A New Book On Law, Literature, and Narrative

Jose Calvo Gonzalez of the University of Malaga has published an interesting new book, Direito Curvo (Porto Alegre: Editora Livraria do Advogado, 2013). The title translates as Curvable Law. More information here. See the table of contents here.

"Suits" Returns For a Fourth Season

Suits, the USA legal drama, will be back on the USA network for a fourth season. More here from The Hollywood Reporter. The show, starring Gabriel Macht and Patrick J. Adams, features ethically challenged attorneys at a high profile firm who take on interesting cases.

Where The Girls Aren't

Ryan A. Malphurs, Courtroom Sciences Inc., Jaime Bochantin, DePaul University, L. Hailey Drescher, University of Kansas, and Melissa Wallace Framer, Arizona State University, Hugh Downs School of Human Communication, have published Too Much Frivolity, Not Enough Femininity: A Study of Gender and Humor at the U.S. Supreme Court. Here is the abstract.

The four authors in this study took on the exhilarating task of listening to 79 oral arguments in the Supreme Court’s 2011-2012 term. After two years spent recovering from oral argument overload, the authors have prepared a study that ingeniously tricks readers into reading a study on humor that is really about gender inequality at the Supreme Court and in the field of Law. Initially tallying instances of un-transcribed laughter, the authors — prompted by Hillary Clinton’s urging — began noticing gender and humor discrepancies between the justices and the advocates; what started as a simple humor tabulation devolved into important research. In the following study, the authors lull readers into complacency by offering data related to humor, but then shock their audience with serious data about gender inequality — ruining any fun that readers might have had. It’s true the authors show that the Supreme Court is far funnier than previously thought, and that Justice Scalia enjoys bullying Justice Breyer; however, potential readers should turn back now, because what follows is mind numbing boredom and “PC” discussions about gender veiled within a “humor” study.

The authors would like readers to know that the following study, if you haven’t been able to tell already, does not follow traditional scholarly conventions. “Why?” you may ask, because it would be boring and no one would read it, duh. The authors have endeavored to make this study both interesting in the data and entertaining to read — a truly ground-breaking feat in scholarly studies. Great risk comes with great rewards, and we’re just hoping someone other than ourselves will read this study.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Another TV Lawyer Drama

The tv series Betrayal, based on the Dutch series Overspel, debuted on ABC on September 29, 2013 in a lineup that includes lead-ins of Once Upon a Time and Revenge. The show features Hannah Ware as Sara Hanley, a photographer married to prosecutor Drew Stafford (Chris Johnson), who begins a torrid affair with attorney Jack McAllister (Stuart Townsend), in-house counsel for a powerful businessman. Fairly soon, there's guilt, then murder, then conflict as Sara's husband and her lover clash in the courtroom.

Henry Thomas (remember him as the adorable Elliott in E.T.?) is all grown up as the son of businessman Thatcher Karsten, who's played by the wonderful James Cromwell (Farmer Hoggett in Babe). Others in this show include Wendy Moniz as Elaine McAllister, Jack's wife and Thatcher Karsten's daughter, Elizabeth McLaughlin as Valerie McAllister, Jack and Elaine's daughter, and Braeden Lemasters as Victor McAllister, Jack and Elaine's son.

Franklin & Bash Will Return For Another Season

TNT has renewed the legal series Franklin & Bash for a new season (its fourth). The show, which stars Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Breckin Meyer, features two lawyers who delight in breaking the rules in order to win their cases.

The Influence of Robert M. Cover

Roy Andrew Partain, Soongsil College of Law, has published Ecologies of Paideic Law: Environmental Law and Robert M. Coverʼs Jurisprudence of 'Nomos and Narratives' , at 24 Hanyang Law Review 423 (2013). Here is the abstract.

This article provides an extensive introduction to the legal philosophy of Robert M. Cover and begins a discussion on how his principles of jurisgenesis could be applied in environmental law. This article suggests that a deeper appreciation of Cover’s jurisprudence could better assist in the development of climate change legislation.
Robert M. Cover was a legal scholar at Yale Law School who died in 1986, tragically early in his career, leaving many aspects of his innovative jurisprudence incomplete. Despite those circumstances, he has become one of the top-most cited legal scholars in American jurisprudence. In particular, he is best known for his “Nomos and Narratives” theory of law. Cover’s legal philosophy holds that the laws and narrative traditions of a culture cannot be critically separated, that they must be understood to operate intertwined. Further, he argued certain aspects of the narrative cultures must be included in the concept of law, in the corpus juris, alongside more explicit forms such as constitutions, legislations, and judicial decisions. Thus, Cover argued, legal scholars have been overly focused on one type of law to the neglect of other types of law.

Cover introduced the concept of paideic jurisgenesis and of jurispathic judges to counter the legal theories of H.L.A. Hart, Hans Kelsen, and Ronald Dworkin. Cover’s theory provides a more complete framework to answer Dworkin’s question of how judges resolve ‘hard’ legal cases. A ‘hard’ case exists when both sides of an adversarial courtroom can provide sound legal support for their arguments; Dworkin posited that jurisprudence is simply the investigation of how judges resolve that conflict. Whereas Hart, Kelsen and Dworkin saw a shortage of law, of a need to explain how law was created by judges, Cover concluded to the contrary that law actually existed in over-supply and that judges act to eliminate surplus laws to resolve ‘hard’ problems.

Cover balanced the development of paideic laws, i.e. narratively evolved laws, with the controls of imperial, i.e. governmental, legislation and jurispathic judges. Cover named this universe of legal meaning and context-rich interpretations ‘nomos’, borrowing from the Greek language for ‘law’. Cover proposed that social groups created laws via social cohesive narratives of obligations, coercion, and socially-endorsed enforcement. But this organic process of legislation could create too many overlapping legal systems as each society contains multiple social groups. Legislatures were seen by Cover as providing a democratic process to select Kelsenian Grundnormen to better align the diverse legal narratives of multiple social groups. Cover then saw the key role of judges as jurispathic, to eliminate legal chaos when too much law exists.

A legal scholar, in Cover’s world, has two roles. First, to observe and appreciate the organic and paideic narratives that create the laws in the legal scholar’s nomos-verse. Second, to provide the legal scientific understandings necessary to support the judiciary’s jurispathic duties. In both cases, a legal scholar has the opportunity to engage and interact in the development of law. A legal scholar can become engaged in the development of the paideic narratives and social dialogs that create paideic law. A scholar can assist in the development of the imperial legal structures that provide stability and unity to the social group. Cover was particularly interested in the development of Human Rights and Civil Rights laws, but his theories and techniques have found applications in many other areas of law.

This article provides a preliminary example of Cover’s theories in regards to the development of climate change legislation. The article takes notice of the historical problems to develop and enforce climate change legislation. The article examines Cover’s theories to uncover the practical legal and policy tools suggested by his theories of jurisprudence. The article suggests a list of methods wherein Cover’s theories could be applied to climate change legislation.

Donwload the article from SSRN at the link. 

