FINAL REMINDER - CALL FOR PAPERS: UK IVR CONFERENCE, 12-13 April 2013, Queen Mary, University of London

THEME: LEGAL HISTORY AND LEGAL THEORY: A NEGLECTED DIALOGUE?

Deadline: 1 October 2012

Details available here: http://www.law.qmul.ac.uk/events/items/76649.html

OUTLINE: 

Apart from some notable exceptions, much of contemporary legal theory is uninformed by history, including legal history. This is deeply regrettable, for legal theories may be vastly improved by being informed, and perhaps more importantly, challenged by historical contexts. Theories of law, one might say, are better if they are forged at the coal-face of historical research. Similarly, one could argue that legal histories are better when they draw on, and themselves contribute to, the conceptual resources of legal theory. Somewhat more radically, if one agrees law does not have a nature, but a culture, then one must account for how the culture of law changes, and has changed, over time. This, by necessity, demands a historically-informed methodology. Similarly, the problem of change is an unavoidable one in legal theory, whether that be change in legal regimes or changes in certain areas of the law – here, again, the resources of history, including the philosophy of history, are invaluable. Putting things a little more colourfully, one could say that legal ideas cannot but be understood historically. Further, legal theory has, of course, its own history: legal theories are not disconnected islands, but rather interventions in a long series of dialogues and polylogues amongst theorists. As many have observed, and described, legal theory’s history needs to be informed not only by such dialogues and polylogues amongst theorists, but also by awareness of the theorist’s immersion in political, economic and other conditions of his or her time and place – there, once more, a serious engagement with history is important. This conference - the annual conference of the UK Branch of the IVR (International Association of Legal and Social Philosophy) - is designed to bring together legal theorists and legal historians (including historians of legal theory and political thought) in an attempt to facilitate and encourage dialogue between the two disciplines.

The event is hosted by the Queen Mary Legal Theory and Legal History Research Group: www.law.qmul.ac.uk/legaltheory.

NOTICE: Journal Publications (courtesy of the Réseau Européen Droit & Société/European Network on Law and Society)

The Réseau Européen Droit & Société/European Network on Law and Society list of journal publications included:

·  Clio@Themis. Revue électronique d'histoire du droit

·  Crime, Histoire & Sociétés = Crime, History & Societies

·  European Law Journal. Review of European Law in Context

·  Journal of Law and Society

·  Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law

·  Law & Social Inquiry

·  Law & Society Review

·  Social & Legal Studies. An International Journal

See below for additional details.

NOTICE AND CALL FOR PAPERS: Electronic Journal of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law (EJIMEL)

The Electronic Journal of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law (EJIMEL) is a new open access, peer-reviewed international journal published by the Center for Islamic and Middle Eastern Legal Studies (CIMELS), University of Zurich, Switzerland.

EJIMEL has been founded guided by the awareness that the Arab World is going through a momentous phase of change and transition, a shift which is characterized by fallen regimes and political systems, and general policies being rethought or reshaped. However, the relationships and interdependencies between the Orient and the Occident have been growing considerably even before the so-called “Arab Spring”. In fact, Middle Eastern countries have obtained a key position on the world stage decades ago due to their significant geopolitical position, their economic resources and perspectives. Rich in diversity and heritage, the Middle East today keeps evolving faster than any other part of the world.

The journal individuates itself by laying a special focus on the multifaceted relations between Islam and national and international law orders over the course of time and from different points of view. Furthermore, EJIMEL aims to contribute to the on-going highly topical debates of regional and global interest in the field of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law, such as, e.g., Process of Democratization, Gender and Human Rights. The editors’ aim is to foster a vivid debate focusing on the correlation between Islam as a religion with a distinct body of legal norms and the paramount principles and guarantees of current international law under the aspects of conflict, competition and complement. Also, we welcome contributions which inquire into key phenomena in Middle Eastern law orders such as, e.g., «Re-Islamisation», which have influenced both codifications and scholarly discourse in a significant way.

LAST CALL FOR PAPERS: 2013 IUAES/Commission on Legal Pluralism (CLP) conference

Dear members of the Commission on Legal Pluralism and others,    This is the last call for papers for the 2013 IUAES/Commission on Legal Pluralism (CLP) conference, entitled ‘Evolving Humanity, Emerging Worlds’. The conference will take place on August 5-10, 2013 in Manchester (UK), (see www . iuaes2013 . org/) The following Commission on Legal Pluralism panels are still open for paper proposals: G33, G39, G40, G43, G44, G45, G47, G48, G49, G53, see www . nomadit . co . uk/iuaes/iuaes2013/panels . php5. Are you interested in presenting a paper at this conference? Please send a title, a short abstract of less than 300 characters, and a long abstract of less than 250 words to the panel convenor(s), with cc to Janine Ubink at j.ubink@law.leidenuniv.nl.  If you feel your paper does not fit with any of the proposed panels, please send your paper proposal to Janine Ubink (j.ubink@law.leidenuniv.nl). The deadline for paper proposals is next week, September 12, 2012. This is the LAST CALL for papers!

NOTICE: O'Brien Human Rights Fellows in Residence Program at the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism

O'Brien Human Rights Fellows in Residence Program at the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism
APPLICANT PROFILE: McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism (CHRLP) will select the O'Brien Fellows from a diverse pool of applicants that includes journalists, activists, academics, and practitioners in the field of human rights. Applicants should possess a deep understanding of their chosen subject area and a track record of professional accomplishment. Fellows should be able to work in English with proficiency. Knowledge of French is desirable.

DURATION & LOCATION: 1 to 6 months in residence at the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, McGill Faculty of Law.

