BOOK: Objectivity in Law and Legal Reasoning

Hart Publishing has just published Jaakko Husa and Mark van Hoecke (eds), Objectivity in Law and Legal Reasoning (2013). Both are members.

The book blurb is:


Legal theorists consider their discipline as an objective endeavour in line with other fields of science. Objectivity in science is generally regarded as a fundamental condition, informing how science should be practised and how truths may be found. Objective scientists venture to uncover empirical truths about the world and ought to eliminate personal biases, prior commitments and emotional involvement. However, legal theorists are inevitably bound up with a given legal culture. Consequently, their scholarly work derives at least in part from this environment and their subtle interaction with it. This book questions critically, in novel ways and from various perspectives, the possibilities of objectivity of legal theory in the twenty-first century. It transpires that legal theory is unavoidably confronted with varying conceptions of law, underlying ideologies, approaches to legal method, argumentation and discourse etc, which limit the possibilities of 'objectivity' in law and in legal reasoning. The authors of this book reveal some of these underlying notions and discuss their consequences for legal theory.

WORKSHOP: Machiavelli, Islam and the East

Machiavelli, Islam and the East
International Workshop
Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa (Italy)
6 May 2013
Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa (Italy) is inviting scholars to submit 25-minutes papers for a one-day international workshop titled "Machiavelli, Islam and the East", which will take place on 6 May 2013.

While Niccolò Machiavelli is universally recognized as one of the founders of the Western political thinking, the aim of the international workshop, organized by the research project "Beyond the Holy War" in the year of the fifth centenary of the Prince, is to explore the less known connections among Machiavelli's work - written in a period of successful Ottoman expansion in the Mediterranean region -, the Muslim world, and the East. The languages of the workshop are English and Italian.

We particularly invite contributions related to one or more of the following areas:

1. Machiavelli's vision about political, administrative, military, and religious aspects of  the Muslim world and the East, including its origin and reference, as well as similar contemporary examples, not only from the European context; 2. The reception and re-use of Machiavellian themes by European authors, who  formulated opinions and images about Islam and the East, from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment; 3. A comparative study of the recovery of Machiavelli in relation with Islam and the East on the one hand, and the Americas in the Age of Exploration on the other hand; 4. The possible circulation of Machiavelli's writings in North Africa, Middle East and Asia in the early modern period, both among local learned men and travelers.

Please send your proposals, 250 words maximum, and a brief CV with your contact information to Giuseppe Marcocci (g.marcocci@sns.it).

The deadline for proposals is 20 February 2013. Responses will be sent by e-mail within 28 February 2013.

While we are not able to offer support to cover travel expenses, the Scuola Normale will provide accommodation for the workshop and will cover all meals.

REGISTRATION: Juris Diversitas Inaugural Annual Conference (3-4 June, Lausanne, Switzerland)

 

Registration is now open  for the 

JURIS DIVERSITAS CONFERENCE

DIFFUSION:

an international, interdisciplinary conference on comparative law (and more)

3-4 June 2013, Lausanne, Switzerland 

Co-Sponsored by the Swiss Institute of Comparative Law

The conference fees are:

• €50: For JD Members (with Ordinary membership 2012 and 2013)
• €100: For JD Members (with Ordinary membership 2013) or Members of the AiSDC 
• €200: For Non-Members (individuals neither a member of JD nor the AiSDC)

The conference dinner fee is optional and costs an additional €50.

JD membership information is available here. 

Membership fees, conference registration fees, and conference dinner fees can all be paid through the SUBSCRIBE button on the main Juris Diversitas Blog page. Simply enter the appropriate amount there.

Questions about membership payments and registration should be addressed to Lukas Heckendorn-Urscheler at Lukas.Heckendorn@isdc-dfjp.unil.ch. Other membership questions should be addressed to Salvatore Mancuso at secretariat.jd@outlook.com.