The History of European Legal Culture

Helge Dedek, Mc Gill University Faculty of Law, Institute of Comparative Law, is publishing When Law Became Cultivated: ‘European Legal Culture’ between Kultur and Civilization in Towards a European Legal Culture (G. Helleringer & K. Purnhagen eds.; C. H. Beck/Hart: Munich-Oxford, 2014) (forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

In this contribution, I invite the reader to approach the concept of ‘European legal culture’ from a historical perspective. Such an approach is helpful in two ways: first, it helps to attune one’s ear to the shades of meaning of ‘culture’ and to enhance awareness of the fact that ‘legal culture’ may have a different ring in different legal traditions. Second, as we shall see, it is the discourse on ‘legal culture’ itself, and especially the discourse on ‘European legal culture’, that seeks historical legitimacy by cultivating foundational narratives, invoking, in particular, the writings of the German Historical School and its most well-known proponent, Friedrich Carl von Savigny. I will present ‘snapshots’ of some of the foundational moments in the career of the concept of ‘legal culture’, and then, after a short comparison with contemporary English usage, set out to inquire which role ‘legal culture’ may be said to play in Savigny’s famous manifesto, Vom Beruf unserer Zeit für Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft (Of the Vocation of our Age for Legislation and Legal Science, written in 1814). I want to suggest that re-reading Savigny’s text with the historical semantics of ‘culture’ between the French ‘civilisation’ and the German ‘Kultur’ in mind will help us to see more clearly some aspects of the text that are at times obscured in its ‘culturist’ readings that are too eager to find a romantic conception ‘Volksgeistlehre’ in Savigny’s work. These often neglected aspects might hint to an openness toward the possibility of thinking a legal culture beyond the nation state, and might give us, perhaps counterintuitively, some useful cues for a reflection on possible theoretical approaches to a ‘European legal culture’.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link. 

Ada Lovelace Day

Even though we missed it by a day...a slight detour for a tribute to Ada Lovelace, unfortunately less well known as the mother of computer programming than as the daughter of George Gordon, Lord Byron and Anna Isabella Milbanke. More about remembering Ada and her work here at the Wellcome Trust's blog. A mini bio here by Agnes Scott College's Dr. Betty Toole.

Twelve Inquiring Jurors

Steven Lubet, Northwestern University School of Law, and Kevin Chang have published Stupid Juror Questions? as Northwestern Public Law Research Paper No. 13-32. Here is the abstract.

Everyone knows there is no such thing as a stupid question. Well, at least every parent, teacher, counselor, advisor, librarian and boss is evidently aware of the truth of that simple maxim. Nonetheless, the obvious utility of asking questions – seeking wisdom; requesting clarification; locating information – appears to have eluded certain high officials in the justice system of the United Kingdom, not to mention a raft of journalists, a clutch of parliamentarians, and a good swath of the British public, all of whom expressed consternation at a series of written questions posed by the jurors in a high profile, though relatively low stakes, criminal case. “Do we need IQ tests for juries?” wondered one pundit, who fumed that the jury’s questions had “exposed a breathtaking level of ignorance and stupidity.” Another echoed the thought, asking whether the jury was “stupid or just confused?” This article analyzes the ten infamous questions posed by the jury in the British trial of Vicki Pryce, who was accused of “perverting the course of justice” in an attempt to advance the political career of her now-former husband. Drawing upon legal history, criminal procedure, and cognition science, we conclude that the jury’s questions were far more perceptive than the court and the British pundits realized.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link. 

Taking Ally Seriously

John Denvir, University of San Francisco School of Law, has published Romancing the Law: Ally McBeal and the Art of Subversive Comedy as a University of San Francisco Research Paper. Here is the abstract.

The television sitcom Ally McBeal drew large audiences and won many awards, but the series also had detractors who felt that it demeaned both women lawyers and the legal profession. People loved and hated the show, but no one has thought it a serious commentary on the American legal system.

I think it is time to take Ally McBeal seriously. I believe that its creator David E. Kelley has used the narrative devices of romantic comedy to make a subtle but powerful critique of the American legal system and to suggest a new future for law. It is an excellent example of what I call subversive comedy.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link. 

Call For Papers

From Bob Jarvis, Nova Southeastern Law Center, news of a publication opportunity in the area of U.S. legal history (pedagogy):

The October 2013 issue of the American Journal of Legal History (www.ajlh.org) contains a symposium on teaching legal history in U.S. law schools.  As a follow-up, the symposium’s essays are going to be republished in a book entitled “Teaching Legal History:  Comparative Perspectives.”  The book’s publisher is the esteemed London firm of Wildy, Simmonds & Hill.
 Because the space available in the book is greater than what was available in the Journal, we are seeking additional contributions that follow the style of the existing essays.  Accordingly, we would be pleased to receive your submission.  The operational details are as follows:
 1)      Completed essays are due by February 15, 2014 and should be e-mailed, preferably in Word, to Professor Bob Jarvis, Nova Southeastern University, at jarvisb@nova.edu.  This deadline is firm and extensions will not be possible.  Acceptance/declination decisions will be made as soon after the deadline as possible.
 2)      Essays cannot exceed 1,500 words and should describe how you teach the course and why you teach it as you do.  The word length will be strictly enforced and footnotes, if any, should be kept to a minimum.
 3)      While we’re open to a wide variety of styles and approaches, we really want practical (as opposed to theoretical) pieces.   In other words, we want to know what people are really doing in their classrooms when they teach legal history.
 4)      Although we appreciate that many folks include a lot of legal history in their non-legal history courses (particularly if they teach, for example, constitutional law), this book, like the symposium, is limited to actual legal history courses taught in U.S. law schools.
 5)      Lastly, if you do not have access to a copy of the Journal, please e-mail Bob Jarvis for a sample essay.

New Books In Law and the Humanities

Some new publications of interest:

Julen Etxabe, The Experience of Tragic Judgment (Routledge, 2012). 

Richard Dawson, Justice As Attunement: Transforming Constitutions in Law, Literature, and the Rest of Life (Routledge, 2014).

Peter Goodrich, Legal Emblems and the Art of Law: Obiter Depicta as the Vision of Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

Thanks for Daniela Carpi for alerting me to these publications.

Fox Ramps Up a New Legal Drama

Experienced showrunner Howard Gordon (24, Homeland) is putting together a new legal drama with 24 executive producer Evan Katz for Fox. The show, Trial of the Century, which will feature Richard Shepard as director, will star a Latina attorney "working on a unique high profile case." But who will play the "young Latina attorney"? Stay tuned.

More here from The Hollywood Reporter.

The Blood Libel Legend

John Obi Ifediora, University of Wisconsin, has published The Blood Libel Legend: Its Longevity and Popularity. Here is the abstract.

Jewish ritual murder accusations, in their common apprehension, refer to alleged killing of Christians by Jews in furtherance of religious rites, or specifically Jewish practice. The blood libel, however, is a special variant, and a subset of the broader ritual murder accusation, and came much later into the panoply of accusations leveled at the Jews in the Middle Ages. This essay seeks to address the explanations given by scholars for the popularity and longevity of the blood libel as it touches on the following aspects of the legend: what gave rise to the blood accusations in the Middle Ages when the consequences were so horrific and brutal? Who “first” made the accusations against the Jews in medieval times, and who stood to benefit from such charges, or were they occasioned by economic, social, and religious circumstances that defined medieval Europe? But most importantly, what sustained and popularized it from the twelfth to the twentieth century?

