NOTICE: Legal Pluralism and Democracy: When does Legal Pluralism enhance, when does it erode Legitimacy of and Trust in Democratic Institutions? (9-11 June 2011; Oñati, Spain, )

I only just became aware of this, now expired, Call for Papers. I thought our members might still be interested in hearing about it.

CALL FOR PAPERS


Legal Pluralism and Democracy: When does Legal Pluralism enhance, when does it erode Legitimacy of and Trust in Democratic Institutions?

Workshop to be held at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law (IISJ) in Oñati, Spain, June 9-11, 2011 and convened by Mirjam Künkler (Princeton University) and Yüksel Sezgin (Harvard Divinity School)

The introduction of colonial (secular) law notwithstanding, many countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America have since independence adopted schemes of legal pluralism and multiple jurisdictions where pockets of law are adjudicated based on (positivized) religious and customary legal norms. Colonial administrations seldom imposed their own law in the realm of family- or personal status law, and sometimes also adjudicated in matters of criminal law based on local norms (or colonial interpretations thereof), rather than on the basis of standards in criminal law prevalent in their own societies. Since independence, many post-colonial states therefore function with multiple jurisdictions, often in order to accommodate cultural particularity. As a result, differentiations based on religion, gender and culture in both rights and duties often exist within the same politicolegal space. On the one hand, such differentiations, including group rights, may protect cultural particularity and enhance trust in central/national administrations by alleviating the burden of assimilation into a national culture. On the other, they may introduce unequal legal standards undermining internationally recognized civil and human rights. Especially in countries that have democratized and thus carry the promise of international rights standards, tensions may arise between accommodating for cultural particularity on the one hand, and delivering upon the promise of universal and equal citizenship on the other – both of which are crucial sources of legitimacy and trust in nascent democracies.

This workshop examines the implications of legal pluralism and multiple jurisdictions for the quality of post-colonial democracies. From Indonesia to Senegal, India to Peru, the Philippines to Mongolia, states have been faced with the trade-off between difference and inclusion, unity and equality, accommodating for particularity in their legal systems versus delivering upon their promise of unitary rights standards. The legitimacy and trust in democratic regimes hinge upon these mutually exclusive projects.

For the purposes of the workshop, we understand as having legal pluralism both those tates that officially recognize multiple jurisdictions (such as Indonesia with special qadi courts), those that within a unified judicial system apply different codes of law (such as India with “sharia” law for Muslims), and those states where informal justice is a common phenomenon (as in the application of non-codified customary law through nonstate authorities like village elders).

We welcome paper proposal that specifically address questions such as: when does legal pluralism hinder or advance the support for and trust in democratic values and institutions? When and how can legal pluralism reconcile competing demands for equality, unity and particularity without disrupting democratic institutions and processes?

While the workshop will focus on post-colonial democracies, we also welcome paper proposals that draw comparisons to democracies that did not emerge from a colonial context, but whose legal systems are plural.

The Workshop shall bring together junior and senior scholars of Law, Political Science, Anthropology and Sociology, as well as practitioners and activists involved in legal reform. We hope to strike a balance between accounts based on rich ethnographies, and those based on comparative-institutional analyses. Both types should allow us to inform a better theoretical understanding of the consequences of legal pluralism for the quality of long-standing and nascent democracies and the trade-offs states face in designing legal and judicial institutions that are perceived as culturally legitimate but also comply with universal rights standards.

Each participant will be asked to present a paper of 6,000-8,000 words, and panels will be organized comparatively. To open the discussion, one participant will be asked to offer a ten-minute commentary on a given paper, before the floor will be opened for discussion of the paper among all participants. Papers shall be circulated eight weeks ahead of the workshop, and shall afterwards be edited and submitted for publication in the IISL working paper or book series.

Please email paper abstracts of 350 words and a short bio until August 10, 2010 to the Workshop Directors at legalpluralism-onati@hotmail.com

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS - REMINDER: COMPARATIVE LEGAL THEORY PROJECT (Roundtable, 29 October, Catania)

Participants are being sought for a collaborative project in legal theory.

The Comparative Legal Theory Project aims to study legal philosophy in context to better understand the relationship between changing conceptions of legal thought across time and space and a more genuinely general or universal jurisprudence.