JOURNAL: Journal of Japanese Law

A member brought the following journal to my attention:

Journal of Japanese Law
Zeitschrift für Japanisches Recht

The most recent issue available online included the following articles:

• Sôichirô Kozuka - Insurance Law Issues Due to the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 (Part One)
• Eiji Takahashi/Kazunori Shintsu – Einführung eines Konzernrechts in Japan: Der Zwischenentwurf und die ergänzenden Erläuterungen
• Dan W. Puchniak - The Derivative Action in Asia: A Complex Reality
• Dan Tidten - Equality-Oriented Policies in Japan
• Sôichirô Shimada - Paradigmenwechsel im japanischen Organtransplantationsgesetz und die verbleibenden Probleme
• Shintarô Koike - Rechtliche Aspekte der Kindesmisshandlung und des Kindesmissbrauchs in Japan
• Christopher Danwerth - Principles of Japanese Law of Succession
• Matt Nichol - Valuing Professional Japanese Baseball Players and the Role of Statistics, Economics, Culture, and Corporate Governance
• Csaba Gergely Tamás - The Birth of the Parliamentary Democracy in Japan:
• An Historical Approach
• Mark A. Srour - Restrained Judicial Constitutionalism in Japan: A Reflection of Judicial Culture Rather than Political Interests

SPREAD THE WORD!

Members and readers, we’d appreciate your support in spreading the word about Juris Diversitas: the blog, our conference and other events, our publications and projects, our new book series, etc, etc.

We'd also appreciate your support as members.

And if you’re a Facebook user, we also have a Facebook page with additional notices. Stop by, ‘Like’ us, ‘Share’ our posts, and suggest us to friends. If you're attending our conference, please visit our Conference Page, too, to let others know if you’ll be attending.

ARTICLES: Ellis on Soft Law and Ho on Law and Virtue

The following have appeared on SSRN:

Jane Ellis, 'Shades of Grey: Soft Law and the Validity of Public International Law' (2012) 25(2) Leiden Journal of International Law

Soft law is often seen as a way to overcome certain problems of legitimacy in international law, notably the weaknesses of a voluntaristic conception of international law’s validity. Other perceived benefits of soft law include flexibility, speed of adoption and modification, and even effectiveness. Yet soft law is seen by others as a threat to law, because it effaces the border between law and politics. This paper explores different approaches to the boundary between law and not-law which seek both to maintain this boundary and to reconceptualise it in a way that better anchors the validity of international legal rules. 

HL Ho, 'Of Law, Virtue and Justice - An Introduction' 

This is the introductory chapter of the book, Amalia Amaya and Ho Hock Lai (eds.), Law, Virtue and Justice (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2012).

ARTICLE: Hesselink on Private Law Principles, Pluralism and Perfectionism

Martijn W Hesselink's 'Private Law Principles, Pluralism and Perfectionism' is available on SSRN:

This paper discusses the legitimacy of general principles of private law as they have been formulated recently by the Court of Justice of the European Union and proposed by the European Commission. It addresses challenges from different strands in political theory including liberal perfectionism, political liberalism and Habermasian discourse theory. There are four specific lessons to be learned from these theories. First, the quest should not be for very general and abstract principles with a very broad scope, but rather for principles of an intermediate level of abstraction and a limited scope, which could explain and bring coherence to a set of rules or a legal doctrine, but not to the whole law of contract. Private law principles which are too general and sweeping would risk to neglect the need for internal diversification within private law. Secondly, these private law principles should be situated on the non-constitutional level of ordinary private law, subject to the constitution (including its horizontal effect) which in turn must be compatible, in order to be legitimate, with the political principles of justice that the EU polity has given itself. Thirdly, the CJEU, although an institution that is not in itself a less legitimate lawmaker than the legislator, also when it comes to private law principles, has a strong duty to explain itself and to provide good reasons for adopting general principles of civil law and for choosing certain principles, especially if these principles happen to be controversial, either from a comparative law point of view or along any of the other axes along which European citizens and European Member States may differ. Finally, there is no legitimate place for strong perfectionism in the deliberation on fundamental European private law principles; any private law perfectionism should be either local (in specific doctrines like unfair exploitation) or thin (limited to values like rationality). However, as long as we remain cautious is all these respects, the quest for general private law principles is perfectly legitimate. There is no contradiction per se in seeking to find general private law principles in a pluralist world. 

