The Watergate Grand Jury Report Is Now Available

The Watergate Grand Jury report is now available. It has been under seal for nearly 45 years. Here's a link to the material.

A short bibliography about the Watergate scandal.


Books

John Dean, Blind Ambition: The White House Years (1976).

Elizabeth Drew, Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon's Downfall (2015).

Stanley Kutler, The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon (1990).

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, All the President's Men  (1974). The first book about the Watergate break-in by the reporters who broke the story about the cover-up. Made into a 1976 film that starred Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate's Deep Throat (2005).


Films and Television

Dick Cavett's Watergate (2014).

Frost/Nixon: The Original Watergate Interviews (1977).

Our Nixon (2013).

Websites

Watergate at 40 (Washington Post)

Watergate.info

Murrell on How the Independence of Judges Reduced Legal Development in England, 1600-1800 @UofMaryland

Peter Murrell, Department of Economics, University of Maryland, has published The Independence of Judges Reduced Legal Development in England, 1600-1800. Here is the abstract.

Conventional wisdom on English development confers iconic status on the clause of the Act of Settlement (1701) that mandated secure tenure for judges. Because the Act's effect on tenure was partial, the effect of tenure on judicial decisions can be identified. The paper estimates how the awarding of tenure changed the number of citations to judges' decisions, a measure of judicial quality. The empirics uses two new databases, one on judges' biographies and one recording citations in the English Reports to earlier decisions. Several strategies aid identification. A court-year panel permits difference-in-differences. Controls capture judges' human capital and the importance of litigation. Instrumental-variable estimates use judge life-expectancy and political vicissitudes as instruments. Tenure has a strong, significant, and deleterious effect on the quality of associate-judge decisions. Tenure has no effect for chief judges. The Act of Settlement reduces citations by 20% in the 18th century. The results are interpretable in terms of the incentives provided by a powerful legal profession that could protect vulnerable judges in a politically volatile era.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Resnik on On Darkness and LIght in Legal Imagination and Practice @YaleLawSch

Judith Resnik, Yale University Law School, is publishing On Darkness and Light in Legal Imagination and Practice: A Foreword to the Dark Sides of the Law in The Dark Sides of the Law: Perspectives on Law, Literature, and Justice in Common Law Countries (Geraldine Gadbin-George, Yvonne-Marie Rogez, Armelle Sabatier & Claire Wrobel, eds., Paris: Editions, Michel Houdiard, 2019).

This Foreword, building on the book Representing Justice: Invention, Controversy, and Rights in City-States and Democratic Courtrooms by Judith Resnik and Dennis Curtis, explores the social constructions of “darkness” and of “lightness.” One illustration comes from how darkness has been valorized as well as bemoaned in the iconography of courthouses. While once the Virtue Justice was insistently displayed as clear-eyed, that figure’s eyes are now often obscured by a blindfold. When blindfolds were attached to Justice figures in the Renaissance, that deployment was derisive. Today, the blindfold is celebrated as an appropriate marker of the special role of a judge. The shifting import of the darkness imposed by blindfolds reflects changing ideas about the relationship of judges to the sovereignties that employ them and about the impact of sight on knowledge. The Foreword maps these changes before turning to the use of glass in building design. As the images reproduced make plain, glass facades ought not to be confused with phenomenal transparency. Glaring light, as well as darkness, can make exercises of authority unobservable.

Download the Foreword from SSRN at the link.

Butler and Crawley on Forms of Authority Beyond the Neoliberal State @GriffLawSchool @kscrawling @LawAndCritique

Chris Butler and Karen Crawley, both of Griffith University Law School, have published Forms of Authority Beyond the Neoliberal State: Sovereignty, Politics, and Aeathetics, in Law and Critique (2018). Here is the abstract.

Critical legal scholarship has recently turned to consider the form, mode and role of law in neoliberal governance. A central theme guiding much of this literature is the importance of understanding neoliberalism as not only a political or economic phenomenon, but also an inherently juridical one. This article builds on these con-ceptualisations of neoliberalism in turning to explore the wider historical, cultural and sociological contexts which inform the production of neoliberal authority. The papers in this collection were first presented at the symposium ‘Forms of authority beyond the neoliberal state’, held at the Griffith Law School in December 2017. They consider the role of the corporation, the site of the university, the politics of debt, the genre of prestige television, and the archic sources of state violence, in order to imagine forms of authority which lie beyond neoliberalism as an ideology and a set of practices, and the ensemble of institutions which constitute the neo-liberal state. The contributions draw on social theory, philosophy, cultural studies, legal geography and political theology in exploring new possibilities for cultivating judgement through and beyond the sovereign, political and aesthetic terrains of neo-liberal governance.

Newly Published: Chenxi Tang: Imagining World Order: Literature and International Law in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800 @CornellPress

Newly published: Chenxi Tang, Imagining World Order: Literature and International Law in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800 (Ithaca: Cornell University press, 2018). Here, from the publisher's website, is a description of the book's contents.

In early modern Europe, international law emerged as a means of governing relations between rapidly consolidating sovereign states, purporting to establish a normative order for the perilous international world. However, it was intrinsically fragile and uncertain, for sovereign states had no acknowledged common authority that would create, change, apply, and enforce legal norms. In Imagining World Order, Chenxi Tang shows that international world order was as much a literary as a legal matter. To begin with, the poetic imagination contributed to the making of international law. As the discourse of international law coalesced, literary works from romances and tragedies to novels responded to its unfulfilled ambitions and inexorable failures, occasionally affirming it, often contesting it, always uncovering its problems and rehearsing imaginary solutions. Tang highlights the various modes in which literary texts - some highly canonical (Camões, Shakespeare, Corneille, Lohenstein, and Defoe, among many others), some largely forgotten yet worth rediscovering - engaged with legal thinking in the period from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. In tracing such engagements, he offers a dual history of international law and European literature. As legal history, the book approaches the development of international law in this period —its so-called classical age—in terms of literary imagination. As literary history, Tang recounts how literature confronted the question of international world order and how, in the process, a set of literary forms common to major European languages (epic, tragedy, romance, novel) evolved.

 

Wozner and Abiri on the Tree of Knowledge and the Birth of Normativity @TAU_LAW

Shai Wozner, Tel Aviv University, and Gilad Abiri, Yale University Law School, have published The Tree of Knowledge and the Birth of Normativity at 27 Jewish Law Association Studies 239 (2017). Here is the abstract.

