NOTICE: 2011 Symposium on Comparative Early Modern Legal History - 'The Struggle for Land: Property, Territory, and Jurisdiction in Early Modern Europe and the Americas'

The 2011 Symposium on Comparative Early Modern Legal History at Chicago's Newberry Library will focus on 'The Struggle for Land: Property, Territory, and Jurisdiction in Early Modern Europe and the Americas'. It will take place from 9-5 on Friday, 8 April, 2011. The Symposium is organised by Tamar Herzog (Stanford) and Richard J. Ross (Illinois, Urbana-Champaign).

The description reads:

The struggle to possess and control land, both as property and as jurisdictional territory, was central to the formation of early modern European societies as well as their colonial domains. This conference will look at how Europeans defined the right to land both at home and overseas. We will examine how so-called European expansion influenced the conceptualization of property and territorial jurisdiction and the relationship between them. Conference participants may explore how notions of property and territoriality changed over time; and how colonial needs and the encounter with new cultures reshaped these notions. In what ways did “international competition” and the emergence of an “international law” (to use an anachronism) modify property and jurisdiction? How did economic, social, and political developments influence new ideas and experiences regarding the land? In what ways did these ideas and experiences shape practical strategies for claiming land and asserting rights to govern it and profit from it? We are particularly eager to know whether these encounters encouraged, consciously or not, borrowing between different European legal systems as well as between settlers and indigenous peoples. How was the movement and refashioning of legal knowledge bound up with the movement of peoples and refashioning of modes of control over land? We would like to encourage an interdisciplinary conversation among lawyers, historians, sociologists, geographers, and literary scholars.

NOTICE: 'Comparative Law and International Organizations: Cooperation, Competition and Connections' (Swiss Institute of Comparative Law, Lausanne, 9-10 September 2010)

The Swiss Institute of Comparative Law (SICL) has organised a Juris Diversitas-inspired colloquia on 'Comparative Law and International Organizations: Cooperation, Competition and Connections' from 9-10 September 2010.

 

 

The concept is as follows:

 

Contemporary comparative law is more than just a method of legal research. The explosion in numbers of international organizations after the Second World War dragged this “academic law” out of the shadows of legal libraries and made it become an instrument of and material for the construction of new legal institutions .

 

International organizations today are veritable laboratories of “living comparative law” where the practical implementation of comparative methods may be observed. In fact, the use of comparative law by international organizations occurs on several levels.

 

On the one hand, comparative law is applied in the construction of international entities. Indeed, international organizations and, in consequence, the international law they produce are “artificial legal orders” as opposed to the usual “naturally grown” legal orders of states. Historically, the national legal orders developed before international organizations, which, therefore, have been designed after the image of the former. Thus comparative law has become not only an instrument of construction, but also a sphere of competition among several legal traditions: the duel between the civil law and common law was followed by the increasing influence of the law of the Nordic countries as well as the Islamic legal tradition and the law of the former socialist countries. In order to be able to understand international organizations, it is essential to analyze this “competition of legal traditions” and to study the nature of international entities and of the law they produce: Is one legal tradition predominantly influencing an international organization – and what are the reasons and the consequences? Or is it actually a “chemical reaction” resulting in hybrid legal orders, for example somewhere between common and civil law, a fusion of elements from several legal families or traditions?

 

On the other hand, comparative law unquestionably also plays an important role in the daily work of international entities. Comparative studies concerning the legislation and practice within the member states are becoming an increasingly important part of the international organizations’ legislative process. This approach bears witness to the goal of finding a common denominator, a universally acceptable minimum standard, or a model-law conveying the most suitable solution. Within the work of international developmental organizations, comparative law is often a tool in the search for the best solution when proposing legislation to be adopted in assisted countries.

 

Furthermore, the case-law of the international courts facilitates the transposition of concepts from one legal tradition to another, thus contributing to blurring the boundaries between the major legal traditions. To give but one example: by interpreting the notion of “contractual obligations”, the European Court of Justice imposes on the British judge the duty to apply, in certain cases, a concept originating in the continental legal traditions.