POST: Emory Colloquium on War and Security in Law, Culture and Society

Colloquium on War and Security in Law Culture and Society

The colloquium will meet on Mondays from 4:15-6 p.m. at the law school (room G114 or G575). Papers will be available approximately two weeks prior to the workshop. To attend, please read the paper in advance.

Jan. 28, 2013 •  Mark Drumbl, Washington and Lee Law School, Law, Reimagining Child Soliders in International Law and Policy

Feb. 18, 2013 • Mary Favret, Indiana University, English, TBA

Feb. 25, 2013 •  Rande Kostal, Western Ontario, Legal History, The Destruction of Philosophies: Allied Planning for the Denazification of German Law, 1944-1945

Feb. 27, 2013 •  Robert Chesney, University of Texas, Law, Beyond the Battlefield, Beyond Al-Qaeda (This will be presented during Emory Law School's Lunchtime Colloquium)

March 4, 2013 •  Matthew Payne, Emory University, History, False Activists and True Misery: Local Resistance to the De-Socialization of Cattle in Kazakhstan, 1932-1934

March 18, 2013 •  Pamela Scully, Emory University, Department of Women's and Gender Studies, History, Grassroots Peacemaking, and Resilience in Liberia

April 8, 2013 •  Mary L. Dudziak, Emory University, Law, Drones and Democracy: How Robotic Warfare Undermines Political Checks on the War Power 

April 15, 2013 •  Judith Miller, Emory University, History, 'Cato's Death' in France, 1792: Painting, Violence and the French Republic after the Terror

Hat Tip to the Legal History Blog.

JOURNAL: Waseda Bulletin of Comparative Law

I recently saw a link to the Waseda Bulletin of Comparative Law:

published mostly in English, is the annual journal of comparative law. The journal devotes to presenting Japanese law, legislation, cases, articles, and academic meetings. In addition, the journal includes articles and book reviews in English or other languages.'

FELLOWSHIPS: Power and Institutions in Medieval Islam and Christendom

PIMIC‐ITN: Power and Institutions in Medieval Islam and Christendom, an integrated training network in research and diffusion for comparative history, is offering 10 PhD Fellowships (each worth c. 50,000 Euros per annum for three years)

“Power and Institutions in Medieval Islam and Christendom” is a research project which will develop from 2013 to 2016. It has been funded as a ‘Marie Curie Initial Training Network’ with a grant of 3.3 million euros. The project combines academic research on medieval power and institutions with training in the wider dissemination of research‐based knowledge, based on a formal network established between universities and private sector companies and funded by the European Union. It provides funding for 10 PhDs at universities in Spain, Britain, Italy, France, and Israel, and two postdoctoral positions, one based at a Dutch publisher (Brill), one at a Spanish TV/film company (Lopez‐Li). During their studies, the PhD students will all have secondments to the publisher and the film company, the post‐docs will come to the Universities to run sessions on print and media diffusion of research. Further training workshops are provided, on academic and other skills, as well as a larger‐scale ‘Media School for Historians’. The project concludes with a conference on ‘Consequences in the Contemporary World.’

PIMIC Academic Partners
CCHS‐CSIC (Coordinator): Dr. Ana Rodríguez
University of St. Andrews: Dr. John Hudson
Universitá Roma Tre: Dr. Emanuele Conte
Birkbeck College London: Dr. Caroline Humfress
Universitá Roma Tor Vergata: Dr. Sandro Carocci
University of Tel Aviv: Dr. Gadi Algazi
Université Paris
I‐Panthéon‐Sorbonne: Dr. Michel Kaplan
School of Oriental and African Studies: Dr. Hugh Kennedy

PIMIC Private Sector Partners
Lopez‐Li Films (Spain)
Brill Publishers (Netherlands)

Contact: pimic@cchs.csic.es

More info: http://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/
[1]http://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/ [1]
DEADLINE 24 MARCH 2013

Links:
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[1] http://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/
[2] http://www.mediterraneanseminar.org