McCaffrey and Dorobat on First Principles on the Final Frontier: Economic Foundations of Science Fiction

Matthew McCaffrey, University of Manchester, Manchester Business School, and Carmen-Elena Dorobat, Manchester Business School, Strategy Enterprise and Sustainbility, have published First Principles on the Final Frontier: Economic Foundations of Science Fiction Television. Here is the abstract.

Paul Cantor pioneered the use of Austrian economics in literary criticism, showing not only how sound economic reasoning can be used to interpret literary texts, but also how it helps us to appreciate such texts as celebrations of commercial culture. To honor Cantor's work, in this chapter we apply some fundamental economic principles to boldly go where no one has gone before: modern science fiction. We explore several ways in which sci-fi television shows spanning several decades—such as Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse, as well as Star Trek: The Next Generation, Firefly, and Andor—incorporate economic principles and use them as sources of dramatic tension. These principles include scarcity, division of labor and autarky, trade and prices, protectionism and war, and the role of international (or perhaps, interstellar) organizations in promoting peace and prosperity.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Harrison on The First State to Ratify the United States Constitution

Alan Harrison (no affiliation provided to SSRN), has published The First State to Ratify the United States Constitution. Here is the abstract.

Delaware became the first state to ratify the United States Constitution because the small group of oligarchs who ran Delaware politics not only recognized the state’s dire financial situation and internal political turmoil, but were also able to direct the Philadelphia Convention and the ratification process so as to rapidly obtain effective relief for the underlying causes of that situation. In particular, the acceptance of the national debt by the newly-formed United States alleviated the problems of requisitions on states by Congress. Furthermore, provisions for uniform national currency promised to relieve the hardships of a barter economy, as well as the problem of state currencies secured by real property. Finally, the preservation of “one state, one vote” in the United States Senate mollified the political class and allowed Delaware’s financial interests to progress.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Call For Interest, International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication: From Text to Semiotics, Section 52: Digital Transition of Contemporary Societies and Legal Adaptation

From Anne Wagner, Research Associate Professor, Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale (CGU Calais)

Call for Interests: Section 52 — Digital Transition of Contemporary Societies and Legal Adaptation

 

 

INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK OF LEGAL LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION: From Text to Semiotics.

 

https://meteor.springer.com/ihllc

 

 

Section Editors: Le Cheng & Ming Hu

 

We invite scholars and practitioners to express their interest in contributing to Section 52: Digital Transition of Contemporary Societies and Legal Adaptation, edited by Le Cheng (chengle163@hotmail.com) and Ming Hu (hm606@zju.edu.cn). This section is part of an expansive Handbook designed as an encyclopedia with nearly 1,000 chapters. Each entry goes beyond a standard encyclopedic summary to offer a substantive and reflective contribution, grounded in existing literature but shaped by the author’s unique research perspective.

 

This section investigates how digital transformation is reshaping contemporary legal systems. It considers how the transition toward digital governance, online commerce, and AI-driven technologies challenges traditional legal structures. By focusing on issues such as digital contracts, e-governance, and automation in the legal field, this section highlights the need for laws that are adaptable to the speed of digital innovation and the societal shift toward a fully integrated digital landscape.

 

Potential topics include:

 

Digital Governance and Law: Exploration of e-government initiatives and the digitization of public services, focusing on the legal frameworks that support digital administration.

Automation in Legal Practice: Impact of AI and digital tools on legal procedures, contracts, and decision-making, including the ethical and regulatory challenges posed by automation.

Digital Contracts and Transactions: The transition from traditional to digital contracts, addressing issues of enforceability, consent, and cross-border legal challenges in e-commerce.

Societal Shifts in Digital Law: The evolving legal landscape as societies transition toward digital living, with a focus on emerging rights, privacy, and security concerns.

Contributions should present established knowledge clearly and accessibly, ideally with a personal angle and an original analytical lens, while maintaining scholarly rigor. The Handbook aims to serve both newcomers and experienced readers alike.

 

If you are interested in contributing to this section, please reach out directly to the section editors by 15 August 2025:

Le Cheng – chengle163@hotmail.com

Ming Hu – hm606@zju.edu.cn

 

We look forward to your engagement in this important and timely conversation.

 

Grossman and Friedman on The Quick and the Dead: The Uses and Misuses of History in Abortion Jurisprudence

ICYMI: Joanna L. Grossman, Southern Methodist University School of Law, and Lawrence M. Friedman, Stanford University School of Law, have published The Quick and the Dead: The Uses and Misuses of History in Abortion Jurisprudence at 46 Women's Rts. L. Rep. 1 (2024).