 

Comparative law is therefore used as a reservoir for good practices, optimal legal solutions that enable international legislators and judges to propagate the models of law which best correspond to the objectives of the organization which they represent. By allowing for a “free movement of models of law”, the normative and judicial activities of international organizations contribute to the erasing of the borders separating the major legal traditions. The impact of this tendency on actual and future legal systems requires reflection: Which legal tradition shapes a changing legal system? Is it primarily one tradition, or does it incorporate the features of two or more legal traditions? What are the implications of “hybrid” models of law? And what are the reasons for the influence of a legal tradition? Is it the feature and quality of a legal tradition, geopolitical factors, the personalities involved, or pure coincidence that determines the influence of a legal tradition?

 

The aim of this conference is to lay the foundations for finding the answers to these questions. In three half-days, the conference endeavors to open up avenues for reflection on the functioning of international organizations, on the contents of the international legal rules they produce and on the crossed influences of the major legal traditions (e.g., civil law, common law, Islamic law, law of the Nordic countries, and law of the former socialist systems). Furthermore, the reverse influence of the international entities and their legal rules on the internal law of the member states will also be examined.

 

Taking examples such as the United Nations Organization, the European Union, the Council of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights, the World Trade Organization and the World Bank, this conference aspires to study the international organizations, on the one hand, as hybrid legal systems (1st half-day, 9th of September), and, on the other hand, as “consumers” and “producers” of comparative law, confronting their member-states’ national legal orders to search for and propagate the “most suitable solutions” (2nd half-day, 10th of September). These two topics will be brought together in a round table discussion on the various interactions between national and international legal orders and the different roles of comparative law in this process (3rd half-day, 10th of September).

 

The programme and registration information is available on the SICL Website. Speakers will include, among others,:

• International Legal Order’s Mixed Heritage - Colin B. Picker
• International Trade Law (WTO) - Gabrielle Marceau
• International Environmental Law - Markus W. Gehring
• International Law of Human Rights - Daniel Rietiker
• The ECJ’s Perspective - Ludovic Bernardeau
• International Commercial Arbitration (ICC’s) - Francesca Mazza
• The World Bank - Klaus Decker
• The Experience of International Development Agencies: UNDP - Ekaterina Kouznetsova
• The European Union in the Field of Consumer Law - Brigitta Lurger

 For additional information, contact Martine Do-Spitteler at martine.do@isdc-dfjp.unil.ch. Tel. +41(0)21 692 49 11 – Fax +41(0)21 692 49 49.

NOTICE: Empire: Legality, Locality, Authority Symposium (Plymouth, 10 September 2010)

I just received the following information:

Empire: Legality, Locality, Authority
A Symposium at the University of Plymouth 10 September 2010
Organizers: Dr Nandini Chatterjee and Dr Kim Stevenson

This multi-disciplinary symposium draws together scholars working within their own disciplinary contexts on the historical connection between law and empire, with the following aims:

• Bringing together a variety of discipline-specific analytical tools to explore how law-bound power is constituted, exercised, justified, represented and transgressed in the inherently unequal context of empire;

• Grappling with methodological problems to identify the most convincing and productive uses of the Privy Council’s records, recently transferred to the National Archives;

• Building a core research team and larger advisory committee to help in conceptualizing, executing, publicizing and attracting funds for the Privy Council project as its grows.

Further details about the project: ‘Judging empire: the global reach of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council’; Programme and Abstracts are available from the website of the Centre for Humanities, Music and Performing Arts Research, University of Plymouth.

Speakers: Nandini Chatterjee; Lin Holdridge; Stacey Hynd; Diana Jeater; Justin Jones; Stephanie Jones; Stephanie Pratt; Charlotte Smith, Judith Rowbotham; Kim Stevenson; Elizabeth Tingle.

Participation in the symposium is free, but spaces are limited.

To register, contact: nandini.chatterjee@plymouth.ac.uk before 16 July 2010.

