CALL FOR PAPERS: Encounters: An International Journal for the Study of Culture and Society

A Call for Papers for Encounters: An International Journal for the Study of Culture and Society has been issued. The topic, 'Islamic Law: Society, Culture and State' is quite similar to our Mediterranean Project. The Guest Editor is Sabrina Joseph (Zayed University, Dubai).

The Call for Papers reads:

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 arewelcome, 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 July 1, 2012. Submissions should include a cover letter to the editor describing the work in approximately one hundred words.

NOTICE: Janke and Licari on Enforcing Punitive Damage Awards in France

Benjamin West Janke (Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, PC) and Juris Diversitas Member François-Xavier Licari (University of Metz - Faculty of Law)'s 'Enforcing Punitive Damage Awards in France after Fountaine Pajot' is forthcoming in the American Journal of Comparative Law. It is available on SSRN.

In a landmark ruling, the Cour de cassation held that 'an award of punitive damages is not, per se, contrary to public policy,' but that 'it is otherwise when the amount awarded is disproportionate with regard to the damage sustained and the debtor's breach of his contractual obligation.' Schlenzka & Langhorne v. Fountaine Pajot, S.A. involved the failed attempt by American judgment creditors to enforce their California judgment against a French defendant in France. At the same time that the judgment creditors were taking their case through the French legal system, the Cour de cassation, in a different line of cases, liberalized the conditions under which a foreign judgment could be enforced in France. But when the Court opened one door for the American plaintiffs, it closed another by refusing to enforce the judgment because it included disproportionate punitive damages. The Court's reasons were inconsistent with prior interpretations of proportionality and disingenuous to the court's modern approach to the enforcement of foreign judgments. In just a few words, the Court echoed prevailing French and European sentiments about American punitive damage awards. Unfortunately, the prevailing attitudes are dominated more by prejudice than by fact and reason.

The Civil Law and its Codes: A Journey Through the Americas

Les Editions Thémis, Montreal, published Le droit civil et ses codes: parcours à travers les Amériques, a collection of papers presented at a workshop series conducted at the Quebec Research Center of Private and Comparative Law at McGill University, edited by Jimena Andino Dorato, Jean-Frédérick Ménard and Lionel Smith. View the Table of Contents.

Les neufs juristes conviés par le centre de recherche en droit privé et comparé du Québec de l'Université McGill à parcourir le droit civil à travers les Amériques et leurs codes en dressent un portrait pluriel. Cela dit, comme le relève Benoît Moore dans le rapport de synthèse qui clôt cet ouvrage collectif dans lequel il se penche sur l'unicité, la centralité et la pérennité des "codes d'Amérique", des thèmes récurrents traversent les textes des auteurs, indépendamment de leur origine nationale. Ainsi, on observe l'évolution du rôle normatif du Code civil en Argentine avec Julio César Rivera qui s'attarde notamment à ses interactions avec le common law et la lex mercatoria. On constate aussi, tant avec Olivier Moréteau, qui réfléchit à la place du Code civil en Louisiane qu'avec Jimena Andino Dorate, Graciela Jasa-Silveira et Nelcy Lopez Cuellar qui abordent le dialogue des codes civils avec les normes constitutionnelles et internationales en Argentine , au Mexique et en Colombie, que la place du code civil dans l'univers juridique a beaucoup changé depuis la première vague de codification au 19ème siècle. De même, l'exposé de de José Antônio Peres Gediel sur la modernisation du droit des personnes physiques en réponse aux innovations médicales et scientifiques et dans la foulée de l'adoption par le Brésil d'un nouveau code civil rejoint à la fois le propos sur les défis associés à la réforme et à la recodification du droit privé que livre Luis Muniz-Argüelles à partir de Puerto Rico et le point de vue québécois de Sophie Morin sur l'avenir du Code civil du Québec. Tel que l'évoquent en ouverte Jimena Andino Dorato, Jean-Frédérick Ménard et Lionel Smith, cet ouvrage pose un regard renouvelé sur le droit civil tel qu'il s'est développé sur le continent américain et constitue une excellente introduction à son étude comparée.

REMINDER: Call for Papers - Doing Justice: Official and Unofficial ‘Legalities’ in Practice

Doing Justice:

Official and Unofficial ‘Legalities’ in Practice

Juris Diversitas is organising, with the Centre Jacques-Berque, a colloquium on Mediterranean laws and norms. It will be held in Rabat, Morocco from 15-16 June 2012.

Participants, both jurists and others, are asked to speak on the complexity of

• state laws (both Western and non-Western), including the gap between legal theory and practice
• other non-state normative orders (religious, customary, etc)

Speakers may discuss, in English or French, either of these aspects (including case studies) or the relationship between the two.

