Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities (ASLCH) Accepting Submissions for Julien Mezey Dissertation Award

 

The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities is currently accepting submissions for the Julien Mezey Dissertation Award. This annual prize is awarded to the dissertation that most promises to enrich and advance interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of law, culture and the humanities.

Applicants eligible for the 2026 award must have defended their dissertations successfully between March 2025 and March 2026.

The Association will cover the Mezey Prize winner’s travel and lodging costs to the annual meeting.

Nominations for the 2026 award must be received on or before March 15, 2026.

Each applicant must submit the following:

1. a letter by the nominee detailing the genesis, goal, and contribution of the dissertation;
2. a letter of support from a faculty member familiar with the work;
3. an abstract, outline, and selected chapter of the dissertation;
4. contact information for the nominee.

Please submit these materials to lch@lawculturehumanities.com.

More information about this award is available on our website.

Smith on Holistic Constitutional Interpretation

Michael L. Smith, University of Oklahoma College of Law, has published Holistic Constitutional Interpretation. Here is the abstract.

This Article identifies and advocates for holistic constitutional interpretation, a method in which interpreters consider disputed constitutional terms or provisions in the context of the Constitution as a whole to gain insight into otherwise inscrutable textual questions. Holistic interpretation resembles, but is distinct from, alternative methods like structural argument and intratextualism—maintaining a focus on constitutional text that distinguishes it from structural methods, but approaching context in a more flexible manner than the more cabined intratextualist approach. While some scholars recognize holistic interpretation as a distinct method, their focus is often fixed on federal constitutional law. This Article adds to existing discussions of holistic interpretation by demonstrating how the method pervades the interpretive methods of a wide range of legal topics. Courts interpret contracts, wills, deeds, judgments, and statutes in a holistic manner—urging consideration of the whole document when interpreting a provision in dispute. Holistic interpretation is common in state constitutional cases as well, with the vast majority of state supreme courts purporting to interpret state constitutions as a whole. Holistic interpretation enriches textualist methodology, which might otherwise become overly technical or hyper-fixated on arcane definitional and grammatical disputes. It also takes the wind out of the sails of alternate interpretive methodologies that thrive on perceptions of ambiguity and uncertainty. While its implications for individual rights are mixed, holistic interpretation strengthens textualist methodology and is a useful tool for those who might otherwise be troubled by abstract or ambiguous constitutional language.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Charles and Gelbach on Bruen's Tenth Amendment Problem

Jacob D. Charles, Pepperdine University School of Law, and Jonah B. Gelbach, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, have published Bruen's Tenth Amendment Problem. Here is the abstract.

In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Supreme Court applied a novel history-and-tradition framework to Second Amendment claims. That test keys the validity of modern gun laws to their similarity with historical analogues. Although scores of commentators have critiqued that approach, this Article identifies a critical constitutional flaw that has escaped focused attention: if Bruen’s test is not recalibrated, it violates the Tenth Amendment. The Tenth Amendment preserves to States all powers the U.S. Constitution did not divest from them. This Article argues that a crucial reserved power is the power of legislative choice—the States’ second-order power to choose whether to act or not, including whether to change course. Bruen’s requirement that each modern law match a historical precursor infringes on this reserved power, because it impermissibly removes from today’s legislatures a whole vista of choices available to their Founding-era predecessors. It withdraws a reserved State power that was woven into the Constitution when the Second Amendment was ratified: the power to do things differently today than before. In light of this conflict, the Article urges the Court to clarify that judges must implement any historical test in a way that respects the power of legislative choice. First, the Court should accord historical silence contextually appropriate weight. It can do so by recognizing and adopting a principle from the law of evidence, which deems silence in the face of an accusation probative only if the circumstances called for contradiction (what we label “the 3C test”); historical silence should be probative only if circumstances otherwise called for regulation. Second, at the same time it devalues silence, the Court should simultaneously expand the universe of historical evidence relevant to the inquiry. Both moves would better serve the end of respecting constitutionally-guaranteed State prerogatives while safeguarding individual rights.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Stevenson and Cox on Eugenic Criminology and the Birth of Predictive Algorithms in Criminal Justice

Megan T. Stevenson, University of Virginia School of Law, and Robynn Cox, UC Riverside, University of Southern California, Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, have published Eugenic Criminology and the Birth of Predictive Algorithms in Criminal Justice. Here is the abstract.