On June 24, 2022, a solid conservative majority of justices on the United States Supreme Court decided that the time had come to overrule Roe v. Wade, and it did so in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The opinion in Roe, according to the majority in Dobbs, “was egregiously wrong from the start.” And the time had come to get rid of it once and for all. There was no constitutional right to an abortion, according to the majority. In the Court’s words, “the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives.” Dobbs is and will remain controversial. Abortion is clearly a major issue, politically speaking, with strong passions on both sides. Roe v. Wade itself was also controversial from the very beginning. Abortion had been a contested matter before that decision; and Roe itself was never accepted by a large minority of Americans, particularly in the South. Both sides in the abortion controversy have appealed to the historical record. The Dobbs majority opinion relies on the criminalization of abortion in the second half of the nineteenth century to conclude that abortion cannot be recognized as a fundamental right under the Fourteenth Amendment. In this article, we want to re-examine that history. It would be naïve to think that historical considerations made a crucial difference in the Dobbs decision (despite what the opinion claims); or that it will be decisive in a related dispute over the Comstock Act and the legality of abortion pills. But historical rhetoric has been a prominent tool in the abortion dispute; and this makes it worthwhile to pick apart the historical arguments. Yet this is not only, or primarily, a study in legal history. It is a study of the shape and meaning of the abortion controversy over time. It is a study of how the social context molded that controversy, in the past, and in the present. The goal is to broaden our understanding, first, of the abortion issue, and beyond that, how politics, religion, ideology, and other factors bear on the question of unborn life. The aim is objectivity—if that is possible. We will first consider the particular ways in which history was deemed relevant to the majority’s ruling in Dobbs and note the historical claims that are contested or even obviously wrong. Then, we will get to the heart of the article, in which we examine the history of abortion law and policy in social context. This analysis lays bare the absurdity of grounding constitutional rights in “history,” when laws and policies are plucked from their social context and dropped into a world that would have been unrecognizable to those who lived at the relevant time in history. Abortion is, as before, a controversial issue. History, as we said, cannot convince either side that their view is right and the other view wrong. What it can do is shine the light of scholarship on the history of this controversy, with as much rigor as the subject allows. When we do this, the historical arguments in the Dobbs opinion seem more and more irrelevant. Those arguments, we have argued, were based on a profound misreading of the social context in which the abortion issue in Victorian times played out. Today, we live in a very different world. The terms of the debate in the nineteenth century are not the terms of today. They are in fact, as we tried to show in this article, essentially obsolete.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Keyes on the Evolution of Legislative Drafting Style in English

John Mark Keyes, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, has published Evolution of Legislative Drafting Style in English. Here is the abstract.

This paper reviews the evolution of legislative drafting style in English beginning in the Middle Ages in England through to modern reforms adopted by the national drafting offices of Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. It concludes there is remarkable similarity in the styles adopted by these offices with the exception of some of the more debatable techniques proposed to enhance the readability of legislation.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Shanks-Dumont on Godzilla Cinema and the Imaginal Legal History of Ecocide

Daimeon Shanks-Dumont, University of California, Berkeley, is publishing Godzilla Cinema and the Imaginal Legal History of Ecocide in volume 36 of the Yale J.L. & Human. (forthcoming 2025). Here is the abstract.

This Article develops a theory of imaginal legal history in the service of recovering aspects of social phenomena that are habitually suppressed in contemporary modes of legal history. It offers a retrospective account of the emerging international crime of ecocide through the use of unlikely source material: Godzilla cinema. Through the use of moving images, this history surfaces latent meaning within the concept of ecocide that has been concealed in traditional narratives, namely an anthropocentric grounding that is at odds with its self-professed environmentalism. The Article is divided into two main Parts. The first lays out a speculative theory of imaginal history. It begins by considering how images operate in and through legal practices and materials as a general matter of symbolic ordering, before moving on to discuss what the concept of the imaginal offers legal-historical study. It critiques the dominate modality of professional historiography, contextualism, and the reduction of narrative that is a result of the hegemony of the written word. It then outlines a novel methodological paradigm—imaginal legal history—that promises a way out of the obsession with radical contingency that has arrested legal history since its encounter with critical legal studies in the 1980s. The second Part is an attempt to operationalize imaginal legal history with film—to create what Walter Benjamin called a “critical constellation”—to better appreciate current efforts to leverage international law to address the climate crisis. It begins by explaining why Godzilla cinema is an apt repository of moving images with which to engage the histories of international law, arguing that the genre’s global scope, international scale, and deep inventory of symbolic imagery and fantasy recommend it as a tool of imaginal legal history. It then analyzes a foundational moment in international environmental law’s history in the 1960s and 1970s—the invention of the concept of ecocide, the beginning of the modern environmental movement, and the articulation of environmental consciousness in American jurisprudence. Finally, the Article “reads” the 1971 film, Godzilla vs. Hedorah, and what its imagery, symbolism, and structure reveals of contemporaneous and current environmental and legal consciousness. The dénouement comes in the Conclusion, which takes the montage of images brought forward in the Article, dissolved of their contexts, and through a critical interpretation integrates them in ecocide’s horizons of meaning. A short Coda to the text follows, meditating on a materialist reading of Godzilla vs. Hedorah, and the traces of the Real that survive in the interstices of the film.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Papers: Anamorphosis--International Journal of Law & Literature

