Bernick on The Opinion in Yellow

Evan D. Bernick, Northern Illinois University College of Law, has published The Opinion in Yellow as a Northern Illinois University College of Law Legal Studies Research Paper. Here is the abstract.

Four months ago, the Supreme Court of Arkham published an obscene document which cannot fairly be called an opinion. I cannot explain it and dare not try. What I can and will do is relate the substance of my conversation with a former clerk who is widely thought to be its principal author. The task ahead fills me with dread; I press on because I can think of nothing else to do under the circumstances.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Linarelli on The Cognitive Science of Comparative Law: An Emerging Area of Study?

John Linarelli, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, has published The Cognitive Science of Comparative Law: An Emerging Area of Study? as U. of Pittsburgh Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2025-31. Here is the abstract.

Comparative law is a heterodox field of legal study from the standpoint of method. It is a field because of what it does – “compare” - and not by how the comparing is done. It is open to any method advancing the aim of comparing law across national borders. Despite this methodological diversity, few published works have deployed the cognitive or behavioral sciences in comparative law. Insights from the cognitive sciences, including on the group aspects of human thought and action, on biases and heuristics, and on the evolution of culture, have the potential to offer in some instances significant advances in comparative law scholarship. Moreover, as comparativists we face the potential of interjecting our own biases into our work, or heuristics that work from our own jurisdictional perspective. A view from nowhere is impossible. Call this cognitive imperialism: the domination of a lawyer’s thinking about what is good and right about the law, based on what they sense or know about their own law. This article attempts a contribution to the methodological literature on comparative law by exploring how a new field of the study of comparative law using the cognitive sciences, might contribute to comparative law scholarship. Part I lays out the theoretical and methodological groundwork. It also explains that the cognitive science under investigation here is broader in scope than behavioral law and economics but certainly includes that approach. Parts II through IV explore several directions for this new field of study. Part II offers the case that the cognitive sciences offer tools to aid in understanding global law making, such as the work of UNCITRAL, UNIDROIT, and other intergovernmental organizations. Putting a group of lawyers from different jurisdictions in a deliberative process in an intergovernmental organization to produce a legal instrument that must be widely accepted across many jurisdictions could be understood as the setting for a natural experiment for comparativists. Part III explains that the cognitive sciences offer tools to evaluate legal transplants in a way that may help us to understand how they adapt to local conditions and on why some transplants are more successful than others. Part IV informs that the cognitive sciences may be able help us to get around the epistemological obstacles that “legal culture” has presented in comparative law. Part V deals with potential objections and limitations.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Trinity College, Dublin Offers M. Phil. in Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies

 The Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Centre at Trinity College, Dublin offers a M. Phil. in Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies. More information is available through this page. 

Call For Papers: The Law of the Liturgies and the Liturgies of the Law: Finding Common Ground Between Law and Religion in Ritual Speech and Performative Action

From Judith Hahn, University of Bonn, and Emory University, Center for the Study of Law and Religion:

As scholars with an interest in the intersection of law and ritual (or law and magic), I would like to draw your attention to the attached Call for Papers. Pamela Slotte Russo (Helsinki), Oliver Wright (Oxford), and I are organizing the conference (and edited volume), The Law of the Liturgies and the Liturgies of the Law: Finding Common Ground Between Law and Religion in Ritual Speech and Performative Action. The conference will take place 14–16 September 2026, at Magdalen College, University of Oxford. It may be of interest to you or others in your network who work at the broader intersection of law and ritual. We encourage submissions from emerging researchers and would be grateful if you could also share this call with your postdocs who might be interested in contributing. The conference is funded, so costs for accommodation and travel are covered. The call is open until 28 February 2026. Any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out.

          Judith Hahn 

Professor of Canon Law Seminar of Canon Law | University of Bonn Rabinstraße 8 | 53111 Bonn | Germany McDonald Distinguished Senior Fellow Center for the Study of Law and Religion | Emory University

Ayaz on Modernity, Mimicry, and Moksha: A Postcolonial Study of R. K. Narayan's The Guide and V. S. Naipaul's A House For Mr. Biswas

Amreen Ayaz, University of Aberdeen, has published Modernity, Mimicry, and Moksha: A Postcolonial Study of R. K. Narayan's The Guide and V. S. Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas. Here is the abstract.

This research examined the concepts of modernity, mimicry, and moksha, their applications in postcolonial literature, and their altered meanings in the modern world. It studied modernity through various dimensions like colonialism, Nanni’s exploration of colonisation through time and religion, intergenerational variations in its impact, the redefined meaning of success through tools like life and career planning, and the makings of a modern man. The concept of mimicry was analysed through the works of scholars like Bhabha, Uytanlet, Harold, Chakrabarti, Alvarez, Phukan, Mandal, Sultana, and others. It looked at themes like the need for mimicry, its dual aspects, intra-national mimicry, masculinised mimicry, and gaps in postcolonial studies. The work also delved into the idea of mimicry by drawing on theories from other disciplines, like Hegel’s dialectics, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, evolutionary biology, performance theory, systems theory, and cultural hegemony theory, while drawing historical examples from India’s freedom struggle. The research aimed to explore the identity conflict in the present youth of the erstwhile colonial nations, which are experiencing massive changes in culture through globalisation and the fast-paced import of ideas. It endeavoured to bring out a synthesis between conflicting values of tradition and modernity, and highlight the possibility of evolved ways of living that the selected works of postcolonial writers were attempting to convey to their readers. For the purpose, the traditional framework of moksha was woven in with the literary theories of modernity and mimicry, explaining its meaning through religion, philosophy and socio-cultural perspectives. Manu’s Dharma Shastra was focused upon to trace the process of achievement of moksha; its modernised version was explored through the different paths taken by the characters of Naipaul and Narayan, ultimately answering the question of how to achieve moksha in a hybridised environment. Through the journeys of Raju and Mohun Biswas, the conclusion was reached that in the modern world, moksha is found not in a return to tradition, but in the courage to embrace one’s true identity amidst change.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Davies on Law Books in Caricature and Composition: Edward Thompson's Marketing in the Late 1800s

Ross E. Davies, George Mason University Law School; The Green Bag, has published Law Books in Caricature and Composition: Edward Thompson’s Marketing in the Late 1800s at 28 Green Bag 2d 307 (2025). Here is the abstract.

The Edward Thompson Company was one of the most successful American publishers of law books in the late 19th century. It was also one of the most innovative marketers of books of any sort.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Gales, Solan, and Tobia on Nix v. Hedden: Corpus Linguistics and the Interpretation of Statutes Over Time

Tammy Gales, Hofstra University, Lawrence M. Solan, Brooklyn Law School, and Kevin Tobia, Georgetown University Law Center, have published Nix v. Hedden: Corpus Linguistics and the Interpretation of Statutes Over Time (draft) Here is the abstract.