This Article tells the story of the birth of predictive algorithms in criminal justice. Known as risk assessments, these tools are widely used today to make decisions about bail, sentencing, and parole. Their roots trace back to the 1920s, when statistical prediction tools were first proposed for use in criminal justice decision-making. In this Article, we show that risk assessment found its origins in the ideas of eugenic criminology: namely, that crime is mostly caused by an inferior subclass of humanity, tainted from birth. Risk assessment was conceptualized as a way of sorting between the "normals" who were amenable to reform and the "sub-normals" who, due to their inferior genes, were not. Such "born criminals" were seen as requiring indefinite confinement within isolated penal colonies in order to protect society from crime, prevent procreation, and provide care for those in need of paternalistic guidance. We tell this story in part because it is a fascinating piece of history, marked by bigotry, bravado, and an almost fanatical optimism about mankind's ability to engineer a perfect society. But we also tell it because the ideas and practices of eugenic criminology are not widely known. While "tainted origins" do not automatically condemn the ongoing use of risk assessment, understanding history can help identify ways that the past lives on in the present.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Shugerman and Handelsman on Memory Warriors, Pluralists and Abnegators in Constitu[t]ional Interpretation: An Essay on Jack Balkin's Pluralist Originalism in Memory and Authority

Jed H. Shugerman, Boston University School of Law, and Zach S. Handelsman, McGill University, Department of Political Science, have published Memory Warriors, Pluralists and Abnegators in Constitu[t]ional Interpretation: An Essay on Jack Balkin's Pluralist Originalism in Memory and Authority.

Jack Balkin’s Memory and Authority: The Uses of History in Constitutional Interpretation brings into conversation the scholarly insights of constitutional theory, history, and the growing field of “the politics of memory,” especially the concept of the “memory entrepreneur.” Balkin appropriately connects the memory wars in American constitutional law back to Eastern European memory wars during the World Wars and their aftermath. Prompted by Balkin, we turn to Jan Kubik and Michael Bernhard edited volume Twenty Years After Communism (2014), which has become even more widely influential after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and a new round of Eastern European memory wars. They propose four categories of memory entrepreneurs (“mnemonic actors”) in post-Soviet countries: “mnemonic warriors” who claim a single “true” interpretation of the past, opposed to all others who cultivate “wrong” or “false” interpretations; “mnemonic pluralists” who embrace multiple narratives and traditions; “mnemonic abnegators” who deny the significance of the past in favor of the present; and “mnemonic prospectives” who have a faith in an inevitable future (e.g., utopian Marxist historical materialists). We suggest this taxonomy may be a helpful guide for American constitutional politics. The “memory pluralist” category is perhaps the majority of American constitutional law professors, maybe even a plurality of the U.S. Supreme Court and the federal and state bench, who do not give exclusive weight to history, but still give substantial weight to history (e.g., Philip Bobbit’s modalities, Balkin’s “living originalism” and his “thin originalism.”). Some “thick originalists” are more “Memory Anti-Pluralists” than “Warriors.” We reserve the category of “Memory Warrior” for those constitutional interpreters who are consciously fighting for an exclusive, comprehensive national narrative of us vs. them. These warriors include ideological originalists (especially the ones who seem to rely on a general narrative arc rather than specific historical evidence), but they also may include the “history-and-tradition” conservatives, common-good constitutionalists, and perhaps some progressive-left memory warriors who have a more exclusive interpretation of past events than pluralists do. Balkin rightly criticizes originalism for its “memory entrepreneurialism” that narrows the field of who “counts” and who is excluded, exacerbating constitutional law’s democratic deficit. We think the “memory warrior” category helps sort out the more problematic approaches, and we suggest a solution: a high burden of proof about consensus and public meaning to mitigate this democratic deficit, to reduce judicial legitimacy problems, and to slow down “warrior” judicial activism.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Varsava and Watson on Originalism's General-Law Turn

Nina Varsava, University of Wisconsin Law School, and Bill Watson, University of Illinois College of Law, have published Originalism's General-Law Turn.