From Dr. Amanda Muniz Oliveira, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF)

Call for Papers ANAMORPHOSIS - International Journal of Law & Literature (from Brazil)

Upcoming Issue & Deadlines
Submissions are accepted on a rolling basis;
Earlier submissions receive earlier decisions.

About the Journal
ANAMORPHOSIS is the only Brazilian scholarly periodical entirely devoted to the intersection of Law and the Humanities. Since 2015 it has offered an open forum for rigorous, interdisciplinary dialogue between legal scholarship, literary studies, philosophy, cultural theory and related fields. The journal is fully open-access, charges no article-processing or submission fees, and operates a strict double-blind peer-review system.

What We Publish?
We welcome original, unpublished work (maximum two authors) in any of the following categories:

1. Research Articles: Theoretical or empirical studies that advance the field of Law & Humanities or Cultural Legal Studies; 
2. Translations: Scholarly translations of texts not yet published in Portuguese, accompanied by a critical introduction, aiming to broaden the dissemination of foreign scholarship in Latin America.
3. Reviews:Critical reviews of recent books or landmark works relevant to Law, Humanities, and Cultural Studies.

Doctoral candidates and early-career researchers are especially encouraged to submit.

Languages
Manuscripts may be submitted in English, Spanish, French, Italian, German or Portuguese. 

Approved texts in Portuguese are published with an English translation, and vice-versa; texts in other languages appear alongside a Portuguese translation, broadening readership and impact.

Why Submit to ANAMORPHOSIS?

• No fees - publish without APCs or submission charges.
• Global visibility through respected indexing services and open-access licensing.
• Fast, fair review - editorial screening followed by at least two external reviews.
• Distinguished international board spanning Europe, the Americas and beyond.
• Interdisciplinary reach - engage scholars across legal theory, literature, cultural studies, history, philosophy, the arts and social sciences.

How to Submit

• Register or log in at https://periodicos.rdl.org.br/anamps.
• Follow the five-step submission workflow, ensuring all files are anonymised for double-blind review.
• Adhere to our Author Guidelines (template and style guide available on the website).
• Upload a brief biographical note in a separate file once the paper is accepted.

Contact
Questions about scope or preparation? Write to the Editorial Office at anamps@rdl.org.br or henriete@rdl.org.br We look forward to receiving your contribution and to continuing the conversation between law, literature and society.

Share this call with colleagues, graduate students and research networks interested in the vibrant field of Law & Humanities.

Drumbl on Justice Pal's Legacy: Keynote Lecture

Mark Drumbl, Washington and Lee University School of Law, has published Justice Pal's Legacy: Keynote Lecture. Here is the abstract.

This chapter examines the legacy of Justice Pal's dissent at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East. It does so by peering into two sites. One site is postwar Japanese politics and memory. Another site is contemporary international law in the areas of criminality, the environment, and international organization. This chapter examines Justice Pal's footprintsin law and politicsand also counter-intuitively wonders what the world would be like had he not authored his lengthy dissent. Justice Pal was also about much more than his dissent at Tokyo. Hence, this project includes in Justice Pal's legacy footprint his subsequent work with the International Law Commission, along with his scholarly writings on political philosophy and international relations.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Lincoln on Axiomatic Shifting Paradigms: Wittgenstein's Language-Games, Goedel's Incompleteness Theorem, Language, Law, and the Limits of Formalism

Charles Edward Andrew Lincoln, IV, University of Groningen, Faculty of Law, has published Axiomatic Shifting Paradigms: Wittgenstein’s Language-Games, Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, Language, Law, and the Limits of Formalism at 47 U. Ark. Little Rock L. Rev. 133 (2025). Here is the abstract.