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Love As a Contract

Martha M. Ertman, University of Maryland School of Law, has published Love and Contracts in Don Quixote in Don Quixote: Interdisciplinary Connections 251 (Matthew D. Warshawsky and James A. Parr, eds.; Newark, NJ: Juan de la Cuesta, 2013). Here is the abstract.

Viewing love as a contract seems, initially, like mistaking windmills for giants, or a peasant girl for a grand lady. This chapter seeks, like Don Quixote, to convince readers to suspend their practiced views of everyday relationships in order to see them in a new light. What seems crazy at first glance may come to look as good, and sometimes better, than the more conventional view. As a law professor, I usually write about love and contracts by focusing on legal opinions and statutes, and recently I have added real-life stories from books and newspapers, as well as my friends, family, colleagues, and students. But if I am right that love and contracts often complement instead of oppose each other, then my argument that contracts shape the beginning, middle, and demise of love relationships ought to hold true in fiction as well, especially for the jump-off-the-page characters and situations in Don Quixote. Applying this analysis to Don Quixote invites new readings, and may even bring yet more readers to this brilliant text.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link. 

More On the LHI/Cardozo Blood Libel Conference

More on the Blood Libel Conference, sponsored by the Law and Humanities Institute and Cardozo Law School, here. The Conference takes place at Cardozo, November 14-15.

More On Law and Poetry

Joseph P. Tomain, University of Cincinnati College of Law, is publishing Reading Poets in St. John's Law Review (forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

Lawrence Joseph, the poet, has been the subject of a symposium published by the University of Cincinnati Law Review. Lawrence Joseph, the nonfiction novelist, has been similarly honored by the Columbia Law Review. With the publication of The Game Changed, his work should be so recognized and he should be given scholarly attention as a critic/essayist. Joseph the lawyer/poet/scholar has developed a jurisprudence of his own. Joseph’s jurisprudence, however (and to the good), cannot be reduced to a single word like originalism, or even a label like liberal democratic (though he may be in fact). Rather, the resultant jurisprudence refracts off a multitude of ideas and attitudes contained within the book’s various prose pieces. In this Essay, I will first describe the mechanics of The Game Changed, and will then identify and briefly comment upon several of those ideas and attitudes that comprise Joseph’s jurisprudence that go Into It.

Download the article from SSRN at the link. 

Lawyers and Poetry

Pleasure Boat Studio has published a new anthology of poems inspired by the practice of law. Lawyer Poets and That World We Call Law: An Anthology of Poems About the Practice of Law is edited by James R. Elkins, of West Virginia University College of Law, who also edits the Legal Studies Forum. Here's a description of the volume, provided by the publisher.

The book sells for $22.50, and is available through the publisher's website, which is offering a 20 percent discount (offer good until December 1st, 2013) or through bookstores or online through Amazon.com.

The Blues Brothers and the First Amendment

Julien Mailland, Indiana University Department of Telecommunications & University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communication, has published The Blues Brothers and the American Constitutional Protection of Hate Speech: Teaching the Meaning of the First Amendment to Foreign Audiences, at 21 Michigan State International Law Review 451 (2013). Here is the abstract.

Skokie, Illinois, 1978. A retired black and white police car is stuck in traffic before a bridge where a political rally is being held by Nazis of the American Socialist White People’s Party. In the car, two men, wearing black suits, black hats, and black sunglasses, stand idle. The Nazis’ venomous leader delivers a racist and violence-mongering speech, which infuriates the onlookers. The Nazis are protected from the angry crowd of hecklers by a line of police. One of the men in black calmly states: “I hate Illinois Nazis,” as the other slams the gas pedal, charges the ranks of the brownshirts and stampedes them off the bridge into the water, to the cheers of the crowd. As they drive off, the soaked Nazi commander vows revenge. (THE BLUES BROTHERS (Universal Studios 1980). Long Synopsis).This scene from the 1980 blockbuster comedy The Blues Brothers is a popular cultural expression of a uniquely-American legal provision: the constitutional protection of hate speech by virtue of the free speech clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The legal regime for hate speech in the United States has no equivalent anywhere in the world and is baffling to non-Americans. Europeans, in particular, whose countries served as the locus of Nazism’s horrors, tend to hold the U.S. constitutional protection of hate speech in disbelief, before shaking their heads in contempt and concluding something along the lines of “those crazy Americans.” This protection of hate speech, however, makes a lot of sense in the American context. In this paper, I argue that the aforementioned scene from The Blues Brothers has great potential to elucidate the meaning of the constitutional protection of hate speech, and, more broadly, of the First Amendment, for a non-American audience. I propose that the scene be used by comparative jurists teaching the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. I focus the comparison between the United States and France, for “France and the United States start from such different assumptions regarding freedom of speech and the relationship between speech and other rights that it is virtually impossible to reconcile their competing approaches,” a situation that creates deep cultural misunderstandings, which in turn can be reconciled using this case study. France is also relevant because it is one of the countries that has taken the most aggressive stance against American companies in the context of Nazi speech distributed globally over the Internet, which has resulted, in particular, in Yahoo!, Inc. and its executives being criminally prosecuted in France for violation of anti-hate speech laws. Fostering mutual understanding between the U.S. and France is therefore particularly important in this age of global digital information distribution.In Part I, I first theoretically ground the argument that consumption of cultural artifacts is a prerequisite to understanding the law of a country, and beyond it, the country’s people and society themselves (I). Part II involves a detailed case study of the aforementioned scene from The Blues Brothers as such an artifact, in order to lift the veil on the cultural signified hidden beyond the legal signifier that is the First Amendment, and foster mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other peoples (II). I conclude that the Blues Brothers’ Nazi scene should be used by comparative jurists teaching the meaning of the First Amendment to foreign audiences, as an aid to shine a light on the cultural, social, and political principles that ground the constitutional protection of hate speech in the United States.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Law and Equity in Chinua Achebe's "Arrow of God"

Olubukola Olugasa, Babcock University School of Law and Security Studies, has published Interplay of Law and Equity in Chinua Achebe's 'Arrow of God'.

The late literary legend, Chinua Achebe, may have been celebrated in many ways for his immense contributions to humanity through profound literary works that will perpetually remain beneficial to the world. But hardly have we appreciated his works from legal perspective. Interestingly, in many less developed academic environments, scholars tend to limit their research and academic publications to stereotypes within frameworks of fragmented subjects; fragmented subjects of study for teaching convenience. Perhaps that disposition has restricted robust interdisciplinary research and approach to exploring the real essence of literary works of scholars like Chinua Achebe. It is not peculiar to Nigeria. This paper seeks to bring to life the legal issues deducible from the trilogy of Chinua Achebe, namely 'Things Fall Apart', 'No Longer at Ease' and 'Arrow of God'. The events in the trilogy show the dilemma of the protagonists in responding appropriately to the changing circumstances of the unwritten and unspoken customary laws of their times. The challenge of choice of appropriate discretion in the face of dynamics of change has foisted on every man the need to take deep consideration of the position of law and equity, even within the shortest possible time, before making a choice. The choice made ultimately determines the fate of man. That appears to be what in literary parlance is couched in the expression 'character is fate'. The approach here begins and goes beyond socio-legal perspective to doctrinal analyses of the story in the novel. The paper concludes by using the discourse to reflect the position of a Nigerian in the context of the interplay of law and equity against his customary law requirements, the challenges and the need for reforms and repositioning of customary law in Nigeria’s legal system.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link. 