Robert A. Pascal: A Priest of Right Order

ROBERT ANTHONY PASCAL: A PRIEST OF RIGHT ORDER, has been published online as Volume 3 of the Bicentennial Series, by the Center of Civil Law Studies at LSU (Louisiana State University). The book was edited by Professor Olivier Moréteau, who wrote a twenty-page introduction and selected previously unpublished and published writings by Professor Emeritus Robert A. Pascal:

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE LIFE AND WORK OF ROBERT A. PASCAL by Olivier Moréteau
PART 1 – A MAN OF PRINCIPLE
Recollections of a Life Studying and Teaching Law
Punishment, Pardon, Parole
Natural Law and Respect for Law
PART 2 – A MAN OF VISION
A Summary Reflection on Legal Education
Of the Civil Code and Us
Of Trusts, Human Dignity, Legal Science, and Taxes
PART 3 – A MAN OF DIVERSE SCHOLARSHIP
Updating Louisiana’s Community of Gains
Characterization as an Approach to the Conflict of Laws
The Italian Legal System: A Book Review
BIBLIOGRAPHY

The book may be downloaded from the CCLS website: http://www.law.lsu.edu/index.cfm?geaux=ccls.publications.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Union in Separation: Trading Diasporas in the Eastern Mediterranean (1200-1700) - Heidelberg, 17-19 February 2011

A Call for Papers has been issued for international conference to be held in Heidelberg from 17-19 February 2011. The theme is 'Union in Separation – Trading Diasporas in the Eastern Mediterranean (1200-1700)':

“Union in Separation” is a three-day international conference hosted by the Transcultural Studies Programme at the University of Heidelberg. The conference focuses on transcultural diasporic communities in the medieval and early modern Mediterranean with specific respect to their role in trade between perceived separate cultural areas.

The term “transculturality” tends to be used to designate the hybrid character of modern-day societies and to ultimately argue that separate cultural units (defined as the sum of elements that characterise the aggregate identity of a society) do not exist. However, regardless of whether it is possible to speak of separate ‘cultures’, the construct continues to persist in people’s minds. These mindsets, their creation and their impact on societies is what historians are now investigating.

The study of Mediterranean diasporas lends itself well to this endeavour, as it allows for an understanding of the construction and deconstruction of cultural differences as well as the potential integration into a host culture. In order to best analyse these processes, we suggest exploring commercial exchange and its legal framework as two interrelated phenomena.

Medieval Mediterranean trading diasporas, such as Venetian merchants residing in Mamluk Alexandria, operated both within and outside of formal legal structures. However, their status as religious minorities often posed strong challenges to their business. For instance, far-reaching privileges granted by the Sultan to Christian merchants coexisted with, and were frequently challenged by, orthodox Islamic law and/or local legal practice.

Thus, a primary interest of historical transcultural research is to gather evidence on informal mechanisms that facilitated trade-given cultural hurdles. This will shed light on the form and scope of cultural exchange.

The conference will bring together academics from a wide variety of fields including medieval studies, history (including economic, legal, art history), and cultural studies.

Panels include

-Legal Pluralism and Diasporic Communities in Historical Perspective (Teresa Sartore)
-Diasporic Communities in Rhodes 1350-1450 (Teresa Sartore)
-Diasporic Groups in Mamluk Egypt 1300-1450 (Anna Katharina Angermann)
-Diasporas and Imperial Rule in the 13th C. Aegean (Stefan Burkhardt)
-Diasporic Networks and Institutions in Medieval Trade 1200-1500 (Lars Börner, Franz Julius Morche)
-Early Modern Italy‘s Diasporas (Roberto Zaugg)

Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words  and a short CV to the respective panel organizer as well as to Teresa Sartore and Georg Christ.

PhD students are encouraged to participate as well. Please do not hesitate to contact us, if you wish to propose an entire panel. There is a limited availability of travel grants for PhD students.

Deadline for Abstracts: 31.07.2010

University of Heidelberg
Transcultural Studies
Marstallstraße 6
D-69117 Heidelberg
Germany

teresa.sartore@uni-heidelberg.de
angermann@uni-heidelberg.de
stefan.burkhardt@urz.uni-heidelberg.de
morche@uni-heidelberg.de
roberto.zaugg@unibas.ch
georg.christ@uni-heidelberg.de

THANKS: Juris Diversitas AGM and Mediterranean Legal Hybridity Symposium (Malta)

I want to thank all of those who attended the Juris Diversitas AGM and the Symposium in Malta last week.

Special thanks are due to Dr David Zammit (Malta) for handling local arrangements, to Simon Mercieca (Malta) and all of those who assisted locally, and to our sponsors.

