Call For Papers: Association of American Law Schools, Section of Law and the Humanities, 2016 Meeting

The AALS Section of Law and the Humanities has issued the following CFP for the 2016 Meeting.

The following is a Call for Papers issued by the Section of Law and the Humanities:

"In the past three decades, significant research links assumptions based on race, ethnicity, and gender to views of individuals and their capacities.

“One example of such research is through use of the Implicit Association Test, available at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html,

and discussed in, Anthony G. Greenwald, Debbie E. McGhee, and Jordan L. K. Schwartz, “Measuring Individual Differences in Implicit Cognition: The Implicit Association Test,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 74, p. 1464 (1998); Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald, Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People (Delacorte, 2013).

“Another example is through the use of “blind” and “double-blind” testing.  See, e.g., Corinne A Moss-Racusin, John F. Dovidio, Victoria L. Brescoli, Mark J. Graham, and Jo Andelsman, “Science Faculty’s Suble Gender Biases Favor Male Students,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, no. 109, no. 41, pp. 16474-16479 (2012)

“More generally, the relationships among perception, sight, knowledge, and judgment have spawned a debate about how to develop wise judgment.

“At the Annual Meeting of the AALS, the Section on Law and the Humanities wishes to explore how implicit bias operates in courtrooms and how its operation has an impact on the participation of and outcomes for women and minorities as litigants.  Among other possible topics, we are interested in how partiality or impartiality in the courtroom is represented; how judicial impartiality is performed; and how bias is visible not only in judicial decisionmaking but in ways such as court composition.  Areas of interest include anti-discrimination, in which the protected class status of women and minorities plays a role, and also criminal law, family law, and immigration, among others.

“At this stage, the Section invites abstracts of proposed papers that address one of the described topics. The Section's Executive Committee will select among the abstracts and request that the proponents make a twenty-minute presentation at the Section’s meeting during the AALS Annual Meeting, January 7-9, 2016, in New York.  We request also that those who make presentations commit to publication of papers summarized at the Meeting.  We, in turn, commit to seek publication in an appropriate journal.

"Please submit an abstract of a proposed paper by April 15 to Dr. Neil H. Cogan, ncogan@law.whittier.edu."

ABA Announces 2015 Silver Gavel Awards Finalists

The ABA has released the list of finalists for the 2015 Silver Gavel Awards for Media and the Arts. Here are the names in all categories. The winners of the Silver Gavel in each category will be announced on May 13th.

BOOKS

“Burning Down the House: The End of Juvenile Prison”
Nell Bernstein, Author
The New Press
“The Case Against the Supreme Court” Erwin Chemerinsky, Author
Viking/Penguin Books
“Uncertain Justice: The Roberts Court and the Constitution” Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz, Authors
Henry Holt and Company

MAGAZINES
“The Murders at the Lake”
Michael Hall, Executive Editor
Texas Monthly

NEWSPAPERS
“No Relief”
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Cary Spivak, Reporter
“Till Death Do Us Part”
The Post and Courier Glenn Smith, Projects Editor
Doug Pardue, Projects Reporter
Jennifer Berry Hawes, Faith and Values Reporter
Natalie Caula Hauff, Reporter

DOCUMENTARIES
“Stop” Stop Productions
Spencer Wolff, Director/Producer
“The Case Against 8” Tripod Media
Ben Cotner and Ryan White, Directors/Producers
Jessica Lawson, Co-Producer

TELEVISION
“15 to Life: Kenneth’s Story”
American Documentary/POV
Nadine Pequeneza, Director/Producer
Chris White, Vice President, Programming and Production
Simon Kilmurry, Executive Producer
Cynthia Lopez, Co-Executive Producer
“The New Black”
Promised Land Film
Yoruba Richen, Producer/Director
Yvonne Welbon, Producer
Angela Tucker, Co-Producer