In the study of American statutory interpretation, Nix v. Hedden (1893) exemplifies the primacy of ordinary meaning. The Court famously held that, in a tariff act, a tomato is a "vegetable," not a "fruit." However, the Court suggested that the statute was addressed to buyers and sellers of produce and that it would eschew "ordinary" meaning for a technical meaning in trade or commerce-if one existed. In this chapter, from a book on corpus linguistics and the interpretation of historical statues, we revisit Nix with corpus linguistic analysis. We compiled a specialized corpus of 19th century trade sources and find that the usage of "tomato" was decidedly mixed: a vegetable, a fruit, and sometimes both simultaneously! This new data complicates the seemingly simple holding in Nix. It also challenges the case's import. Current Supreme Court Justices invoke Nix for the principle that (1) statutes should not be interpreted "literally" (they should be interpreted contextually), by (2) giving terms their ordinary, nontechnical meanings. Our study of Nix underscores the false equivalence between contextual and ordinary interpretation. In some cases, the contextually relevant meaning is a technical one. Our study of 19th century trade meaning supports that Nix may even be one of those cases.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Natelson on Virgil and the Constitution

Robert G. Natelson, Independence Institute, has published Virgil and the Constitution. Here is the abstract.

All three legends on the Great Seal of the United States are adaptations of verses attributed to the Roman poet Virgil—reflecting Virgil’s status as the unofficial “poet laureate” of the American Founding. This article examines how Americans employed Virgil’s poetry during the debates over the United States Constitution. It also explains how the selected passages implicate constitutional meaning.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Interest: Empowering the Environmental Consumer: Flexibility & Harmonization in Global Legal Communication

 

Call for Interest – Section 14: Empowering the Environmental Consumer

I’m pleased to share the call for contributions to Section 14 – Empowering the Environmental Consumer: Flexibility & Harmonization in Global Legal Communication, part of the forthcoming International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication: From Text to Semiotics (Springer).

This section explores how harmonized yet adaptable consumer standards—such as energy labels, lifecycle disclosures, and repairability indices—can promote sustainability, prevent greenwashing, and empower consumers worldwide.

📝 We invite proposals that bridge law, linguistics, environmental science, and communication studies.

For more details, please see the attached call or visit:
🔗 https://meteor.springer.com/ihllc

Contact: Aurélien Fortunato – aurelien.fortunato@univ-lille.fr

 

2026 Law and Humanities Workshop for Junior Scholars

 

Call for Participation

Georgetown University Law Center, Stanford Law School, UCLA School of Law, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Southern California Center for Law, History, and Culture invite submissions for the 24th meeting of the Law and Humanities Workshop for Junior Scholars, to be held at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School on June 8-9, 2026.

 

ABOUT THE WORKSHOP

The workshop is open to untenured professors, advanced graduate students, post-doctoral scholars, and independent scholars working in law and the humanities. In addition to drawing from numerous humanistic fields, including Black and Indigenous studies, history, literature, political theory, critical race theory, feminist theory, and philosophy, we welcome critical, qualitative work in the social sciences, including anthropology and sociology. While the scope of the Workshop is broad, we cannot consider proposals that are focused solely on quantitative social science research or that are limited to doctrinal legal research. We are especially interested in submissions touching on themes of inequality, anti-racism and anti-subordination. We welcome submissions from those working at regional and teaching-intensive institutions.

 

Based on anonymous evaluation by an interdisciplinary selection committee, between six and eight papers will be chosen for presentation at the Workshop, where two senior scholars will comment on each paper. Commentators and other Workshop participants will be asked to focus specifically on the strengths and weaknesses of the selected scholarly projects, with respect to subject and methodology. The selected papers will then serve as the basis for a larger conversation among all the participants that may include themes connecting all of the projects, as well as discussion of the evolving standards by which we judge excellence and creativity in interdisciplinary scholarship.

The selected papers may appear in a special issue of the Legal Scholarship Network at SSRN; there is no other publication commitment. (We will accommodate the wishes of chosen authors who prefer not to have their paper posted publicly with us because of publication commitments to other journals.) However, we will only accept Workshop participants whose papers are true works in progress; articles or chapters that are already in page proofs or are otherwise unable to be revised by the time of the Workshop are ineligible.

The Workshop will pay the domestic travel and hotel expenses of authors whose papers are selected for presentation. For authors requiring airline travel from outside the United States, the Workshop will cover such travel expenses up to a maximum of $1250.

 

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Applications should be submitted through the submissions portal on the Law and Humanities Workshop website at LawandHumanitiesWorkshop.org.

Your application should consist of a single Microsoft Word document (not PDF)

containing:

a 1500-2000 word summary of your paper (word count includes footnotes or endnotes); a 1-2 page bibliography; and, if your paper is a chapter in a book or dissertation, an optional 1-page chapter outline of the larger project.

Applications are due on Monday, December 1, 2025.

If your application advances to the final stage of consideration, you will be asked to submit the full paper by January 15, 2026. Please do not apply if you will not have a full paper on January 15. Your application should be a summary of existing, ongoing work rather than a proposal for new or planned work.

The full paper must be a work-in-progress that does not exceed 10,000 words in length (including footnotes/ endnotes). A dissertation chapter may be submitted, but we strongly suggest that it be edited so as to stand alone as a piece of work with its own integrity. A paper that has been submitted for publication is eligible for selection so long as it will not be in galley proofs or in print at the time of the Workshop; it is important that authors still be in a position at the time of the Workshop to consider comments they receive there and to incorporate them as they think appropriate in their revisions.

We ask that those submitting applications be careful to omit or redact any information in the paper summary, bibliography, or chapter outline that might serve to identify them, as we adhere to an anonymous or “blind” selection process.

 

For more information, please send an email inquiry to Lawandhumanitiesworkshop@gmail.com or visit LawandHumanitiesWorkshop.org.

 

Program Committee, 2026 Law and Humanities Workshop for Junior Scholars Riaz Tejani, Chapman University, Law, Chair LaToya Baldwin Clark, University of California Los Angeles, Law Danielle Boaz, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Africana Studies David Eng, University of Pennsylvania, English & Asian American Studies Melynda Price, University of Michigan, Women and Gender Studies Clyde Spillenger, University of California Los Angeles, Law

 

The Law and Humanities Workshop for Junior Scholars is committed to anti- racism both inside and outside the academy.

Lukina on Beyond Political Decisionism and Legal Normativism: Schmittian-Kelsenian Synthesis

Anna Lukina, London School of Economics & Political Science, has published Beyond Political Decisionism and Legal Normativism: Schmittian-Kelsenian Synthesis. Here is the abstract.

Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt, two most prominent legal minds of the interwar era, are always imagined as antagonists as they repeatedly clashed on the relationship between the law and the state. To Kelsen, the state and the legal order shared the same space, as the former could not exceed the latter. To Schmitt, every sovereign had a latent power to declare an emergency and set the law aside. Nevertheless, their two stances are similar in their convergence against attempts to mix moral and legal validity. As a result, in exploring how the law and the state interact, one can draw on the best of both positions by looking at that relationship on two levels. In normal circumstances – when we look at the boundaries of the legal order – one can easily adopt a modified version of the Kelsenian positivist picture to identify its content. In the situation of exception, when emergency action is required, this legal order can, as per Schmitt, be transcended. Adopting this mixed ‘Schmittian-Kelsenian’ stance would be preferable in both descriptive and normative terms, as both law and politics are and should be equally important and do not exclude each other, but work together.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Interest: Legal Implications and Representations in Gaming

 

Call for Interest: Legal Implications and Representations in Gaming ⚖️

 

Contribute to the International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication: From Text to Semiotics (Springer)!

This section explores how games portray legal concepts, shape virtual identities, and raise new challenges in digital law—from intellectual property to avatar accountability.

📄 Submit a 300-word abstract + short bio
📧 Dr. Gabriele Aroni
🔗 https://meteor.springer.com/ihllc

Bradley on Extradition in the Early Republic: International Law and Constitutional Authority

Curtis Bradley, University of Chicago Law School, has published Extradition in the Early Republic: International Law and Constitutional Authority as University of Chicago Law School, Public Law & Legal Theory Research Paper No. 25-34. Here is the abstract.

This Article is the first comprehensive account of the constitutional foundations of U.S. extradition practice and its relationship to international law. Through detailed analysis of early American extradition controversies—including the Longchamps Affair and the Robbins case—the Article shows how political actors and courts constructed the modern constitutional law of extradition, resolving key issues concerning presidential power, the role of the states, and the scope of congressional authority. This regime, the Article argues, emerged not from appeals to the constitutional text or original understandings, but rather from structural intuitions, consequentialist considerations, and, as time went on, historical traditions. As the Article further documents, the constitutional law of extradition had a relational interaction with international law, in that the views of U.S. interpreters concerning the nation’s international law duties were relevant to their views of constitutional authority, and vice versa. The Article also complicates the dominant narrative of a unilateral “imperial presidency” in foreign affairs by showing that, because of the liberty interests involved, extradition authority evolved and remained as a shared power, requiring a treaty-based or statutory foundation as well as judicial involvement. In this respect, extradition parallels the development of certain other unenumerated foreign affairs powers, including most notably the authority over immigration. Finally, the Article situates extradition within the broader field of foreign relations law, illuminating its ties to doctrinal developments such as treaty non-self-execution, foreign affairs federalism, and sovereignty-based legislative power—developments that still resonate today.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

2026 LCH Conference Call For Papers

From Simon Stern, President, Association for the Study of Law, Culture, & the Humanities

Dear all, We are excited to announce that we are now accepting submissions for the Twenty-Eighth Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities. The conference will be held in person (with some online components) on June 17-18, 2026 at the DePaul University College of Law in Chicago, Illinois. This year's theme is "Uprooted Law: Reflecting on the Origins and Outgrowths of Law."  You can find the call for papers on our website or view the PDF version. We are also accepting applications for our annual Graduate Student Workshop, which will take place the day before the conference on June 16, 2026. Information on how to apply for the workshop can be found in the PDF or on our website here. Please help us spread the word and circulate the CFP in your academic communities. We look forward to gathering for the conference again this year and hope to see you there! Best regards,   Simon Stern, President, Association for the Study of Law, Culture & the Humanities

Chauvin on Understanding Free Speech Values at the Supreme Court

Noah Chauvin, University of Oklahoma College of Law, is publishing Understanding Free Speech Values at the Supreme Court in volume 78 of Rutgers Univ. L. Rev. Commentaries (forthcoming 2025). Here is the abstract.

This essay is a book review of The Supreme Court and the Philosopher: How John Stuart Mill Shaped US Free Speech Protections, by Professors Eric Kasper and Troy Kozma. The book argues that John Stuart Mill had an indelible impact on the Supreme Court's free speech jurisprudence, and that through the power of precedent, we have come to have a "Millian" First Amendment. As I explain in the review, Kasper and Kozma have made a compelling case. However, because Mill offered an expansive defense of freedom of expression, it is not enough to say that the Court's free speech jurisprudence is "Millian," because that could mean many different things. Understanding with greater precision what motivates the justices in free speech cases is crucial for attorneys, advocates, and scholars.

Download the review from SSRN at the link.

Tushnet on History and Tradition in First Amendment Intellectual Property Cases: A Critique

Rebecca Tushnet, Harvard Law School, is publishing History and Tradition in First Amendment Intellectual Property Cases: A Critique in the Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review. Here is the abstract.

There are indications that the "history and tradition" approach the Supreme Court applied to gun rights and abortion restrictions may be coming for First Amendment doctrine. In intellectual property cases, it already has, with the Court using historical analogies for the right of publicity, copyright, and trademark. Unlike in the Second Amendment context, where the Court has reasoned from things earlier regulators didn’t do to strike down gun regulations today, in “history and tradition” First Amendment law the Court has reasoned by broad analogy to allow new speech restrictions. One lesson is that the history and tradition approach does not meaningfully constrain Justices even in low-political-salience areas like copyright and trademark, outside highly politicized contexts. The manipulability of levels of generality in making historical analogies has been justly criticized, but the IP cases provide a particularly clear contrast in outcomes from those in the Second Amendment cases, despite putatively using the same method of looking to historical models before—and even in place of—applying a means-ends test or other non-analogic scrutiny.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Handler on The Administrative Law of McCarthyism

Nicholas Handler, Texas A&M School of Law, is publishing The Administrative Law of McCarthyism in volume 78 of the Stanford Law Review (2026).

