Wieboldt on Natural Law Appeals as Method of American-Catholic Reconciliation: Catholic Legal Thought and the Red Mass in Boston, 1941-1944 @DennisWieboldt @NotreDame

Dennis J. Wieboldt, III, University of Notre Dame, has published Natural Law Appeals as Method of American-Catholic Reconciliation: Catholic Legal Thought and the Red Mass in Boston, 1941-1944 at U. S. Catholic Historian 41 (2023). Here is the abstract.

Amid the Second World War, the Boston College Law School and the Archdiocese of Boston co-sponsored the first Red Mass in New England. Though this liturgy had been celebrated for centuries to invoke divine guidance for legal administrators, the Red Mass tradition emerged in Boston during a particular American Catholic intellectual movement. This movement encouraged Catholic and non-Catholic legal practitioners to predicate their understandings of the American legal tradition on the Natural Law philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and, purportedly, the Founding Fathers. By employing the movement's intellectual resources during Red Mass sermons, Boston's Catholic leaders believed they could demonstrate the philosophical Americanness of U.S. Catholicism. Chiefly responsible for the Red Mass tradition's emergence and sustained influence in Boston was Father William J. Kenealy, S.J., Boston College Law School's dean (1939-1956). The history of the first four Red Masses in Boston suggests that the experience of wartime significantly informed Catholic leaders' postwar conviction that appealing to the Natural Law could offer an effective medium for American-Catholic reconciliation.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

ICYMI: The Cabinet of Imaginary Laws (Routledge Publishing, 2021) @routledgebooks

ICYMI: The Cabinet of Imaginary Laws: (Peter Goodrich and Thanos Zartaloudis, eds., Routledge, 2021) (Discourses of Law). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

Returning to the map of the island of utopia, this book provides a contemporary, inventive, addition to the long history of legal fictions and juristic phantasms. Progressive legal and political thinking has for long lacked a positive, let alone a bold imaginary project, an account of what improved institutions and an ameliorated environment would look like. And where better to start than with the non-laws or imaginary legislations of a realm yet to come. The Cabinet of Imaginary Laws is a collection of fictive contributions to the theme of conceiving imaginary laws in the vivid vein of jurisliterary invention. Disparate in style and diverse in genres of writing and performative expression, the celebrated and unknown, venerable and youthful authors write new laws. Thirty-five dissolute scholars, impecunious authors and dyspeptic artists from a variety of fields including law, film, science, history, philosophy, political science, aesthetics, architecture and the classics become, for a brief and inspiring instance, legislators of impossible norms. The collection provides an extra-ordinary range of inspired imaginings of other laws. This momentary community of radial thought conceives of a wild variety of novel critical perspectives. The contributions aim to inspire reflection on the role of imagination in the study and writing of law. Verse, collage, artworks, short stories, harangues, lists, and other pleas, reports and pronouncements revivify the sense of law as the vehicle of poetic justice and as an art that instructs and constructs life. Aimed at an intellectual audience disgruntled with the negativity of critique and the narrowness of the disciplines, this book will appeal especially to theorists, lawyers, scholars and a general public concerned with the future of decaying laws and an increasingly derelict legal system.

Sciullo on Defending Critical Race Theory @nickjsciullo

Nick J. Sciullo, Texas A&M University, has published Defending Critical Race Theory. Here is the abstract.

Recent attacks on Critical Race Theory (CRT) have caused wide-ranging discussions about CRT in a diverse number of disciplines, throughout all grade levels, and around the world in media. While CRT adherents have long wished for more engagement with CRT, the recent firestorm of attacks has been surprising at best, and horribly worrisome and frightening at worst. Efforts to ban CRT in schools, while likely not having much effect given the improbability that CRT is taught in any K-12 schools, have politicized CRT in new ways (though like all education, it was always political). Moreover, this engagement is clearly not in ways that many of us writing in or about this tradition imagined, yet the increasing politicization of CRT has raised interest in the theory well beyond the colleges, universities, and graduate and professional schools where it was, at best, occasionally taught. Arguably, conservatives created a debate where there is none and was none. Or, as Donald Earl Collins puts it, this is a discussion not about CRT, but rather about “critical race fact.” This Article sets out to defend CRT from the criticisms levied by conservative and Republican politicians in the United States as well as other pundits and pontificators. These criticisms have always existed, but they have now been taken up in popular media in a confusing menagerie of political fervor. Of course, the criticisms of CRT are almost always based on a misunderstanding of the idea. Each Part below takes up a different criticism and presents evidence that the criticism is simply not true by using both what critical race theorists have written, as well as what others who have experience teaching it in the United States’ schools, colleges, and universities have claimed. It is possible, one supposes, that the country’s alleged critical-race-teaching kindergarten teachers are covertly inserting CRT into our five-year-olds’ lessons on colors, but this seems unlikely.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Law, Culture, and the Humanities Conference, 2025: Call For Papers @Law_Cult_Huma

Call For Papers: Law, Culture, and the Humanities Conference, 2025

Every year, the Association holds it annual conference, usually a two-day affair, as well as a graduate student workshop, usually held on the day before the annual conference. The 2025 annual meeting will be held at Georgetown Law from June 17-18th. The theme of the conference, our call for papers, and submissions guidelines can be found below:

 

Speech Matters We live in a golden or an iron age, depending on one’s point of view, for laws regulating speech. The COVID-19 pandemic forced governments around the world to reckon with floods of dis- and misinformation. The global rise of the far right has brought with it a need for new legal tools to combat threats, harassment, and hate speech. And in the United States, state and local governments have attempted to suppress speech by or about unpopular subjects through means ranging from book bans to felony prosecutions. For this year’s Law, Culture, and Humanities Annual Conference, we invite papers on how the law conceptualizes, regulates, commodifies, or instrumentalizes speech (broadly defined not just as language but as expressive activity). In particular, we welcome papers that use humanistic tools for making sense of speech and expression—concepts from rhetoric, narrative theory, aesthetics, genre studies, and more—to tackle new or persistent legal puzzles.

 

Submission Guidelines We encourage the submission of fully constituted panels, as well as panels that reimagine or experiment with models for academic presentation, such as roundtables, author meet reader sessions (which may include multiple books and their authors in conversation), collaborative presentations, multi-panel streams, etc. Individual proposals should include a title and an abstract of no more than 250 words. Please note that online presenters should organize a full panel (we will not be accepting individual papers for online presentations this year) and that, though we traditionally accept most papers, we may need to limit the number of online panels we accept, depending on demand. Panels, whether virtual or in-person, should include three papers (or, exceptionally, four papers). Please specify a title and designate a chair for your panel. The panel chair may also be a panel presenter. It is not necessary to write an abstract or proposal for the panel itself. To indicate your pre-constituted panel, roundtable, or stream, please ensure that individual registrants provide the name of the panel and the chair in their individual submissions on the registration site. All panel, roundtable, or stream participants must make an individual submission on the registration site. When submitting a proposal, we also ask that registrants identify two keywords to help us align sessions with each other.