RADIO
“Serial: Season One”
Serial
Julie Snyder, Executive Producer
Sarah Koenig, Host and Executive Producer
Dana Chivvis, Producer
“60 Words”
Radiolab WNYC
Jad Adumrad, Host/Editor
Robert Krulwich, Host
Kelsey Padgett, Producer

OTHER MEDIA
“Segregation Now: Investigating America’s Racial Divide”
ProPublica
Nikole Hannah-Jones, Investigative Reporter
Minhee Cho, Communications Manager
Jeff Larson, Data Editor
Maisie Crow, Independent Documentary Filmmaker
“Profiting from Prisoners: Time is Money”
The Center for Public Integrity
Eleanor Bell, Multimedia Editor
Daniel Wagner, Reporter

Liberty of Contract and Gender Studies

Michael Schearer, University of Maryland School of Law, has published No Ma’am: Progressive Reform as an Obstacle to Gender Equality. Here is the abstract.

In the four decades between 1897 and 1937, conservatives repeatedly skirmished with progressives, especially in the labor arena. The chief weapons were liberty of contract on the conservative side and the state’s police power on the progressive side. Since the 1970s, a growing body of scholarship has taken a critical look at Progressive Era Supreme Court cases with an eye toward evaluating the long-term legacy of women’s protective labor legislation. This paper seeks to add a critical piece to the conversation by looking at efforts by the Court to acquiesce to the progressive political agenda by perpetuating gender stereotypes and prolonging a period of indifference toward the rights of women. The courts’ already-deferential attitude toward women’s protective labor legislation was reinforced and enhanced by abandonment of meaningful rational basis review. Given a fair chance, the natural evolution of the liberty of contract doctrine might well have led to some fuller measure of gender equality, especially in the labor arena, considerably sooner than actually occurred. Ultimately, though, the structural subordination of women doomed their chances.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Holding Law Enforcement Officers Accountable: Participation and Protest

Jocelyn Simonson, New York University School of Law, is publishing Copwatching in volume 104 of the California Law Review (2016). Here is the abstract.

Legal scholars today rightly criticize the lack of public participation in local policing as a barrier to true police accountability. When searching for solutions, however, scholars are often preoccupied with studying and perfecting consensus-based methods of participation such as community policing, neglecting the study of more adversarial, confrontational forms of local participation in policing. This article challenges the scholarly focus on consensus-based strategies of police accountability through an exploration of the phenomenon of organized copwatching – groups of local residents who wear uniforms, carry visible recording devices, patrol neighborhoods, and film police-citizen interactions in an effort to hold police departments accountable to the populations they police.

This article argues that the practice of copwatching illustrates both the promise of adversarialism as a form of civic engagement and the potential of traditionally powerless populations to contribute to constitutional norms governing police conduct. Organized copwatching serves a unique function in the world of police accountability by giving these populations a vehicle through which to have direct, real-time input into policing decisions that affect their neighborhoods. This article urges scholars and reformers to take adversarial, bottom-up mechanisms of police accountability seriously – not just as protest, but as true participation. Doing so requires respecting observation and contestation as legitimate civic gestures worthy of protection.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Osnabrueck Summer Institute Now Accepting Applications For This Year's Program

The 6th International Osnabrueck Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of the Law (OSI), Emergent Paradigms: Current Issues and Debates in Cultural Legal Studies, is accepting applications.  The Summer Institute will take place from August 3 through August 9, 2015. The Institute welcomes applications both from PhD students and post-docs.

Here is a link to the webpage for OSI.

The Legacy of the Author of the Thirteenth Amendment

David B. Kopel, Independence Institute and University of Denver College of Law, has published Lyman Trumbull: Author of the Thirteenth Amendment, Author of the Civil Rights Act, and the First Second Amendment Lawyer. Here is the abstract.

Illinois Senator and attorney Lyman Trumbull wrote the Thirteenth Amendment, outlawing slavery in the United States, and giving Congress the power to remove all badges of servitude “by appropriate legislation.” The appropriate legislation which Trumbull then introduced was the Civil Rights Act of 1886, the foundational civil rights statute in the United States. He also wrote the First Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, to protect the civil rights of freedmen nationally. The bills were the first federal legislation to protect Second Amendment rights.