This Article recovers the largely overlooked legal and administrative history of the federal loyalty-security program, and argues that it played a formative role in the development of modern civil service protections and administrative law. During the McCarthy era, the United States Civil Service Commission (CSC), under pressure from Congress, implemented a sweeping loyalty program aimed at rooting out purportedly disloyal federal employees. Though often remembered as a moment of political overreach and civil liberties violations, this Article shows that the loyalty program simultaneously catalyzed a surprising expansion in procedural rights for government workers—both through internal reforms initiated by the CSC and through judicial decisions that extended emerging administrative law doctrines into the domain of federal employment. Drawing on original archival research, this Article reconstructs how the Loyalty Review Board, housed within the CSC, developed formalized standards for loyalty adjudications, including evidentiary thresholds, rights to notice and counsel, and appellate review. These procedures, while initially limited to loyalty hearings, came to inform broader doctrines governing the removal and discipline of civil servants. In particular, courts began to apply principles such as the Accardi doctrine and the Chenery rule—originally developed for public-facing regulatory action—to disputes between the federal government and its own employees. The result was a nascent body of administrative law that treated personnel decisions not as matters of unfettered executive discretion, but as legal acts subject to procedural constraint. The Article makes two central claims. First, it argues that civil service law should be understood as a core component of administrative law—not merely a subspecialty of public employment law. Legal rules governing the hiring, discipline, and removal of civil servants serve the same functions as more familiar administrative law doctrines: they mediate interbranch conflict, preventing any one branch from dominating federal policy-making and thus serving deeper separation-of-powers and rule of law values. Second, it argues that the regulation of federal employment not only prevents the aggrandizement of the political branches, but also protects individual rights. In the postwar era, federal jobs functioned as a major form of state-administered benefit, and the procedures surrounding those jobs shaped broader public expectations about fairness, merit, and due process. Those expectations were deeply challenged during the unrest of the McCarthy period, but were ultimately vindicated by the creative adaption of administrative law principles. These lessons are newly relevant today, as the second Trump administration embarks upon one of the most ambitious attempts to remake the federal civil service in generations, often explicitly seeking to replace merit systems with tests of personal and political loyalty.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Pontz on Eisenhower's Crusaders: District Court Appointments as Civil Rights Policy, 1953-1961

Ben Pontz, Harvard Law school, has published Eisenhower's Crusaders: District Court Appointments as Civil Rights Policy, 1953-1961 at 55 Presidential Studies Quarterly 115 (2025). Here is the abstract.

During his eight years in office, President Eisenhower appointed 182 federal judges, 127 of whom served on federal district courts. Historical and legal scholarship has paid considerable attention to the judiciary's role in the Civil Rights Era as well as to Eisenhower's civil-rights legacy. The scholarship has not, however, connected those two strands to examine how Eisenhower used judicial appointments-especially of district court judges-as part of his civil-rights policy, one that should inform his civil-rights legacy. These district judges embodied Eisenhower's earnest-but-not-activist approach to civil rights, which sits in stark contrast to that of Eisenhower's Supreme Court appointments, especially Chief Justice Earl Warren, whose outspoken nature struck Eisenhower as counterproductive. For Eisenhower, durable civil-rights progress came through incremental change backed by the rule of law, which judges could achieve through the steady interpretation and enforcement of statutes and the Constitution-to much greater effect than grand, moral pronouncements from presidents or judicial pronouncements from Supreme Courts. The district judges that Eisenhower appointed took that approach, and their appointment is as much the civil-rights policy of the Eisenhower administration as any rhetoric or government program.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Pfander on Looking for Art in the Law Review Article

James E. Pfander, Northwestern School of Law, has published Looking for Art in the Law Review Article at the Harvard Law Blog, September 5, 2025 and as Northwestern Public Law Research Paper No, 25-44. Here is the abstract.

This short essay considers the nature of and market for legal scholarship. Taking a page or two from the book Air Guitar by the critic, Dave Hickey, the essay reflects on how we measure greatness and failure in art and in the art of the law review article. Blame for all seemingly irrelevant asides should be assigned to Arthur Leff, whose work taught us much about greatness. Failure we have all had to work out for ourselves.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Lehrer on Jurists as Evolutionary Engineers: Artificial Selection in Legal Doctrine

Ignacio Adrian Lehrer has published Jurists as Evolutionary Engineers: Artificial Selection in Legal Doctrine.

This study analyzes how legal scholars, judges, and codifiers function as evolutionary engineers who practice artificial selection on legal doctrines, accelerating legal evolution through conscious intervention. Drawing on Darwin's observations of artificial selection and Harari's analysis of religious interpreters as normative engineers, we document systematic mechanisms by which legal professionals consciously select, cultivate, and eliminate doctrinal variants. The research reveals four primary mechanisms: academic cultivation through scholarly networks, judicial breeding of precedential lines, systematic codification, and institutional elimination of dysfunctional variants. Unlike natural legal evolution operating through unconscious social pressures over centuries, artificial selection achieves comparable changes within decades through directed intervention. Case studies demonstrate successful artificial selection including elimination of "separate but equal" doctrine, integration of common law and civil law principles in mixed jurisdictions, and development of European contract law. Failed attempts illuminate factors necessary for successful doctrinal engineering. This analysis provides theoretical foundation for understanding how legal systems achieve rapid adaptation while maintaining institutional continuity, with implications for legal education, judicial administration, and international harmonization efforts.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Workshop for Junior Scholars, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, June 8-9, 2026

 Workshop for Junior Scholars

Georgetown University Law Center, Stanford Law School, UCLA School of Law, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Southern California Center for Law, History, and Culture invite submissions for the 24th meeting of the Law and Humanities Workshop for Junior Scholars, to be held at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School on June 8-9, 2026. For more information please see the link to the CFP below. 2026 LHW Jr Scholars CFP.pdf

New From Hart Publishing: Picart on Countering Jihadi Cool: Narrative, Law, and Philosophy Against Global Jihad (2025)

New from Caroline Joan "Kay" S. Picart, Countering Jihadi Cool: Narrative, Law, and Philosophy Against Global Jihad (Hart Publishing, 2025).

Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

Using an aesthetic culture and techniques termed as jihadi cool, terrorist groups have been able to recruit members from around the world, so how do we begin to respond? This book analyzes the rhetorical and ethical dynamics of a culture of jihadi cool/chic, and why these rhetorical and aesthetic techniques have been such a powerful recruitment force for particular transnational terrorist groups. The author uses an evidence-based approach, with frameworks derived from law, politics, philosophy, rhetoric, feminist theory, and communication studies, to examine various attempts to construct counter-narratives to the jihadi cool master narrative. The book closes with an examination of how to begin to respond critically and effectively to the lure of jihadi cool.

Cultures of Legality in Weimar Germany: Next Series of Lectures at the University of Lucerne

From Dr. Stephen Howe, Senior Research and Lecturer, Associate Director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Legal Studies, Iucernaiuris, University of Lucerne

The next series of lectures in Cultures of Legality in Weimar Germany

Wednesday 12 November, 10.00-11.00

Visualising ‘Through Science to Justice’? Sexological Photographs during the Weimar Republic

Xiaojue Michelle Zhu (The Courtauld Institute of Art, London)

 

Tuesday 25 November, 16.00-17.00

Visualizing the Legal Subject in Weimar Film

Hannes Charen (Pratt Institute, Brooklyn)

 

Wednesday 10 December, 09.00-10.00

The Paragraph Film: Genre, Emotions and the Struggle for Law

Steven Howe (University of Lucerne)

 

All sessions are free and open to all, and we warmly invite you to join us. Further details, including registration info, available via the links.

 

Please note that listed start times are CET. Time zone converter here.