The project will take place over the next few years. Participants will first produce jurisdictional reports on the basis of a questionnaire prepared by the project managers. The resulting reports will provide thick descriptions of contemporary legal theory in diverse social and historical contexts. While participants need not be comparatists, a comparative perspective will be encouraged through ongoing collaborative meetings and the circulation of draft reports throughout the life of the project. This collaboration will also include the analysis of the reports by the managers and reporters. Finally, the reports and analysis will be published.

To achieve these aims, a preliminary roundtable will be held at the University of Catania, Italy on Friday, 29 October 2010. Those attending the roundtable will be able to assist in the final formulation of the project, the creation of the questionnaire to be used, and the identification of potential reporters.

The project managers are Seán Patrick Donlan (Limerick), Margaret Martin (Western Ontario), and Alessio Lo Giudice (Catania). Please email sean.donlan@ul.ie for additional information on the project or alogiudice@lex.unict.it for practical advice on accommodation, etc.

Please feel free to circulate this message to other individuals, institutions, blogs, etc.

NOTICE: Chair in Law (Civil law, public law, or the Scottish legal tradition) at the University of Aberdeen

The following notice may be of interest:

We seek to appoint to a Professorial post in Civil Law, Public Law or the Scottish Legal Tradition. We welcome applications from high quality candidates who have very considerable teaching experience and a very significant high quality publication portfolio. We seek a scholar of international standing who can make an excellent contribution to the research quality profile of the school. The successful candidate would be expected to take on appropriate administrative responsibilities, and leadership experience is required.

Informal enquiries can be made to Head of School Professor Margaret Ross (tel: 01224 272421 or e-mail m.l.ross@abdn.ac.uk) or Deputy Head of School Dr John Paterson (tel 01224 273888, email j.paterson@abdn.ac.uk).

Salary will be at an appropriate placement according to qualifications and experience.

Should you require a visa to undertake paid employment in the UK you will be required to fulfil the minimum points criteria to be granted a Certificate of Sponsorship and Tier 2 visa. As appropriate, at the time an offer of appointment is made you will be asked to demonstrate that you fulfil the criteria in respect of financial maintenance and competency in English. Please do not hesitate to contact Louise Alford, HR Adviser, for further information on this.

To apply online for this position visit www.abdn.ac.uk/jobs

Job Reference Number: 1151338.

The closing date for the receipt of applications is Friday 27 August 2010.

Promoting Diversity and Equal Opportunities throughout the University

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS: Comparative Legal Theory Project

Participants are being sought for a collaborative and comparative project in legal theory.

The Comparative Legal Theory project aims to place legal theory in its social, historical, and comparative context. Our goal is to produce jurisdictional reports on legal theory on the basis of a questionnaire prepared by the project organisers and through ongoing collaborative workshops.

A roundtable on the project will be held in Catania on Friday, 29 October 2010. Participants will be able to assist in creating the questionnaire to be used and to identify potential reporters.

The project managers are Seán Patrick Donlan (Limerick), Margaret Martin (Western Ontario), and Alessio Lo Giudice (Catania). Please email sean.donlan@ul.ie for additional information.

Please feel free to circulate this message to other individuals, institutions, blogs, etc.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: 50th Anniversary Conference of the Québec Society of Comparative Law

I think that I somehow failed to post the following call for proposals:

50th Anniversary Conference of the Québec Society of Comparative Law (QSCL)

Université de Sherbrooke
27-29 October 2011

Submission deadline: October 1st, 2010

For nearly 50 years, the Québec Society of Comparative Law has brought together legal scholars, lawyers, judges and graduate students sharing an interest in comparative law. The Association’s main activities include organising an annual conference, awarding prizes for outstanding student works in comparative law, informing its members of upcoming events of interest and providing financial support to enable reporters from Québec to take part in congresses of the International Academy of Comparative Law. The Society has played an essential role in promoting the comparative study of legal systems and traditions.

To celebrate its 50 years of existence, the Society is organising a conference inviting a critical examination of its very mission: comparative law. The enduring presence of comparative studies in the legal environment is perhaps surprising: neither a field of law nor a discipline in its own right, comparative law continues to be an object of research and debate. This conference will serve to reflect on comparative law as a foundational endeavour by addressing topics and themes related to its past, present, and future. Proposals for the 50th Anniversary Conference might address one or several of the following themes, or even suggest others:

• A look at the past: the foundations of comparative law
o The jurists who have shaped comparative law: their dreams, works, successes and failures.
o Mobilisation for the sake of comparative law: a history of the associations and institutions that have helped to develop and promote the comparative study of law.
o Contributions of comparative law to positive law: the influence of comparative law in codification, legislative reform and case law.
o The place of comparative law in the history of legal thought.