The constitutive myth of the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Knowledge is central to the biblical law. It deals with fundamental normative and legal issues – commandment, prohibition, sin and punishment – combines the main aspects of nomos and narrative, and represents an organizing story upon which the thick normativity of biblical precepts and prohibitions is based. In the paper, we would like to suggest a new interpretation of the myth, according to which the tree of knowledge was an ordinary tree and its fruits were normal fruits. Its uniqueness was constituted only by Divine commandment and prohibition, which were put in place in order to enable Adam and Eve to break the law. Infringing the law and eating from the forbidden fruit was the means by which God taught Adam and Eve the notions of good and evil. In order to fully grasp normativity, it was necessary for Adam and Eve to violate the Divine command at least on one occasion. In this reading, God is not a stringent law-maker, but rather a teacher teaching mankind an important lesson. When commanding Adam and Eve to refrain from partaking of the fruit, his actual goal was not to hinder them from eating but to afford them an opportunity to break the law and to learn the notion of good and evil. It was an exercise in educational manipulation, foreseeing their failure and sin. The sin of eating from the tree of knowledge was not a derailment of the Divine program, but rather its performance.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Pershina on Metaphors of Crime and Punishment in Shakespeare's "Macbeth" @UAHes

Marina A. Pershina, University of Alcala, has published Metaphors of Crime and Punishment in Shakespeare’s 'Macbeth'. Here is the abstract.

The aim of the article is to study the notions of crime and punishment in the Shakespeare’s tragedy “Macbeth”. It analyses the role of supernatural elements and metaphorical symbols as key components of the images of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Complex metaphors and poetic symbols go through the play’s plot. They follow the development of the characters’ inner struggle, reveal their intentions, and finally reflect their fall. Most symbols represent the supernatural dichotomy of the heaven (king Duncan’s virtues are compared to angels) and the hell (Macbeth is called a devil). Even the scenes of nature are depicted fantastically. The words of Hecate and the ‘weird sisters’ express the idea of existence in the external human world of something unknown that affects people’s internal motivation. At the end of the tragedy, metaphors in Macbeth’s soliloquies embody the themes of death, destruction, moral disintegration of the personality of the person who lost the meaning of life. The results of the research show that metaphors and symbolic elements are implied in the tragedy to create a psychological portrait of main characters. On the one hand, Shakespeare used them to show individuals. On the other hand, these characters become the collective images of sinners and righteous men.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Nabaskues on Law, Crime, Morals and Sense of Justice in "Treasure Island" @IISJOnati @upvehu

Iker Nabaskues, University of the Basque Country, Faculty of Law, is publishing Law, Crime, Morals, and Sense of Justice in 'Treasure Island' in the Oñati Socio-Legal Series (forthcoming). Here are the abstracts in English and Spanish.

English Abstract: The aim of this article is to examine the legal, ethical and moral complications shown in Robert Louis Stevenson’s masterpiece, Treasure Island and the short story The Persons of the Tale. The methodology followed consisted on qualitative observation on different passages of the book. This analysis shows a shifting moral landscape where the characters of the plot make ethical choice out of the moral and social conventions of society. There are not legal institutions on the island. But we are reminded of the presence of the rule of law at all times. Stevenson uses this particular scenario to express a special and suggestive moral code where ambiguity, paradox and contradiction are the dominant pattern. There are very few works about Stevenson from the iusphilosophical approach, so the article makes a contribution on the field of Law and Literature.

Spanish Abstract: El objetivo de este artículo es analizar las complejidades jurídicas, éticas y morales presentes en La isla del tesoro, obra maestra de Robert Louis Stevenson, y en la narración Los personajes del relato. La metodología consiste en la observación cualitativa de varios pasajes del libro. Ese análisis muestra un paisaje moral cambiante donde los personajes hacen elecciones morales fuera de las convenciones morales y sociales. No hay instituciones jurídicas en la isla; pero en todo momento se nos hace recordar el imperio de la ley. Stevenson utiliza este particular escenario para expresar un código moral muy especial y sugerente, donde la ambigüedad, lo paradójico y lo contradictorio son las tónicas dominantes. Hay muy pocas obras sobre Stevenson desde un enfoque iusfilosófico, por lo cual el artículo hace una aportación al campo del Derecho y la Literatura.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Gould on Democracy and the Vernacular in Vico's Plebian Philology @rrgould

Rebecca Gould, University of Birmingham; Harvard University, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, is publishing Democracy and the Vernacular Imagination in Vico's Plebian Philology in History of Humanities (Forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

This essay examines Giambattista Vico’s philology as a contribution to democratic legitimacy. I outline three steps in Vico’s account of the historical and political development of philological knowledge. First, his merger of philosophy and philology, and the effects of that merge on the relative claims of reason and authority. Second, his use of antiquarian knowledge to supersede historicist accounts of change in time and to position the plebian social class as the true arbiters of language. Third, his understanding of philological knowledge as an instrument of political change, and a foundational element in the establishment of democracy. By treating the philological imagination as a tool for bringing about political change, Vico’s plebian philology is radically democratic, and a crucial instrument in the struggle against the elite, from antiquity to the present.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Scholz on Big Data Is Not Big Oil: On Analogical Reasoning, New Technologies, and Law @scholzlauren

Lauren Henry Scholz, Florida State College of Law, is publishing Big Data Is Not Big Oil: On Analogical Reasoning, New Technologies, and Law in the Georgetown Law Journal (forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

Many commentators on the information economy have casually and uncritically compared big data to big oil. Admittedly, data, like oil, is valuable, and both power the modern economy. But to extend the analogy any further as a matter of law and policy is unwise. This Essay has two theses: (1) Data as the oil of the information economy is a bad analogy as a matter of logic, and (2) data as oil is a misleading and dangerous analogy as applied to law and policy, because it obscures key features of the underling resource and its function in the economy. Unlike oil, the source of data can be traced to individual people, a fact which demands moral and legal consideration. The Essay goes on to describe and evaluate analogies between big data and intellectual property, personhood, and salvage. This illustrates the promise and potential of alternate analogical approaches to big data.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Frosio on Reimagining Digital Copyright Through the Power of Imitation: Lessons From Confucius and Plato @GCFrosio

Giancarlo Frosio, Université de Strasbourg - CEIPI; Stanford University - Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society, is publishing Reimagining Digital Copyright through the Power of Imitation: Lessons from Confucius and Plato in volume 5 of the Peking University Transnational Law Journal (Forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