This Article shows how Ludwig Wittgenstein’s idea of “language-games” and Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems mark the outer limits of legal formalism and other leading interpretive theories—textualism, originalism, and purposivism. It begins by tracing Wittgenstein’s progression from a “picture theory” of language to the view that social context drives meaning more than any simple correspondence between words and reality. Gödel’s work on formal systems, suggesting that mathematics—long held as the pinnacle of logical certainty—itself cannot be both consistent and complete, reinforces the notion that purely “logical” approaches cannot capture the full range of linguistic and social nuances at play in law. Next, the Article examines how the late-nineteenth-century “scientific” movement in legal education, associated with Harvard Law School, underlies many assumptions about formalism. It then compares textualism, originalism, and purposivism, each grappling—but ultimately unable to resolve—the deep ambiguities that language poses. By exploring examples such as grammar debates, the sorites paradox (on vagueness), and Wittgenstein’s concept of language as shared practice, the Article shows why no interpretive framework can truly eliminate uncertainty or encapsulate the ever-evolving nature of the meaning of legal texts. Finally, the Article proposes a “dialectical sublation” of these rival schools of interpretation. Rather than clinging to the impossible dream of perfect textual clarity, it urges jurists and legal theorists to accept the fluidity and contingency inherent in language—and to build that understanding into their interpretive methods.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Joshi on Judicial Regrets

Yuvraj Joshi, Brooklyn Law School; UCLA Promise Institute of Human Rights; UC Berkeley Miller Institute for Global Challenges and the Law, is publishing Judicial Regrets in volume 99 of the Southern California Law Review (2026). Here is the abstract.

U.S. Supreme Court Justices have often expressed regret about their most consequential rulings and opinions. Chief Justice Earl Warren lamented his 1955 Brown v. Board of Education opinion ordering desegregation “with all deliberate speed”—ambiguous phrasing that ultimately enabled delays in integration. Justice Lewis Powell recanted his 1986 opinion in Bowers v. Hardwick, which upheld a Georgia law criminalizing same-sex intimacy. In Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor predicted that affirmative action policies would no longer be needed twenty-five years later—a prediction she later acknowledged was mistaken. These examples, among others discussed in this Article, illustrate that judicial regrets are frequent and poignant, spanning several areas of law. Despite their significance, judicial regrets remain largely unexplored in American legal scholarship. This Article addresses this phenomenon by drawing on multidisciplinary research on regret, previously unpublished judicial survey data, and judicial case studies. It examines how the law might better account for judicial regret and underscores insights about law and judging that stem from deeper understandings of it. Because judicial regret can catalyze legal reforms, rectify past harms, and influence legal interpretations, this Article proposes ways to incorporate it into constitutional interpretation and the treatment of precedent. By contemplating the legal and normative significance of this neglected judicial emotion, this Article aims to help the legal community avoid collectively discounting regret.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Applications, Visiting Fellows 2026, for the Institute for Interdisciplinary Legal Studies, University of Lucerne

Call For Applications: Visiting Fellows 2026

The Institute for Interdisciplinary Legal Studies at the University of Lucerne invites applications for our Visiting Fellows Programme 2026.

 

The fellowship programme supports junior scholars who wish to spend a period of time in Lucerne pursuing work that overlaps with or otherwise complements scholarly activities currently being pursued at the institute. During their stay, fellows enjoy access to our specialist resources, and are invited to share and develop their ideas with our community of faculty, researchers and students.  

 

Tailored to PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers, the programme is open to all working on interdisciplinary topics at the intersections between law, the humanities and the social sciences. Focusing on critical and theoretical approaches, the institute aims to bring together a diverse group of scholars who read and think widely across fields, contexts and disciplines.

 

The deadline for submissions is Tuesday 30 September 2025.

 

Further details here.

 

For a full list of funding opportunities at the institute, please see here.

Daniel on The Historiographical Problem of Municipal Bankruptcy Law

Josiah M. Daniel, III, Vinson & Elkins, LLP; University of Texas, Austin, Department of History, has published The Historiographical Problem of Municipal Bankruptcy Law. Here is the abstract.