Originalists are increasingly turning to a general-law theory of constitutional rights. Under this theory, constitutional enactment declared but did not create constitutional rights. The content of those rights was, and remains, a question of general law—a species of unwritten law, commonly employed at the Founding, that transcends jurisdictional boundaries. This preoccupation with general law has precipitated a wave of scholarship developing general-law accounts of various constitutional rights. Yet the nature of general law itself remains poorly understood. This Article offers a theory of general law. Using philosophical methods to reexamine early American cases and recent work in legal history, the Article finds that general law depended on morality. To the extent that constitutional law consists of general law, identifying constitutional law calls for moral reasoning. This is not pure moral reasoning employed from an armchair but rather applied moral reasoning that accounts for customs, legal texts, institutional roles, and other social facts, all filtered through lawyers' specialized training and experience. The implications for originalism are striking. First, the general-law theory of constitutional rights requires reconceiving the core originalist principles of fixation and constraint, as general law satisfies those principles only in the sense and to the extent that morality does. Second, applying general law can be seen as either finding or making law; the distinction turns on one's view of the nature of law and is of no consequence for adjudication. Third, the theory supports an approach to adjudication that centers on moral reasoning and is consistent with a range of nonoriginalist approaches.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

McNeil on The Intertemporal Law Doctrine's Application to the Acquisition of Colonies in the Americas

Kent McNeil, Osgoode Hall Law School, has published The Intertemporal Law Doctrine’s Application to the Acquisition of Colonies in the Americas. Gere is the abstract.

The intertemporal doctrine provides that international disputes have to be resolved in accordance with the international law that existed at the time the events giving rise to the dispute took place, not at the time the matter is adjudicated.1 It is thought to be impermissible to apply current standards to events that occurred in the past when different legal principles and rules were the norm. This doctrine applies as much to acquisition of colonies as to other international issues.2 So in order to determine whether a European nation acquired sovereignty over an overseas territory, it is necessary to determine and apply the international law extant at the time sovereignty was claimed. As international law has evolved from the time European overseas colonial expansion began in the fifteenth century, this means that different standards can apply in diverse colonial contexts, depending on when sovereignty is alleged to have been acquired.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Stump on Historical Beginnings: Appalachian Coal and the Coming of Industrial Capitalism

Nicholas Stump, West Virginia College of Law, has published Historical Beginnings: Appalachian Coal and the Coming of Industrial Capitalism.

This chapter provides an overview of the core historical events that shaped modern Appalachia. After a brief section detailing the essential geographic and natural resource profile of the region, the development of human communities in Appalachia is explored—commencing with Indigenous peoples and extending through the Euro-American conquest and colonization. The general character of preindustrial Appalachia then is covered, before this chapter turns to the late nineteenth-century period of rapid timber- and coal-based industrial growth. Indeed, the coming of industrialized coal and other industries—which occurred within the broader context of period liberal capitalism—would, in short order, create profoundly negative social, cultural, economic, and environmental conditions in Appalachia. This period’s developments also set the stage for the subsequent century and a half; that is, from the late 1800s onwards, the fossil fuel hegemony would form the cornerstone of the profoundly exploitative Appalachian ecological political economy.

Download the chapter from SSRN at the link.

Yeager on Discursive Footnotes

Daniel B. Yeager, California Western School of Law, has published Discursive Footnotes. Here is the abstract.