 

Mode The twenty-seventh annual conference will emphasize the LCH tradition of in-person conversation. While we encourage participants to join us in Washington, D.C., we recognize that in-person attendance may be prohibitive for some. To that end, we will also accept the submission of virtual panels. Since we will not be providing technical support for virtual participants, panel chairs will be responsible for providing Zoom links that will be listed in the program. All plenary sessions will be available streaming online as well as in person.

 

How to Submit? Submissions may be made through our website: https://lawculturehumanities.com/event/2025-twenty-seventh-annual-confer...

 

Creating a Panel: Contact Our Graduate Coordinators Early While participants may submit individual paper proposals that the Program Committee will later combine into full panels, we strongly encourage applicants to create full panels prior to submission. Pre-formed panels may cohere better, and allow collaborators to craft focused scholarly exchanges. Panels comprising a diversity of institutions, academic ranks, disciplines, and identities are often the most rewarding. If you would like support in finding others who might be interested in forming a panel, please contact our Graduate Coordinators, Aditya Banerjee (adityabanerjee@g.harvard.edu) and Jack Quirk (john_quirk@brown.edu) with “LCH panel” in the subject line. The Graduate Coordinators will act as intermediaries, and may be able to put you in contact with others working on related topics. We especially encourage graduate students and those new to LCH to consider reaching out to the Graduate Coordinators if they’re struggling to identify potential co-panelists. Please contact them well before the submission deadline, to allow time for follow-up.

 

Submission Deadline The deadline for all conference submissions is January 31, 2025. Contact Information Please email lch@lawculturehumanities.com with any queries. categories

Call For Papers: Hugo and the Law, Maastricht University Faculty of Law, May 8, 2025

Call for Papers; Hugo and the Law, Maastricht University Faculty of Law, Masstricht, the Netherlands, May 8, 2025.

On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Actes et Paroles, the collection of Victor Hugo’s political speeches, the UM Law and Popular Culture Research Network organizes a Workshop on 8 May 2025 dedicated to the author’s conceptualization of several legal issues. The Workshop will take place at the Faculty of Law of Maastricht University (The Netherlands), with a fully in-person program.

Goal and Background of the Workshop.  In his several works, Victor Hugo has often delved into profound perspectives into the relationship between humanity and the law. Hugo was not merely a renowned novelist but a visionary thinker who engaged with multiple societal issues, including the intricacies of the legal system, the condition of women, the rise of socialism, and the future of Europe. On the 150th anniversary of the publication of Actes et Paroles – which perfectly captures such themes– this Workshop aims to examine Hugo’s conception of the law.

Hugo’s conception of the law is multifaceted, encompassing both its theoretical foundations and its practical implications. His writings often reflect a deep concern for the struggle for power and the ethical responsibilities of institutions. Through an examination of Hugo’s literary corpus, the Workshop will explore how his books’ characters grapple with the complexities of law and its impact on individuals and society. One key aspect of the Workshop is Hugo’s emphasis on the moral dimension of the law. His characters navigate questions of morality, duty, and conscience by their interactions with legal systems. At the same time, the Workshop will address Hugo’s critique of the legal machinery, shedding light on his observations regarding the potential for injustice and the abuse of power. Furthermore, this Workshop will investigate the historical context in which Hugo lived and wrote, considering the political and social upheavals that influenced his views on the law. From the aftermath of the French Revolution to the establishment of the Second French Republic, through the rise and fall of the Empire of Napoleon III, until the experience of the Commune, Hugo’s observations of the evolving legal landscape are integral to understanding his perspective on the nature of power, the State and the foundations of Europe, and the condition of women.

By examining the philosophical, historical, and theoretical underpinnings and practical implications of Hugo’s thoughts on law, the Workshop aims to illuminate the enduring relevance of his insights and their potential to inspire contemporary discussions on law and justice.

Abstract Submissions.  The “Hugo and the Law” Workshop will feature panel sessions. Submissions should relate to the overarching theme of the Workshop.

Submissions should indicate the title of the contribution, an abstract (max. 400 words), and the contact information and a short biography of the speaker (max. 150 words). Fully written papers are not required. We encourage submissions in English, and co-authored papers will be also considered.

Who Can Participate in this Workshop?  The “Hugo and the Law” Workshop is not restricted to lawyers. We welcome proposals that offer multi-disciplinary perspectives from various areas of law (including civil, criminal, tax, and labor law), as well as from scholars in e.g. the humanities and other social sciences (e.g. history, economics, political science, sociology) with an interest in the Workshop’s theme. We welcome submissions from senior and junior scholars (including doctoral students) and interested practitioners.

How and When to Submit?  Send your submission to agustin.parise@maastrichtuniversity.nl.  The Call for Papers closes on 22 December 2024. Shortly after that, the authors will be informed whether their papers are selected for a presentation during the Workshop.

Conference Organizing Committee.  Should you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact a member of the Workshop Organizing Committee:

Eline Couperus(e.couperus@maastrichtuniversity.nl)
Agustín Parise (agustin.parise@maastrichtuniversity.nl)
Franco Peirone (franco.peirone@maastrichtuniversity.nl)
Livia Solaro (l.solaro@maastrichtuniversity.nl)
Arthur Willemse (arthur.willemse@maastrichtuniversity.nl)

ICYMI: Dees on Great Trials and the Law in the Historical Imagination @routledgebooks

ICYMI: Russell L. Dees, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, has published Great Trials and the Law in the Historical Imagination: A Law and Humanities Approach (Routledge, 2024). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

Great Trials and the Law in the Historical Imagination: A Law and Humanities Approach introduces readers to the history of law and issues in historical, legal, and artistic interpretation by examining six well-known historical trials through works of art that portray them. Great Trials provides readers with an accessible, non-dogmatic introduction to the interdisciplinary ‘law and humanities’ approach to law, legal history, and legal interpretation. By examining how six famous/notorious trials in Western history have been portrayed in six major works of art, the book shows how issues of legal, historical, and artistic interpretation can become intertwined: the different ways we embed law in narrative, how we bring conscious and subconscious conceptions of history to our interpretation of law, and how aesthetic predilections and moral commitments to the law may influence our views of history. The book studies well-known depictions of the trials of Socrates, Cicero, Jesus, Thomas More, the Salem ‘witches’, and John Scopes and provides innovative analyses of those works. The epilogue examines how historical methodology and historical imagination are crucial to both our understanding of the law and our aesthetic choices through various readings of Harper Lee’s beloved character, Atticus Finch. The first book to employ a ‘law and humanities’ approach to delve into the institution of the trial, and what it means in different legal systems at different historical times, this book will appeal to academics, students and others with interests in legal history, law and popular culture and law and the humanities.

Leclair on L'évolution constitutionnelle de 1760 à 1867: progression pour les uns (Canadiens français) et regression pour les autres (peoples autochtones)

Jean Leclair, University of Montreal Faculty of Law, has published L'évolution constitutionnelle de 1760 à 1867: progression pour les uns (Canadiens français) et régression pour les autres (peuples autochtones) [Constitutional evolution from 1760 to 1867: progress for some (French Canadians) and regression for others (Aboriginal peoples)] as a University of Montreal Faculty of Law Research Paper. Here is the abstract.