This is the first archivally researched history of the genesis of municipal bankruptcy law, 1933-1938. It also compares the historical method with law and economics (L&E) for finding and telling the story. Congressman Hatton Sumners, Judiciary Committee chair, was the key actor. The legislative process was a laboratory for new forms of relief under the Bankruptcy Clause of the Constitution, seeking to relieve the insolvency experienced during the Depression by irrigation districts in “the Valley” of Texas, new towns in Florida, and elsewhere across the nation that could not collect taxes and pay their municipal bonds. State governments were helpless; the Constitution’s Contract Clause forbade “impairing the Obligation of Contracts,” and voluntary, private restructuring agreements were frustrated by the “holdout problem.” From a variety of models, it was composition with creditors that succeeded politically. Congress from 1933 to 1937 amended the Bankruptcy Act of 1898 by enacting the First and Second Municipal Bankruptcy Acts—known as Chapter IX—based on composition. L&E scholars credit this to freshman Florida congressman Mark Wilcox who worked in conjunction with a bondholders’ group. But it was Sumners who determined that the composition model was constitutional and politically most feasible. He navigated through opposition that insisted “bankruptcy” required turnover of the debtor’s assets in exchange for a discharge and that such legislation would destroy the municipal credit market. Municipal bankruptcy did leave all assets in the debtor’s hands and granted a discharge, and the credit market survived. And relevantly to a key issue in reorganizational bankruptcy today, Sumners crafted the first, and still the only, statutory injunctive relief applicable in the bankruptcy case of an artificial entity for the protection of nondebtor third parties—here, all officers and inhabitants of a municipal debtor—against creditors’ collection efforts. Municipal bankruptcy became a New Deal agenda item, and Franklin Roosevelt helped push the legislation to enactment in the spring of 1934. The Supreme Court invalidated the first act in the 1936 Ashton case, but Justice Cardozo dissented and outlined small changes that Sumners and Congress utilized in enacting the second act in 1937. Then Sumners led the oral arguments in 1938’s Bekins case that sustained it. Municipal bankruptcy law succeeded in effectuating municipal-bond restructuring agreements, and its essence lives in today’s Bankruptcy Code as Chapter 9, providing discharge of unpayable debt and more commonly furnishing the platform upon which towns and taxing districts negotiate such deals. Chapter IX worked in the past, and Chapter 9 works today. Sumners, not Wilcox, was primarily responsible for the legislation. Nothing was assured; the story demonstrates change over time, with Sumners the key actor. And the project of finding and interpreting the genesis of municipal bankruptcy is one for legal history, not for L&E, the author argues.

DOwnload the article from SSRN at the link.

Solove on Notable Privacy Books: A Journal Through History

Daniel J. Solove, George Washington University Law School, has published Notable Privacy Books: A Journey Through History. Here is the abstract.

In this essay, I discuss notable privacy books from the 1960s to 2020s – seven decades and more than 400 books. I briefly explain why each book is noteworthy. Examining the books chronologically also opens a window into history, as the books reflect the concerns, ideas, and terminology of the times in which they were written. The books also shed light on the discourse about privacy, which has evolved over the decades. In the past few decades, attention to privacy issues has significantly increased, and the number of books has proliferated. The books involve many perspectives, fields, and approaches: philosophical, journalistic, sociological, legal, literary, anthropological, political, empirical, psychological, and historical.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Carvalho on Three Books and the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court Today? What Do the Works of Kafka, Orwell, and Faoro Have In Common With Today's Brazilian Supreme Court?

Cristiano Carvalho, University of Sao Paulo, Faculty of Law, Department of Economic, Financial, and Tax Law, has published Three Books and the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court Today - What do the works of Kafka, Orwell, and Faoro have in common with today's Brazilian Supreme Court? originally in Portuguese on May 27, 2025 at www.migalhas.com.br. Here is the abstract.

This article examines the current role of the Brazilian Supreme Court through the lens of three seminal works: The Trial by Franz Kafka, 1984 by George Orwell, and Os Donos do Poder by Raymundo Faoro. Drawing parallels between literary dystopias and institutional reality, the text argues that the Court has progressively abandoned its constitutional mandate as guardian of rights and due process, assuming instead a protagonistic and often unchecked political role. The article reflects on the erosion of the rule of law, the inversion of legal logic, and the rise of selective repression, suggesting that future historians may view this period as one of the darkest chapters in Brazilian constitutional history.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Goldstein on James Wilson at the University of Pennsylvania

Ari Goldstein, University of Pennsylvania Law School, has published James Wilson at the University of Pennsylvania. Here is the abstract.

James Wilson was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, one of the principal architects of the United States Constitution, and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. But he is often remembered instead as the founder of the University of Pennsylvania Law School. This Essay interrogates that claim, arguing that Wilson’s relationship with the school is more interesting and complex than the title of ‘law school founder’ suggests. The University of Pennsylvania was one of the institutional foundations of Wilson’s life, serving as his employer and launchpad when he first arrived in Philadelphia and as a platform for his professional ambitions later in his career. In exchange, Wilson served as the school’s trustee and attorney, helping to save it from ruin when the Pennsylvania State Assembly abrogated its charter in the wake of national independence. When Wilson was appointed the school’s first professor of law, the appointment was the capstone, not the beginning, of a twenty-five-year relationship between a man and a school each essential to the American Founding.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Donaldson on Law, Legal Expertise, and the Peaceful Settlement of Disputes: Revisiting Early League Council Practice