Additional thanks go to Professor Olivier Moretéau (LSU) for delivering the conference's keynote address and to Professor Vernon Palmer (Tulane) for launching the Mediterranean Hybridity Project.

Additional information will also be available soon on publication of the papers presented at the conference, the Mediterranean Hybridity Project, and on changes in Juris Diversitas.

MEMBER NOTICE: ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING (Malta, 11 June 2010)

MEMBER NOTICE:

Our Annual General Meeting (AGM) will be held next Friday, 11 June 2010. Those who’d like to make a suggestion should circulate an email or contact one of the officers.

For those attending, we'll meet for lunch at the front desk of the Corinthia Palace Hotel, near the lovely San Anton Gardens, at 1:30.

We'll meet again at the Hotel’s front desk at 2:45 to be driven to Villa Parisio for the AGM, to take place from 3-4:30. The symposium begins at 4:30 at the same location.

Please note: Gumbo not included.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Scientia Juris: Metz Law Review

A new law review, Scientia juris: Metz Law Review has been announced and, with it, a call for papers for the first issue on 'Law and Borders – the Frontiers of Law':

There are many relationships between law and borders. International borders may immediately come to mind, as they define the area of validity of each legal system and are in turn determined by public international law. In a broader sense, the notion of border proves to be inherently linked to law. First of all, law, borders and other limits seem to be the main tools for creating order. Moreover, law as a whole can be seen as the most exemplary system of delimitation: “the norm is the boundary” (Anthony COHEN), and “law is this art of the limit; it is this socially approved discourse that names, classifies and divides” (François OST), namely territories, social spaces and areas of competence; persons, roles, institutions, objects, actions and processes; the allowed from the forbidden, etc. Nevertheless, the reach of law is not without limits. This raises the question of its frontiers in relation to other social systems and modes of regulation. Furthermore, there will undoubtedly be the need to make certain distinctions: law may either draw new borders or create penalties for the transgression of preexisting ones (Émile DURKHEIM); on the political and constitutional level, we can distinguish with Max WEBER between norms of power limitation (Gewaltbegrenzung) and norms of separation of powers (Gewaltenteilung).

Based on this rough outline, we request papers in English, French or German that explore the relationships between law and borders. The submissions may develop the above mentioned themes or focus on the following questions:

Can we observe an individualization of – especially territorial – borders, if not a “liquefaction” (Zygmunt BAUMAN) of society by law?

Do delimitations working in law enhance groups or individuals? Or is it necessary to distinguish according to sectors of social life and branches of law? For example, territorial borders sanctioned by law may set the stage for groups whereas the delimitation of privacy would concern individuals.

Can law and borders be considered as structural or “formal investments” (Laurent THEVENOT)?

The legal language is particularly rich in nouns, which could be the most appropriate category of words for delimitation. What lessons may follow from this for our subject and for the understanding of law in general?

This list is far from complete; numerous other problems and points could be addressed as well. Similarly, the bibliography given below is only meant as a research tool; consultation of documents mentioned here is thus neither required nor objectively indispensable. The papers sought should put forth and defend ideas, hypotheses, models or theories, but not simply present data or already published research work in a more or less descriptive way.

Submissions shall be sent as an Open Office or Word file to the editors by September 30, 2010. There is no minimum or maximum length.

Note that contributors can also submit papers outside of the focus of this call on any comparative or transnational subject. All submissions should be sent to rjfdm@univ-metz.fr or licari@univ-metz.fr

CALL FOR PAPERS: Regionalism and Authoritarianism in the Contemporary Arab World: An Interdisciplinary Research Workshop

The Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia (TRI) at Princeton University has issued a call for papers on the topic of 'Regionalism and authoritarianism in the contemporary Arab world: an interdisciplinary research workshop'.