Call For Papers: Socio-Legal Studies Association 2026 Annual Conference, Dance/Law Current Topic

From Dr. Sean Mulcahy, Research Officer, Gender, Law and Drugs Program, LaTrobe University:

The call for papers for the Socio-Legal Studies Assocation's 2026 Annual Conference is open. The conference will be held at the University of Sussex.

We would be delighted if you would consider submitting an abstract to the Dance/Law current topic co-convened by myself and Dr Maria Frederica Moscati (University of Sussex).

You can find out more information here. Just scroll down to 'Dance/Law'.

The deadline for submissions is 30 October 2025. 

If you have any questions or would like any further information, please do reach out. 

 

ICYMI: Barbas on The Story of Beauharnais v. Illinois

ICYMI: Samantha Barbas, University of Iowa Collee of Law, has published The Story Of Beauharnais v. Illinois at 2 Journal of Free Speech Law 420 (2023). Here is the abstract.

In 1952, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark First Amendment decision in Beauharnais v. Illinois, upholding an Illinois hate speech law. Beauharnais, involving a white supremacist “hate group” leader in Chicago, was the Supreme Court’s first encounter with racist speech. The Illinois statute, enacted in 1917, was one of several hate speech or “group defamation” laws that existed in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. Commentators believed that the Supreme Court’s approval of the Illinois statute would lead other jurisdictions to enact hate speech laws. Yet Beauharnais facilitated the demise of hate speech laws. This article tells the story of Beauharnais v. Illinois and explains why the Supreme Court’s ruling helped bring about the end of hate speech laws in America.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Wieboldt on Ideas With(out) Consequences?: The Natural Law Institute and the Making of Conservative Constitutionalism During the Cold War, 1947-1951

Dennis J. Wieboldt, III, is publishing Ideas With(out) Consequences?: The Natural Law Institute and the Making of Conservative Constitutionalism During the Cold War, 1947-1951 in volume 42 of the Law & History Review (2025). Here is the abstract.

Recent scholarship on conservative constitutionalism in the United States focuses near exclusively on the development of originalism as a method of constitutional interpretation. Before conservatives turned to originalism to counter the perceived threats of an activist judiciary in the 1980s, however, this article demonstrates that conservatives employed a very different interpretive philosophy to counter a very different perceived threat. To do so, this article reconstructs the history of a conservative legal movement that predated "the" conservative legal movement. Indeed, this article uncovers how conservatives employed natural law philosophy to respond to the elite legal academy's seemingly morally foundationless positivism during the Cold War. The network of natural lawyers that sustained this earlier movement was deeply indebted to the Natural Law Institute (NLI), an academic initiative of the University of Notre Dame established in 1947. By framing the founding fathers' natural law philosophy as a bulwark of individual liberty against the encroachments of legal realists, World War II-era totalitarians, and Cold War communists, the NLI created what the political scientist Amanda Hollis-Brusky has termed a "political epistemic network." In concluding, this article suggests that recovering the history of the NLI's epistemic network reveals the importance of natural law to the making of conservative constitutionalism during the Cold War.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Monopoli on A "New" New Departure

Paula A. Monopoli, University of Maryland School of Law, has pulished A "New" New Departure at 102 Washington University Law Review 1961 (2025). Here is the abstract.

In the wake of enactment of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, women’s rights activists embarked on an exercise in popular constitutionalism known as “the New Departure.” Frustrated by the failure of Congress to include women in the Reconstruction Amendments, suffragists turned to a strategy based, in part, upon republican theory. They argued that women had an inherent right to vote grounded in natural law and in their status as citizens of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment. They operationalized that theory by engaging in mass-voting events and were prosecuted for illegal voting. These activist efforts came to an end in 1875 when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected that theory in Minor v. Happersett. This paper situates the New Departure at the beginning of a historical continuum that includes two subsequent periods in feminist legal history—the Progressive Era and the period which began in the wake of the Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health. It explores how women’s rights activists in each of these three periods have rejected originalism as an interpretive methodology that, by its very terms, has a subordinating effect on women’s constitutional status. Such activists have proposed alternative interpretive methods which centered women and their legal, economic, and social status. Feminist constitutional advocacy in the post-Dobbs period continues in this tradition by resisting the dominant interpretive method and arguing for a “new” New Departure toward interpretive methods which elevate rather than subordinate women’s constitutional status. Exploring feminist constitutional strategies across time illuminates a history and tradition that may have a generative effect for current efforts to restore the right to abortion and establish a broader reproductive justice.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Katz on "May It Please Her Honor": The United States' First Women Juges, 1870-1930

Elizabeth D. Katz, University of Florida College of Law, has published "May It Please Her Honor": The United States' First Women Judges, 1870-1930 at 102 Washington University Law Review 1729 (2025).

Between 1870 and 1930, hundreds of women served as judges in the United States. While a small number compared to the men who served, these pathbreaking officials were particularly visible and influential in women's efforts to secure political rights and advance in the legal profession. Women's progress in obtaining judgeships developed in a regional pattern, with women in the Midwest and West able to secure earlier and broader jurisdiction positions than their counterparts in the Northeast and South. Seeking access to the judiciary, women in conservative states made gendered arguments about women's supposed superiority in overseeing cases involving women, children, and families. Some demonstrated women's skill in handling juvenile and family matters through service as the country's first probation officers, a step that supported women's selection as judges in juvenile and family courts. Regardless of location or type of court, women judges attracted significant attention because they seemed to embody the promise and perils of women's increasing political and professional power. Yet since most served in local trial courts, nearly all are forgotten today. This Article recovers the stories of these overlooked trailblazers, offering the most comprehensive account of the obstacles they faced and the strategies they deployed to join the country's judicial benches.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Priel on The Political Theories of the Legal Realists

Dan Priel, City University of Hong Kong School of Law; York University, Osgoode Hall Law School, has published The Political Theories of the Legal Realists. Here is the abstract.

A popular view about the legal realists is that, either knowingly or inadvertently, they advanced ideas inconsistent with traditional values, democracy, and the rule of law. Another view about them suggested that the realists had no political theory: they only offered a descriptive (empirical) theory of adjudication, albeit one that has normatively "quietist" implications. In this essay, I challenge both views. I argue that there were two legal realist camps whose jurisprudential ideas presupposed two quite different political theories. One group of legal realists consisted of public utilitarians who were consciously inspired by Bentham, wanted to turn legal and political theory into a science, and who thought law should be evaluated by its ability to increase social welfare. The other group had a very different political theory underlying its approach to law. For these legal realists, law was a traditionary institution, which should reflect, and be continuous with, community customs and values. After showing these different views, I show their relevance to contemporary debates in different areas of law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

LCH 2026 Conference Scheduled for June 17-18, 2026 at DePaul College of Law

The Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities will hold its 2026 conference June 17-18, 2026 at the DePaul University College of Law, in Chicago. The CFP will be available soon.