For millennia, Western and Eastern culture shared a common creative paradigm. From Confucian China, across the Hindu Kush with the Indian Mahābhārata, the Bible, the Koran and the Homeric epics, to Platonic mimēsis and Shakespeare’s “borrowed feathers,” our culture was created under a fully open regime of access to pre-existing expressions and re-use. Creativity used to be propelled by the power of imitation. However, modern policies have largely forgotten the cumulative and collaborative nature of creativity. Actually, the last three decades have witnessed an unprecedented expansion of intellectual property rights in sharp contrast with the open and participatory social norms governing creativity in the networked environment. Against this background, this paper discusses the reaction to traditional copyright policy and the emergence of a social movement re-imagining copyright according to a common tradition focusing on re-use, collaboration, access and cumulative creativity. This reaction builds upon copyright’s growing irrelevance in the public mind, especially among younger generations in the digital environment, because of the emergence of new economics of digital content distribution in the Internet. Along the way, the rise of the users, and the demise of traditional gatekeepers, forced a process of reconsideration of copyright’s rationale and welfare incentives. Scholarly and market alternatives to traditional copyright have been plenty, attempting to reconcile pre-modern, modern and post-modern creative paradigms. Building upon this body of research, proposals and practice, this Article will finally try to chart a roadmap for reform that reconnects Eastern and Western creative experience in light of a common past, looking for a shared future.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Yoo on James WIison as the Architect of the American Presidency @PennLaw

Christopher Yoo, University of Pennsylvania Law School; University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School for Communication; University of Pennsylvania, School of Engineering and Applied Science, is publishing James Wilson as the Architect of the American Presidency in the Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy. Here is the abstract.

For decades, James Wilson has been something of a “forgotten founder.” The area where commentators generally recognize Wilson’s influence at the Convention is with respect to Article II, which establishes the executive and defines its powers. Most scholars characterize him as a resolute advocate of an independent, energetic, and unitary presidency, and a particularly successful one at that. In this regard, some scholars have generally characterized Wilson’s thinking as overly rigid. Yet a close examination of the Convention reveals Wilson to be more flexible than sometimes characterized. With respect to many aspects of the presidency, including the appointment power, the use of an advisory council, the veto power, and presidential selection, he adopted a more pragmatic approach than generally recognized. The most dramatic example of this is an event that is almost entirely overlooked in the historical record: Wilson’s break late in the Convention from his consistent support for a unitary executive by proposing an advisory council to advise the president on appointments. While initially seeming like something of a puzzle, the reasons for Wilson’s change of heart become clearer when debates over presidential power are placed in the context of the larger controversies that dominated the Convention, such as the Great Compromise and presidential re-eligibility and selection. This broader frame suggests that Wilson held a more pragmatic, less doctrinaire vision of executive power than is commonly recognized.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Conference on the Bible in Crime Fiction and Drama, January 8, 2019, University of Edinburgh @EdinburghUni

The Bible in Crime Fiction and Drama: Day Conference, at the University of Edinburgh

Date of Event

8^th January 2019

Last Booking Date for this Event

4^th January 2019

Places Available

46

Description

The Bible has always enjoyed notoriety within the genres of crime fiction and drama; numerous authors have drawn on biblical traditions as thematic foci to explore social anxieties about violence, religion, and the search for justice and truth. This conference explores the issues raised by the forthcoming volume, The Bible in Crime Fiction and Drama (Bloomsbury Press, 2019), which brings together multi-disciplinary scholarship from the fields of biblical interpretation, literary criticism, criminology, and studies in film and television to discuss international texts and media spanning the beginning of the 20th century to the present day.

Call For Papers and Posters: Socio-Legal Studies Association Conference, 2019

The Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA) has opened its call for papers and posters for its April 3-5, 2019 conference. Send proposals by January 14, 2019. The University of Leeds is hosting the conference. More here.

Doppelganger Political Commercials @VeepHBO @justinlmack @emrosenberg @indystar @washingtonpost

Eli Rosenberg at the Washington Post points out the "life imitates art" resemblances between Senator Joe Donnelly (D-IN)'s new campaign commercial and that for character Jonah Ryan, who ran for Congress in the popular TV series "Veep." Cue the plaid shirt and tree-chopping activities. Mr. Rosenberg cites some tele-analysis from Justin L. Mack and Holly V. Hays at the Indianapolis Star, who note that "there are some differences. For example, Donnelly does his own narration...while Ryan uses a voiceover. And Donnelly, showing his love of responsible wood chopping, makes sure to wear gloves and safety goggles whenever he takes a swing. Ryan recklessly eschews both."

It's interesting that the real candidate does his own talking, and the fictional one uses a voiceover. Is that a comment on IRL candidates with slick (read Hollywood-esque) production values? And the contrasting axe wielding techniques are interesting, too. Is the real candidate sending a message about safety around dangerous devices? Is Veep telling us (as if we didn't know) that some politicians actually fake their love of the outdoors in order to appeal to some of the public? Or perhaps that they're actually clueless about safety, theirs and ours? Does Senator Donnelly's campaign indicate that he's actually yearning for a veep spot? Or is a campaign commercial just a campaign commercial?

Gingerich on Remixing Rawls: Constitutionalizing Cultural Liberties

Jonathan Gingerich, Washington University, St. Louis, is publishing Remixing Rawls: Constitutionalizing Cultural Liberties in volume 11 of the Northweastern University Law Review (2019). Here is the abstract.

This article develops a liberal theory of cultural rights that must be guaranteed by just legal and political institutions. People form their own individual conceptions of the good in the cultural space constructed by the political societies they inhabit. This article argues that only rarely do individuals develop views of what is valuable that diverge more than slightly from the conceptions of the good widely circulating in their societies. In order for everyone to have an equal opportunity to autonomously form their own independent conception of the good, rather than merely following others, culture must be democratically controlled. Equal respect for members of a liberal democracy requires that all citizens have roughly equal opportunities to do things like make movies, publish novels, and exhibit paintings. This article contends that the contemporary American legal order fails to guarantee that all citizens have roughly equal opportunities to shape and influence their shared culture. Guaranteeing the liberty to do so would require reforms to many areas of law, including applying anti-discrimination law more broadly to the conduct of cultural organizations, expanding fair use protections in copyright law, limiting the ability of businesses to arbitrarily refuse service to customers, and restricting private control of capital in order to democratize the means of cultural production.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Bonfield on Britain's Brief Encounter With Forced Heirship @NYLawSchool

Lloyd Bonfield, New York Law School, has published Farewell Downton Abbey, Adieu Primogeniture and Entail: Britain's Brief Encounter with Forced Heirship. Here is the abstract.