Across the Arab world, most regimes are authoritarian—that is, characterized by a high degree of limitation on political competition, with those limits enforced by state coercion. Within these authoritarian systems, whether republican or monarchical, the state structure is as a rule strongly unitary and highly centralized. With rare exceptions (the United Arab Emirates; in the last decade, Sudan and Iraq), federal systems are absent in the Arab world. Scholars, meanwhile, have tended to take the unitary state at face value. In a number of disciplines, studies of the modern Arab world focus disproportionately on the central state. The state’s relationship to its population is assumed to be invariable across the territory; where differences in that relationship are recognized and analysed in the literature, they are usually communal rather than geographical ones (one regime favours cAlawis or Bedouins; another discriminates against Shicis or Berbers). And yet in practice, the expression of power in authoritarian Arab regimes is clearly modulated according to region—whether it is the Sacid and Sinai in Egypt, the Oranais in Algeria, the Hijaz in Saudi Arabia or the Rif in Morocco. Even in a country such as Syria this is the case: modes of governance differ greatly between the capital and Aleppo, let alone between settled and tribal areas.

That this is so reflects the relative weakness of the concerned regimes, but also the continuing strength of regional identities. Scholars and other commentators are very ready to assert that the borders of modern Arab states are artificial and lack legitimacy in the eyes of their populations. But, whereas this is usually taken to mean that Arab populations would view a larger territorial unity as more legitimate, it is often the case that regional loyalties within states remain stronger than, or at least as strong as, national (let alone pan-Arab) ones.

This workshop, drawing on multiple disciplinary perspectives, will seek to examine the relationship between authoritarianism and regionalism in the Arab world. How have practices of regionalism functioned in authoritarian regimes which recognize little or no formal differentiation between regions within their state? By “practices of regionalism”, we mean both the manifestations of regional loyalties within the central state agencies (such as Takriti domination over the upper echelons of the former Iraqi regime) and regional variations in the implementation of state authority (in Syria, for example, an internal circular of the Ministry of awqaf sets levels of control on the composition of Friday sermons that differ by region).

Authoritarianism, however, has not only been forced to cope with pre-existing regional identities and particularities: it has also reinforced them, either directly, by deliberately neglecting rebellious peripheral areas (the Rif in Hassan II’s Morocco), or indirectly, by opposing a free press and genuine party politics—that is, the arenas that might have helped transcend the regional fragmentation of the national territory. Looking at the question in the other direction, to what extent have regional considerations shaped non-state actors’ interactions with regimes? To what extent have mobilizations characterized as sectarian in nature (including ‘Islamist’ mobilizations) in fact represented an outlet for regionalist sentiment? We are interested in how regional feeling affects interactions with a state whose effective authority is not in itself challenged, rather than separatist or autonomist movements (Kurds in Iraq and Syria, South Yemen) or de facto independent regions within failed states (“Smaller Christian Lebanon” during the civil war, Somaliland and Puntland).

Format: The workshop will bring together a group of 12-15 participants with relevant expertise, including doctoral students and younger academics as well as more established researchers, for a series of round table discussions. Papers will be pre-circulated, allowing the maximum time for discussion and the exchange of ideas. The workshop will not be public, but will involve Princeton faculty and graduate students as discussants.

The language of the workshop will be English.

Submission guidelines: Prospective participants are invited to submit abstracts (up to 400 words) to the organizers: Thomas Pierret (tpierret@princeton.edu) and Benjamin White (bw5@princeton.edu).

Deadline for submissions is Friday 9 July 2010. Abstracts may present a single-country case study or one that draws material from more than one Arab country, but in all cases submitters should draw out the wider comparative significance of their specific subject. The workshop will take place on 15-16 November 2010.

Accommodation and meals will be provided, and travel costs will be reimbursed up to a reasonable limit.

NOTICE: Identity and Otherness: Dealing with Difference without Borders Conference

The following interesting, transdisciplinary postgraduate conference is fast approaching:

Identity and Otherness: Dealing with Difference without Borders

University of Birmingham, College of Arts and Law Graduate School

28th May 2010

The law panel, one among many, includes:

• Fiona Batt, University of Bristol, “Ancient Indigenous Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) and Intellectual Property Rights”

• Luke Butler, University of Birmingham, “Putting Lawyers in Boxes: “You are Either One of Us, One of Them or One of the Other” – Conflicts of Norms and Legal Cultures”

For any enquiries or for further information, contact: Claire Peters (cim951@bham.ac.uk) or Sarah Botfield (SJB923@bham.ac.uk)