• A look at the present : comparative law today
o The role of comparative law in facilitating cohabitation, coordination and harmonisation of national and supranational legal systems.
o Linguistic diversity within legal systems: an obstacle or a challenge for comparative law?
o The place of comparative law in academic teaching and research.
o The role of comparative law in practice.
o The new “comparative lawyers” and the transnational practice of law.
o “Families”, “traditions”, “legal transplants”, “viruses”, etc.: the metaphors of comparative law.

• A look at the future: comparative law tomorrow
o “A small, small world” or the globalisation of law: with the decline of national legal systems, will comparative law become obsolete?
o Does comparative law really contribute to the knowledge of law?
o Comparative legal research: with or without method?
o Comparative law as a bridge between national legal communities: the example of mixed legal systems.
o The next 50 years of comparative law: who, why, how?

Proposals must include a title and summary (500 words maximum), with a short biography (250 words maximum), and be submitted by October 1st, 2010 to the President of the Society, Professor Nathalie Vézina (Nathalie.Vezina@USherbrooke.ca). The Scientific Committee will communicate its decision as of the month of December, 2010.

Speakers whose proposals are accepted by the Scientific Committee must be prepared to pay their conference fees, cost of travel and accommodation to attend the conference.

Financial assistance may be available to cover some of these costs, in accordance with the needs of individual speakers and depending on sources of funding.

Speakers will be invited to submit a paper for publication in the Conference proceedings.

Additional information will follow regarding the modalities of such publication.

All contributions may be in French or in English.

Scientific Committee :
Michelle Cumyn, professor, Université Laval
Mathieu Devinat, professor, Université de Sherbrooke
David Gilles, professor, Université de Sherbrooke
Michel Morin, professor, Université de Montréal
Nathalie Vézina, professor, Université de Sherbrooke and Committee president

For further information : www.aqdc.qc.ca.

NOTICE: Center on Global Legal Transformation

I just received the following notice:

Center on Global Legal Transformation Established at Columbia Law School

Professor Katharina Pistor Will Oversee Venue for Research and Scholarship on Emergence of New Forms of Governance in Wake of Globalization

Media Contact: Steven Gosset, 212-854-1787, steven.gosset@law.columbia.edu
Public Affairs, 212-854-2650

New York, Aug. 9, 2010—Columbia Law School has created the Center on Global Legal Transformation, which will examine the impact of new forms of governance in the wake of globalization.

The center will be led by Katharina Pistor, the Michael I. Sovern Professor of Law, an internationally recognized expert on comparative law and governance. She expects the center to serve as a think tank for academics from multiple disciplines to study the transformation of law in the context of globalization and “rethink these issues collectively.” Toward that end, the Center will host workshops and conferences, including one in the fall on globalizing property rights.

“We’re moving away from the nation-state model, yet do not have, and – critically – are unlikely to have in the foreseeable future, a fully developed global governance regime,” Pistor said.

To fill this void, Pistor said, governments, firms, NGOs, and other entities assert rule-making authority by, for example, establishing standards on food safety for transnational production chains, or developing model contracts for innovative financial products that are traded globally, or codes of conduct for multinational firms.

“Importantly, these instruments are effectively binding on others. This has serious implications for what law is, how law is made and how law is enforced, and what the distributional effects of law might be. I think we have to study this in a systematic fashion,” Pistor said.

The Center is also planning an interdisciplinary colloquium on governing interdependence. “The world is not integrating, but it has clearly become much more interdependent,” noted Pistor, who joined the Law School faculty in 2001.

It is an issue that gained prominence during the financial crisis two years ago when a crisis that originated in the U.S. housing market quickly spread around the world. Interdependencies are equally prominent in climate change, global public health, or terrorism.

“Conventional notions of governance are not very helpful when we actually observe the emergence of multiple, competing and partially overlapping governance regimes,” she said.

The colloquium will bring together academics from around the Columbia community to share research and develop new frameworks for analyzing global interdependencies.

Columbia Law School, founded in 1858, stands at the forefront of legal education and of the law in a global society. Columbia Law School joins its traditional strengths in international and comparative law, constitutional law, administrative law, business law and human rights law with pioneering work in the areas of intellectual property, digital technology, sexuality and gender, criminal, national security, and environmental law.