Megan Donaldson, University College London Faculty of Laws, is publishing Law, Legal Expertise and the Peaceful Settlement of Disputes: Revisiting early League Council practice in the Cambridge Handbook on the League of Nations and International Law (Rasmussen, Ikonomou & van Leeuwen (eds), forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

Through a new account of three early disputes, this chapter revisits the novel role of the League Council in interstate dispute settlement. This role was delimited by a legal threshold: the question of whether disputes arose out of a matter purely within a state party's national jurisdiction or domaine reservé. Application of this test, nominally left to the Council, prompted considerable experimentation with institutional forms, and particularly recourse to 'committees of jurists', an understudied, flexible and protean mechanism which would go on to be deployed in many spheres of League activity. Drawing on contemporaneous legal scholarship and a range of archival materials, the chapter sketches the Council's procedural management of three key disputes, redirecting focus to the larger landscape of institutionalized dispute settlement beyond the Permanent Court of International Justice. In this larger landscape, the chapter teases out the diverse characteristics associated with recourse to avowedly 'legal' expertise and reasoning. This close reading of varied 'legal' deliberations recovers the multifaceted relationship between institutionalization and legalization of dispute settlement-and suggests the complexity of relations between legal reasoning and peaceful ordering, both for contemporaries and for us.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

New Online Program on Law, Literature, and Film Taught Entirely in Spanish To Launch in October 2025

 

The University of Maastricht announces a new program on Law, Literature, and Cinema, to be taught online (via Zoom) entirely in Spanish, and hosted at the University of Girona. This program might be the first one taught only in Spanish. It begins in October of this year.

Spanish-speaking students around the world interested in law and film will certainly be interested in investigating this program.

Here's the link to the program's webpage: https://www.fundacioudg.org/es/curso-especializacion-literatura-cine-derecho.html

Satrio on Between Two Worlds: Indonesia and the Spectre of the Dharmic-Infusted Constitutional Structure

Abdurrachman Satrio, Faculty of Law Universitas Trisakti; The Institute for Migrant Rights, is publishing Between Two Worlds: Indonesia and the Spectre of the Dharmic-Infused Constitutional Structure in Asian Comparative Comparative Constitutional Law 3: Constitutional Structure (Ngoc Son Bui, Mara Malagodi, and Christopher Michael Roberts, eds., Hart Publishing, 2025). Here is the abstract.

In examining constitutional structures, most constitutional law scholars and political scientists often focus on questions such as: does the structure use a presidential or parliamentary system of government? Federalism or unitary? Bicameral or unicameral? And how was the judicial review mechanism exercised? Essentially, the discussion of constitutional structure emphasises the governance of relations between different branches. Moreover, there are no clear benchmarks or standards in designing a constitutional structure. Every country’s constitutional design will be greatly influenced by various factors and challenges that it faces. For example, a post-colonial state usually imitates the constitutional structures of its former colonial masters. Or, how a country whose society is divided along socio-cultural backgrounds such as ethnicities, religions, and languages, usually tends to adopt various constitutional mechanisms that can guarantee an equal share of power among each group in its society, such as federalism or bicameralism. The text above has highlighted that in developing their constitutional structure, a country is mainly affected by the challenges or conditions in their respective societies. Hence, in this chapter, I want to explain Indonesia’s constitutional structure design and the constitutional framers’ motivations in developing such a structure. However, it should be noted that I want to demonstrate their motivation from the way they ‘interpret the world in which they are immersed,’ without being trapped by common errors that often caught many scholars studying the Indonesian constitutional system, that is to observe Indonesia selectively with Western eyes, which makes them not considering any conceptual difference regarding the meaning and practice of the Indonesian Constitution as something worth to be clarified.

Download the chapter from SSRN at the link.

Jones Corredera on The Origins of the Calvo Clause: Why Carlos Calvo Supported Napoleon III's Vision for Latin America

Edward Jones Corredera, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, is publishing The Origins of the Calvo Clause: Why Carlos Calvo Supported Napoleon III's Vision for Latin America in The Monroe Doctrine: History, Interpretations, Legacy (Cahen, Castellanos-Jankiewicz, and Simon, eds., 2025). Here is the abstract.