Later, he brought Second Amendment test cases to the U.S. Supreme Court (Presser v. Illinois in 1886 ) and the Illinois Supreme Court (Dunne v. Illinois in 1879). These Second Amendment cases involved labor rights, in particular, the rights of organized groups of working men to defend themselves from company goons and other violence. The most famous case of the last part of Trumbull’s career was also a labor case, In re Debs; there, he brought a habeas corpus case to the Supreme Court in support of the labor leader Eugene Debs, who had defied a federal court injunction against continuing to encourage a railroad strike.

Trumbull was not a particularly “pro-Second Amendment” person. Other rights in the Constitution, such as habeas corpus, interested him much more. His legislation and litigation for the Second Amendment were derivative of the great cause to which he was devoted: “a fair chance” for “the poor who toil for a living in this world” — as Clarence Darrow remembered him.

This article examines Trumbull’s career as a lawyer and legislator. It pays particular attention to the themes which explain why he became involved in Second Amendment issues.

Part I of this article provides an overview of Trumbull’s political philosophy, as it remained mostly constant from his early days as an Andrew Jackson Democrat to Republican Senator to Populist. Part II then begins the narrative of Trumbull’s life, from earliest days through his service in the Illinois state legislature, on the Illinois Supreme Court, and as the leading anti-slavery advocate of that state. Part III details Trumbull’s three terms as United States Senator from Illinois — defending civil liberties during the war, authoring the first statute which freed slaves, the Thirteenth Amendment, and then major Reconstruction legislation. Finally, Part IV examines Trumbull’s career after the Senate, as a Chicago lawyer from 1873 until his death in 1896.

Trumbull was one of the “Founding Sons” who in the mid-19th century first eliminated slavery, and then set up the constitutional and statutory structures for national protection of civil rights. This structure continues to be vitally important today. So studying the full sweep of Trumbull’s political and legal career is important for the same reason as is studying the other Founding Sons, such as Salmon Chase, Jonathan Bingham, or Thaddeus Stevens. Trumbull has been the subject of three biographies, the first in 1913 by his friend the newspaper writer Horace White, and the last in 1979. None of these general biographies, however, were legal scholarship. Given Trumbull’s tremendous importance in the development of American law, this Article aims to fill that gap.

A second purpose of this Article is to explicate Trumbull’s heretofore-overlooked position as the leading pro-Second Amendment legislator and lawyer of the nineteenth century — or at least the part of the century after Founders such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison had departed. Second Amendment rights were not among Trumbull’s major political or legal interests. So why did he end up doing so much on behalf of the Second Amendment? This Article suggests that the answer was Trumbull’s lifelong devotion to the rights of workers.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Indigenous Peoples and the History of Land Rights

Kaius Tuori, Network for European Studies, has published The Theory and Practice of Indigenous Dispossession in the Late Nineteenth Century: The Saami in the Far North of Europe and the Legal History of Colonialism as Helsinki Legal Studies Research Paper No. 34. Here is the abstract.

The dispossession of indigenous peoples is one of the central issues of the postcolonial world. The purpose of this article is to explore the Saami dispossession in the nineteenth century in the far North of Europe through a comparative approach. By comparing the theory and practice of the Saami dispossession with examples from Oceania, North America and Africa, the article analyses the role of legal and anthropological doctrines in the process of dispossession. Linking the history of colonialism with the idea of progress inherent in Western historical thought, it follows the complex convergence and transfer of ideas of property and indigenous rights that still influence debates on indigenous land rights.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Law, Politics, and Guns

J. Richard Broughton, University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, has published The Ineludible (Constitutional) Politics of Guns in volume 46 of the Connecticut Law Review (2014). Here is the abstract.