This essay offers a comprehensive account of the past forty years of scholarship on footnotes within law. Not just any old footnotes, but footnotes that are discursive in form, that is, those with an expressive rather than bibliographic function. After contrasting the function of discursive footnotes in judicial opinions with those in academic legal literature, this essay identifies and decodes a comparatively hidden avant garde footnotes literature. Borrowing from techniques of literary criticism, that literature, properly understood, provides a foundation for our making more subtle judgments about both the relation of primary to secondary texts and the allocation of responsibilities between readers and writers.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

The 2026 International Osnabrueck Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of the Law

From Peter Schneck, Director, OSI (Osnabrueck Summer Institute)

Announcing the 2026 International Osnabrueck Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of the Law: 

"Law in Transit - Moving Subjects, Universal Rights, and the Contingencies of Recognition"

University of Osnabrueck, Germany
July 18-26, 2026 

For more information, follow this link. 

Volpi on Legal and Political Constitutionalism from Schmitt and Kelsen to Contemporary Debates: Notes on Constitutional Guardianship and Democracy

Alessandro Volpi, Max Planck Institute fr the Study of Crime, Security and Law, has published Legal and Political Constitutionalism from Schmitt and Kelsen to Contemporary Debates: Notes on Constitutional Guardianship and Democracy as Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law Working Paper No. 2026/01. Here is the abstract.

This paper situates the Carl Schmitt-Hans Kelsen dispute on constitutional guardianship within the now-standard categories of political and legal constitutionalism. It examines the conflict between political and legal understandings of the constitution and of constitutional adjudication, alongside divergent conceptions of democracy that strain this institution (notably, the countermajoritarian difficulty). It begins with a close reconstruction of the Weimar-era debate-its legal and political details-covering competing views of adjudication, the constitution as a set of norms or a political decision, and alternative models of guarantees. Through comparative analysis, the paper then traces lines of continuity and discontinuity between those positions and contemporary discussions of constitutional guardianship within debates over legal versus political constitutionalism. What emerges is the enduring persistence of theoretical alternatives that deeply structure the idea of constitutional guardianship in a democratic system. At the same time, we find differences in interpretation and in proposals for legal politics concerning substantive versus procedural conceptions of the constitution, as well as divergent understandings of democratic conflict and pluralism and their implications for constitutional stability. The paper concludes by showing how certain theoretical contradictions at the heart of constitutional guardianship resist easy resolution and must be inhabited, rather than definitively overcome.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Davies on One Complicated Hour

Ross E. Davies, George Mason University Law School; The Green Bag; has published One Complicated Hou in Regulation and Imagination: Legal, Literary and Historpical Perspectives on Highway Robbery (Green Bag Press, 2025). Here is the abstract. Regulation and Imagination: Legal, Literary and Historical Perspectives on Highway Robbery (Green Bag Press 2025)

Can a Wall Street tycoon be a pirate? Can a judge?

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Stigall on The Rousseau-Portalis Doctrine: French Legal Thought and the Law of War--Parts I and II

Dan E. Stigall, George Washington University Law School; U. S. Department of Justice, has published The Rousseau-Portalis Doctrine: French Legal Thought and the Law of War – Parts I and II as Lieber Institute for Law & Warfare, Articles of War (USMA), GWU Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2025-80. Here is the abstract.

The Rousseau-Portalis Doctrine is the idea that war is a relationship between states rather than individuals and, accordingly, military operations must be conducted exclusively against the enemy forces and not against civilians who do not take an active part in hostilities. Grounded in Grotian thought but enhanced and refined by Enlightenment thinkers, this revolutionary idea has had a significant impact on the law of war over the past two centuries. The doctrine is understood today as a salient component in the undergirding framework of the law of war. This is a two-part series illustrating the impact of French legal thought on the formation of the law of war with a specific focus on the Rousseau-Portalis Doctrine. The first part provides a brief background on Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Jean-Étienne-Marie Portalis, their views on the law of nations, and their ideas that form the substance of the Rousseau-Portalis Doctrine. The second part traces the evolution of that doctrine and discusses its impact on the law of war.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.