This chapter sheds light on the imperial origins of the Calvo Clause. It shows how and why Carlos Calvo, traditionally known as a stalwart supporter of the Monroe Doctrine, initially supported Napoleon III’s imperial vision for the advancement of the interests of the “Latin race” in Latin America. It emphasises how Calvo’s legal thought had a dual role as a critique and an instrument of imperial ambitions. It studies how Carlos Calvo’s diplomatic role as the representative of Paraguay tasked with the resolution of the Canstatt affair in Europe informed his views on international law, intervention, and the role of race in relations between the anglosphere, Latin America, and France. Drawing on his understudied Una página del derecho internacional (1862), this article shows how Calvo marshalled the comments on the affair of leading contemporary statesmen and jurists, such as Édouard Drouyn de Lhuys and Robert Phillimore, his querelle with Juan Bautista Alberdi, the father of Argentinian constitutionalism, and the support of his course of journalists writing in the leading European periodicals of his age, in order to encourage British officials to respect Paraguay’s sovereignty, and to bolster the principle that foreign claims had to be settled according to local laws. Above all, this chapter considers the continuities between Calvo’s defence of Napoleon III’s imperial gaze and his defence of the Monroe Doctrine, encouraging a more contextualised reading of the role of empire, intervention, and diplomacy in the emergence and popularisation of Calvo’s clause and doctrine.

Download the chapter from SSRN at the link.

Kammerhofer on Hans Kelsen

Joerg Kammerhofer, University of Freiburg Faculty of Law, has published Kelsen, Hans in the Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Legal Theory and Philosophy (John Linarelli, ed., Cheltenham: Edward Elgar 2025). Here is the abstract.

This entry in the Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Legal Theory and Philosophy traces the life of Hans Kelsen (1811-1973), the founder of the Pure Theory of Law, and summarises his major writings. The Pure Theory itself is described in a separate entry.

Download the entry from SSRN at the link.

Fletcher on Nanaboozhoo and Derrick Bell Go for a Walk

Matthew L. M. Fletcher, University of Michigan Law School, has published Nanaboozhoo and Derrick Bell Go for a Walk. Here is the abstract.

When the Anishinaabeg were new to Anishinaabewaki, they knew little about how to fend for themselves. The animals and plants took pity on them and taught the Anishinaabeg. One winter, as the food stores of the Anishinaabeg were running out, an ininaatig (maple tree) saw an Anishinaabe innini (man) weakly scavenge for food. The ininaatig decided to offer part of itself to the Anishinaabeg. The ininaatig told the innini to cut off a branch. Ininaatigwabo, delicious, thick maple syrup, oozed from the stump. There was enough to feed the innini for many days. And there were many, many ininaatigoog (maple trees) to feed all of the Anishinaabeg until the end of spring and into the summer. The ininaatigwabo was so plentiful, delicious, and easy to harvest that the Anishinaabeg became lazy and fat. They did not farm, hunt, or fish in the summertime like they usually did. As fall approached, the Anishinaabeg had done nothing to prepare for the winter. Nanaboozhoo approached and saw the Anishinaabeg laying under the ininaatigoog, drinking the ininaatigwabo and doing little else. He said, "This will not do." He decided to teach the Anishinaabeg a lesson. He visited a nearby river and took many gallons of water to the tops of the ininaatigoog. He poured the water into the trees until they were saturated. The ininaatigwabo became more watery and bland. After that action, it would take many gallons of sap to make the delicious ininaatigwabo. The Anishinaabeg would have to work for their harvest. And they would also return to their regular activities.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

From the University of Coimbra: Announcing the PhD in Contemporary Studies

From António Ventura, Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies:

A PhD to Understand Complexity

 

The Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies (CEIS20) announces the PhD in Contemporary Studies (DEC), which prepares a new generation of researchers to better understand and act on the uncertainties of contemporary complexity, in an intense environment of interdisciplinary knowledge creation.

It brings together an ambitious, diverse and aggregating programme of different scientific areas:
        - Humanities,
        - Arts
        - Social Sciences
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Call For Expressions of Interest: International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication, Section 26: Criminal Law and Communication in Immersive and Transnational Digital Environments

 Call For Expressions of Interest

INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK OF LEGAL LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION 

🚨 Call for Interest – Section 26: Criminal Law and Communication in Immersive and Transnational Digital Environments 🚨

 

 

 

Editor: Sou Hee Yang

 

We invite scholars, legal practitioners, linguists, and interdisciplinary researchers to express interest in contributing to Section 26 of our upcoming volume, which will explore how legal language and communicative frameworks are adapting to the complexities of crimes committed in immersive and transnational digital spaces—including the metaverse, VR platforms, and decentralized online networks.

 

This section goes beyond conventional cybercrime. We're particularly interested in new legal challenges around virtual sexual violence, identity manipulation, consent violations, and non-physical forms of harm that occur in avatar-mediated or digitally simulated environments.