Visit us at http://law.columbia.edu

Follow us on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/columbialaw

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS: Mediterranean Hybridity Roundtable

An interdisciplinary roundtable on the legal and normative hybridity of the Mediterranean region will be held in Catania on Monday, 25 October 2010. Organised with Juris Diversitas and hosted at the University of Catania, the event is part of the Mediterranean Hybridity Project launched in Malta in June 2010.

The extraordinary legal and normative hybridity of the Mediterranean was produced in a complex history of conquest, colonisation, and social and legal diffusion across shifting and porous boundaries. But studies of the subject have been isolated, sporadic, and too often framed within narrow jurisdictional and disciplinary constraints.

The Mediterannean Hybridity Project is creating a collaborative interdisciplinary network of experts to study both (i) the state laws that are the domain of lawyers and (ii) the wider normative orders typically studied by social scientists. The project marries conceptual and empirical models from the legal and social sciences, especially earlier analyses of ‘mixed legal systems’ and normative (or legal) pluralism.

Our intention is to create multidisciplinary jurisdictional reports, resulting in a published collection, and a database on the laws and non-state norms of the region. The roundtable will allow the project leaders to select the participants involved over the course of the project and to finalise the questions to be posed.

The outcome of the project will be more accurate, useful, and accessible accounts of Mediterranean legalities. It may produce an analytical model more useful than existing taxonomies and methods for new research in the region, in Europe, and around the world.

The project leaders are Dr Seán Patrick Donlan (University of Limerick), Dr David Zammit (University of Malta), and Dr Simon Mercieca (University of Malta).

While the organisers will not be able to fund expenses, there is no cost to attend. We are especially eager to include participants (i) from the Balkans, the Levant, and North Africa and (ii) anthropologists, geographers, historians, and sociologists.

For additional information, contact Dr Seán Patrick Donlan (sean.donlan@ul.ie) or, after 1 September, Dr Biagio Andò (bando@lex.unict.it).

NOTICE: Juris Diversitas Membership

Juris Diversitas will soon be accepting membership applications. Information will be posted shortly on our blog.

In addition to being able to vote in future elections, members will be charged reduced fees for conferences held in the year of their membership. Additional benefits are being negotiated.

Individuals interested in membership should sign up for alerts.

Anyone willing to assist Juris Diversitas in our work or with suggestions should contact Dr Seán Patrick Donlan (sean.donlan@ul.ie).

NOTICE: Transnational Legal Theory

I've just received notice that the latest (second) issue of Transnational Legal Theory has been published.

Having reviewed again the editor's introduction to the journal, I was surprised how close its aims were to our own. I've included the introduction in full below:

Welcome to the inaugural issue of Transnational Legal Theory (TLT), a peer-reviewed journal published by Hart Publishing. As Convening Editor charged with initiating and overall editing of TLT, I am both delighted and humbled by the response to TLT in its formative stages. In particular, a second-to-none group of scholars from around the world, spanning a number of sub-disciplines and a range of theoretical approaches within the legal academy, has enthusiastically signed on as TLT’s editorial team. Almost to the person, each expressed the view that just this sort of journal is needed at this juncture in the evolution of legal scholarship worldwide.

TLT will publish high-quality theoretical scholarship that addresses transnational dimensions of law and legal dimensions of transnational fields and activity. We seek to be a journal of first recourse for scholars seeking to push the boundaries of contemporary legal theory in ways that take seriously how transnational contexts, forces and ideations affect debates within existing traditions, schools of legal thought, or subject-matter fields of law. Similarly, TLT aspires to challenge scholars debating general theories about law, as well as those working in the particular jurisprudence of a variety of fields (criminal law, family law, tort law, the law of evidence, and so on), to integrate the relevance of transnational contexts and dimensions into their work.

Transnational Legal Theory’s mandate includes theoretical work that explores fresh (or revived) understandings of both international law and comparative law ‘beyond the state’ (and the interstate). In particular, we seek works that explore the interfaces, intersections and mutual embeddedness of public international law, private international law and comparative law, in terms of whether and how such inter-relationships are reshaping and blending these sub-disciplines in directions that are in important respects ‘transnational’ in nature.