CALL FOR PAPERS: The Chinese Journal of Comparative Law (CJCL)

The following information on the Chinese Journal of Comparative Law (CJCL) has become available:

We invite submissions for The Chinese Journal of Comparative Law (CJCL), a brand-new law journal the inaugural issue of which to be officially published by the Oxford University Press in March 2013. The Journal will publish two issues each year and will accommodate substantial articles and shorter works including but not confined to legislative commentaries, case notes and book reviews.

ABOUT THE CJCL: The Chinese Journal of Comparative Law (CJCL) is an independent, peer-reviewed, general comparative law journal published under the auspices of the International Academy of Comparative Law (IACL) and in association with the Silk Road Institute for International and Comparative Law (SRIICL) at Xian Jiaotong University, PR China.

CJCL aims to provide a leading international forum for the interchange of views and research collaboration between Chinese lawyers and lawyers in other parts of the world. It accommodates and fosters top-quality discourses falling within what is broadly conceived as comparative studies on all disciplines of law, including cross-disciplinary legal studies, with a view to serving constructively the Chinese legal system and its continuous evolution and reform. It also aims to contribute, in a vital way, to global legal scholarship by providing to a wide range of legal debates an increasingly important Chinese perspective. CJCL gives preference to articles addressing issues of fundamental and lasting importance in the field of comparative law, particularly those having close relevance to the development of the Chinese legal system.

CALLS FOR PAPERS/NOTICES: European Network on Law and Society (Réseau Européen Droit & Société)

The very informative bulletin of the European Network on Law and Society (Réseau Européen Droit & Société) included information on the following:

• Cultural legal studies methodology. Wherefore art thou?”, Wollongong (Australia), Friday 21 September 2012

• The UW Global Legal Studies Center & South Asia Legal Studies Working Group, Sixth Annual South Asia Legal Studies Pre-Conference Workshop, Thursday, October 11, 2012. Lubar Commons (7200 Law) - University of Wisconsin Law School

• Institute of Commonwealth Studies, First Decolonization workshop 2012-2013. Londres, 16 novembre 2012

• University of Liverpool School of Law and Social Justice, Critical Approaches to International Criminal Law, Liverpool, 6-7 décembre 2012 

   

  See below for additional details. 

NOTICE: New Issue of Transnational Legal Theory

Transnational Legal Theory Volume 2, Issue 4 has just been published:

Articles

Constitutionalism and the State of the ‘Society of Networks’: The Design of a New ‘Control Project’ for a Fragmented Legal System

Karl-Heinz Ladeur

Neither Dualism nor Monism: Holism and the Relationship between Municipal and International Human Rights Law

Thomas Finegan

Fragmentation, Coherence and Synergy in International Law

Joel P Trachtman

Jus Cogens: Towards an International Common Good?

Mark Retter

Reviews

How to Theorise Law in a Transnational Context: A review of Detlef von Daniels, The Concept of Law from a Transnational Perspective

Samantha Besson

Fuller, Torture, and Interactional Legal Theory: A review of Jutta Brunné and Stephen Toope, Legitimacy and Legality in International Law: An Interactional Account

Matthew H Kramer

Differences in Sameness: A review of Tomer Broude and Yuval Shany (eds) Multi-Sourced Equivalent Norms in International Law

Jolene Lin

NOTICE: Dresch and Skoda on Legalism: Anthropology and History

Oxford University Press will be publishing Paul Dresch and Hannah Skoda (eds), Legalism: Anthropology and History in the months ahead:

 

Law and law-like institutions are visible in human societies very distant from each other in time and space. When it comes to observing and analysing such social constructs historians, anthropologists, and lawyers run into notorious difficulties in how to conceptualize them. Do they conform to a single category of 'law'? How are divergent understandings of the nature and purpose of law to be described and explained? Such questions reach to the heart of philosophical attempts to understand the nature of law, but arise whenever we are confronted by law-like practices and concepts in societies not our own.

In this volume leading historians and anthropologists with an interest in law gather to analyse the nature and meaning of law in diverse societies. They start from the concept of legalism, taken from the anthropologist Lloyd Fallers, whose 1960s work on Africa engaged, unusually, with jurisprudence. The concept highlights appeal to categories and rules. The degree to which legalism in this sense informs people's lives varies within and between societies, and over time, but it can colour equally both 'simple' and 'complex' law. Breaking with recent emphases on 'practice', nine specialist contributors explore, in a wide-ranging set of cases, the place of legalism in the workings of social life.

The essays make obvious the need to question our parochial common sense where ideals of moral order at other times and places differ from those of modern North Atlantic governance. State-centred law, for instance, is far from a 'central case'. Legalism may be 'aspirational', connecting people to wider visions of morality; duty may be as prominent a theme as rights; and rulers from thirteenth-century England to sixteenth-century Burma appropriate, as much they impose, a vision of justice as consistency. The use of explicit categories and rules does not reduce to simple questions of power.

The cases explored range from ancient Asia Minor to classical India, and from medieval England and France to Saharan oases and southern Arabia. In each case they assume no knowledge of the society or legal system discussed. The volume will appeal not only to historians and anthropologists with an interest in law, but to students of law engaged in legal theory, for the light it sheds on the strengths and limitations of abstract legal philosophy.

The table of contents includes:

NOTICE: Donlan, Andò, and Zammit on Maltese law

The long-awaited ‘“A happy union”?: Malta’s legal hybridity’—by Seán Patrick Donlan, Biagio Andò, and David Zammit—has been published in (2012) 27 Tulane European and Civil Law Forum 165.