The International Maritime Bureau of the International Chamber of Commerce reported 439 reports of actual piracy attacks in 2011, most Somali based, and a higher number of attempts. This book presents perspectives on the problem by contributors from four continents, diverse legal cultures, and multiple disciplines. This volume appraises piracy from the comparative perspectives of those disciplines and from the standpoint of key participants in the social processes that are plagued by piracy-mariners, navies, ship owners and operators, policy makers and lawyers. Decision-making and operational measures cannot be separated from piracy's origins and continuing social impact. Thus the contributors bring clarity to the problem through the lenses of history, development, law, maritime security, fisheries, economics and ocean commerce. Maritime piracy initiatives are generating a great number of operational and institutional counter-measures and the diversity of stakeholder interests often complicates proposed solutions. Against that backdrop the contributors examine strategies - the range of available modalities to address and correct the problem - through the lenses of naval power, port state control, penal systems and development. And they appraise law - both national and international authoritative decision-making - viewing state practice, international regulations, tribunal judgments, custom and international conventions from the comparative perspectives of Africa, India, England, France and the United States.

Piracy in Comparative Perspective is a collaboration of the Centre for Maritime and Oceanic Law (CDMO) of the University of Nantes (France) and the Center for Oceans and Coastal Law of the University of Maine School of Law (United States), prepared under the direction of Professor Charles H. Norchi and Dr. Gwenaële Proutière-Maulion.

NOTICE: Husa on Polynomia

Our friend at the Irish Society of Comparative Law got to this first, but one of our own recently posted the following on SSRN:

Abstract:
Globalization and Europeanization do not only produce coherence and uniformity but are flanked by differentiation and fragmentation, producing diverse and polycentric outcomes. This article puts forth reflections on European legal pluralism and a proposition for pluralist methodology. The author claims that in today’s Europe there is legal pluralism, which means that there are many over-lapping normative orders in Europe. It is claimed that Europe is fundamentally pluralistic. Hence there are overlapping non-coherent hierarchies and competing claims for normative power. This is conceptualized as polynomia. The article seeks to demonstrate that legal pluralism in the strong sense has penetrated into European legal doctrine. This state of affairs is claimed to result in a situation in which pluralism is not something that would concern legal anthropologists, legal historians or sociologist of law only. According to this article, doctrinal methods forged in the molds of legal centralism and monism are outdated and respond poorly to the present day European legal pluralism.

Husa, Jaakko, The Method is Dead, Long Live the Methods - European Polynomia and Pluralist Methodology (December 1, 2011). Legisprudence, Vol. 5, pp. 249-271, 2011.

NOTICE: Legal Theory and Legal History Conference

The 2013 UK IVR Annual Conference - Legal Theory and Legal History: A Neglected Dialogue? – will be held from 12-13 April 2013 in the Law Building of Queen Mary, University of London. The IVR is the International Association of Legal and Social Philosophy. 

An extensive and exciting programme has been prepared and the conference description reads:

The 2013 annual conference of the UK Branch of the IVR is designed to bring together legal theorists and legal historians (including historians of legal theory and political thought) in an attempt to facilitate and encourage dialogue between the two disciplines.

     Apart from some notable exceptions, much of contemporary legal theory is uninformed by history, including legal history. This is deeply regrettable, for legal theories may be vastly improved by being informed, and perhaps more importantly, challenged by historical contexts. Theories of law, one might say, are better if they are forged at the coal-face of historical research. Similarly, one could argue that legal histories are better when they draw on, and themselves contribute to, the conceptual resources of legal theory.
     Somewhat more radically, if one agrees law does not have a nature, but a culture, then one must account for how the culture of law changes, and has changed, over time. This, by necessity, demands a historically-informed methodology. Similarly, the problem of change is an unavoidable one in legal theory, whether that be change in legal regimes or changes in certain areas of the law – here, again, the resources of history, including the philosophy of history, are invaluable. Putting things a little more colourfully, one could say that legal ideas cannot but be understood historically.
     Further, legal theory has, of course, its own history: legal theories are not disconnected islands, but rather interventions in a long series of dialogues and polylogues amongst theorists. As many have observed, and described, legal theory’s history needs to be informed not only by such dialogues and polylogues amongst theorists, but also by awareness of the theorist’s immersion in political, economic and other conditions of his or her time and place – there, once more, a serious engagement with history is important.

JURIS DIVERSITAS BOOK SERIES

REMINDER:

Authors are being sought for the Juris Diversitas Book Series: 

Rooted in comparative law, the Juris Diversitas Series focuses on the interdisciplinary study of legal and normative mixtures and movements. Our interest is in comparison broadly conceived, extending beyond law narrowly understood to related fields. Titles might be geographical or temporal comparisons. They could focus on theory and methodology, substantive law, or legal cultures. They could investigate official or unofficial ‘legalities’, past and present and around the world. And, to effectively cross spatial, temporal, and normative boundaries, inter- and multi-disciplinary research is particularly welcome.

We hope to publish innovative monographs, collections (original, conference-based, Festschriften, etc), and student texts.

Anyone interested in publishing in the Series should contact me (Seán Patrick Donlan) at sean.donlan@ul.ie.

The first volume in the series--Concepts of law: Comparative, Jurisprudential, and Social Science Perspectives--is now being edited by me and Lukas Heckerdorn Urscheler. Contributors to that volume will include Roger Cotterrell, Mariano Croce, Maximillian del Mar, Baudouin Dupret, Julia Eckert, Andrew Halpin, Jaakko Husa, Alessio Lo Giudice, Salvatore Mancuso, Emmanuel Melissaris, Werner Menski, David Nelken, Catherine Valcke, and Mark van Hoecke.

Spread the word!

NOTICE: Mixed Legal Systems, East and West Conference Photograph

For those members who attended last May's conference on Mixed Legal Systems, East and West: NewestTrends and Developments in Malta, I found the following photograph posted on the Euro-Mediterranean University (EMUNI) website:

The conference was co-organised by The Protection Project at the John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), the World Society of Mixed Jurisdiction Jurists, and the Tulane University Law School Eason Weinmann Center for Comparative Law.

NOTICE: Schiavone on The Invention of Law in the West

The English translation of Aldo Schiavone's The invention of law in the West was published earlier this year. The publisher notes:

Law is a specific form of social regulation distinct from religion, ethics, and even politics, and endowed with a strong and autonomous rationality. Its invention, a crucial aspect of Western history, took place in ancient Rome. Aldo Schiavone, a world-renowned classicist, reconstructs this development with clear-eyed passion, following its course over the centuries, setting out from the earliest origins and moving up to the threshold of Late Antiquity.

The invention of Western law occurred against the backdrop of the Roman Empire’s gradual consolidation—an age of unprecedented accumulation of power which transformed an archaic predisposition to ritual into an unrivaled technology for the control of human dealings. Schiavone offers us a closely reasoned interpretation that returns us to the primal origins of Western legal machinery and the discourse that was constructed around it—formalism, the pretense of neutrality, the relationship with political power. This is a landmark work of scholarship whose influence will be felt by classicists, historians, and legal scholars for decades.

NOTICE: (2012) 8 Annual Review of Law and Social Science

Volume 8 of the Annual Review of Law and Social Science is now available online.

View the full Table of Contents for Volume 8.
 

The 23 reviews in this volume strive to enhance the understanding of the complex connections between law, culture, social structure, and society. Topics in this volume include behavioral ethics, the study of judicial decision making, emotion and the law, bullying, the legal history of money, contracts, and the regulation of sex work.