Performing Law

Richard K. Sherwin, New York Law School, has published Law as Performance: Presence and Simulation in the Theater/Courtroom. Here is the abstract.

Contemporary theatrical performances and courtroom performances are increasingly grappling with the same challenge, namely: how to respond to world loss, the steadily advancing process of dematerialization. A growing number of cultural productions, including law, oscillate between virtual reality effects (the screen-based sensorium of heightened baroque sensation) and bodily presence. We are torn between reflexive meaning construction, on the one hand, and the material recuperation of reference and perception, on the other. In this essay, I ask what lessons multi-media theater may hold for the contemporary performance of law? I conclude that the current neo-baroque condition of world loss, and the familiar baroque strategy of proliferating form to distract us from metaphysical anxiety, poses serious political and legal challenges. Absent an appropriate response, unchecked growth in ongoing processes of de-realization, dis-ownership, and de-responsification may ultimately threaten the continued legitimation of law’s claim to power in the digital age.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link. 

Spanish Law and Religion

Rafael Palomino, Facultade de Derecho, Universidad Complutense, has published Manual Breve de Derecho Eclesiástico del Estado (Spanish Law and Religion in a Nutshell). Here is the abstract.

Manual breve de Derecho eclesiástico del Estado español. El manual comprende 10 capítulos sobre elementos fundamentales del Derecho estatal en materia religiosa.
Spanish Law and Religion in a Nutshell. Ten chapters of the fundamentals of Spanish Law and Religion.

Download the two hundred page document, which is in Spanish, at the link.

Repeat: Call for Papers and Registration: Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities

CALL FOR PAPERS: ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF LAW, CULTURE, AND THE HUMANITIES

Seventeenth Annual Conference

March 10-11, 2014, University of Virginia, School of Law

We are pleased to announce that the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities will be held at the University of Virginia School of Law, March 10-11, 2014. We invite your participation.  Please note, panel and paper proposals are due Tuesday, October 15^th, 2013

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, law and cultural studies, 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 place in culture.

This year’s conference theme is as follows:

The Politics of Law and the Humanities: Crisis, Austerity, Instrumentalism

How will law and the humanities scholarship fare against the pressure of the science and technology paradigm that has now permeated the institutional frameworks of academia? Will it mime the general humanities and, as suggested by the defeatist pomp of many national “crisis reports”, merely retreat to its traditional position as the well-mannered guardian of liberal values? Will law and the humanities scholarship be subsumed under the science paradigm’s instrumental ethos by either taking on aims and objectives sanctioned by government policies or by domesticating its own political potential to address those very same policies? Or can we imagine more salutary alternatives to defeatism and instrumental subsumption? 

The terrain is well known. The ongoing economic crisis has engendered a worldwide decline in funding for research in the humanities showing sharp decreases between 2009 and 2012 with funds almost cut in half each year. The global trend is also detectable at national levels, with growing gaps between public investment into STEM subjects and the humanities. But the changes do not merely concern the fiscal prioritization of diminishing resources. The social sciences, including law, are under constant political pressure as lawmakers question the value of curiosity-driven basic research. This pressure is then mirrored at the institutional level of individual law schools emphasizing their vocational remits at the expense of research and scholarship. And this research and scholarship is itself increasingly cast in reformist, practical, and “policy relevant” terms, and directed to issues of perceived topical and regulatory concern.

The implied allegation is simple enough: basic research in the humanities and social sciences is, if not obsolete, then at least a luxury we can’t afford in these times; because it cannot satisfy the more immediate needs of market-driven societies in the current economic climate, it is politically irrelevant.

But can we imagine new ways to claim – or, perhaps, to reclaim – our political relevance? Are we relevant in other, perhaps more radical ways? And if we are, how? Is there a politics that is specific to law and the humanities? Or can we articulate the limits to the conversation about “relevance” in a way accessible to minds focused on instrumentality? How might we respond to our critics, or do we ignore them? 

Participants are encouraged to reflect on this broad, but not exclusive, conference theme.

In addition to sessions that connect to the theme, examples of other types of sessions we expect to organize include: History, Memory and Law; Reading Race; Law and Literature; Human Rights and Cultural Pluralism; Speech, Silence, and the Language of Law; Judgment, Justice, and Law; Beyond Identity; The Idea of Practice in Legal Thought; Metaphor and Meaning; Representing Legality in Film and Mass Media; Anarchy, Liberty and Law; What is Excellence in Interpretation?; Ethics, Religion, and Law; Moral Obligation and Legal Life; The Post-Colonial in Literary and Legal Study; Processes and Possibilities in Interdisciplinary Law Teaching.

We urge those interested in attending to consider submitting complete panels, and we hope to encourage a variety of formats-roundtables, sessions at which everyone reads the papers in advance, sessions in which commentators respond to a single paper. We invite proposals for session in which the focus is on pedagogy or methodology, for author-meets-readers sessions organized around important books in the field, or for sessions in which participants focus on performance (theatrical, filmic, musical, poetic).

How to register:

ASLCH uses a two part registration system (this will all be explained in detail on the website). First you register your paper or panel and pay a $35 membership fee. Then after January 10th, 2014, assuming your paper or panel is accepted, you go back to the same website (an email will be sent on that day to remind you) and pay the conference fee. 

Here is the link to register:

https://www.regonline.com/17thannualmeetingLCH

Hotel information:

We have reserved rooms in three Charlottesville hotels.  The main conference hotel, where we have reserved 80 rooms, is Hyatt Place, a brand-new hotel.  It is a short drive from the Law School, and they have a shuttle service.  The rate we negotiated is $139/night plus tax.  To reserve, call +1 434 426 4428 and state that you are a part of the ASLCH. You must reserve a room in Hyatt Place by Sunday, February 9.

For those of you who would rather be walking distance from the law school, we have reserved 30 rooms at the Inn at Darden, a hotel owned and operated by UVA's Darden School of Business, about a 5-minute walk from the law school.  To reserve a room there, call +1 434 243 5000 or if in the US 434-243-5000 and state that you are a part of ASLCH.  The rate for the room is $135/night plus tax. You will need to reserve a room by Saturday, February 1.

In case both of these hotels fill, we have also reserved 30 rooms at the Courtyard Marriott University.  It is a short drive from the Law School, and if enough participants are staying there, we may be able to run a bus to the conference.  To reserve a room online, please go to www.marriott.com/chodt and use the booking code ASLASLA or ASLASLB. You can also call +1 434 977 1700 and state that you are a part of ASLCH. The room rate is $169/night plus tax. You will need to reserve a room by Sunday, February 9.

If you have any questions you can email the hotel managers directly at these addresses:

Hyatt Place: Sheleigha Early (sheleigha.early@hyatt.com)

Inn at Darden: Bridget Merker (reservations@darden.virginia.edu)

Courtyard Marriot: Alex Jobin (Alex.Jobin@crestlinehotels.com)

Prizes and nominations: 

 We have the following awards that we give out at our annual conference. If you would like to nominate someone for the awards, please email the people listed below who is associated with that prize. Please note unless otherwise noted, all prizes nomination deadlines are the same: November 15th, 2013.