French abstract: Ce texte vise à présenter à un large public, et non uniquement aux experts, un récit de l’évolution constitutionnelle du Canada, et plus précisément du Québec, avant l’avènement de la fédération canadienne. Le sort des peuples autochtones dans le territoire qui deviendra le Québec est également abordé.

 

English abstract: This manuscript aims to provide a broad audience, not just experts, with an account of the constitutional evolution of Canada, and more specifically Quebec, before the advent of the Canadian federation in 1867. The fate of the aboriginal peoples in the territory that was to become Quebec is also addressed.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Stanley-Ryan on Ka mua, ka Muri: He Whakaputanga, Concealed Indigenous Histories, and the Making of International Law @ashstanleyryan

Ash Stanley-Ryan, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID); Victoria University of Wellington; Te Herenga Waka - Faculty of Law, is publishing Ka mua, ka Muri: He Whakaputanga, Concealed Indigenous Histories, and the Making of International Law in Law & History. Here is the abstract.

This article examines how our understanding of international law is harmed by the systematic erasure of indigenous experiences and histories. He Whakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni is used as a case study. The article first considers several methodological considerations for legal historians. A theoretical approach is constructed which centres Māori voices and Te Reo Māori, and accepts that history is both political and contingent. In the next section, two parallel histories are detailed: pākehā stories of he whakaputanga as act to secure Imperial interests; and Māori recollections of he whakaputanga as an affirmation of independence, in response to an ever-more-intrusive world. The two histories are then considered through the lenses of jurisdictional encounter and international legal reproduction. These lenses show how history and law have undertaken a demarcating exercise, concealing Māori histories and removing he whakaputanga from legal relevance. This process has harmed international law, because it legitimises imperialism and hides law’s contingent nature. The article closes by recalling Moana Jackson’s call for ‘honesty about the misremembered stories and the foresight to see where different stories might lead’. NB: typos, including the use of the term "te re rangatira" rather than "te rangatiratanga", are not corrected in this preprint.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Sprigman on The Jeffersonian Model of U.S. Cultural Property Law @CJSprigman @nyulaw

Christopher Jon Sprigman, NYU School of Law; NYU Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy, is publishing The Jeffersonian Model of U.S. Cultural Property Law Forthcoming 2024, in Tutela & Restauro (the annual journal of the Soprintendenza archeologia belle arti e paesaggio per la città metropolitana di Firenze e le province di Pistoia e Prato). Here is the abstract.

This article, the published version of a closing keynote talk given at a conference on Italian cultural heritage and cultural property law held in 2022 at the University of Florence, describes the loosely-constituted, largely uncodified "Jeffersonian" model of cultural heritage law that operates in the U.S. The Jeffersonian model understands cultural heritage not primarily as a thing to be protected, but as a thing to be used. This model is concerned primarily with the interests of the living – specifically, our collective interest in producing today’s culture, drawing on the past but also reworking it in ways that may preserve or may destabilize the past. This model is largely indifferent to and perhaps in practice even hostile to cultural particularism and to the stability of any particular culture. The role of IP rights, in this model, is not to preserve old culture. It is to encourage people to make new culture. The differences between the Jeffersonian model and the more protectionist cultural heritage and cultural property models that hold sway in Italy and across Europe grow out of deep differences in how different cultures understand what leads to human flourishing. The European model situates individuals within a particular culture; it is based on the notion that some well-defined group identity is central to an individual’s flourishing. On the other hand, the Jeffersonian model is both more cosmopolitan and more present-focused. The logic of these models rests on differing beliefs about the relative importance of individual autonomy versus group identity, and about the virtues of more rapid cultural change versus relative cultural stability.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Bruyas and Perrin on What's Law Got to Do With It? Language and Gender Equality in Law

Pierrick Bruyas, University of Strasbourg, and Caroline Perrin, Utrecht University, have published What's Law Got to Do with it? Language and Gender Equality in Law. Here is the abstract.

Certain languages require speakers to grammatically acknowledge and indicate gender, while others do not impose such requirements. Recent research indicates that this linguistic distinction correlates with gender-based variations in economic outcomes. This study delves into the connection between gender marking in language and gender equality in law. Utilising the ‘Women, Business and the Law’ database, our findings reveal a positive association between the degree of gender marking in language and the legal rights granted to women. Our results remain robust under various sensitivity tests.

Dowload the article from SSRN at the link.

Cultures of Legality in Weimar Germany, University of Lucerne (Imagining Justice: Law, Politics and Justice in Weimar Germany: SNSF Project)

From Laura Peterson, University of Lucerne:

We’re pleased to announce the next three talks in our online seminar series on Cultures of Legality in Weimar Germany:

 

Wednesday 30 October, 10am-11am (Switzerland) Javier Samper Vendrell (Pennsylvania), A Film for Children? Autonomy and Vulnerability in Emil and the Detectives (1931)

 

Wednesday 6 November, 10am-11am (Switzerland) Lucy Byford (Bremen), From Imperial Sanctum to Cradle of Democracy: Site and Semantics in Dada Interventions at the Berlin Cathedral and the National Assembly in Weimar (1918-1919)

 

Wednesday 20 November, 9am-10am (Switzerland) Nicole Schraner (Lucerne), Visual Representations of the 1924 Hitler-Ludendorff Trial in the Context of Law and Media NB.

 

Please note start times refer to Swiss local time: Time Zone Converter. The sessions are open to all and we warmly invite you to join us.

Bandes on The Sense of an Ending @BandesSusan @DePaulLaw

Susan A. Bandes, DePaul University College of Law, has published The Sense of an Ending at 73 DePaul Law Review 751 (2024).

One of the delights of shows like HBO's Succession is the virtual communal watch party they create, replete with competing interpretations and passionate predictions about plot development. These conversations reveal some enduring truths about the power of narrative expectations, one of which is the tremendous importance we place on the delivery of a satisfying ending. As the influential literary scholar Frank Kermode argued, “we cannot be denied an end, but it must be the right kind of ending.” One of the fascinating aspects of Succession was the uncertainty about what kind of ending would be satisfying. This uncertainty seems closely tied to the difficulty in pinning down the genre to which Succession belonged. This Essay will first examine the notion of a satisfying ending as it applies to Succession. It will argue that although Succession’s ending was, in some ways, letter-perfect, it was not—and could not be—emotionally satisfying. The emotionally impoverished ending was fitting, but dispiriting, and probably unavoidable given the particular generic traditions upon which Succession drew. The Essay will then pose the question: What lessons can the notion of narrative closure—the need for a satisfying ending—convey about legal proceedings? We have grown accustomed to thinking about law as storytelling, but what insights can narrative theory impart about how law stories ought to end? In legal terms, to determine what constitutes a legally satisfying end point, we first must determine what the proceeding is meant to accomplish. Legal finality may not track literary closure or psychological “closure;” and it is important to distinguish the dictates of the legal system from the impulses that drive finality and closure in other contexts. I will illustrate this point with examples from death penalty jurisprudence, in which the question of an ending is unavoidable and takes several forms: finality of judgment, the notion of “closure” for bereaved family members, and the loss of life.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Peterson on The Fourteenth Amendment and the Venus Noire @UChicagoLaw @WMLawReview

Farah Peterson, University of Chicago Law School, has published The Fourteenth Amendment and the Vénus Noire at 66 William & Mary Law Review 191 (2024). Here is the abstract.

