NOTICE: Morigiwa, Stolleis, and Halperin on the Interpretation of Law in the Age of Enlightenment

I’ve just become aware of the release (by Springer) of a very interesting text by Yasutomo Morigiwa, Michael Stolleis, and Jean-Louis Halperin (eds), Interpretation of Law in the Age of Enlightenment: From the Rule of the King to the Rule of Law (2011):

This book examines the actual practice of the interpretation of law in the Age of Enlightenment versus the ideology of the Age and explains the reason for and difference between the two. The ideology of the Age of Enlightenment was that law, i.e., the will of the sovereign, can be explicitly and appropriately stated, thus making interpretation redundant. However, the reality was that in the 18th century, there was no one leading source of national law that would be the object of interpretation. Instead, there was a plurality of sources of law: the Roman Law, local customary law, and the royal ordinance. Yet, in deciding a case in a court of law, the law must speak with one voice, making interpretation to unify the norms inevitable. This book discusses the process involved and the role played by justification in terms of reason - the hallmark of Enlightenment.

The table of contents includes:

Editors’ Preface; Morigiwa Yasutomo, Michael Stolleis, Jean-Louis Halpérin.- Foreword from the Herstec Project; Sato Shoichi.- About the Contributors.- I. Introduction.- Judicial Interpretation in Transition from the Ancien Régime to Constitutionalism; Michael Stolleis.- II. The case of France.- Legal Interpretation in France under the Reign of Louis XVI through the Gazette des Tribunaux; Jean-Louis Halpérin.- Legal Interpretation through the Case Law Book of the Parlement de Flandre; Serge Dauchy.- II. The case of Germany.- The Object of Interpretation: Legislation and Competing Normative Sources of Law in Europe during the 16th to 18th Centuries; Heinz Mohnhaupt.- The Concept and Means of Legal Interpretation in the 18th Century; Jan Schröder.- Necessity: Pandectists between Norm and Reality (1780-1870); Hans-Peter Haferkamp.- IV. The Nature of Legal Interpretation.- Interpretation by Another Name; Morigiwa Yasutomo.- What is Interpretation of the Law for the French Judge? Michel Troper.- The Craft of Interpretation ; Bradley Wendel.- Concluding Remarks.- Legal Interpretation in 18th Century Europe: Doctrinal Debates versus Political Change ; Jean-Louis Halpérin.- Index.

REMINDER: The Concept of 'Law' in Context Conference

REMINDER REMINDER REMINDER

 

Our conference on 'The concept of "law" in context: comparative law, legal philosophy, and the social sciences' will be held from 21-22 October 2011 at the Swiss Institute of Comparative law (SICL) in Lausanne:

The coexistence of the laws of the state and other normative orders, in the Western past and the global present, is a challenge to both modern legal philosophy and comparative law. The continuing importance of non-state norms, trans-national and sub-national, undermines the state-centred focus of much contemporary jurisprudence. It also problematises the neat division of complex and dynamic legal traditions into discrete families of closed legal systems.

Speakers include plenary speaker Werner Menski (SOAS, University of London) and Marc Amstutz (University of Fribourg), Gerhard Anders (University of Zürich and Edinburgh), Mauro Bussani (University of Trieste and the International Association of Legal Science), Seán Patrick Donlan (University of Limerick), Baudouin Dupret (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France), Julia Eckert (University of Berne), Andrew Halpin (Swansea University), Lukas Heckendorn Urscheler (Swiss Institute of Comparative Law), Alessio Lo Giudice (University of Catania), Salvatore Mancuso (University of Macao), Emmanuel Melissaris (London School of Economics), Alexander Morawa (University of Lucerne), David Nelken (University of Cardiff and Macerata), and Mark van Hoecke (University of Ghent)

For addition information, please contact Lukas Heckendorn Urscheler at info@isdc.ch or +41 21 692 49 11. A registration form is available at http://www.isdc.ch/.


Finally, note that our project on Legal Philosophy in Context will also be discussed on Friday, 21 October 2011. For additional information, please contact Seán Patrick Donlan at sean.donlan@ul.ie.

Additional information will be provided shortly about a meeting of our members.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Second EUROPEAN SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE LEGAL HISTORY Conference (Amsterdam 9-10 July 2012

The Second European Society for Comparative Legal History Conference will be held in Amsterdam from 9-10 July 2012. The theme is:

COMPARATIVE LEGAL HISTORY

Definitions and Challenges

Call for papers

Comparative Legal History is a relatively young discipline. It focuses explicitly on the comparison of legal ideas and legal institutions in divergent legal traditions. The European Society for Comparative Legal History (ESCLH) was founded in 2009 in order to promote such comparison. Its Inaugural Conference (Valencia, 5-6 July 2010) showed that it is not always easy to find material which is suitable for serious comparison and to establish the criteria which have to be met in order to come to grips with this material.