The murders at Newtown intensified the American political debate about guns — a debate that often fits within the framework of a larger national conversation about violent crime and the political approaches to addressing it. Yet the gun control debate has resulted in a strange but fascinating intersection of law and politics, particularly law and politics of the constitutional sort, when we consider where the historical political battle lines have been drawn on matters of crime and punishment. This Article, written as part of a symposium on the Second Amendment and gun control, explores that intersection, giving special attention to the law and politics of federalism as reflected in the narrative concerning the “overfederalization” of crime. Rather than focusing on gun rights and the Second Amendment, then, this paper focuses on Congress’s power to create federal gun crimes using the authority of the Commerce Clause. The Article traces the relevant Supreme Court and lower court decisions and evaluates the state of Commerce Clause litigation involving federal gun possession crimes. The Article ultimately suggests that, because federalism has become a consistent theme of Roberts Court jurisprudence, firearms-related litigation could be a vehicle for Commerce Clause-based federalism to reemerge as a mechanism for cabining federal criminal law-making power. This would be appealing to those, particularly on the political Right, who favor sensible gun controls and have a comparatively narrow view of gun rights, but who are also troubled by the contemporary scope of federal criminal law powers.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The Language of Supreme Court Opinions

Adam Sean Feldman, University of Southern California, Department of Political Science, has published A Brief Assessment of Supreme Court Opinion Language. Here is the abstract.

The language of Supreme Court opinions is an often overlooked yet integral outcome of Supreme Court decision-making. Opinion language has significant implications for Supreme and lower court decisions as well as for public and social policy. This paper examines the relationship between Supreme Court opinion language and parties' merits briefs from 1946 through 2013. I developed an original dataset for this paper that includes the percent of overlapping language for each brief with its corresponding opinion as well as the attorney and law firm of record on each brief. I find factors including the types of parties, lawyers' experience in the Supreme Court, a case's importance and complexity, and the justices' ideological dispositions all have significant impacts on the amount of language opinions share with briefs.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Clerking at the Supreme Court

Clare Cushman, Supreme Court Historical Society, has published 'Lost' Clerks of the White Court Era. Here is the abstract.

While studies of early Supreme Court clerks have focused on the scholarly Justices (Horace Gray, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo) who hired clerks from elite law schools and mentored them on to successful careers after one or two terms, most Justices in the White Court era employed private secretaries, who, although graduates of local D.C. law schools, performed mainly clerical work and often stayed with their Justice for many years before becoming government lawyers. Wide variations in tenure, promotion, and remuneration existed for the White Court era clerks while they served the Supreme Court.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

A Conference on Law and Art at Yale Law School

Recently concluded: a conference called The Legal Medium: New Encounters of Law and Art, February 28, 2015, at Yale Law School.  Speakers included Amy Adler, Sophie, Arkette, Jack Balkin, Jonah Bokaer, Mary Ellen Carroll, Joshua Decter, Keller Easterling, Liam Gillick, Kenneth Goldsmith, Barbara Hoffman, Tehching Hsieh, David Joselit, Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento, Doris Sommer, and Laura Wexler.

A Study of Radovan Karadzic and the Charges Against Him

New from Cambridge University Press:

Robert J. Donia, Radovan Karadžič: Architect of the Bosnian Genocide

Radovan Karadžić, leader of the Bosnian Serb nationalists during the Bosnian War (1992–1995), stands accused of genocide and other crimes of war before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. This book traces the origins of the extreme violence of the war to the utopian national aspirations of the Serb Democratic Party and Karadžić's personal transformation from an unremarkable family man to the powerful leader of the Bosnian Serb nationalists. Based on previously unused documents from the tribunal's archives and many hours of Karadžić's cross-examination at his trial, the author shows why and how the Bosnian Serb leader planned and directed the worst atrocities in Europe since the Second World War. This book provocatively argues that postcommunist democracy was a primary enabler of mass atrocities because it provided the means to mobilize large numbers of Bosnian Serbs for the campaign to eliminate non-Serbs from conquered land.