This Essay reflects on art to make two points. It first argues that originalism is not a promising path for progressive causes. It then argues that as the Constitution is amended, the meaning of the entire document is altered, and earlier text should be interpreted in light of what has changed.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Brown, Epstein, and Gulati on The Constraining Efect of "History and Tradition": A Test

Rebecca L. Brown, USC School of Law, Lee Epstein, University of Southern California, and Mitu Gulati, University of Virginia School of Law, have published The Constraining Effect of "History and Tradition": A Test as Virginia Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper No. 2024-63, Virginia Law and Economics Research Paper No. 2024-28, and USC Law Legal Studies Paper No. 24-33. Here is the abstract.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s embrace of originalism, and particularly the “history and tradition” method of interpreting constitutional text, is often justified by its defenders as constraining judges from making up the law to match their preferences. Two Second Amendment cases (Heller in 2008 and Bruen in 2022), where the Court switched methodologies, provide a vehicle to test the debated question. Analyzing data from federal court decisions on gun rights spanning 2000 to 2023, we find that the switch from a means-ends to a history-tradition methodology corresponds with an increase in judicial discretion. Personal factors like partisan identity, gender, race and careerist considerations shape judicial behavior in the post-Bruen era in ways they did not under the prior regime. The results challenge the notion that a historical approach provides a neutral constraint on judicial discretion.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Contributions, Cambridge Handbook on Law, History, and the Visual @CambridgeUP

From Steven Howe, Desmond Manderson, and Laura Peterson: Call For Contributions for the Cambridge Handbook on Law, History, and the Visual:

The Cambridge Handbook on Law, History and the Visual aims to collate cutting-edge scholarship on key topics in a vibrant and growing space of academic inquiry. We are seeking original contributions that explore the myriad ways in which we experience law visually – and the visual lawfully – in and across diOerent times and places in history. Gathering the expertise of scholars working within and between diOerent disciplines, the collection aspires to reflect the current state-of-the-art, to prompt new agendas, and to provide an up-to-date point of reference for students, researchers and teachers alike. We are soliciting proposals for essays of approximately 5,000-8,000 words, from established and emerging scholars, on any topic that fits within the scope of the volume (see below). The Handbook will be published in English, but we seek to provide a broad geographical coverage. We particularly welcome contributions from the Global South. Please note that manuscripts must be original and not be published elsewhere. All submissions will be peer-reviewed. If accepted, the deadline for full essays will likely be June 2026. Please submit proposals (title, abstract of approx. 250 words, biography of approx. 150 words) to Laura Petersen: laura.petersen@unilu.ch by Tuesday 10 December 2024. Please also indicate which theme or themes listed below you consider most relevant for your contribution. Scope of the Volume In the interests of focusing the Handbook coherently, we have identified the following lead themes: 1. Methods: creating the field of visual legal history We invite contributors to reflect on what it means to do scholarship on and in law using visual objects from the past. How might the study of images cultivate new routes into legal history? What stakes are involved when we think law with images in (and beyond) their time and place? 2. Standpoints: scholarly encounters with law and the visual We urge contributors to think directly about standpoint and the limitations and possibilities of undertaking scholarship in this field, including who is part of the encounter, who is not in the picture, and where, when and what is the address of the image? 3. Sources: mediums, archives, materialities We encourage critical engagement with the sources and institutional repositories of historical enquiry, and invite contributions that consider carefully the medium, materiality and provenance of specific images, including the role of potential ‘counterarchives’. 4. Times: from the epochal to the everyday We ask for analysis which considers explicitly how a chosen image(s) sits within time and changes or stays static throughout a particular time/legal period. We encourage diversity in thinking about the scale, period, background and futurity of specific images and their relations with law. 5. Places: place-making and visual jurisdictions We encourage analysis that focuses on a particular site, place, border-land, or country, and for contributors to investigate the strata of relations between the natural or built environment, legality, authority and visual objects. 6. Cross-sections: shifting legal and visual cultures We invite contributions that consider the traOic of images at specific sites and moments, and which locate these flows within visual legal histories. Such inquiries may connect legal images with historical shifts in visuality, or link visual objects with shifts in legal regimes or theories.

The deaadline for the call for contributions is December 10, 2024.

Rabanos on Back to (Law as) Fact: Some Remarks on Olivecrona, Scandinavian Legal Realism, and Legal Notions as Hollow Words @Univerzitet_BG @julesrabanos

Julieta A. Rabanos, University of Belgrade, has published Back to (Law as) Fact. Some Remarks on Olivecrona, Scandinavian Legal Realism, and Legal Notions as Hollow Words at Materiali per una storia della cultura giuridica 205 (2023).

The aim of this paper is to critically reconsider some of the main tenets underlying Karl Olivecrona’s works. The first two sections are devoted to a brief reconstruction of his position on methodology for the study of legal phenomena, including the endorsement of philosophical realism and the enterprise of demystifying legal language through linguistic therapy (§ 2), as well as his particular conception of legal notions as hollow words (§ 3). I will then provide a brief analysis of a central legal concept – that of “authorityµ – to show how Olivecrona’s methodological framework can be applied (§ 4). The last two sections are devoted to the analysis and evaluation of three possible criticisms of Olivecrona’s claims as a legal realist (§ 5) and some brief concluding remarks on the usefulness of Olivecrona’s approach for contemporary legal philosophy (§ 6).

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Steel on Political Threads in Legal Tapestry: A Computational Analysis of Executive Branch Legal Interpretation, 1934-2022 @reillysteel @ColumbiaLaw @Princeton @PennJCL

Reilly Steel, Columbia Law School; Princeton University, is publishing Political Threads in Legal Tapestry: A Computational Analysis of Executive Branch Legal Interpretation, 1934–2022 in the University of Pennsvylvania Journal of Constitutional Law. Here is the abstract.