Those engaged in our Mediterranean Hybridity Project may also present preliminary overviews of the jurisdictions they’re working on. Indeed, related proposals focusing on similar themes beyond the Mediterranean are also welcome.

For additional information, see the original Call for Papers or contact Seán Patrick Donlan (sean.donlan@ul.ie) or Baudouin Dupret (baudouin.dupret@cjb.ma).

Those interested in making a presentation should send a short (250 word) proposal to Baudouin Dupret by 7 February 2012.

NOTICE: Pargendler on the Rise and Decline of Legal Families

Mariana Pargendler (Fundação Getulio Vargas School of Law at São Paulo)'s 'The Rise and Decline of Legal Families' (2012) 60 American Journal of Comparative Law is now available on SSRN.

The abstract reads:

The effort to group jurisdictions around the world into a handful of legal families based on common characteristics of their laws has traditionally occupied a central role in the comparative law literature. This Article revisits the intellectual history of comparative law and surveys the evolution of legal family taxonomies from the first efforts at classification in the late-nineteenth century to the influential categorizations advanced by René David and Zweigert and Kötz in the 1960s. The early taxonomies differed from their modern counterparts in important ways. Although the nineteenth century is usually viewed as the apex of the common-civil law dichotomy, this distinction was conspicuously absent from legal family classifications until the twentieth century. A number of economic and political factors – ranging from economic liberalism to anti-colonialist sentiment – likely played a role in minimizing the salience of legal traditions in nineteenth-century legal thought.

NOTICE: Palmer on 'The Great Spill in the Gulf . . . and a Sea of Pure Economic Loss'

Vernon Valentine Palmer has recently published 'The Great Spill in the Gulf . . . and a Sea of Pure Economic Loss: Reflections on the Boundaries of Civil Liability' in the (2011) 116 Penn State Law Review 105. It begins:

What has been called the greatest oil spill in history, and certainly the largest in United States history, began with an explosion on April 20, 2010, some 41 miles off the Louisiana coast. The accident occurred during the drilling of an exploratory well by the Deepwater Horizon, a mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU) under lease to BP (formerly British Petroleum) and owned by Transocean. The well-head blowout resulted in 11 dead, 17 injured, and oil spewing from the seabed 5,000 ft. below at an estimated rate of 25,000-30,000 barrels per day.

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS: Rethinking Inheritance

Call for Participants

The New School for Social Research

2012 Anthropology Conference: “Rethinking Inheritance”

April 28th, 2012

The Theme: Inheritance has typically been conceived as a passive process of reception. Yet, inheritance also implies claims to something. Claiming inheritance and claiming selves, communities, nations and other units as heirs is an active practice. How can we better conceptualize the labor involved in establishing inheritance? How are inheritances rejected, resisted, renewed, reformed, or renegotiated? How are identity and belonging implicated in inheritance?

As we begin to think of inheritance in multiple registers, we hope to challenge its supposed passivity and expand its conceptualization. What does it mean to inherit a citizenship, a nationality, a legal framework, or an ethnicity, and what are the modes for these inheritances? How can inheritance be employed to think through temporal relationships of historical consciousness, collective memory, and their narration? We also hope to think together about how active inheritance relates to materialities and economies, financial institutions, and the act of making claims on properties, whether virtual or physical. Similarly, we can consider inheritance in terms of spaces and boundaries, wondering how territories are passed down and how borders are maintained.

NOTICE: New Issue of Jurisprudence

The newest issue of Jurisprudence is now available. It includes.

Articles

Natural Law Beyond Finnis

Jonathan Crowe

Self-Reference of the Constitutional State: A Systems Theory Interpretation of the Kelsen-Schmitt Debate

Jiří Přibáň

Discussion

Three Comments on Joseph Raz’s Conception of Normativity

Introduction

George Pavlakos

Raz’s Nexus

Niko Kolodny

Guided by Reasons: Raz on the Normative-Explanatory Nexus

Ulrike Heuer

Problems of Intellectualism: Raz on Reason and its Objects

Douglas Lavin

CALL FOR PAPERS: The Transformation of Property Rights in Land and Property Law in China

Workshop on Law, Governance and Development:

The Transformation of Property Rights in Land and Property Law in China

11 May 2012 (9am-5pm)

Call for Papers

Following its workshop on Law and Orientalism in 2011, CEAL, with the support of the Centre of Chinese Studies, SOAS, will hold a workshop on The Transformation of Property Rights in Land and Property Law in China.