The journal is also much interested in pushing into new terrain the study of the interaction of legal systems or legal orders in such contexts as the following examples: constitutional law theory on the reception of various forms of external law by states’ legal orders; jurisdictional theory on the external projection of states’ legal order; public law theory on the evolution of regional legal orders such as that of the EU; theorisation of law as ‘global’ in contradistinction to law as either international or transnational; and processoriented approaches to policy formation, decision-making, and operationalisation of law, from transjurisdictional litigation to delocalised arbitration to multi-level governance. Importantly, it should be emphasised here that the journal’s mandate is ecumenical in an important sense, namely in that the work of the journal is not governed by any specific definition of ‘transnational’. Most particularly, ‘transnational legal theory’ need not be understood as synonymous with theories of or about something to be called ‘transnational law’. Indeed, contributors are in no sense expected to accept the existence and/or desirability of a form or forms of law best styled ‘transnational law’ and are further welcome to critique such conceptions.

There is another sense in which the journal is pluralistically minded. The ‘legal theory’ of Transnational Legal Theory is understood broadly to encompass a variety of inter- and sub-disciplinary theoretical approaches to law or to law-like normativity, including, to name only some, philosophy of law, legal sociology, legal history, law and economics, international relations theory, and political and moral theory. It further includes the best of what one might call doctrinal-theoretical explorations of subject-matter fields commonly understood by field insiders as transnational in some meaningful sense (fields such as commercial arbitration law, maritime law or law of the internet)—on condition that readers be able to distill important general lessons from the article on the shape of law outside the confines of purely state-law or interstate-law assumptions. Such it is that, as Convening Editor, I approach ‘transnational legal theory’ as une salle polyvalente (a wonderful term I first came across 15 years ago as signage on community centres throughout southern France). To push the metaphor somewhat inelegantly, Transnational Legal Theory is an edifice still at the planning stages and, in the spirit of the networked epistemologies of the contemporary world, I invite everyone to join in as co-architect.

Craig Scott, Professor of Law,
Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto

That second issue's contents include:

Articles

Transnational Legal Pluralism
Peer Zumbansen

Constitutional Tipping Points: Sustainable Constitutionalism in Theory and Practice
Victor V Ramraj

Global Corporate Social Responsibility, Human Rights and Law: An Interactive Regulatory Perspective on the Voluntary-Mandatory Dichotomy
Radu Mares

Reviews

Framers and Problematisers: Getting to Grips with Global Governance
Roger Brownsword

Defining the Crime of Aggression
RA Duff

Citizenship and Injustice in Immigration
Colin Grey

An ‘Empire of Law’? Controlling Executive Power in a Worldwide Polity
Martin J Wiener

The Worlds of the Trusts at McGill

The Quebec Research Centre of Private and Comparative Law announces a conference entitled The Worlds of the Trust/La fiducie dans tous ses États, 23-25 September 2010, at the Faculty of Law, McGill University.

Until recently, the trust was often described as foreign to the logic of the law of property in the civilian tradition. This assertion is increasingly untenable, as the profile of the trust in legal systems with a civilian law of property continues to develop and expand. This conference seeks to explore the multiple ways in which civilian and mixed legal systems have embraced the trust, with the goal of allowing jurists from different jurisdictions to better understand their different approaches to this increasingly important legal institution.

This conference promises to be a new point of departure in the comparative study of trust law. Twenty papers will be presented which examine issues relating to the nature and operation of trusts in civilian and mixed legal systems. Commentary on the papers will be provided by commentators with expertise in the common law trust. The working languages of the conference will be English and French. Simultaneous translation will be provided.

Speakers at the conference include: François Barrière, Université Paris-II(Panthéon-Assas); Alexandra Braun, Oxford University; François du Toit, University of the Western Cape, Republic of South Africa; Thomas Gallanis, University of Iowa; George Gretton, University of Edinburgh; Lusina Ho, University of Hong Kong; Mr. Justice Nicholas Kasirer, Quebec Court of Appeal; Paul Matthews, King's College London.

Commentators include: Gregory Alexander, Cornell Law School; Aline Grenon, University of Ottawa; John Langbein, Yale Law School; Ben McFarlane, Oxford University; Tina Piper, McGill University; Robert Sitkoff, Harvard Law School; Lionel Smith, McGill University; Donovan Waters, University of Victoria (Emeritus).

The full programme is available at

http://www.mcgill.ca/crdpcq/activities/trust/

The online registration system will be available in late July. The conference will be accredited by the Barreau du Québec as part of its mandatory continuing legal education programme.

The Quebec Research Centre of Private and Comparative Law acknowledges with gratitude the financial support that it has received from the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel Foundation, from Quebec's Ministère du Développement économique, de l'Innovation et de l'Exportation, and from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.