How does the push and pull between law and politics shape the work of executive branch lawyers charged with providing "neutral" interpretations of the law? To shed light on this longstanding question, this Article undertakes the first large-scale computational analysis of legal interpretation in the executive branch of the United States federal government. Leveraging a novel dataset comprised of the texts of 12,879 pages of opinions issued by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), an elite unit of the Department of Justice (DOJ) that provides authoritative legal opinions to top executive branch officials, I use machine learning methods to explore markers of partisanship and ideology in these high-profile executive branch decisions. Several important findings emerge from this analysis. Broadly, I detect a significant partisan gap in the language used by the OLC. Yet this gap appears to have experienced limited growth in recent years, suggesting some degree of disconnect between the OLC and the broader, increasingly polarized political environment. Focusing on more fine-grained distinctions in the use of specific words and phrases, I find that Democrats and Republicans have differed along a number of salient dimensions, including the types of legal arguments invoked, substantive policy-related language, and institutional issues involving the separation of powers. One of the sharpest distinctions relates to executive power, with Republicans being more likely to adopt language associated with expansive presidential authority. I also find evidence that Republicans have more closely associated executive power with various markers of authoritarianism, such as language related to violence, the armed forces, and nationalism. But neither party appears to have consistently associated executive power with markers of democracy more than the other, complicating this picture. These findings have important implications for law and politics. To start, the existence of significant partisan differences in the OLC's language use casts doubt on the prospect that high-ranking executive branch lawyers will act as "neutral expositors" when rendering legal opinions. At the same time, the apparent disconnect from broader trends in polarization arguably offers some sliver of hope for those who would prefer neutrality. Another issue that has attracted both scholarly and popular attention relates to the role of executive branch lawyers in safeguarding against—or alternatively facilitating—democratic backsliding. My results highlight the risks of relying on executive branch lawyers to uphold constitutional guardrails against presidential overreach, especially amidst attempts by certain political actors to increase politicization within the DOJ. Such concerns underscore the potential importance of other institutions in preserving democratic norms.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Lloyd on Recasting Canons of Construction Into "Canonical" Queries: Canons and Queries of Meaning, Spirit, Letter, and Text @LloydEsq @WFULawSchool

Harold Anthony Lloyd, Wake Forest University School of Law, has published Recasting Canons of Construction Into “Canonical” Queries: Canons and Queries Of Meaning, Spirit, Letter, and Text. Here is the abstract.

This article builds upon my two prior articles addressing deficiencies in the canons of construction and the need to convert such canons to “canonical” queries. Focusing on canons, presumptions, and queries of speaker meaning, spirit, letter, and text, this article explores: General Queries of Speaker Meaning, Ordinary-Meaning Queries, Consistent Usage Queries, Signifier Drift Queries, Sense Fixation Queries, Reference Fixation Queries, General/Specific Queries, Prospectivity/Retroactivity Queries, and Purpose or “Spirit” Queries. In addressing such queries, this article: (1) continues to recast “canons of construction” into an expanding list of common or “canonical” queries and related tools; (2) addresses necessary steps of distinguishing interpretation (addressing linguistic meaning) from construction (addressing legal meaning); (3) explores the importance of querying speaker meaning including legislative intent; (4) debunks claims that legislative intent is a problematic concept; (5) addresses the necessary step of exploring all available evidence (including legislative history) when performing interpretation and construction; and (6) addresses essential linguistic and semiotic frameworks for such “canonical” queries and related tools. In addressing these essential linguistic and semiotic frameworks, this article also: (7) explores why queried text is a semiotic co-relation of signifier(s) and signified(s); (8) debunks illusory conflicts between text, letter, and spirit of the law; (9) calls out needs to define the meaning of “meaning” presupposed by theories of interpretation and their semantic queries; (10) explores the necessarily experiential and thus temporal nature of such meaning; (11) addresses how meaning’s experiential and thus temporal nature undermines strict fixation theses without also undermining meaning otherwise anchored by concepts or conceptions acknowledged to be temporal; (12) otherwise highlights the essential role of time and experience in legal hermeneutics and semantic queries; and (13) underscores hermeneutics’ essential role not only in rule of law but also in the genesis of lifeworlds so ruled. Any plausible textualism must be consistent with all the above. In that vein, this article is written with hopes of adding its explorations (along with those of my two prior canons to queries articles) to a planned book countering Scalia and Garner’s Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts. I am happy to share the most current outline of this planned work upon request.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Stern on From Clapham to Salina: Locating the Reasonable Man @ArsScripta @LawLitJournal

Simon Stern, University of Toronto Law, has published From Clapham to Salina: Locating the Reasonable Man at 36 Law & Literature 391 (2024). Here is the abstract.

“The man on the Clapham omnibus” is an often cited but poorly understood name for the standard of reasonable care in tort. It originated in a 1903 decision in which this formula was used not to articulate a legal standard but to describe an average person whose views have no legal significance. This figure finds a cousin in another personification, as “the man who takes the magazines at home, and in the evening pushes the lawn-mower in his shirt sleeves.” Both formulations have complex histories that help to underscore their inaptness as descriptors for the standard they are used to represent. These two examples also help to show, more generally, why a personified standard (“the reasonable person”) tends to introduce problems that do not arise with a more abstract one (“reasonableness,” “reasonable care”). Many critics have shown that the “reasonableness” standard is susceptible to problems of bias and framing. Personifying the standard invites the inappropriate use of individuated figures with particular features (e.g., a bus rider from a London suburb) that only worsen these problems. This article traces the history of these two standards, tries to explain how they moved from descriptive to normative use, and then turns to problems with personified standards more generally, showing how some superficially appealing reasons for using a personified standard prove to be unpersuasive.

The full text is available by subscription.

Davies on Casey Meets the Court @horacefuller @GB2d

Ross E. Davies, George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School; The Green Bag, has published Casey Meets the Court at 27 Green Bag 2d 169 (2024). Here is the abstract.

Ernest Lawrence Thayer, creator of “Casey at the Bat,” produced three versions of his poetical gift to baseball fans. The Supreme Court of the United States, creator of the “baseball antitrust exception,” produced three versions of its doctrinal gift to baseball owners. In Volume VIII of its series of Re-readings booklets, the Green Bag republished all three of Thayer’s versions of Casey, and compared the arc of their literary development to the judicial arc of development of the Court’s baseball antitrust exception. There was something missing, however, from this parallel treatment of Casey and the Court: the two arcs intersected in the end, via Justice Harry Blackmun. This is their story.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Phelan on The Promise of Judicial Biography for the Study of the European Court of Justice @tcddublin

William Phelan, Trinity College, Dublin, has published The Promise of Judicial Biography for the Study of the European Court of Justice. Here is the abstract.