Julien Mezey Award

The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities invites submissions for the 2014 Julien Mezey 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. The award will be presented at the Assocations Annual Conference, hosted by the University of Virginia on March 10-11, 2014.

The Association seeks the submission of outstanding work from a wide variety of perspectives, including, but not limited to law and cultural studies, legal hermeneutics and rhetoric, law and literature, law and psychoanalysis, law and visual studies, legal history, legal theory and jurisprudence. Scholars completing humanities-oriented dissertations in SJD and related programs, as well as those earning PhDs, are encouraged to submit their work. Applicants eligible for the 2014 award must have defended their dissertation successfully between September 1, 2012 and August 31, 2013.

For your nominations and submissions, please email Imani Perry at iperry@princeton.edu. Applications and nominations are due by November 15, 2013

The Austin Sarat Award

We are pleased to announce the Austin Sarat Award, a prize to be offered to a graduate student for a paper presented at an ASLCH annual conference. We are looking for papers that represent excellence in interdisciplinary thought, research and writing in the field of law, culture and the humanities. Although presentation of the paper at the conference is required to be eligible, the award winner will be chosen based upon finished papers submitted after the annual conference.

The deadline for this prize already passed (it was at the end of May, 2013) because we have the nomination process active while papers are still fresh in people’s mind. But keep this prize in mind for shortly after the 2014 conference ends. Please email Catherine Kellogg at ckellogg@ualberta.ca with any questions.

Graduate Student workshop

The Annual Law Culture and Humanities conference is pleased to offer a graduate student workshop designed for graduate students who are undertaking research that cuts across law, cultural studies, literature, philosophy, legal studies, anthropology, political science, economics. The workshop is designed to provide mentoring, practical advice on publishing and applying for work, as well as have some fun. Applications to the workshop should include a statement of research, a current curriculum vitae, and a short statement of the paper that each student will be presenting at the conference. There is limited space for the workshop, and so we cannot admit all (although we will do our best!). Please forward your application to ckellogg@ualberta.ca by November 15.

The Return To the Bramble Bush

Anders Walker, Saint Louis University School of Law, has published  Bramble Bush Revisited: Karl Llewellyn, the Great Depression, and the First Law School Crisis, 1929-1939. Here is the abstract.

This article recovers the plight of legal education during the Great Depression, showing how debates over practical training, theoretical research and the appropriate length of law school all emerged in the 1930s. Using Bramble Bush author Karl Llewellyn as a guide, it strives to make three points. One, Depression-era critics of law school called for increased attention to practical skills, like today, but also a more inter-disciplinary curriculum – something current reformers discount. Two, the push for theoretical, policy-oriented courses in the 1930s set the stage for claims that law graduates deserved more than a Bachelor of Laws degree, bolstering the move away from a two year LL.B. and towards a mandatory three year Juris Doctor, or J.D. The rise of the J.D. following World War II, this article concludes, heightened the role of inter-disciplinary work in the first three years, even as it substantially diminished the role of advanced, graduate-level research, a point worth recalling as law school reformers, the ABA and, even the President of the United States lobby for shorter, more-practice oriented programs. While such proposals may be prudent, they may also warrant a return to plural law degrees.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link. 

There's An App For That!

If you like the show NCIS (I have to admit that I do think Mark Harmon is eye candy as well as a good actor and I loved David McCallum as Ilya Kuryakin oh so many years ago on The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) you might like the NCIS app, which allows you to play along with Gibbs, Ducky, and the rest of the team as they solve crimes. The app lets you discovers evidence for example--it gives you hints along the way, and characters from the show give you encouragement or suggest you're falling down on the job depending on how long it takes you to solve various stages of the game. I've played the game a little, and found it entertaining, but a little challenging. You have to have good eyesight, and apply some critical thinking. The app is available for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. More here.

Looking For Women's Rights In the Constitution

Jill Elaine Hasday, University of Minnesota Law School, has published Women's Exclusion from the Constitutional Canon in the University of Illinois Law Review for 2013. Here is the abstract.

This Essay asks why sex equality is outside the constitutional canon. While race discrimination is a canonical concern of constitutional law, the story of America’s struggles over and against sex discrimination is not widely taken to be a central, organizing part of our constitutional tradition — a defining narrative that exemplifies and expresses the nation’s foundational values and commitments. I offer three potential explanations for the exclusion of sex equality from the constitutional canon. First, the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence developed in ways that suggested that sex discrimination was not a core constitutional problem and concern, especially when compared to race discrimination. Second, the Court’s sex discrimination case law has focused narrowly on state action that draws explicit distinctions between women and men. The Court has little interest in reviewing facially neutral laws, no matter their contribution to women’s unequal status, so the Court hears few sex discrimination suits anymore. This paucity of case law contributes to the sense that conflicts over sex equality are no longer central to constitutional law, if they ever were. Third, the story of women’s resistance to sex discrimination may be less prominent in American constitutional law because this story is less prominent in American popular culture, and vice versa. The Essay concludes by exploring why sex equality may ultimately become part of the constitutional canon. The Court’s reading of the Equal Protection Clause to prohibit sex discrimination has become much less controversial since the 1970s. Moreover, new analogies have emerged in constitutional law, which over time have pushed sex discrimination closer to the core of the Equal Protection Clause. Courts, lawmakers, advocates, and scholars seeking constitutional protection from sexual orientation discrimination now routinely analogize sexual orientation to sex. The frequency and prominence of these analogies, which presuppose that struggles against sex discrimination are already central to our nation’s understanding of equality and equal protection, may help move sex into the constitutional canon at last.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

A New Award, Named For Penelope Pether

From Keith Bybee, Director, Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media at Syracuse University, announcement of a new award:

The Penny Pether Award for Law and Language Scholarship A passionate advocate for interdisciplinary scholarship in law, literature, and language, Penelope J. Pether was Professor of Law at Villanova University School of Law and former Professor of Law and Director of Legal Rhetoric at the American University Washington College of Law. Her own scholarship focused not only on law, literature, and language, but also on constitutional and comparative constitutional law; legal theory, including constitutional theory; common law legal institutions, judging practices, and professional subject formation. Beginning in November 2013, the Penny Pether Award for Law & Language Scholarship will be given annually to an article or essay published during the preceding year (September 1 to September 1) that exemplifies Penny’s commitment to law and language scholarship and pedagogy. The Committee selecting award recipients from among the articles and essays nominated will look for scholarship that not only embodies Penny’s passion and spirit but also has some or all of the following characteristics:1. “[S]cholarship concerning itself with the unique or distinctive insights that might emerge from interdisciplinary inquiries into ‘law’ grounded in the work of influential theorists of language and discourse.”2. Scholarship that “attempts to think through the relations among subject formation, language, and law.”3. Scholarship that provides “accounts of—and linguistic interventions in—acute and yet abiding crises in law, its institutions and discourses.”4. Scholarship and pedagogy that is “[c]arefully theorized and situated, insisting on engaging politics and law, [and that] charts ways for law and its subjects to use power, do justice.” More explanations and descriptions of these characteristics can be found in Penny’s chapter from which these quotations are drawn: Language, in Law and the Humanities: An Introduction (Austin Sarat et al. eds., Cambridge U. Press 2010). Nominations should be sent by October 25, 2013 to Jeremy Mullem at mullem@law.duke.edu.  You are free to nominate more than one work and to nominate work you’ve written.  Please provide a citation for each work you nominate. The Selection Committee includes Linda Berger, David Caudill, Amy Dillard, Ian Gallacher, Melissa Marlow, Jeremy Mullem, Nancy Modesitt, and Terry Pollman.  Members of the Selection Committee and other faculty at their schools are not eligible for the award.   ------------------------- Keith J. Bybee
Director, Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media at Syracuse University
Paul E. and the Hon. Joanne F. Alper '72 Judiciary Studies Professor, Syracuse University College of Law
Professor of Political Science, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs

Call For Papers: Annual Meeting of Law & Society/Africa Law and Society

From Mark Kende, Drake University Law School:

COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH NETWORK CALL FOR PAPERS:  AFRICA LAW AND SOCIETY (CRN 13)
              
The forthcoming Annual Meeting of Law & Society will be held in Minneapolis from May 29 to June 1.  The Africa CRN invites proposals for panels (with submission of abstracts and a panel description), proposals for roundtables (with a description), proposals for Author Meets Reader events, or the submission of  independent papers related to Africa Law & Society issues.  Please list your event as being part of CRN 13 when you submit.  You should also consider whether other CRN’s may be interested in co-sponsoring.  The deadline for submissions to the conference is Tuesday, October 15, 2013.   All submissions must comply with Law & Society rules:  http://www.lawandsociety.org/minneapolis2014/2014proposals.html    No time extensions will be allowed.
 If you have an independent paper that you would like the Africa CRN to try to match with a panel or would like the CRN’s assistance in organizing a panel or roundtable, please e-mail your paper or panel/roundtable proposal to Professor Brian Ray at b.e.ray@csuohio.edu by 5 p.m. eastern standard time on Monday October 7, 2013.
              
Among the numerous topics that could be addressed include:  the situation of women in African nations; customary law and traditions; the 20^th Anniversary of South African independence; religion in African nations; constitutionalism and human rights; problems and success in governance at the national, regional, and local levels; the rise of Chinese influence in the region as well as other foreign influence; corruption; freedom of the press; problems related to poverty and war; issues of health and medical care; judicial functioning; the legal profession; and many other areas.
 Herewith is a description of the Africa CRN: the research focus of this CRN is on African law and society.  Open to all, this CRN aims to investigate the variety of levels and methods through which African law and society are constituted and change.  Recent annual meetings of the LSA have demonstrated that the Law and Society Association’s full potential for scholarship by Africans or about African law and society has not been achieved.  Likewise, African scholarship falling broadly within the law and society or socio-legal studies intellectual tradition has not been as prominent as could be the case.  Working both within the LSA and Africa, this CRN aims to organize panels for LSA annual meetings in Minneapolis and beyond.  The CRN also aims to promote and facilitate participation in African-located law and society scholarship initiatives.  The CRN is also pursuing funding and holding an African Institute, based loosely on the model of the LSA’s Summer Institutes.  While the CRN is African rather than South African, this CRN will both recognize and critique the role that South Africa plays in African law and society and in its scholarship.
  P.S.  Apologies for any list duplication.  If you know of someone not on the list who might be interested, please pass this on.  Thanks.  Mark
   Professor Mark KendeJames Madison Chair in Constitutional LawDirector, Drake University Constitutional Law Center2507 University Ave., Des Moines, IA 50311515-271-3354, 515-271-1858 (fax)mark.kende@drake.edu Author, Constitutional Rights in Two Worlds:  South Africa and the United States (Cambridge Univ.), http://www.amazon.com/Constitutional-Rights-Two-Worlds-Africa/dp/product-description/0521171768SSRN sample papers:  http://ssrn.com/author=339761Center Web Site:  http://www.law.drake.edu/academics/conLaw/
 

Histories of the Law

Lawrence Friedman, New England Law School, has published Introduction to: 'Law and the Modern Condition: Literary and Historical Perspectives' in Law and the Modern Condition: Literary and Historical Perspectives (Lawrence Friedman, edl; Talbot Publishing, Clark: New Jersey, 2013). Here is the abstract.

Using fiction as a lens through which to view particular developments in the law, each of the essays in the new book, 'Law and the Modern Condition: Literary and Historical Perspectives' (Talbot Publishing, 2013), discusses a work of literary fiction — some classical (the tale of Ruth in the Bible, the fiction of Franz Kafka and Herman Melville, the plays of William Shakespeare) some modern (the post-September 11 fiction of William Gibson, Ken Kalfus, Claire Messud, Ian McEwan and Helen Schulman) — that concerns, directly or indirectly, the historical development of the law. This exploration of legal history through fiction pays particular attention to its relevance to our present circumstances and our growing concerns about terrorism and civil liberties. Each essay considers the legal lessons about the fictional event or events at its core, lessons that tell us something worth remembering as we continue to chart law’s evolution. These lessons, like those that may be found in all great literature, necessarily extend beyond the historical confines of the characters and plot and background of each story to embrace the modern condition — which, as these great stories suggest, is and always has been the only condition.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link. Thanks to Simon Stern, University of Toronto, for sending me the cite.

A Law and/in/as Literature Conference in Brazil, October 30 to November 1

From our colleague Jose Calvo Gonzalez at the University of Malaga, news of another extremely interesting conference, this one in Brazil. Here's a link to the call for papers and more information about the conference, which is devoted to law and literature, law as literature, and law in literature. The event,officially named the II COLÓQUIO INTERNACIONAL DE DIREITO E LITERATURA:  "A REPRESENTAÇÃO DO JUIZ E O IMAGINÁRIO SOCIAL,” takes place from October 30 through November 1 at the Auditório Central, Faculdade Meridional, Passo Fundo, RS, Brasil.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Ownership

Yxta Maya Murray, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, has published From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried: Carrie Mae Weems’ Challenge to the Harvard Archive at 8 Unbound: Harvard Journal of the Legal Left 1 (2013). Here is the abstract.