This article observes a little-noted proposal (the Landed Property of Intestates Bill) introduced into the British Parliament in 1836. It considers the debate upon it that ensued, and the accompanying pamphlet literature. The Bill proposed to alter the inheritance custom of primogeniture that directed the pattern of descent of freehold land in the absence of directions by settlement or will, and the dialogue is used as a lens to view the nexus between inheritance customs and broader political, economic and social concerns. The intensity of the dispute over primogeniture suggests that more was at stake than simply the devolution of land. The controversy in the Commons over the proposed legislation encompassed a discussion on the variety of purposes that succession law should serve. Lurking in the background in the debate over the proposed bill was a more abstract conundrum: should succession laws primarily be crafted to serve political ends, the constitution; or was it more appropriate to calibrate them to foster desirable social, economic or familial goals? In short, the debate put into sharp focus the question of what interests drive inheritance law, and how attempts can be made to modify it, if and when such concerns alter over time. The bill failed, and it would be for another century for Parliament to abolish primogeniture.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Applications, Tenure Track Positions, Legal Studies, St. Jerome's University

Two Faculty Positions Open, Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, St. Jerome's University

The Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at St. Jerome’s University invites applications for two (2) positions in Legal Studies, both commencing July 1, 2019. One is tenured or tenure stream at the rank of Associate Professor; the other is tenure stream at the rank of Assistant Professor and is subject to budgetary approval. Successful candidates will have a PhD in the interdisciplinary field of Legal Studies or a relevant interdisciplinary or disciplinary field in the humanities or social sciences. Candidates with a doctorate in law may also apply. We are especially interested in candidates who conduct interdisciplinary research in and can teach any of the following subjects: environment and law, history and law, gender and law, Indigenous studies and law, international law and global justice, political/social theory and law, psychology and law, and religion and law. A history of innovation in the area of teaching and learning is also desired.
Successful candidates should be able to teach first-year Introduction to Legal Studies, second-year Criminal Law, fourth-year seminars, as well as courses that correspond to the applicant’s areas of specialization. Successful candidates should also be committed to participating in administrative service. Applicants for the Associate Professor position must have an excellent track record in teaching, research, and service, particularly in academic leadership. Applicants for the Assistant Professor position must demonstrate a commitment to excellence in teaching, research, and service. As of May 1, 2018, the base salary for an Associate Professor is $100,868, and the base salary for an Assistant Professor is $80,143.
Legal Studies is an interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary program that offers Honours, Joint Honours, and Four-Year General undergraduate degrees. Successful candidates will work with colleagues across disciplines as well as with our partners at the University of Waterloo. For further information on the Department at St. Jerome’s University, visit www.sju.ca/sociology-legal-studies.
Complete applications from interested candidates will include:

• cover letter detailing interest in and suitability for the position – clearly state your intent to apply for either the Associate or Assistant position

• curriculum vitae

• teaching dossier – include evidence of excellence and innovation in teaching

• in lieu of a teaching philosophy, please answer the following question in 1000 words or less:

How does your teaching and research advance your vision of interdisciplinary scholarship?

• outline of a research agenda

• two sample publications

• contact information for three referees – to be contacted if your application is shortlisted

Send applications by email to Dr. Kieran Bonner, Chair, Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, St. Jerome’s University: legalstudies@sju.ca. All applications must be submitted by January 15, 2019.St. Jerome’s University, situated on the University of Waterloo campus, is a public Roman Catholic university federated with the University of Waterloo. The University is committed to advancing the Catholic intellectual tradition and welcomes faculty and students from all faiths and backgrounds. St. Jerome’s University is also committed to the principles of employment equity and in accordance with Canadian immigration requirements this advertisement is directed in the first instance to Canadian citizens and permanent residents of Canada. Candidates requiring accommodation should contact the Director of Human Resources. For further information, visit www.sju.ca.

Extended Deadline: ASLCH CFP October 24, 2018 @Law_Cult_Huma

Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities: Call for Proposals

Extended Deadline

We are pleased to announce that the Twenty-Second Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities will be held at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada on March 22-23, 2019. The event is co-sponsored by The Pauline Jewett Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies, Carleton University and the University of Ottawa. Information regarding the pre-conference Graduate Student Workshop will follow shortly.

We welcome quality proposals on any topic related to law and legal studies. We warmly welcome proposals on all topics, and are particularly interested in proposals addressing the intersections between gender, sexuality, race and law.

All proposals are due Wednesday, October 24, 2018.

Individual proposals should include title and an abstract of no more than 250 words.

We also welcome proposals for panels, roundtables, and streams (two panels on one theme). Panels should include three papers (or, exceptionally, four papers). Specify a title and a chair of 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.  

All proposals must be submitted on this website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2019-annual-meeting-association-for-the-study-of-law-culture-the-humanities-registration-50307147031

Notifications will be sent by mid-December, 2018.

The fees for participation in the Conference, which include membership to the Association, will be:

·      Graduate students and post-doctoral scholars: $35

            • Income less than $75,000: $125

            • Income between $75,000-$99,999: $155

            • Income between $100,000-$124,999: $210

            • Income $125,000 and over: $260

The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities is an organization of scholars engaged in interdisciplinary, humanistically-oriented legal scholarship. The Association brings together a wide range of people engaged in scholarship on legal history, legal theory and jurisprudence, political, law and cultural studies, law and anthropology, law and literature, law and the performing arts, and legal hermeneutics. We want to encourage dialogue across and among these fields about issues of interpretation, identity, and values, about authority, obligation, and justice, and about law's role as a constituent part of cultures and communities. If you have any general questions about the conference, please do not hesitate to contact us law.culture.humanities@gmail.com

Funny, Funny Judges @laphamsquart

Lapham's Quarterly offers this selection of interesting footnotes from cases, some well-known, some obscure. Included is a Ninth Circuit case that introduces the phrase, "Holy Copyright Law, Batman!" to the legal lexicon, and a cite to "Who Let the Dogs Out?" with the wry comment from Judge Philip S. Straniere that although the song "allegedly has nothing to do with canines[,] ...I have not been able to understand the lyrics to any song written since the Fillmore East closed, I have appropriated the title solely to make a point and will ignore the content of the song."

CFP: Television Drama, Law, and National Identity, Symposium at Centre for Law, Society, Popular Culture, Westminster Law School, September 6, 2019 @@UW_WLS ‏

Centre for Law, Society and Popular Culture

Westminster Law School

Television drama, law and national identity

Symposium Announcement and First Call for Papers

Friday 6 September 2019

University of Westminster

Television drama plays a seminal role in the cultural life of nations, and the way in which it depicts national identities merits scholarly exploration.  In this regard national identity’s relationship with law as its crystallisation is particularly worthy of academic attention and lends itself to interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives.  Police, crime, justice and dystopian dramas frequently place law and social attitudes to law centre-stage in the delineation of national identity. 

Television drama may be perceived as a communicative event in which history is transformed into myth through a stylised set of codes.  The transmission of coded messages about national identity, and their interpretation (both hegemonic and oppositional) become particularly worthy of analysis as the nation comes under strain through patterns of globalised and regional integration coupled with acts of national resistance.  Multiple genres of television drama provide scope for the expression of national identity, including the use by period dramas of creative nostalgia to represent the contemporary nation or the warnings to the nation posed by science fiction television.  In all contexts the interplay between projections of national identity and television’s treatment of race, class and gender warrants critical scrutiny.  