 

https://meteor.springer.com/ihllc

 

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

 

🔹 Linguistic and legal definitions of violence and consent in immersive interactions

🔹 Comparative criminal law across jurisdictions (UK, South Korea, US, and beyond)

🔹 Virtual groping, stalking, and coercion – how law responds to new forms of sexual harm

🔹 Legal semiotics – what avatar gestures mean in court

🔹 Jurisdictional friction and the linguistic politics of cross-border prosecution

🔹 Terminological innovation – how laws invent language for emerging crimes

🔹 Discursive representation of digital victims and justice for the “invisible” harmed

 

This section foregrounds comparative and cross-cultural perspectives, legal and linguistic innovation, and the pressing question of how legal meaning is made in digitally immersive and borderless environments.

 

📢 If your work intersects with law, language, digital environments, or virtual harm, we’d love to hear from you.

 

📩 To express interest or request more information, please contact: 

Sou Hee Yang

 

 ssophiey@toki.waseda.jp

 

Help us shape the conversation at the frontiers of law, language, and digital life.

Feel free to share widely across your networks! 🌐 #DigitalLaw #VirtualHarm #LegalSemiotics #MetaverseJustice #CriminalLaw #LegalLinguistics

 

Call For Expressions of Interest: International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication, Section 12: Constitutionality, Normativity, and the Limits of Law

 Call For Expressions of Interest

INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK OF LEGAL LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION - SPRINGER

 

https://meteor.springer.com/ihllc

 

📣 Call for Interests – Contribute to the International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication

 

🔍 Section 12: Constitutionality, Normativity, and the Limits of Law

📘 Editors: Ana Margarida Simões Gaudêncio & José Manuel Aroso Linhares

 

We are currently seeking expressions of interest for contributions to Section 12 of the International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication. This section invites critical engagement with the boundaries, authority, and evolving semiotics of law in the face of global challenges and shifting normative landscapes.

 

This section explores:

⚖️ How constitutional and normative frameworks define (and redefine) the authority of law

🌐 How global emergencies, digital governance, and environmental crises test the limits of legal systems

🧭 How legal autonomy, inter-semiotic practices, and normative conflicts shape law’s practical and theoretical horizon

 

Key themes include:

 

The Semiotics of Constitutional Authority

Normative Clashes in Contemporary Governance

Landmark Cases Testing Legal Boundaries

Global Crises and Emerging Constitutional Norms

Juridical Autonomy and the Limits of Law

The Role of Intersemioticity in Legal Discourse

The Counterpoint between Juridicity and Constitutionality

Rethinking Instrumentalism and Conventionalism in Legal Reasoning

This is a unique opportunity to contribute to a landmark international volume and to engage with foundational questions concerning the identity and limits of law in an increasingly plural, contested, and interconnected world.

 

✉️ Interested in contributing?

We welcome abstracts, ideas, or initial proposals. Please get in touch with us via email at jmarolinh@gmail.com & anagaude@fd.uc.pt

 

Let’s rethink the frontiers of legal meaning and authority together.

 

Wasiq and Magoge on the Epistemology of Legal Maxims and Hermeneutics in Common Law Jurisprudence

Mohammad Rasikh Wasiq, ILS Law College, and Jackson Simango Magoge, National Institute of Transport; NALSAR University of Law, have published Epistemology of Legal Maxims and Hermeneutics in Common Law Jurisprudence. Here is the abstract.

The objective of this seminal inquiry is to elucidate the nuanced paradigm of legal interpretation and reasoning inherent to the common law milieu by interrogating the hermeneutics of legal maxims through an epistemological lens. This research endeavors to delineate an analogy between the theoretical constructs and practical manifestations of common law principles and legal maxims, thereby illuminating their evolving interpretive frameworks and intrinsic scientific value.The analysis encompasses several salient dimensions: the nature of interpretive mechanisms; the interplay between legal innovation and its socioeconomic ramifications; and the historical evolution of legal maxims, particularly in relation to the interpretation of criminal cases across diverse jurisdictions. To yield substantial insights into the interpretive clarity of legal maxims and to navigate the dialectic between ambiguity and interpretation, this study employs a rigorously conceived analytical framework, specifically tailored to accommodate the inherent complexities and paradoxes of legal maxims.It is pertinent to note that this study is confined to the practices of common law and predominantly utilizes doctrinal research methodologies. In doing so, it establishes a robust foundation for identifying the junctures where contemporary jurisprudential challenges intersect with traditional legal maxims. By engaging with the epistemological underpinnings that shape and define legal thought within the common law framework, this investigation aspires to further enrich the discourse on legal hermeneutics, advancing our comprehension of the mechanisms through which legal meaning is constructed and contested.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.