In the early 1990s, the artist Carrie Mae Weems appropriated daguerreotypes of enslaved people that are housed in Harvard University’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. These incendiary images of Drana, Jack, Renty and Delia had been commissioned by Harvard Zoology Professor Louis Agassiz in the mid-1800s, supposedly in order to illustrate his theory of racial difference. However, Weems had signed a contract with the Peabody promising not to use the images without their permission, and she did not seek such approval before including the daguerreotypes in her now-famous series "From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried." Harvard threatened to sue Weems on the grounds of copyright infringement and breach of contract, though when Weems invited Harvard to conduct what she understood to be a difficult conversation about law, history, and race "in the courts," Harvard demurred.
In this essay, I consider the copyright and contract claims that Harvard might have depended upon in its litigation. With respect to the copyright infringement claim, I query whether the fair use doctrine’s requirement that an appropriator "transform" borrowed images or text might have provided Weems with a defense. This question ushers me into an extended meditation on the meaning of transformation as it relates to art, history, law, seeing, and slavery. I also query whether Harvard actually owned these images at all; such property ownership proves the foundation for their contract claim. I conclude that Harvard did indeed own these daguerreotypes, but struggle against that determination, since this property was wrested from Drana, Jack, Renty and Delia through violence and atrocity. In the interests of peace, remembrance, and racial justice, I maintain that no valid property law should recognize such a chain of title. Borrowing from the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, I draft a proposed law that would recognize the relics of enslaved people as cultural property and require the federally funded museums that now own them to give them back to the descendants of America’s enslaved peoples.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Law and Humanities Junior Scholars Workshop Call For Papers

From Susan Sage Heinzelman, University of Texas, Austin:

CALL FOR PAPERS - Law & Humanities Junior Scholar Workshop

The University of Southern California Center for Law, History & Culture, UCLA School of Law, Columbia Law School, and Georgetown University Law School invite submissions for the tenth meeting of the Law & Humanities Junior Scholar Workshop to be held at USC School of Law in Los Angeles, CA on June 8 & 9, 2014. 

PAPER COMPETITION:

The paper competition is open to untenured professors, advanced graduate students, and post-doctoral scholars in law and the humanities; in addition to drawing from numerous humanistic fields, we welcome critical, qualitative work in the social sciences.  Based on anonymous evaluation by an interdisciplinary selection committee, between five and ten papers will be chosen for presentation at the June Workshop.  At the Workshop, two senior scholars will comment on each paper.  Commentators and other Workshop participants will be asked to focus specifically on the strengths and weaknesses of the selected scholarly projects, with respect to subject and methodology. The selected papers will then serve as the basis for a larger conversation among all the participants about the evolving standards by which we judge excellence and creativity in interdisciplinary scholarship, as well as about the nature of interdisciplinarity itself.

Papers should be works-in-progress between 10,000 and 15,000 words in length (including footnotes/endnotes), and must include an abstract of no more than 200 words.  A dissertation chapter may be submitted, but we strongly suggest that it be edited so that it stands alone as a piece of work with its own integrity.  A paper that has been submitted for publication is eligible so long as it will not be in galley proofs or in print at the time of the Workshop.  The selected papers will appear in a special issue of the Legal Scholarship Network; there is no other publication commitment.  The Workshop will pay the travel and hotel expenses of authors whose papers are selected for presentation. Submissions (in Word, no pdf files) will be accepted until January 6, 2014, and should be sent by e-mail to:
 Center for the Study of Law and Culture,culture@law.columbia.edu
.

Please be sure to include your name, institutional affiliation (if any), telephone and e-mail contact information.  For more information contact Cindy Gao, 212.854.0167 or culture@law.columbia.edu, and to see past winners go to: http://www.law.columbia.edu/center_program/law_culture/lh_workshop. Anne Dailey Katherine Franke Ariela Gross Naomi Mezey Paul Saint-Amour Hilary Schor Clyde Spillenger Nomi StolzenbergConveners 

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Is Still Relevant

Ann E. Tweedy, Hamline University School of Law, is publishing Reflections on Reading Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in the Legal Studies Forum (forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

This essay discusses the author's thoughts on Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, particularly related to femininsm, mind-body dualism, and peace of mind and oneness, especially with respect to technology.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link. 

A New Way To Examine Law and Film

Suzanne Bouclin, University of Ottawa, Common Law Section, has published Méthodologies ambidextres en droit (Ambidextrous Legal Methodologies) in Les cadres théoriques et le droit  347 (Georges Azzaria, ed.; Éditions Yvon Blais, 2013). Here is the abstract.
   

Dans cet ar ticle, j’élabore une métaphore pour aborder la recherche qui se trouve au carrefour du droit et du cinéma. Je qualifie cette approche d’ambidextre. Dans la première partie, je discute des modes interdisciplinaires de recherche juridique et je propose quelques lignes directrices en matière de travaux explicitement transdisciplinaires. Je décris ensuite la manière dont mes méthodes ambidextres s’efforcent d’être transdisciplinaires. Mon travail est ancré dans le droit et le cinéma, tout en se déplaçant audelà de ces disciplines, afin de faire émerger un sens par rapport à la marginalisation des personnes vivant en situation d’itinérance.

In this research, I elaborate a metaphor (ambidexterity) to describe research located at the law/film nexus. I discuss interdisciplinary models of legal research and provide a few guidelines for producing explicitly trans-disciplinary work. I describe how I deploy ambidextrous methods and methodology to explore the legal marginalization of street-involved people.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link. 

Eager Prosecutor Cuts Short Tom Hanks' Career As Juror

A trial in which actor Tom Hanks was serving as a juror skidded to a halt when a prosecutor not assigned to the case approached him during a break and "thanked him" for his service. Oh, dear. The D.A. on the case came to know about the communication and reported it to the judge. As a result, both the D.A. and the defense team reached a plea deal. No one faults Mr. Hanks, who by all accounts seems to have been both gracious and serious about his civic duty.

More here from the Telegraph, here from CNN.

In Memoriam: Penelope Pether

We are saddened to report the passing of Penelope Pether, Professor of Law at Villanova University, and a former member of the Board of Governors of the Law and Humanities Institute. Professor Pether was a distinguished member of the legal academy, and a noted scholar in the areas of criminal law and constitutional law, as well as in law and literature.

Professor Pether received her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Sydney, and later her Ph.D. in English from the same university. In addition, she practiced as an attorney in Sydney, and then in the New South Wales Ombudsman's Office.

During her extensive academic career, Professor Pether taught at the Universities of Sydney and Wollongong, at Southern Illinois University Law School, at American University Law School, and finally at Villanova Law School. She was also a beloved teacher and mentor. Included in her extensive and influential bibliography are articles published in the Stanford Law Review, the William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal, the Washington & Lee Law Review, the Cardozo Law Review, the Sydney Law Review, Law & Critique, Law and Literature, Social Semiotics, and The Australian Feminist Law Journal. Her essays appear in collections published by such publishers as Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and Edinburgh University Press. Lexis recently published the second edition of her Criminal Law casebook. She was also an editor of the SSRN online journal Law and Literature and the journal Law and Literature, and served on the editorial boards of the Waikato Law Review, Social Semiotics, and Law and Critique.

Professor Pether was also active in many conferences and associations, and was a gracious and generous colleague who made new members of the academy feel welcome in what can be a challenging environment. She was with us for far too short a time, and we will miss her.

Villanova Law School has published a remembrance of Professor Pether, with more information about her life and legacy, here.

Call for Papers, ASLCH

From James Martel, President, ASLCH: Information about next year's ASLCH's meeting, which will be held at the University of Virginia School of Law from March 10 to March 11.

CALL FOR PAPERS: ASSOCIATION FOR THE STUDY OF LAW, CULTURE, AND THE HUMANITIESSeventeenth Annual Conference
March 10-11, 2014, University of Virginia, School of Law

We are pleased to announce that the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities will be held at the University of Virginia School of Law, March 10-11, 2014. We invite your participation.  Please note, panel and paper proposals are due Tuesday, October 15^th, 2013The 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, law and cultural studies, 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 place in culture.