Proposals for 20-minute papers are therefore invited for a symposium on 6 September 2019, to be held in the University of Westminster’s historic Regent Street building just metres away from BBC headquarters.  Possible subjects for papers might include, but are by no means limited to:

• is national identity empirical or normative in television drama?
• internet/social media amplification of debates on TV drama, law and identity
• national identity on television as ideology
• depictions of trials and national identity
• national security dramas: ‘war against terrorism’, identity and law(lessness)
• political dramas: uniform global elite or national diversity?
• fan responses to the portrayal of the nation
• globalisation/globalised law – depicted as threat to national identity?
• feminist crime drama and national identity
• science fiction or dystopian fiction, law and national identity
• ‘heritage’ drama: commodification of (rose-tinted) ideas of national identity for global consumption?

Abstracts should be 250 words in length, accompanied by a 100-word biography of the author, and sent to nicold@wmin.ac.uk by the deadline of 1 February 2019.

Via @Doubledegree

Positions Available: Department of Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University @Carleton_U

The Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada) is currently seeking candidates for two tenure-track assistant professors in the following areas:

1) Law and Work

Law and Legal Studies (Law and Work) – Assistant Professor

Field of Specialization: Law and Work
Academic Unit: Law and Legal Studies
Category of Appointment: Preliminary (Tenure-Track)
Rank/Position Title: Assistant Professor
Start Date: July 1, 2019
Closing Date: Consideration of complete applications will begin on October 29, 2018 and continue until the position is filled

About the Position:

The Department of Law and Legal Studies invites applications from qualified candidates for a preliminary (tenure-track) appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor beginning July 1, 2019.

The Department invites applications from qualified candidates with a demonstrated interest and interdisciplinary research agenda in the area of Law and Work. The successful candidate will be expected to conduct theoretically informed research, teach, and supervise in one or more of the following areas: labour, employment, the political economy of labour, the social construction and regulation of work (including paid and unpaid labour), workers’ social movements, transformations in the nature of work and the place of work in the community. The Department encourages innovative, critical and interdisciplinary approaches to these issues. The successful candidate will teach core courses in our Law, Policy and Government or Business Law concentrations and contribute to the development of these areas at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Full ad available here: https://carleton.ca/provost/2018/law-and-legal-studies-law-and-work-assistant-professor/

2) Law and Criminalization

Law and Legal Studies (Law and Criminalization) – Assistant Professor

Field of Specialization: Law and Criminalization
Academic Unit: Law and Legal Studies
Category of Appointment: Preliminary (Tenure-Track)
Rank/Position Title: Assistant Professor
Start Date: July 1, 2019
Closing Date: Consideration of complete applications will begin on October 29, 2018 and continue until the position is filled

About the Position:

The Department of Law and Legal Studies invites applications from qualified candidates for a preliminary (tenure-track) appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor beginning July 1, 2019.

The Department invites applications from qualified candidates with a demonstrated interest and interdisciplinary research agenda in the area of Law and Criminalization. The successful candidate will be expected to conduct theoretically informed research, teach, and supervise in one or more of the following areas: criminal law, criminal justice and/or the practices and processes of criminalization of various activities and populations. The Department encourages innovative, critical and interdisciplinary approaches to these issues. At the undergraduate level, the successful applicant will be expected to teach core courses in these areas and contribute to the Department’s support of the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice. At the graduate level, the successful applicant will contribute to the Department’s offerings in the specialization areas of “Crime, Governance and Security” for the M.A. and “Crime, Law and Security” for the Ph.D. in Legal Studies.

Full ad available here: https://carleton.ca/provost/2018/law-and-legal-studies-law-and-criminalization-assistant-professor/

Fairweather on Redressing Inequality in Personal Credit Transactions: 1700-1974 @AucklandUni

Karen Fairweather, University of Auckland, has published Redressing Inequality in Personal Credit Transactions: 1700-1974 in 2017 Private Law and Power 53 (Kit Barker, Simone Degeling, Karen Fairweather, and Ross Grantham, eds., Hart Publishing, 2018). Here is the abstract.

While the phenomenon of consumerism can be traced back at least as far as the eighteenth century, the idea of protecting individuals qua consumers is far more recent.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Machuskyy on The Right of Blood-Revenge in a Medieval Ukraine

Volodymyr Machuskyy, Kyiv National Economic Univesrity named after Vadym Hetman, has published The Right of Blood-Revenge in a Medieval Ukraine: The Concept and the Evolution. Here is the abstract.

The idea and practice of blood-revenge existed in ancient societies around the world. Because of its high prevalence and significance, blood-revenge as a social phenomenon for a long time was the subject of study of a sufficiently large number of scientists, representatives of various sciences from many countries. The scientific diversity in the context of the study of blood revenge paradoxically leads to contradictory scientific results and, as a consequence, makes it difficult to obtain true knowledge about the nature of blood-revenge. Hence, there was an objective need to study the general patterns of the emergence, functioning and gradual withering away of blood-revenge as a special institute in the system of social regulation of the medieval society on the territory of modern Ukraine. Main conclusions: 1. The right of blood-revenge is a social institution of collective security in a primitive society aimed at protecting individuals from violent crimes. 2. The evolution of the right of blood-revenge in Kyivan Rus was due to the transformation from the right of blood-revenge into a cash ransom and, subsequently, in the death penalty as a surrogate of the right of blood-revenge.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Bastias Saavedra on Jurisdictional Autonomy and the Autonomy of Law

Manuel Bastias Saavedra, Max Planck Society for the Advancement of the Sciences - Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, has published Jurisdictional Autonomy and the Autonomy of Law: End of Empire and the Functional Differentiation of Law in 19th-Century Latin America at 26 Rechtsgeschichte/Legal History 325 (2018). Here is the abstract.

This contribution discusses the collapse of the Iberian Empire and the transformation of legal regimes in 19th-century Latin America. While most of the literature on this period centers on the process of state-building and the reform of legal institutions, my discussion will focus on the important changes produced in the form of law according to Luhmann’s theory of functional differentiation. The main argument is that systems theory can provide a re-evaluation of the history of law in the 19th and 20th centuries if one focuses on the idea of the autonomy of law. I argue that this way of reading the functioning of law is analogous to the legal historical re-evaluation of early-modern Iberian legal regimes through the idea of jurisdictional autonomy. Taken together both ways of understanding autonomy in legal observation direct our attention to shifts in law that go beyond the question of empire and nation-state building.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Moore on The Past, Present, and Future of Law Reform in Canada

Marcus Moore, University of Oxford, Faculty of Law, has published The Past, Present, and Future of Law Reform in Canada at 6 Theory and Practice of Legislation 225 (2018). Here is the abstract.