Submissions will be due on January 31, and the Association will send notifications shortly after that. 

In the meantime, you can view all the recent conference programs here. Here's a link to the 2026 conference website.

Rhodes on A Silence after Slaughter-House: Nineteenth-Century State Constitutional Substantive Rights, Liberties, and Privileges

Charles W. (Rocky) Rhodes, University of Missouri (Columbia) Law School, has published A Silence after Slaughter-House: Nineteenth-Century State Constitutional Substantive Rights, Liberties, and Privileges at 85 Louisiana Law Review 439 (2025).

In rejecting federal constitutional challenges to the Louisiana legislature’s exclusive butchering grant in the Slaughter-House Cases, the United States Supreme Court opined that it was the states’ obligation to protect fundamental privileges, such as rights to acquire and possess property, engage in trade and commerce, and pursue happiness, subject only to those restraints necessary for the public good. But the states met this charge with silence. State courts across the nation consistently parroted Slaughter-House’s reasoning, even while occasionally acknowledging the decision did not bind their interpretation of state constitutional provisions guaranteeing fundamental rights, liberties, privileges, and immunities. Although two states ratified arguably responsive constitutional provisions affording protection to state privileges and immunities, their judiciaries also followed the Supreme Court’s lead. Yet a minority of states, both before and after Slaughter-House, specifically targeted exclusive state legislative grants through anti-monopoly state constitutional provisions or through common-law doctrines. While not affording broad protections for their citizens’ rights and liberties, these constitution makers and state judiciaries attacked the specific perceived problem through either the majoritarian convention and ratification process or within the majoritarian features of the common law. This symposium piece explores the salient lessons this nineteenth-century response offers for the past, present, and future of state constitutional interpretation in Louisiana and throughout the nation. Ascertaining the meaning of universal American foundational jurisprudential principles—such as liberty, rights, privileges, and immunities—has always been a predominantly shared judicial enterprise, despite some arguably significant textual variations among America’s constitutions. But state courts depart more frequently from the universal approach and federal constitutional law’s influence when supported by either a precise state constitutional guarantee targeting the issue or a longstanding state common-law tradition. These methods typically prevail when the state constitution’s design and accompanying institutional incentives reinforce the majoritarian features of state constitutionalism. This explains the state constitutional response to Slaughter-House over 150 years ago and still holds true today.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Vasconcelos Vilaça on Law as a Semiotic Time Machine

Guilherme Vasconcelos Vilaça, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), Law School, has published "Law as a Semiotic Time Machine." Here is the abstract.

This chapter examines several semiotic dimensions of the relation between law and time. Focusing on Tanpınar's novel The Time Regulation Institute, it emphasizes the interaction between different temporal standards, subjectivities and normative sources, and its role in giving meaning to individual and social life. Given law's powers as a time machine the chapter also discusses political projects that supress time, revealing how categories of collective life depend on certain semiotics of time.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Davies on Sherlock Holmes: Real or Imagined? Living or Dying?

Ross E. Davies, George Mason University Law School; The Green Bag, has published Sherlock Holmes: Real or Imagined? Living or Dying? at 2025 Baker Street Almanac I. Here is the abstract.

Readers of the November 22, 1913 issue of Collier’s Weekly magazine had the joy of taking in Arthur Conan Doyle’s new Sherlock Holmes story, “The Adventure of the Dying Detective.” Recipients of the nifty little Christmas 1913 keepsake booklet of “The Dying Detective” put out by the advertising department at Collier’s got to read almost exactly the same story. The typesetters did a near-perfect job of making sure that the text of “The Dying Detective” in the booklet matched the text in the magazine. Indeed, there are just three notable differences between the booklet and magazine texts. The first two differences appear to be intentional and definitely are not defects. The third is, alas, a typographical finish-line fail. While there does not appear to be much worthy of study in the textual differences between the two 1913 Collier’s versions of “The Dying Detective,” addingThe Strand Magazine to the mix may change things. There is at least one difference between, on one hand, both of those Collier’s versions and, on the other hand, the version in the December 1913 Strandthat might merit a closer look. On page 609 of The Strand, while conversing with Dr. John Watson, Holmes says, “Strange how the brain controls the brain!”

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Balkin and Levinson on Casebooks, Canons, and Constitutional Memory

Jack M. Balkin, Yale University Law School, and Sanford Levinson, University of Texas Law School, are publishing Casebooks, Canons, and Constitutional Memory as a Yale Law School Public Law Research Paper.

Why edit a constitutional law casebook? One might want to shape how professors teach the subject and how students learn it. But the influence of casebook editors is limited. Most students at most law schools will never practice constitutional law, and those that do probably deal with subjects not in the standard introductory course. Editing a casebook involves the construction of a canon. The canon in literature is organized around great works of excellence. By contrast, the canon in constitutional casebooks does not reflect the best opinions ever written; instead it reflects generations of political and legal struggles over the Constitution. There are three kinds of canons in constitutional law, and in constitutional law casebooks: (1) the pedagogical canon of materials that students need to know to be well-trained lawyers; (2) the cultural literacy canon of materials that citizens need to know to understand their constitutional system; and (3) the constitutional theory canon of materials that are grist for the mill of serious academic discussion. Each of these canons has a politics, and different casebooks may align themselves with different political and legal visions and movements. Casebooks are also sites of collective memory. A casebook foregrounds what teachers and students are likely to focus on and remember. What is left out of teaching materials is more likely to be forgotten. Hence constitutional law casebook authors are almost inevitably memory entrepreneurs, who seek to get people to remember certain things or remember them differently. But casebook editors are hardly all-powerful memory entrepreneurs. Authors must work with their coauthors to decide what materials to include and delete in successive editions. Casebook authors face serious constraints from publishers. Publishers demand frequent new editions to undercut sales of used casebooks; and they want casebooks to be ever shorter and simpler to understand. Perhaps most important, casebook authors feel obliged to cover contemporary issues in constitutional law. Those issues are not in their control. They are shaped by the continuous interaction and collision between the political branches and the courts, and especially the United States Supreme Court. In this way the Supreme Court exercises vast control over the content and organization of constitutional law casebooks. This creates important problems of constitutional memory. If the Supreme Court overrules a line of cases, those cases are likely to be flushed down the memory hole unless casebook editors are willing to sacrifice other valued content. The Supreme Court constantly destroys existing canons of constitutional law and reconstitutes them through its choice of cases to decide. Casebook authors must carefully consider how much of this constant churning and change is noise and how much is genuinely important and lasting for understanding the U.S. Constitution. This makes casebook authors' limited choices about what to remember especially important. At most, by placing certain materials before professors and students, casebook authors can provide opportunities to recall and absorb what is most important about our constitutional traditions. Yet what others do with those materials--and those memories--is ultimately beyond casebook authors' control.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Pasker on "Which History has Condescended to Notice": Black Testimony in Antebellum Courts

Robert B. Pasker, CUNY Department of History, has published "Which History has Condescended to Notice": Black Testimony in Antebellum Courts. Here is the abstract.