This chapter sets out the promise of judicial biography for research on European Union law, with a particular emphasis on historical research on the birth and early development of the European legal order. It demonstrates that there has been little engagement with the biography of the judges of the Court of Justice in previous scholarship, whether in law, social science, or history. It argues that explanations for behaviour of the Court of Justice often rely on implicit assumptions about the personalities and goals of the judges who make up the Court’s decision-makers. It demonstrates how drawing on the materials of judicial biography can improve our understanding of the texts of the Court’s famous judgments, of the politics of appointments and removals from the Court, and of the Court’s relationship with national constitutional courts. It concludes with a detailed agenda for future research, including explicit testing of legal, social science, and historical claims about the Court’s behaviour against available materials relating to judicial biography, as well as an intensification of data gathering on the lives, activities, and legal commitments of its early judges.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Moving Online Symposium: Call For Proposals: Symposium, January 30, 2025, Coventry University, UK @covcampus

Symposium Announcement and Call for Proposals

Moving Online Symposium: Call for proposals 

Ontology and Ownership of Internet Dance

Symposium 30th January 2025 

Coventry University, UK 

 

Full details here: https://movingonline.coventry.domains/symposium/

Deadline for abstracts 13^th October 2024

 

It will be free to attend and a limited number of bursaries will be available to support travel and participation by freelance artists. More information is available here: https://movingonline.coventry.domains/symposium-bursaries/

 

 

In recent years, there has been increased attention paid to the ownership of dance. There has been important work done in the area of dance and copyright1 as well as the examination of the way ownership is managed via social norms through the ‘commons’2 and as a form of ‘gift’.3 The increased circulation of dance online through archives, video platforms and social media sites has led to multiple debates about the copying and re-embodiment of dances,4 reigniting important conversations about appropriation, acknowledgment and credit.5 

 

At the same time, there has been a flourishing of work on dance and performance ontology. For example, long-standing debates about the ephemerality of dance and performance have been reframed through discussions about the ‘post-ephemeral’6and materiality.7 There have also been new perspectives offered on questions about the nature of dances and the way in which they exist.8,9 

 

In this symposium, we are interested in exploring how these two areas intersect in the context of online dance and performance. The event builds on and shares the findings from Moving Online: Ontology and Ownership of Internet Dance https://movingonline.coventry.domains  (funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [grant number AH/W01002X/1]). We invite proposals that explore the ownership and/or ontology of dance or performance on the internet. We welcome consideration of dance and performance in all of their forms, genres and online contexts. Suggested themes include, but are not limited to: 

 

• Ownership disputes and resolutions 
• Acknowledgment and credit 
• Non-legal forms of ownership 
• Appropriation, copying and/or commodification 
• Copyright, licensing and/or NFTs 
• Materiality, (post) ephemerality and/or ontology 
• Dance challenges, reworking or reenactment 
• Remediation 
• Ownership, economics and online circulation 

 

Proposals should be for 20, 60 or 90 minute sessions and might include: academic papers, curated discussions and/or online performances or screenings. Please submit the following by 13 October 2024 via this link: https://movingonline.coventry.domains/symposium/

 

• 300 word abstract 
• 100 word bio for each contributor 
• Any technical requirements (please note that there will be limited technical support available) 
• Any dietary requirements 
• Any access requirements 

 

We welcome alternative formats for submission. Please contact Hetty Blades to arrange this: hetty.blades@coventry.ac.uk

 

The event is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council via Moving Online (grant number AH/W01002X/1).

 

Timeline: 

• Deadline for Abstracts: 13 October 2024 
• Notification of outcome: 1 November 2024 
• Bursary application deadline: 28 October 2024 

performances or screenings. Please submit the following by 13 October 2024 via this link: https://movingonline.coventry.domains/symposium/

 

• 300 word abstract 
• 100 word bio for each contributor 
• Any technical requirements (please note that there will be limited technical support available) 
• Any dietary requirements 
• Any access requirements 

 

We welcome alternative formats for submission. Please contact Hetty Blades to arrange this: hetty.blades@coventry.ac.uk

 

The event is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council via Moving Online (grant number AH/W01002X/1).

 

Timeline: 

• Deadline for Abstracts: 13 October 2024 
• Notification of outcome: 1 November 2024 
• Bursary application deadline: 28 October 2024
• Bursary application outcome: 11 November 2024
• Symposium: 30 January 2025 

   

  Follow the project on X: @MovingOnlineCU and/or Instagram: @movingonlinecu 

   

  Please contact Hetty Blades with any questions: hetty.blades@coventry.ac.uk  

  For the notes and references please see: https://movingonline.coventry.domains/notes-and-references/

Hershkoff and Littlestone-Luria on The Louisiana Constitution and the Courts of Westminster: Standing and the Civil Law Heritage @lalawreview @nyulaw @ALittleStone

Helen Hershkoff and Adam Littlestone-Luria, both of New York University School of Law, are publishing The Louisiana Constitution and the Courts of Westminster: Standing and the Civil Law Heritage in volume 85 of the Louisiana Law Review (2025). Here is the abstract.

A substantial majority of the Roberts Court now purports to rest constitutional jurisprudence on a legal “history and tradition” divined from the nation’s common law heritage. Leaving aside the question whether this approach should carry dispositive weight in interpreting the federal Constitution, this Article raises a different but unacknowledged concern: The Court’s brand of originalism relies on a cramped notion of the nation’s “usable past.” Its myopic focus on our common law heritage erases other critical threads in the relevant legal legacy. In particular, the Article focuses on the civil law heritage of the Louisiana Constitution. As a first step, we interrogate whether the Louisiana court should automatically interpret its state standing requirement in lock step with the federal. We argue that the Supreme Court’s recent move to limit the kinds of legal harms that count as a basis for Article III standing in terms of common law analogues may cause serious distortion if it is mimicked by Louisiana’s courts. Since the civil tradition and civil codes play such an integral role as the source and definition of private rights and interests, a singular focus on common law analogs may warp the proper “history and tradition” that is relevant to Louisiana law. In conclusion, the article steps beyond the Louisiana context, arguing that the analysis carries wider implications. Assuming that history and tradition must, or at least may, play a role in legal analysis, lawmakers and judges in each state should recognize the potential inherent in their own distinctive legal legacies. As a final step, we argue that the Supreme Court’s brand of originalism obscures the deep pluralism that marks the nation’s history and tradition—a multiplicity which standing doctrine should respect and even celebrate.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Law and Society Association, Graduate Student & Early Career Workshop Call For Applications @law_soc

From the Law and Society Association (LSA): Call for Applications, Graduate Student and Early Career Workshop

The Law and Society Association (LSA) is pleased to announce the call for applications for the Graduate Student & Early Career Workshop. The workshop will convene on Wednesday, May 21, 2025, immediately preceding the Law and Society Association Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

We welcome applications from students in graduate/doctoral programs in the social sciences, humanities, and law, as well as early career scholars who received their highest degree after May 1, 2021, including post-doctoral fellows, adjunct faculty, and pre-tenure faculty. Preference will be given to doctoral candidates and early career faculty. Especially where career breaks exist due to family obligations, eligibility will be assessed on a case-by-case basis. Equity, diversity, and inclusion as well as representation of the Global South are priorities for the workshop.

The workshop will take place May 21, 2025, at the Hyatt Regency, Chicago, IL, USA.

Applications are due November 6, 2024.

More information is available here.