The story of institutional law reform in Canada has been described by one veteran as ‘somewhat troubling.’ It is a story not without significant successes: In Québec civil law, the codifications were remarkable achievements which realised sweeping and highly-esteemed reforms. Among Canadian common law provinces, Ontario founded the Commonwealth’s first law reform commission in 1964, and as early as 1967 Alberta innovated the now internationally-influential joint venture design of its commission. Further, Canada’s original national commission was notable for its ambitious pursuit of social issues, and the second national commission challenged conventional legal paradigms at unparalleled depth. Across the country, many law commissions were established. Yet, what is ‘troubling’ is how many, including long-established and prominent commissions, were since closed or constrained, impeded from accomplishing what they might have. Meanwhile, in Québec civil law, the codifiers’ repeated calls for a permanent commission have gone unheeded. What does the future hold for institutional law reform in Canada? In Québec civil law, there are some signs of movement towards reform continuity. An important question will be whether processes of continuous incremental reform can be developed and managed to alleviate reliance on overwhelming legal overhauls. Elsewhere in Canada, a few Canadian provinces that shuttered commissions have since re-established them in altered forms. The common themes of austerity, ideology, and alleged redundancy in the downfall of past Canadian commissions remain an ever present concern to the survivors, as they simultaneously confront newly emerging challenges. Time will tell whether, because of their experience in reforming themselves in response to their troubling story to date, Canada’s law commissions may be best-positioned to meet institutional law reform’s challenges of the future.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

CFP: 2019 Symposium, Women and the Law, Detroit Mercy Law Review @UDMLawReview

From the e-mailbox:

The Detroit Mercy Law Review will host its 2019 Symposium, Women and the Law, on Mar. 8, 2019. The deadline for proposals is Nov. 9, 2018 at 5:00pm EST.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to: the history of women in the law, how women have impacted the law, how the law impacts women today, how future legal decisions could affect women’s rights (e.g. if Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) were to be overturned), what challenges women still face in the legal profession, the role of gender in the law, and any other topic regarding women and the law.

Proposals should be approximately 250-500 words, double-spaced, and detail the proposed topic and presentation. Submit to Samantha Buck, Symposium Director, at bucksl@udmercy.edu.

Please indicate whether your proposal is for a presentation only or if you would also like to publish an article with the Detroit Mercy Law Review on your presentation topic. If you are interested in submitting an article, it will be due to the Law Review on Friday, Mar.15, 2019.

Please submit a current CV or resume along with your proposal. We will notify chosen speakers by Nov. 30, 2018. Preference will be given to those willing to submit an article for publication.

Click on this link for more information.

 

ASLCH Annual Meeting, Call For Papers, Due October 17, 2018 @Law_Cult_Huma

From Karl Shoemaker:

We are pleased to announce that the Twenty-Second Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities will be held at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada on March 22-23, 2019. The event is co-sponsored by The Pauline Jewett Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies, Carleton University and the University of Ottawa. Information regarding the pre-conference Graduate Student Workshop will follow shortly.

We welcome quality proposals on any topic related to law and legal studies. We warmly welcome proposals on all topics, and are particularly interested in proposals addressing the intersections between gender, sexuality, race and law.

All proposals are due Wednesday, October 17, 2018.

Individual proposals should include title and an abstract of no more than 250 words.

We also welcome proposals for panels, roundtables, and streams (two panels on one theme). Panels should include three papers (or, exceptionally, four papers). Specify a title and a chair of 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.  

All proposals must be submitted on this website: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2019-annual-meeting-association-for-the-study-of-law-culture-the-humanities-registration-50307147031

Notifications will be sent by mid-December, 2018.

The fees for participation in the Conference, which include membership to the Association, will be:

·      Graduate students and post-doctoral scholars: $35

            • Income less than $75,000: $125

            • Income between $75,000-$99,999: $155

            • Income between $100,000-$124,999: $210

            • Income $125,000 and over: $260

The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities is an organization of scholars engaged in interdisciplinary, humanistically-oriented legal scholarship. The Association brings together a wide range of people engaged in scholarship on legal history, legal theory and jurisprudence, political, law and cultural studies, law and anthropology, law and literature, law and the performing arts, and legal hermeneutics. We want to encourage dialogue across and among these fields about issues of interpretation, identity, and values, about authority, obligation, and justice, and about law's role as a constituent part of cultures and communities. If you have any general questions about the conference, please do not hesitate to contact us law.culture.humanities@gmail.com

Goldmann on European Integration in the History of International Law @MattHGoldmann

Matthias Goldmann, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law; Goethe University Frankfurt - Research Center SAFE; Goethe University Frankfurt - Cluster of Excellence Normative Orders; Goethe University Frankfurt, has published Hopes of Progress: European Integration in the History of International Law as Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law & International Law (MPIL) Research Paper No. 2018-26. Here is the abstract.

This paper argues that the Treaties of Rome and the process of European integration they heralded had a lasting impact on the development of international law. However, their significance is usually misattributed. While European law has had little impact on international legal doctrine, and while European integration has remained unique as a political project, European law and the process of European integration have served international law as an important progress narrative. In this respect, they have had an influence on important background understandings characterizing international law since the postwar era, including on the perception of international law as universal, autonomous, pluralistic, and economically liberal. The progress narrative culminates in the view that international law is in a normatively ambitious process of constitutionalization, an idea imported from European law. This progress narrative is now under threat as European integration faces existential difficulties.The crisis of European integration might therefore anticipate a crisis of international law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Publishing Kafka @thenation @evankindley

Evan Kindley examines Franz Kafka's desire to have his works destroyed after his death, his literary executor Max Brod's decision to disregard that command, and the result of Brod's decision, here, in an essay for The Nation.

Brod, in particular, felt a “fanatical veneration” for his friend’s talent and took it as his mission to combat the depressive Kafka’s extreme reluctance to publish his work. “I wrested from Kafka nearly everything he published [during his lifetime] either by persuasion or guile,” Brod recalled. “At times I stood over him like a rod, drove him and forced him…again and again by new means and new tricks…. What mattered to me was the thing itself, the helping of a friend even against the wish of the friend.” When Kafka finally did publish a book—the 1912 short-story collection Meditation—Brod was there to give it one of its few reviews, which included the following statement: “I could easily imagine someone getting hold of this book and finding his whole life altered from that moment on, and realizing he would become a new person.”

Strong Female Characters On Television: Is the Message That the Battle For Gender Equality Is Over?

From BBC News: Strong women in leading roles on British TV, like Bodyguard's Anne Sampson (played by Gina McKee), and Killing Eve's Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) and Villanelle (Jodie Comer),  send the message that sexism in society is no longer a problem, according to Victoria screenwriter Daisy Goodwin.