This study investigates the contested admissibility of Black testimony in American courts between 1790 and 1865, analyzing 73 appellate opinions across 11 states and the District of Columbia. Contrary to the prevailing historiography that portrays antebellum statutes as universally excluding Black voices, these cases reveal that judges frequently exercised discretion to admit testimony where exclusion threatened the courts’ procedural capacity to adjudicate. The analysis demonstrates that judicial reasoning prioritized institutional functionality rather than moral or rights-based considerations. A central challenge was methodological: appellate case law is vast, dispersed, and embedded in archaic legal language that resists conventional search tools. To overcome this, I developed Roscoe, a machine-learning system designed to perform conceptual searches, generate topical classifications, and produce plain-language summaries of nineteenth-century case law. Named for Roscoe Pound, the system allowed efficient retrieval and categorization of relevant cases from hundreds of thousands of digitized opinions. Roscoe not only enhanced recall and precision in identifying Black testimony cases but also facilitated thematic grouping across jurisdictional boundaries, making possible a genuinely national analysis. The findings expose the structural contradiction at the core of antebellum jurisprudence: statutes that categorically barred Black testimony collided with the judiciary’s pragmatic need for probative evidence. Appellate decisions show how Black participation forced courts to adapt in ways that preserved institutional authority while reinforcing racial hierarchy. This duality—judicial flexibility without recognition of Black rights—complicates prevailing narratives of antebellum legal history and demonstrates how digital methodologies can expand the evidentiary base of legal historiography.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Bond on Representations of Law and Race Revisited: An Updated Survey of Recent American Film

Cynthia D. Bond, UIC School of Law, has published Representations of Law and Race Revisited: An Updated Survey of Recent American Film at 30 Denver Sports and Entertainment Law Journal 51 (Spring 2025). Here is the abstract.

This article revisits the author's Laws of Race/Laws of Representation: The Construction of Race and Law in Contemporary American Film, 11 Univ. Tex. Rev. of Sports and Ent. L. 219 (2010), surveying recent developments in mainstream films' depiction of the interrelated narratives of law and race. This article applies to current film the 2010 article's paradigm, which articulated three key narrative aspects of depictions of race and law in popular film: 1.) the raced construction of the lawyer-hero; 2.) the denial or displacement of the law's role in constructing race and race-based discrimination; and 3.) the suppression or revision of politics and political history. Using this paradigm as a point of departure, the article examines a range of films, TV shows, and streaming series that grapple with race under law. Particular focus is paid to films created post-2020, in light of social movements like Black Lives Matter and the attendant increased public dialogue regarding racialized legal disparities in American life. Beyond displaying a mere statistical uptick of racially diverse casting, films and series of the last fifteen years reveal that popular culture can engage notions of race and its place under law in a more direct and nuanced way.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Expressions of Interest: International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication: From Text to Semiotics; Section 3: Justice in the Media Age-- Law, Communication, and Public Perception

Call For Expressions of Interest

International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication (IHLLC): From Text to Semiotics
Editor-in-Chief: Anne Wagner
Publisher: Springer

Section 3: Justice in the Media Age — Law, Communication, and Public Perception

Section Editors: Jerome Tessuto & Vijay Kumar Bhatia
Contact: Tessuto Jerome (t.jerome@libero.it) & Vijay Kumar Bhatia (vjkbhatia1@gmail.com)

We invite proposals for chapters for Section 3 of the IHLLC, which examines the evolving relationship between media, digital communication, and the legal system—and how these shape public perceptions of justice, cultural identity, and collective memory. We welcome contributions that bridge law, linguistics, communication, media studies, and semiotics.

This section explores:

• How traditional media (press, TV, radio) construct legal narratives and influence trust in institutions.
• The role of social and digital platforms (e.g., X/Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) in real-time legal discourse, advocacy, and mobilization—as well as the risks of misinformation and prejudgment.
• The emergence of digital evidence, its authenticity and admissibility, and the impact of virtual courtrooms on procedure and participation.
• Media’s role in collective memory, reform, and accountability, including the responsibilities of tech companies and regulators in moderating harmful content while safeguarding free expression.

Suggested Themes (non-exhaustive)

• Media trials, open justice, and the right to a fair trial
• Framing of courts, judges, and litigants in legacy media
• Social media activism, hashtag movements, and legal reform
• Disinformation, prejudicial publicity, and contempt risks
• Digital evidence: capture, authenticity, admissibility, and fact-finding
• Virtual hearings, remote justice, and access to justice
• Platform governance, content moderation, and intermediary liability
• Online hate speech, defamation, harassment, and remedies
• Investigative journalism, watchdog roles, and legal accountability
• Collective memory, cultural identity, and legal storytelling
• Comparative and cross-jurisdictional analyses
• Methods: discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, multimodal/semiotic analysis

Submission Guidelines

Please email your Expression of Interest (EOI) to Tessuto Jerome (t.jerome@libero.it) and Vijay Kumar Bhatia (vjkbhatia1@gmail.com) including:

• Tentative chapter title (subject to revision)
• Author name(s)
• Institutional affiliation(s)
• Country
• Short abstract

Chapters should be substantial, literature-based, and accessible in tone, engaging the handbook’s semiotic perspective on law and communication. Revisions are possible through the production process.

Timeline: Deadlines for full chapters are flexible (typically 6–12 months after acceptance, with extensions possible).

All information, including author guidelines, templates, and Q&A, is available on the IHLLC project website:
👉 https://meteor.springer.com/project/dashboard.jsf?id=1949&tab=About&mode=ReadPage&entity=15466

Call for Applications: National Humanities Center Residential Fellowships 2026-2027

National Humanities Center Residential Fellowships 2026-27 

The National Humanities Center invites applications for academic-year or semester-long residential fellowships for scholars of the humanities. 

Fellows enjoy private studies, in-house dining, and superb library services that deliver a variety of research materials while they are in residence. Mid-career, senior, and emerging scholars with a strong record of peer-reviewed work from all areas of the humanities are encouraged to apply. 

(Please note: applicants must have received a PhD or equivalent scholarly credentials five years prior to applying to qualify.). Scholars from all parts of the globe are welcome; stipends and travel expenses are provided. 

 For more information about the NHC fellowship experience, eligibility requirements, or to apply, please visit this link: https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/scholarly-programs/. 

Applications are due by 11:59 p.m. ET, October 2, 2025. 