Upcoming CLE Event at DePaul College of Law: Arts Law Colloquium: Art and Its Image: Perspective From Copyright, Trademark, and Cultural Property Law, October 9, 2024 @DePaulLaw

 Upcoming event: CLE - Arts Law Colloquium: Art and its Image: Perspectives from Copyright, Trademark, and Cultural Property Law, October 9, 2024, at Depaul College of Law:

Join CAMCHL and CIPLIT for “Arts Law Colloquium: Art and its Image: Perspectives from Copyright, Trademark, and Cultural Property Law” with Dr. Felicia Caponigri, Visiting Scholar, Chicago-Kent College of Law; Guest Scholar, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca. This event will be hybrid, both in person and online. Lunch will be provided for in-person guests. 1.0 hour CLE available for IL attendees.

More information available here.

Capers on Afrofuturism and the Law: A Manifesto @BennettCapers @FordhamLawNYC @GeorgetownLaw

I. Bennett Capers, Fordham University School of Law, is publishing Afrofuturism and the Law: A Manifesto in volume 112 of the Georgetown Law Journal (2024). Here is the abstract.

Afrofuturism seems to be everywhere these days. In music, film, dance, literature. And in this special symposium issue of the Georgetown Law Journal, “Afrofuturism and the Law.” This prompts a foundational question. What is “Afrofuturism and the Law”? More specifically, as a practice, as a discipline, and a legal movement, what should Afrofuturism and the Law be. Indeed, given Afrofuturism’s seeming staying power, and its incursion into law, is it time for a manifesto to set parameters? Hence, this proposed manifesto. To be sure, I am troubled by the word manifesto, especially given its connection to the word manifest, which conjures the journey of my ancestors, captured and sold into slavery, becoming cargo, part of a ship’s manifest. But perhaps I can use the latter term to think of the inventory or cargo for another journey. A journey into the future. Perhaps on Parliament Funkadelic’s Mothership. Or Octavia Butler’s Earthseed ship. Or Sun Ra’s jazz spaceship. And maybe that’s the connection between manifest and manifesto. It’s not just the things we should carry. It’s also the things we should hold true. So, a manifesto then.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Craddock on Civic Friendship in the Postmodern Polis: Law as Mediator in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice @joshjcraddock @Harvard_Law

Joshua J. Craddock, Harvard University Law School, James Wilson Institute for Natural Rights and the American Founding, is publishing Civic Friendship in the Postmodern Polis: Law as Mediator in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice in the Texas A&M Journal of Law & Civil Governance. Here is the abstract.

In Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare explores whether commercial republicanism can alone sustain civic virtue. Putting Shakespeare into conversation with pillars of American political thought, Merchant of Venice seems to support John Adams’ contention that a republican constitution is “made only for a moral and religious people” and “is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Economic liberty as an end unto itself cannot form the basis of a coherent political order and must ultimately erode public-spiritedness. By examining the character of the Venetian regime and the irreconcilable differences between its citizens regarding the nature of the Good, the attentive reader can identify barriers to civic friendship and evaluate whether law can serve as a mediating influence against what Publius calls “faction” in The Federalist. Shakespeare suggests that law’s mediating influence on faction is at best tenuous and follows the Aristotelean belief that civic friendship depends in large part on substantial agreement about first principles. These themes find their echoes in American political thought and remain deeply relevant to the legal and political challenges facing re-publican self-government today.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Vaale and Borge on The Intended Pariahs: Norway's Legal Settlement with Passive Nasjonal Samling Members after 1945 @Vaale1975

Lars-Erik Vaale, USN School of Business, Department of Business, History and Social Sciences, and Baard Herman Borge, University of Tromsø - The Arctic University of Norway - School of Business and Economics, have published The Intended Pariahs: Norway's Legal Settlement with Passive Nasjonal Samling Members after 1945 as Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory Research Paper Series No. 2024-09. Here is the abstract.

In the wake of World War II, all previously German-occupied countries in Western Europe carried out legal settlements with those citizens suspected of treasonous collaboration with the occupier. Of these, Norway's treason trials were the most extensive, having as their basis a lower threshold for criminalisation than other countries. According to two legal decrees adopted by the Norwegian Government-in-Exile in 1942 and 1944 espectively, joining or remaining a member of Vidkun Quisling's (1887–1945) collaborationist party Nasjonal Samling (National Unity, NS) after the German invasion 9 April 1940 was punishable as treason. The purpose was to impose a collective punishment on all members, including those who were completely passive. From the outset, however, it was unclear how the decrees related to the Norwegian Penal Code of 1902. The main question was whether party membership alone could automatically lead to punishment when the Penal Code requires a careful assessment of the defendant's criminal intent. During the post-war trials of some 30 000 passive NS-members, this legal ambiguity led to considerable variation in the assessment of their guilt. In most cases, however, suspects were punished for treason based on a summary assessment of intent, even though this practice did not fulfil the requirements of the Penal Code. The end result was the most comprehensive legal reckoning ever carried out against a defeated authoritarian regime.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Katz on All Roads Leading to the White House: Building Our Presidential Regime of Statutes in Early Modern America (1868-1921) @WashULaw @ascoseriakatz @WUSTL

Andrea Scoseria Katz, Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, has published All Roads Lead to the White House: Building Our Presidential Regime of Statutes in Early Modern America (1868-1921). Here is the abstract.

At the very moment that the Roberts Court places the Chevron doctrine within its sights, it is worth remembering that behind Chevron's rule of judicial deference toward agency discretion lies an institutional settlement that has structured American governance for approximately one hundred and thirty years. Its roots lie in the period from 1868-1921, and its defining values are presidential lawmaking, administrative expertise, and interbranch problem-solving. This Article proposes to tell its story. A century and a half ago, America was just healing from its Civil War wounds when a host of new problems descended: financial crisis, unemployment, the rise of monopolies, political corruption, and waves of urban migration and immigration. Something had to be done, and so the nation revamped its hundred-year-old institutions to make them quicker, responsive, and more powerful. American government became modern. It became, in sum, a presidential democracy. This process began with executives, as early Gilded Age governors and presidents wielded the veto and the bully pulpit to build reputations as popular heroes. Soon, Congress followed with a host of statutes that gave the President unprecedented new authority: to, among other things, set aside lands for conservation; prescribe tariffs and railroad shipping rates; break up monopolies; and set down national priorities in the federal budget. They built an executive able to set policy on its own-a modern president, in other words. Crucially, the Supreme Court gave this regime its blessing in a series of cases upholding the constitutionality of these interbranch compromises. This presidential regime of statutes brought Congress, the President and powerful independent agencies closer together in a negotiated policymaking process involving multiple stakeholders. By trading formal separations and congressional primacy for interbranch cooperation, it proved a success in freeing up government power to solve the nation's problems, especially during two world wars and the Great Depression. Beginning in the late '70s and recently accelerating under the tenure of Chief Justice John Roberts, a formalist Supreme Court has turned on this settlement, rolling back statutory arrangements that gave Congress a role in overseeing administration or that mandated agency independence. The present assault on Chevron is typical. However, separation-of-powers formalism raises several dangers. Not only does it threaten to leave the government without power to meet new challenges and crises, it also risks weakening Congress further, freezing in place the President's powerful agencies with no countervailing mode of legislative oversight or administrative counterweight. Behind modern American government lies a "regime of statutes," a finely wrought settlement designed not only to release power, but also to contain it. We upset this balance at our peril.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Siliquini-Cinelli on What Legal Reasoning Is @CardiffLaw

Luca Siliquini-Cinelli, Cardiff University, School of Law and Politics, is publishing What is Legal Reasoning? in the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law (2024).