Brescia on Subversive Stories and Counter-Narratives of Cooperation @rbrescia

Raymond H. Brescia, Albany Law School, is publishing Dominance and Disintermediation: Subversive Stories and Counter-Narratives of Cooperation in volume 27 of the Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal (2018). Here is the abstract.

Humans tell stories, and the stories they tell do many things. These stories communicate morals and norms and build morale. They establish orthodoxy and challenge it. They offer a narrative to make sense of the past and generate a vision of the future. Humans tell stories in and through the law as well. Clients provide their stories to their lawyers and the lawyers, in turn, narrate to juries. We make story-based pleas to judges and regulators. Stories inform our understanding of the law and law evolves as new stories and new narratives shape and color new visions for and versions of the law. One of the stories in the law that is pervasive is that human nature is acquisitive and self-interested: that humans find it hard to cooperate to reach mutual ends. Because of this, we should protect ourselves from not just others, but, at times, ourselves. In property law, perhaps more than in most other areas of law, storytelling that speaks of the origins of property regimes, using phrases like the “state of nature” and the “Tragedy of the Commons,” among other themes, has been used to help explain and justify private property-based systems that often accomplish many things, including the preservation of a status quo that is rife with inequities and asymmetries of power and influence, and which is, in turn, highly resistant to change. This durability is, in part, a product of the attractiveness and perhaps intuitiveness of the narrative such stories convey. There is a possible counter-narrative, however. This counter-narrative describes humans’ capacity for cooperation. It recognizes that we possess not just self-interest but also an appreciation for the value of cooperation; indeed, true self-interest, what Alexis de Tocqueville called “self-interest, rightly understood,” embraces that notion that our long-term well-being is fostered by cooperation, by thinking about long-term payoffs and by working collaboratively to achieve better overall outcomes. This Article explores two issues around the use of narratives of cooperation and non-cooperation. The first is the idea that embedded in the research, literature, and scholarship on cooperation is the notion that humans do not just compete, but they also cooperate, despite the dominant narrative that cooperation is unlikely given the stories told about the selfishness of humans. While a counter-narrative of cooperation has always existed, it has likely been suppressed by both the hegemonic power and the attractiveness of narratives of non-cooperation to dominant elites. But this dominance and the capacity for dominance may be slipping. Indeed, the second idea I will attempt to explore here is the power that now exists for non-elites to tell the counter-narrative. New technologies are placing story-telling capacities in the hands of the many, democratizing the power of narrative. This disintermediation is creating the capacity for the emergence of new narratives of mutual care and cooperation. But these new tools do so much more than simply place the means of generating new narratives in the hands of the many. They also help individuals overcome the natural impediments to cooperation in the first place, the transaction costs associated with cooperative action that can lead to self-interested, non-cooperative behavior. This Article explores whether, when we have new communication and coordination tools at our disposal, such tools can help us communicate about and coordinate our cooperative ventures. I will examine whether these tools give us not just the ability to tell counter-narratives of cooperation but also a means of overcoming barriers to collective action itself.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Stolzenberg on Divine Accommodation and the Lost Language of Law

Nomi Stolzenberg, University of Southern California School of Law, has published From Eternity to Here: Divine Accommodation and the Lost Language of Law as USC Law Legal Studies Paper No. 18-2. Here is the abstract.

This paper asserts that the discourse of religious accommodation has stopped making sense, and that the reason it has stopped making sense is because our terminology (including such terms as "religion," "accommodation," and "secularism") is inherited from tradition of political theological discourse that has been forgotten: the theology of divine accommodation. The paper reconstructs the content of that tradition of political theology in broad strokes, arguing that the birthplace of secularism and the birthplace of liberalism both lie here and that, once we recognize that, a number of doctrinal and conceptual puzzles can be solved, including how to define religion, whether to characterize secular humanism as a religion, and whether to accept the broad (virtually boundless) conception of a right to religious accommodation now being promoted by religious conservatives. The answers proposed are that (a) religion, from the standpoint of this tradition of political theology, refers to beliefs about the content and source of the moral law, and is not contingent on continued belief in a deity; (b) secular humanism is a religion in this sense, and is indeed the religion promoted by accommodationist political theology; (c) the broad conception of a right to religious accommodation must be rejected for the same reasons that the "religion" of secular humanism must be accepted. The paper further argues, as a matter of political theory/history of political thought, that locating the origins of liberalism and secularism in the tradition of divine accommodation reveals conservative political theology and liberal political theory to be one and the same. Finally, it underscores the centrality of law to the humanist tradition and the centrality of humanism to law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Applications: Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities @TilburgLawNews

Call For Applications: The Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities at Tilburg Law School.

Professor Willem Witteveen (1952-2014) was an early representative of the interdisciplinary and contextual approach to legal scholarship in the Netherlands. Whereas the emphasis of this approach has often been on the social sciences, Professor Witteveen’s focus was on intersections between law and the humanities. Professor Witteveen’s many contributions to academia, politics and society combined rhetoric, literary analysis, political philosophy and intellectual and cultural history. In his teaching, Professor Witteveen embraced  the classic Bildungsideal, and put textual interpretation at the heart of his classes. He fostered an academic environment that revolved around thinking and discussing.

After Professor Witteveen’s untimely death in 2014, Tilburg University established the annual Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities in order to commemorate his life and work. The fellowship aims to enable a junior scholar (PhD or postdoc level) to develop her or his research in the field of law and humanities during a visit to Tilburg. The fellowship seeks to promote research on the relations between law and language, rhetoric, narrative, image, sound, and/or culture.

What the Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities offers:

The Witteveen Memorial Fellow will have office space and facilities at Tilburg Law School, as well as full library access.

We offer reimbursement of travel expenses and accommodation expenses (max. 5,250 Euro). The Witteveen Memorial Fellowship does not constitute an employment relationship. For this reason, Tilburg Law School will not pay salary and will not make social insurance contributions or contributions to pension or unemployment insurance. Fellows will need to find their own accommodation.

In principle, the Witteveen Memorial Fellow in Law and Humanities will be at Tilburg Law School for the duration of three months in the spring following the application deadline. Candidates are welcome to propose a different period. In case the fellow will visit for less than three months, the maximum amount to be reimbursed will be proportionately lower. If the fellow’s visit will be longer, the total amount to be reimbursed remains 5,250 euro.

What is expected of the Witteveen Memorial Fellow:

During the period of the fellowship the scholar will be present at Tilburg Law School, participate in the academic life of both Tilburg Law School and the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, and deliver a guest lecture to students. Any publications resulting from the fellowship should mention the Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities explicitly.