This year’s conference theme is as follows:
 The Politics of Law and the Humanities: Crisis, Austerity, InstrumentalismHow will law and the humanities scholarship fare against the pressure of the science and technology paradigm that has now permeated the institutional frameworks of academia? Will it mime the general humanities and, as suggested by the defeatist pomp of many national “crisis reports”, merely retreat to its traditional position as the well-mannered guardian of liberal values? Will law and the humanities scholarship be subsumed under the science paradigm’s instrumental ethos by either taking on aims and objectives sanctioned by government policies or by domesticating its own political potential to address those very same policies? Or can we imagine more salutary alternatives to defeatism and instrumental subsumption?

The terrain is well known. The ongoing economic crisis has engendered a worldwide decline in funding for research in the humanities showing sharp decreases between 2009 and 2012 with funds almost cut in half each year. The global trend is also detectable at national levels, with growing gaps between public investment into STEM subjects and the humanities. But the changes do not merely concern the fiscal prioritization of diminishing resources. The social sciences, including law, are under constant political pressure as lawmakers question the value of curiosity-driven basic research. This pressure is then mirrored at the institutional level of individual law schools emphasizing their vocational remits at the expense of research and scholarship. And this research and scholarship is itself increasingly cast in reformist, practical, and “policy relevant” terms, and directed to issues of perceived topical and regulatory concern.

The implied allegation is simple enough: basic research in the humanities and social sciences is, if not obsolete, then at least a luxury we can’t afford in these times; because it cannot satisfy the more immediate needs of market-driven societies in the current economic climate, it is politically irrelevant.

But can we imagine new ways to claim – or, perhaps, to reclaim – our political relevance? Are we relevant in other, perhaps more radical ways? And if we are, how? Is there a politics that is specific to law and the humanities? Or can we articulate the limits to the conversation about “relevance” in a way accessible to minds focused on instrumentality? How might we respond to our critics, or do we ignore them?

Participants are encouraged to reflect on this broad, but not exclusive, conference theme.

In addition to sessions that connect to the theme, examples of other types of sessions we expect to organize include: History, Memory and Law; Reading Race; Law and Literature; Human Rights and Cultural Pluralism; Speech, Silence, and the Language of Law; Judgment, Justice, and Law; Beyond Identity; The Idea of Practice in Legal Thought; Metaphor and Meaning; Representing Legality in Film and Mass Media; Anarchy, Liberty and Law; What is Excellence in Interpretation?; Ethics, Religion, and Law; Moral Obligation and Legal Life; The Post-Colonial in Literary and Legal Study; Processes and Possibilities in Interdisciplinary Law Teaching.
We urge those interested in attending to consider submitting complete panels, and we hope to encourage a variety of formats-roundtables, sessions at which everyone reads the papers in advance, sessions in which commentators respond to a single paper. We invite proposals for session in which the focus is on pedagogy or methodology, for author-meets-readers sessions organized around important books in the field, or for sessions in which participants focus on performance (theatrical, filmic, musical, poetic).

How to register:ASLCH uses a two part registration system (this will all be explained in detail on the website). First you register your paper or panel and pay a $35 membership fee. Then after January 10th, 2014, assuming your paper or panel is accepted, you go back to the same website (an email will be sent on that day to remind you) and pay the conference fee.

Here is the link to register:

https://www.regonline.com/17thannualmeetingLCH
 Hotel information:
We have reserved rooms in three Charlottesville hotels.  The main conference hotel, where we have reserved 80 rooms, is Hyatt Place, a brand-new hotel.  It is a short drive from the Law School, and they have a shuttle service.  The rate we negotiated is $139/night plus tax.  To reserve, call +1 434 426 4428 and state that you are a part of the ASLCH. You must reserve a room in Hyatt Place by Sunday, February 9.

For those of you who would rather be walking distance from the law school, we have reserved 30 rooms at the Inn at Darden, a hotel owned and operated by UVA's Darden School of Business, about a 5-minute walk from the law school.  To reserve a room there, call +1 434 243 5000 or, if in the US, 1-434-243-5000 and state that you are a part of ASLCH.  The rate for the room is $135/night plus tax. You will need to reserve a room by Saturday, February 1.

In case both of these hotels fill, we have also reserved 30 rooms at the Courtyard Marriott University.  It is a short drive from the Law School, and if enough participants are staying there, we may be able to run a bus to the conference.  To reserve a room online, please go to www.marriott.com/chodt and use the booking code ASLASLA or ASLASLB. You can also call +1 434 977 1700 and state that you are a part of ASLCH. The room rate is $169/night plus tax. You will need to reserve a room by Sunday, February 9.

If you have any questions you can email the hotel managers directly at these addresses:
Hyatt Place: Sheleigha Early (sheleigha.early@hyatt.com)Inn at Darden: Bridget Merker (reservations@darden.virginia.edu)Courtyard Marriot: Alex Jobin (Alex.Jobin@crestlinehotels.com)  Prizes and nominations:  We have the following awards that we give out at our annual conference. If you would like to nominate someone for the awards, please email the people listed below who is associated with that prize. Please note unless otherwise noted, all prizes nomination deadlines are the same: November 15th, 2013.
Julien Mezey Award
The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities invites submissions for the 2014 Julien Mezey 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. The award will be presented at the Assocations Annual Conference, hosted by the University of Virginia on March 10-11, 2014.

The Association seeks the submission of outstanding work from a wide variety of perspectives, including, but not limited to law and cultural studies, legal hermeneutics and rhetoric, law and literature, law and psychoanalysis, law and visual studies, legal history, legal theory and jurisprudence. Scholars completing humanities-oriented dissertations in SJD and related programs, as well as those earning PhDs, are encouraged to submit their work. Applicants eligible for the 2014 award must have defended their dissertation successfully between September 1, 2012 and August 31, 2013.

For your nominations and submissions, please email Imani Perry at iperry@princeton.edu. Applications and nominations are due by November 15, 2013
 The Austin Sarat Award
We are pleased to announce the Austin Sarat Award, a prize to be offered to a graduate student for a paper presented at an ASLCH annual conference. We are looking for papers that represent excellence in interdisciplinary thought, research and writing in the field of law, culture and the humanities. Although presentation of the paper at the conference is required to be eligible, the award winner will be chosen based upon finished papers submitted after the annual conference.
The deadline for this prize already passed (it was at the end of May, 2013) because we have the nomination process active while papers are still fresh in people’s mind. But keep this prize in mind for shortly after the 2014 conference ends. Please email Catherine Kellogg at ckellogg@ualberta.ca with any questions.
 Graduate Student workshopThe Annual Law Culture and Humanities conference is pleased to offer a graduate student workshop designed for graduate students who are undertaking research that cuts across law, cultural studies, literature, philosophy, legal studies, anthropology, political science, economics. The workshop is designed to provide mentoring, practical advice on publishing and applying for work, as well as have some fun. Applications to the workshop should include a statement of research, a current curriculum vitae, and a short statement of the paper that each student will be presenting at the conference. There is limited space for the workshop, and so we cannot admit all (although we will do our best!). Please forward your application to ckellogg@ualberta.ca by November 15.