The Second ESCLH Conference, which will take place on 9-10 July 2012 at Amsterdam and will be hosted by the VU University, aims at addressing this fundamental problem. Under the heading “Definitions and Challenges” it will try to delineate the landmarks which fruitful legal historical comparison requires and to trace the specific problems that a comparative-historical approach of the various branches of law may encounter. The keynote address will be delivered by David Ibbetson, Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Cambridge.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Second issue of Scientia Juris (Metz Law School Journal)

Legal Maxims in the 21st Century – Law in Books or Law in Action?

“Hence, in all civilized nations, we always witness the formation, alongside the temple of enacted laws under the legislator’s supervision, of a repository of maxims, decisions, and doctrinal writings which is daily refined by the practitioners and their clashing debates in court, which steadily grows as all acquired knowledge is added to it, and which has always been regarded as the true supplement of legislation”.

- Translation of J.-E.-M. Portalis in Alain Levasseur, ‘Code Napoleon or Code Portalis?’ (1968) 43 Tulane Law Review 762, 769-70.

This famous quotation of Portalis expresses in a brilliant phrase that statutes are not the only sources of law and that alongside them are maxims or adages, as well as judge-made law and doctrine.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Law, Literature, and Translation Conference (Dublin, 9-10 June 2012)

I've heard about the following:

LAW, LITERATURE, AND TRANSLATION CONFERENCE
TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN 9-10th of June 2012

There is no law without literature for law is also literature. Irish druids were not only poets: they were also invested with judicial authority. Still to this day, literature and translation of literature often deal with law, but very often the focus lies on the many ways of breaking the law. Especially in Ireland, poets and jurists are both celebrated and blamed for their talents in using words. Both are endowed with the power to charm their audience, sometimes at the cost of truth. The training of both a jurist and a poet involves a certain degree of self-characterization formed and influenced by culture. Law and literature, like all the humanities, share a common interest in the human experience and they look into what makes them specifically human. However, law aims at the clarity of an objective science whereas the power of literature and its translation rely on emotion and sensitivity of interpretation. Unlike what is expected from law, they feed on ambivalence, ambiguity, paradox and contradiction. Both Law and Literature are caught in the extensive possibilities but also the limitations of both written and spoken words. This conference aims to create an interdisciplinary dialogue between scholars of law, literature, and translation studies, and it seeks to explore the various interactions between these disciplines. It takes a broad approach to the fields of law, literature, and literary translation, welcoming papers considering key areas such as the following (and beyond)

CALL FOR PAPERS: CAS@50 : Cutting Edges and Retrospectives

I just received the following information from the Commission on Legal Pluralism:

CAS@50 : Cutting Edges and Retrospectives

6-8 June 2012

University of Edinburgh

Over 2012, the Centre of African Studies (CAS) in Edinburgh will celebrate its 50th anniversary. The focal point for the year-long celebrations will be an international conference from 6-8 June on the theme of CAS@50: Cutting Edges and Retrospectives.

Emerging out of the Hayter enquiry into Area Studies in the United Kingdom, CAS was established with an explicitly interdisciplinary brief. Since 1962, our researchers have maintained one foot in a core discipline – such as Social Anthropology, History, Geography, Education, Economics, Development Studies, and Politics – and the other in African Studies more broadly. Over the past 50 years, CAS has generated leading research on themes as diverse as Pan-Africanism; Creole communities in colonial West Africa; hunter-gatherer societies in Southern and Central Africa; democratisation; migration and urbanisation; Africa and international education; labour and politics; gender and legal pluralism; and religion and society. More recently, reflecting a generational turnover, it has added biotechnology, borderlands, information technologies, land- and waterscapes, heritage and commemoration, and post-conflict transitions to the list of current research.

CAS@50 expects to use the anniversary not merely to look back upon the history of the Centre with a critical eye, but also to reflect on the trajectories of African Studies itself: to what extent is the terrain of academic enquiry from the early decades recognisable today, and might there be something to be said for looking afresh at some debates that have become obscured with the passage of time? Also, in what respects can one talk of genuine breakthroughs in our understandings, and where do unresolved issues reside? Other aspects of the conference look forward to emerging areas of research and address what might be considered cutting edge today, whether construed in terms of methodology or analytical perspective. Finally, the conference will tackle the contention that interdisciplinarity has been as much a problem for African Studies as its underlying source of strength.