Eligible Candidates

Scholars who are currently working on a PhD dissertation (at least in the third or fourth year of their PhD trajectory) or who obtained their PhD within the last five years are eligible.

Application

Candidates are requested to submit their application before November 15, 2018. Applications can only be submitted online (www.tilburguniversity.edu/about-tilburg-university/working-at/wp/).
Candidates must submit a cover letter, a CV including a list of publications, a statement of intent (‘what do you plan to do during the fellowship?’, ‘what is the end product?’) and one letter of recommendation.

In principle, the selection committee will decide on the basis of the written application only. The extent to which a candidate’s background is in law and humanities as well as evidence of interaction between both disciplines in the candidate’s work is an important selection criterion.

For questions, please contact Prof. Vanessa Mak (substantive questions) and/or Jacoba Floor (other questions). They can both be reached at hrservices@uvt.nl.

Tilburg Law School
Tilburg Law School (TLS) is a modern and specialized university. With a broad variety of international programmes and innovating research, the Tilburg Law School stands for high quality. Research at the Tilburg Law School is conducted in an organisation that fosters diversity. The Tilburg Graduate Law School is responsible for the training and guidance of its Research Master students and of the Faculty’s PhD researchers. With its open and inspiring atmosphere, this school is a congenial working environment.

Tilburg Law School

Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences
Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences (TSHD) conducts scientific research and education in the fields of Communication and Information Sciences, Philosophy, Religious studies and Language and Culture studies. The School of Humanities features three departments, several research institutes and a faculty office. Each year around 275 students commence a Bachelor or (Pre) Master Program. The School has approximately 1300 students and 250 employees.

Recruitment code
Tilburg University applies the recruitmentcode of the Dutch Association for Personnel Management & Organization Development (NVP).

Disclaimer
The text of this vacancy advertisement is copyright-protected property of Tilburg University. Use, distribution and further disclosure of the advertisement without express permission from Tilburg University is not allowed, and this applies explicitly to use by recruitment and selection agencies which do not act directly on the instructions of Tilburg University. Responses resulting from recruitment by non-contractors of Tilburg Universities will not be handled.

 

Anello on The Phenomenology of Arnaldo Bertola

Giancarlo Anello, University of Parma, has published The Phenomenology of Arnaldo Bertola: Legal Categories, Cognitive Interests, Religious Habits, and Their Interaction into the Life of an Italian Colonialist. Here is the abstract.

Italian colonialism was brief, notably transient and disorganized, especially when compared to its European counterparts, but it was characterized by an amazing experimental inspiration from the legal field. Italian legal professionals working in the colonies were compelled to develop their own-often original and creative-legal approaches in managing the complex relationships between legal authorities and colonial subjectivities. This paper analyzes the extraordinary efforts of one such colonial jurist, Arnaldo Bertola. Bertola was a judge in Libya and Rhodes, a Professor of colonial law at the University of Turin 1930’s, and a legal expert in Mogadishu, Somalia, after the war. Bertola’s case is noteworthy because of his innovative thinking, his remarkable personality, his unusual cultural eclecticism, and his steady inner faith in the value of religious freedom. The essay explores his writings not only for his legal achievements, but also for his very human curiosities and uncertainties in confronting the stranger, the colonized, and the foreigner: in a word, the other.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Bignon and García-Peñalosa on The Toll of Tariffs: Protectionism, Education, and Fertility in Late 19th Century @BignonVincent

Vincent Bignon, Banque de France, Microeconomic Research Unit, and Cecilia Garcia-Peñalosa, Aix-Marseille University, have published The Toll of Tariffs: Protectionism, Education and Fertility in Late 19th Century France, as Banque de France Working Paper No. 690. Here is the abstract.

Vincent Bignon and Cecilia García-Peñalosa examine a novel negative impact of trade tariffs and the costs they induce by documenting how protectionism reversed the long-term improvements in education and the fertility transition that were well under way in late 19th-century France. The Méline tariff, a tariff on cereals introduced in 1892, was a major protectionist shock that shifted relative prices in favor of agriculture and away from industry. In a context in which the latter was more intensive in skills than agriculture, the tariff reduced the relative return to education, which in turn affected parents’ decisions about the quantity and quality of children. They use regional differences in the importance of cereal production in the local economy to estimate the impact of the tariff. Their findings indicate that the tariff reduced enrollment in primary education and increased birthrates and fertility. The magnitude of these effects was substantial. In regions with average shares of employment in cereal production, the tariff offset the (downward) trend in birthrates for 13 years; in those with the highest cereal employment shares, there was a delay of up to 22 years.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Golove and Hulsebosch on the Law of Nations and the Constitution

David M. Golove and Daniel J. Hulsebosch, both New York University School of Law, have published The Law of Nations and the Constitution: An Early Modern Perspective at 106 Georgetown law Journal 1593 (2018). Here is the abstract.

Many American scholars, lawyers, and judges born in the latter half of the twentieth century have found it difficult to comprehend, or even recognize, the Founding generation’s commitment to the law of nations as a system of law, jurisprudence, and morality. Perhaps for similar reasons, that commitment tends to get lost in much modern historical writing. So, too, with respect to a related, but, from a legal perspective, more consequential aspect of the Founding: the prominent place of the law of nations in the constitutional reform project that culminated in the Philadelphia Convention. It was the uncertain struggle to ensure that the United States complied with its (or their) treaty obligations and the law of nations that was arguably the most important, and the most consensual, reason for the drafting and ratification of the new Constitution. That imperative shaped the structure outlined in the text, as well as much of the way that judges, executive officials, and even legislators interpreted and administered the Constitution during the first generation of the federal government. The result was a government designed to interact productively with the law of nations. Some of those interpretations, and some aspects of federal administration, became enormously controversial and generated early partisan divisions. But the basic premise—that the law of nations was the law of the land—proved durable, creating a tradition of international “law- mindedness” that deserves more historical investigation than it has so far received. The result is not just a scholarly lacunae. Among many lawyers today, the Founders’ conception of the central position of the law of nations in the American legal order is even less appreciated than their cosmopolitan outlook. In offering a corrective to this forgetfulness, Professors Anthony Bellia and Bradford Clark, in The Law of Nations and the United States Constitution, make an important contribution to the ongoing dialogue over the Founding. Nonetheless, in our view, the legal theory that Professors Bellia and Clark offer downplays, misses, or misunderstands crucial features of the pertinent history, especially why and how the Founders struggled to interweave the law of nations into the Constitution. These errors and elisions are important, in part for purely academic reasons, bearing on the extent to which their approach accurately portrays a foundational period in U.S. constitutional history. They are also important, however, because they lead Professors Bellia and Clark to reach some sound, but also some unsound, conclusions about important issues of constitutional law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.