FAQs: https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/scholarly-programs/faqs/ 

Queries re. application and program: fellowships@nationalhumanitiescenter.org

Mitchell on The Narrative Fragmentation of International Legal History

Ryan Mitchell, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law, has published The Narrative Fragmentation of International Legal History at 27 Journal of the History of International Law 57 (2025). Here is the abstract.

The historiography of international law is highly pluralistic and resistant to unifying master narratives. This pluralism is reflected in diverging authorial strategies. To categorize such strategies, this article borrows Hayden White's typology of 'emplotments', or narrative logics, as a useful method of classification. As the article shows, leading accounts of international law's history have often involved conflicting forms of subjective identification with protagonists and forces. This article also suggests that the turn from a relatively homogeneous understanding of international legal history to one characterized by inescapable fragmentation can be dated to the geopolitical, ideological, and cultural transitions of the 1950s-60s. Entrenched ideological conflict and decolonization resulted in a stubbornly diverse historiography that remains the essential condition of the field today. For modern historians of international law, it is crucial to recognize this narrative fragmentation as well as the resulting choices it imposes upon authors making sense of the past.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Sharma and Pareek on Colonial Constructs and Legal Myths: The Erasure of Hindi Jurisprudence and Dicta on Criminal Law Under the Shadow of English Legal Superiority

Prakash Sharma, Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law, and Animesh Pareek, IIT Kharagpur, have published Colonial Constructs and Legal Myths: The Erasure of Hindu Jurisprudence and Dicta on Criminal Law Under the Shadow of English Legal Superiority. Here is the abstract.

The British colonial enterprise in India restructured political and economic institutions and fundamentally altered the subcontinent's legal landscape. The systematic marginalisation and erasure of intangible Bhartiya heritage, especially in criminal law, was a crucial aspect of this transformation. This chapter examines the colonial imposition of the English legal system, viewing it not only as an administrative mechanism but also as a cultural and ideological initiative based on the belief in the inherent superiority and modernity of English law. The chapter examines the evolution of colonial legal discourse from the late 18th century, highlighting the portrayal of English criminal law as rational, secular, and progressive, in stark contrast to the depiction of Hindu law as irrational, archaic, and overly devoid of logic. The colonial state selectively codified elements of Hindu legal tradition that aligned with its administrative requirements, while disregarding extensive bodies of nuanced jurisprudence, especially those found in Dharmaśāstra literature and community-based justice practices. This chapter examines the suppression of Hindu criminal law as an aspect of broader epistemic violence, in which legal modernity is aligned with Western legal norms, thereby delegitimising non-Western legal systems. This chapter examines legislative developments and judicial opinions to elucidate the lasting effects of this erasure on postcolonial legal consciousness in India. Ultimately, the chapter contests the herrschendeErzählung(dominant narrative) that the English legal system represented a neutral or inevitable advancement over Bhartiya systems. This necessitates a critical reassessment of the influence of colonial legal constructs on current interpretations of law, justice, and legal modernity in India.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Johnson on Frederick Douglass: D.C. Recorder of Deeds

Randall K. Johnson, University of Missouri, Kansas City, School of Law, is publishing Frederick Douglass: D.C. Recorder of Deeds in volume 28 of The Green Bag (2026). Here is the abstract.

Frederick Douglass' surprise nomination, as the first Black D.C. Recorder of Deeds, represented yet another career milestone for the most photographed U.S. citizen of the nineteenth century. As head of the local agency responsible for registering property interests, Douglass played an important role in advancing local economic development, mostly by letting the world know who owns what real estate within the geographic boundaries of D.C. This point is underscored by the fact that Douglass earned the second highest salary in the U.S. federal government, which some have estimated to be as high as $40 per work day in 1886 dollars. My essay, further, builds upon this analysis by focusing on a third indicator of importance: the type, quality and quantity of local press coverage that Douglass received during his time as the D.C. Recorder (1881 to 1886).

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Seong-Hak Kim on Legal Pluralism That Wasn't: State and the Plurality of Law in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Marie Seong-Hak Kim, Käte Hamburger Kolleg "Einheit und Vielfalt im Recht", has published Legal Pluralism That Wasn't: State and the Plurality of Law in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Legaal Hre is the abstract,

Legal pluralism has seemingly become a new orthodoxy. Its core proposition is that law has no privileged relationship with the state. Students of legal history have reason for paying attention, as legal pluralism, a corollary of colonialism, has come to project back onto European history its cultural and social-scientific paradigm and arrogate to itself the role of explaining the evolution of normative orders in the continent's past. This article argues that applying to European history a theory premised on a contest between legal monism and pluralism brings more confusion than clarity. The difference between historically grounded legal pluralism and the contemporary theory of legal pluralism revolves around the question of whether multiple legal orders existed as part of state law or state law was merely one among many legal orders. In late medieval and early modern Europe, law was foremost equated with jurisdictional power, that is, authority to rule. Various kinds of laws, including custom, Roman law, church law, and legislation, operated in a plurality of practices within the state-centered hierarchy, and it was on this framework of state law pluralism that the European countries, while remaining under the doctrinal unity of the jus commune, each followed a discrete path of legal development shaped by political and institutional changes. The history of Europe provides little support for the theory that an imposed Romanitas or state sovereignty displaced and distorted good old customary law. Modern legal pluralist views may be in need of reconsideration not just in light of what was happening in late medieval and early modern Europe but also in terms of how Europe's ideas of legal order spread to the colonies in the late nineteenth century. Recent debates on legal pluralism serve as a reminder that history is distinct from an anemic version of the more theoretical social sciences. Still, the binary of unity and plurality in law can offer an unaccustomed yet useful direction in approaching the legal past.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Applications, Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities, Tilburg Law School

From Michel Bot, Associate Professor of Law and Humanities
Department of Public Law and Governance, Tilburg Law School
Program Director, Major Law in an International Context, University College Tilburg

Tilburg Law School (The Netherlands) is accepting applications for this spring’s one-month Witteveen memorial fellowship in Law and Humanities. Application deadline: September 21.

The Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities aims to promote research and teaching on law and rhetoric, narrative, image, performance, sound, and/or culture.

The fellowship enables a junior scholar (PhD or postdoc level) to share and develop their research in the field of law and humanities during a residency at Tilburg Law School for one month in February-May 2026. There is a 5000 euro budget to cover travel and accommodation costs.

We expect the fellow to participate actively in the academic life of Tilburg Law School by presenting their research in a research seminar and by teaching a guest class to students. Past Fellows have also introduced film screenings, have organized a reading of their play with students, have read their poetry, have given a lecture performance, participated in a teach-out, in addition to participating in various research seminars.

Scholars who are in the final stages of their PhD research or who obtained their PhD in the field of law and humanities within the last five years are eligible.

Please apply via this link.

 

See past fellows via this link.