Since 1978, China has seen a ‘revival’ of property rights. The decollectivisation of rural communes, the ‘corporatisation’ of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and the emergence of urban property markets have been hindered or encouraged by legal reforms. The purpose of this workshop is to discuss the nature and significance of the re-emergence of private property in land and the legal framework concerning landed property in the context of rapid socio-economic change in post-Mao China from a variety of perspectives whilst retaining a focus on law. The workshop’s broader aim is to contribute to the understanding of the changing nature of contemporary China through an examination of private property.

NOTICE: Search for Legal Experts with a Bijural Background

The following message (with a deadline today) has just come to my attention. SPD

Greetings,

This memorandum is to notify you that the ABA-UNDP International Legal Resource Center (ILRC <http://www.abanet.org/intlaw/intlproj/ilrc/home.html> ) is in search of legal experts with a bijural background and experience with transitioning to a common law system. UNDP/Rwanda is in the preparatory stages for a regional conference focusing on the civil and common law situation in Rwanda within the East African context. Rwanda has a dual legal system, embracing aspects of both civil and common law, but gradually moving towards a more common law based system. One of the most interesting challenges faced by Rwanda has been the transformation from civil law to common law. Rwanda was a civil law country, and some concepts of the common law practices have not been readily accepted. The challenges related to such transitions can be multiple and wide-reaching. They can include the need for substantial legal and regulatory reform, comprehensive re-training and education of legal and other professionals (such as the judiciary, civil service, parliamentary committees and other authorities), and broad-scale legal education, communication and outreach to inform the private sector and the public about new laws and practices, and the administration of justice in the country. These can require investment of resources in reform and the formulation of new policies, strategies and plans for the transition to ensure predictability and effectiveness in the legal order and to strengthen, rather than undermine, the legal system.

Despite the challenges, such transitions also offer important and unique opportunities to strengthen the rule of law and to reinforce the legitimacy, transparency, effectiveness and efficiency of the administration of justice and governance institutions. Transitioning to common law, for example, can allow more flexible legal responses to bottlenecks and emerging legal issues, broader scope for judicial decision-making and precedent-setting, and the smoother integration of plural legal orders. Such strengthening can help to build confidence of the private sector and the public in the legal order and the state, engender access to justice and further legal protection of rights and entitlements, facilitate smoother integration with the legal, regulatory and judicial systems in the region, and promote economic security and investment.

 The conference will seek to:

• Bring together delegates from Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan;
• Identify the shared as well as the distinct challenges faced by the countries in focus with regards to transitions in law and hybrid legal systems;
• Highlight the lessons learned, experiences and good practice of other countries with hybrid or transitioning legal situations;
• Explore the opportunities offered by such transitions in terms of strengthening the rule of law and access to justice; and
• Outline the potential avenues and ways forward to strategically overcome the challenges and enhance the legitimacy and effectiveness of governance in the context of hybrid systems and legal transitions.

While UNDP/Rwanda is still in the preparatory stages of this conference, they hope to host this conference in late February 2012. The agenda is still in draft form, but UNDP/Rwanda has requested assistance in identifying experts who may be interested in serving as speakers. In particular, legal practitioners with experience in hybrid legal systems across Africa and Asia, including South Africa, Cameroon, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Singapore, and other countries who can share their experiences, lessons learned, and recommendations for Rwanda, Burundi, and South Sudan. It’s important to have proven experience with transitioning to common law. Membership into the East African Community has mandated that Rwanda and Burundi adopt the common law tradition. Kenyan, Tanzanian, and Ugandan legal systems were modeled after the U.K. common law system, while the Rwandan and Burundi systems were heavily based on the Belgian civil law system. Additionally, the newly independent Republic of South Sudan is also facing similar challenges as it returns to the common law system after decades of Shari’a law.

Please note that UNDP/Rwanda hopes to cover the costs of travel and lodging, but this is not 100% confirmed. Experts with proven experience and ability to make presentations, kindly email (Jacqueline.Gichinga@americanbar.org) your CV and short cover letter highlighting your bijural qualifications/experience. Fluency in both French and English is a plus. Furthermore, experts must be willing to travel to Rwanda for the conference set to take place in late February 2012. The deadline for applications is January 11, 2012. Thank you!

Best in 2012,

Jacqueline

Jacqueline Gichinga
International Program Associate
American Bar Association, Section of International Law
ABA-UNDP International Legal Resource Center (ILRC)
740 15th St, NW
Washington, DC 20005
T: +1-202-662-1662
F: +1-202-662-1669
http://ambar.org/ilrc
Jacqueline.Gichinga@americanbar.org (NEW EMAIL ADDRESS)