NOTICE: Büchler on Islamic Law in Europe

Ashgate's Cultural Diversity and Law series, edited by Prakash Shah, has released Andrea Büchler (Zurich)'s Islamic Law in Europe?: Legal Pluralism and its Limits in European Family Laws:

Cultural and religious identity and family law are inter-related in a number of ways and raise various complex issues. European legal systems have taken various approaches to meeting these challenges. This book examines this complexity and indicates areas in which conflicts may arise by analysing examples from legislation and court decisions in Germany, Switzerland, France, England and Spain. It includes questions of private international law, comments on the various degrees of consideration accorded to cultural identity within substantive family law, and remarks on models of legal pluralism and the dangers that go along with them. It concludes with an evaluation of approaches which are process-based rather than institution-based.

CALL FOR PAPERS: International Conference on Law and Society (5-8 June 2012)

The Association for Political and Legal Anthropology has circulated information on an International Conference on Law and Society:

June 5-8, 2012

Hilton Hawaiian Village
Honolulu, Hawai‘i (USA)

We invite you to participate in the 2012 International Conference on Law and Society: Joint Annual Meetings of the Law and Society Association and the Research Committee on Sociology of Law (International Sociological Association), co-sponsored by the Canadian Law and Society Association (CLSA), the Japanese Association of Sociology of Law (JASL), and the Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA), UK.

The Call for Participation and Submission Site* will be available on October 4, 2011.

Deadline for submission of proposals is December 6, 2011.

Proposals for Individual Papers and Fully-Formed Sessions are welcome.

THEME: Sociolegal Conversations across a Sea of Islands

Building on a phrase coined by noted Polynesian scholar Epeli Hau‘ofa, our conference theme alludes both to the location of our meeting in Hawai‘i with its complex cultural and legal terrain and contemporary struggles over sovereignty and indigenous rights; and to the uniqueness of this opportunity for scholars from the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, North America, and other world regions to engage in conversation. So we seek papers, panels, and roundtables aimed at stimulating conversations that will build bridges across the seas of law and society and at the same time redirect their currents; about issues and ideas that are at once locally grounded and globally relevant; that seek to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar; that cross national, cultural, and disciplinary boundaries.

Our theme is broad, encompassing socio-legal concerns both familiar (such as courts and litigation, legal education, health, legal pluralism) and novel (such as indigenous peoples, finance and economy, war and human security, immigration, counter-terrorism, transnational regulation, globalization, and recolonization). Please see below for a non-exhaustive list of possible topics. They are examples only. Other law and society topics are welcome.

NOTICE: The Institute for Legal Studies of the University of Wisconsin Law School Law & Society Post-doctoral Fellowship

Thanks to the Legal History Blog, I just heard about the following post-doctoral fellowship:

Law & Society Post-doctoral Fellowship
2012-13 Academic Year

Announcement Updated: April 4, 2011
Applications must be received by January 9, 2012

Eligibility: This fellowship is intended for early career social science and humanities scholars whose research contains a strong legal component and who plan to compete for a University teaching position in the U.S. market. Non-US citizens may apply, but must meet the stated criteria.

About the Fellowship: The Institute for Legal Studies of the University of Wisconsin Law School will appoint a post-doctoral fellow for the 2012-13 academic year. We invite applications from scholars who are in the early (pre-tenure) stage of their career or whose careers have been interrupted or delayed. Eligibility is limited to humanities or social science scholars who work in the law and society tradition, for example, anthropologists, economists, historians, political scientists, and sociologists. Advanced ABD graduate students may apply, but the PhD must be completed before beginning the fellowship. The stipend will be $25,000, plus a research allowance of $5,000 and benefits that include health insurance.

NOTICE: Law and Religion in the 21st Century Conference

A conference on Law and Religion in the 21st Century will be held on Friday, 23 September from 9:30-18:30. The conference is chaired by Prof. dr. H.S. Taekema and will be held at Huub Bals Zaal, Hotel New York, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Attendance is free, but places are limited. If you wish to attend, you should register by e-mail with Wouter de Been: debeen@law.eur.nl:

In recent years the separation of church and state has become a topical issue once more. With the arrival of sizable groups of immigrants for whom religion remains an integral part of their identity and the emergence of new forms of transcendence and spirituality, religion is back in the public square. In his recent work Habermas even speaks of the rise of a post-secular society, a society that needs to adjust to the enduring presence of religion even under conditions of continuing modernization.

This renewed vitality of religion, in turn, has elicited a vehement defense of the separation of church and state from defenders of secularism. The separation of church and state, they believe, is an historical achievement of the Enlightenment that should not be sold out to accommodate Muslim immigrants, evangelicals, or new age religionists.