Pursuant to the aims and scope of the Special Issue it is part of, this invited contribution seeks to shed new light on the nature and working logic of legal reasoning. It does so by engaging with two of the most authoritative views on the subject which have recently been put forward in the Common law world—namely, Lord Hoffmann’s, and Larry Alexander and Emily Sherwin’s. A key-concern of the Anglophone debate on legal reasoning is whether it is a specialistic type of reasoning requiring ad hoc education and training, or ordinary reasoning subject to ordinary rules of language (i.e. sentence construction, interpretation, etc.). The article argues that compelling though they are, these sorts of enquiries do not help to understand what legal reasoning really is and how it operates. In particular, it argues that if we are to understand what legal reasoning is and how it works, we ought to examine the propositions it aims to craft and support. In so arguing, the article further shows that exploring law’s nature and operations as an intellectual means for social ordering also helps to understand how law works as a regulatory phenomenon more generally.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Tobia on New Methods on Statutory Interpretation @kevin_tobia @GeorgetownLaw

Kevin Tobia, Georgetown University Law Center; Georgetown University Department of Philosophy, has published New Methods in Statutory Interpretation: Surveys, Corpus Linguistics, ChatGPT. Here is the abstract.

We live in an age of statutes, and textualism is the dominant method of interpreting them. This much is now familiar, encapsulated by Justice Kagan's 2015 announcement that "we are all textualists now." But this story has a recent twist: Textualism's methods are evolving. This short essay introduces some recent developments in textualist methods. Textualists are looking to corpus linguistics, surveys, and even large language models (e.g ChatGPT) to determine the meaning of statutory text. At the same time, textualists grow more skeptical about the force of some traditional methods: dictionaries, substantive canons, and even linguistic canons.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Hsieh on "The Past Is Never Dead, It's Not Even a Trademark or Copyright": William Faulkner on the Elusive Boundary Between Intellectual Property Forms No One Ever Talks About @timhsiehiplaw @OCULAW

Timothy T. Hsieh, Oklahoma City University School of Law, has published "The Past Is Never Dead, It's Not Even a Trademark or Copyright": William Faulkner and The Elusive Boundary Between Intellectual Property Forms No One Talks About. Here is the abstract.

In the 2013 federal case of Faulkner Literary Rights, LLC v. Sony Pictures Classics Inc., et al., Case No. 3:12-cv-100-MPM-JMV (N.D. Miss. July 18, 2013), the Estate of William Faulkner sued Sony Pictures due to Woody Allen’s film Midnight in Paris having a character refer to the Faulkner quote “The past is never dead. It’s not even past” from Requiem for a Nun. In the suit, the Faulkner Estate alleged copyright infringement as well as trademark appropriation under The Lanham Act. A 2012 suit also occurred where The Faulkner Estate sued aerospace defense technology company Northrup Grumman for using the same quote in a 2011 advertisement placed in The Washington Post. See Faulkner Literary Rights LLC v Northrop Grumman. Corporation and the Washington Post Company, No 3:12-cv-732-HTW-LRA (S.D. Miss. Oct 26, 2012). Both cases not only dealt with trademark law, the copyright law doctrine of fair use and also de minimis usage of copyrighted material, but also the fascinating quandary of where one draws the line between a copyright and a trademark, e.g., when does a slogan or title become too long to trademark and proper to copyright and vice-versa, when does a copyrightable line of literary text become too short to copyright and proper to trademark? This boundary between a copyright and a trademark is one seldom analyzed by the legal literature out there, and almost overlooked or even dismissed as a simplistic concept not worth a deeper look. However, these cases involving the infamous Faulkner line compel the conclusion that the difference between a trademark and a copyright might be a much more complex determination to make. By analyzing these two cases, the history of cases differentiating a trademark and a copyright or the “trademark-copyright” boundary, and the potential usage of similar lines from Faulkner’s work, this paper will discuss how one of William Faulkner’s most enduring and timeless lines pushes the boundaries of a cutting-edge but little analyzed concept in intellectual property law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Grynberg on What Trademark Law Can Learn From Comic Art @DePaulLaw

Michael Grynberg, DePaul University College of Law, has published Trademarks as Comics. Here is the abstract.

What can trademark law learn from comic art? This essay uses the comic book form to explore the question.

Download the abstract from SSRN at the link.

Ballakrishen on Kanoon's Sarange: Goodrich and the Non-Minor Jurisprudences of Law and Love @ssballakrishnen @UCILaw @Law_Cult_Huma

Swethaa Ballakrishnen, University of California, Irvine, School of Law; Harvard University, Center on the Legala Profession, is publishing Kanoon’s Sarange: Goodrich and the Non-Minor Jurisprudences of Law and Love in Law, Culture and the Humanities (2024). Here is the abstract.

This article uses three main global visual sites—the popular Korean drama Hometown Cha Cha Cha (2021), the Hindi-English movie, The Lunchbox (2013), and the British-American television series Ted Lasso (2020–2023) to engage with two main strains of Peter Goodrich's scholarship: the interconnectedness between law, justice, and love; and the role of minor jurisprudences. Heeding Goodrich's advice to consider media as an important node for legal analysis, it traces the course of aromantic amity and asexual kinship across these sites to deliberate new ways of considering the law's liberal commitments to conjugality and dyadic partnership. By focusing on popular scripts seemingly unrelated to the law, I seek to both contemplate on new pulses in contemporary cultures and the tools they might offer to consider the literature on law and love. Kanoon is the word in Hindi for law and Sarange is the word in Korean for love. Translated loosely—and, intentionally with flaws and gaps in logic—as Law's Love. To the extent we can reparatively imagine law from the perspective of these cultural prompts, I suggest that they offer new alterities from heteropatriarchy and utopic possibilities beyond the liberal queer rights regime.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Bromby on An Annotated Chronology of Hansard References to "Colonial Prisoners' Removal" in the Westminster Parliament from 1869 Onwards @m_bro

Michael Bromby, Cayman Islands Law School; Glasgow Caledonian University, has published An Annotated Chronology of Hansard References to “Colonial Prisoners Removal” in the Westminster Parliament from 1869 onwards. Here is the abstract.

This paper presents an annotated chronology of all references to "colonial prisoners removal" in the UK Parliament’s Hansard reports. This site does not cover the period 2004-2006, or written answers from April 2010 onwards. Aside from the legislative drafting stages of the 1869 and 1884 Acts, there are very few references to colonial prisoners and their removal under the Acts in either House over a period spanning more than a century. The main focus of debates on the floor of both Houses were in relation to prisoner removals from Bahrain to St Helena in 1956. The Written Answers provide more detail on other removals, most notably some general statistics for the years 1967 and 1987.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.