Published September 2014; $33 paperback.  Also available in hardcover; $90. Robert J. Donia is Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

The Royal Proclamation of 1763, the Canadian Constitution, and Aboriginal Rights

Mark Walters, Queen's University Faculty of Law, has published The Aboriginal Charter of Rights: The Royal Proclamation of 1763 and the Constitution of Canada as Queen's University Legal Research Paper No. 2015-003. Here is the abstract.

Since the nineteenth century, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 has been described as the “Charter” of rights for Aboriginal peoples in Canada. In 1982, the Proclamation was explicitly mentioned in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Yet the legal and constitutional status of the Proclamation remains something of a puzzle in Canadian law today. It is celebrated politically as a landmark instrument in the recognition of Aboriginal rights, and yet judges have read the Proclamation narrowly in terms of the rights it protects and the areas within Canada to which it applies. The author considers the evolving legal status of this historic document within Canadian constitutional law, concluding that as a source of positive law it is more or less a dead letter, but as a source of unwritten legal principle that continues to shape the Crown-Aboriginal relationship in Canada, the Proclamation is still very much alive over 250 years after it was issued. 

 Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Rock Lyrics and Free Speech

Michael Olivas, past President of the Association of American Law Schools and William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Houston School of Law, writes about rap lyrics and free speech here for the Houston Chronicle. He hosts a radio show, The Law of Rock and Roll, on KANW-FM. Rock on!

The Nineteenth Century Origins of Modern Legal Thought

Paulo Barrozo, Boston College Law School, has published The Great Alliance: History, Reason, and Will in Modern Law in volume 78 of Law and Contemporary Problems (2015). Here is the abstract.

This article offers an interpretation of the intellectual and political origins of modern law in the nineteenth century and its consequences for contemporary legal thought.

Social theoretical analyses of law and legal thought tend to emphasize rupture and change. Histories of legal thought tend to draw a picture of strife between different schools of jurisprudence. Such analyses and histories fail to account for the extent to which present legal thought is the continuation of a jurisprudential settlement that occurred in the nineteenth century. That settlement tamed the will of the masses under the influence of authoritative legal thought, conceptions of political morality, and a general sense of social evolution.

The principal mechanism of the settlement was a compact between legal rationalism and historicism to which popular will acceded. After a period of polarization around the time of the American and French revolutions, nineteenth century legal rationalism came to see historical events as the outcome of the cunning operation of reason in the world, and legal historicism came to appeal to the rationalizations of legal reason in order to endow historical matter with both conceptual stability and intellectual authority. Popular will bought into both. Modern law and the main schools of legal thought have remained, ever since, bound to this convergence of reason and history in the face of will. Modern law is therefore as much about continuity as it is about rupture; as much about unity as it is about strife.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Law and Legitimacy

Gabriela Goudenhooft, University of Oradea, Faculty of History, International Relations, Political Sciences and Communication Sciences (IRISPSC), has published Legitimacy: Rituals of Legality and Discursive Authority. Here is the abstract.

This paper aims to explore the concept of legitimacy from a transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspective. The concept of legitimacy is claimed by many disciplines and its roots and formulations can be found in many of them, including law, political science, sociology and, not ultimately, philosophy.

The attempt of explaining the meanings of the concept of legitimacy was also done by reference to other concepts such as legality, authority and sovereignty, identity, democracy, rationality, public space etc.

The first question that we wanted to answer is the following: is legitimacy a quality or rather a relationship? Roman law designed legitimacy in an area of identity, where individuals structure their civil status, family relations and also heritage issues with other individuals. It is primarily about family law and civil law (hereditas legitima, tutela legitima, filius legitimus, successores legitimi, legitimum imperium, potestas legitima, scientia legitima etc.). From this area comes legitimacy’s meaning of compliance with specific order, its relations with legality; here are the forefathers of procedural legitimacy which will be kept even nowadays.

From a philosophical point of view, legitimacy implies the existence of a specific order which is superior to anomie, to the lack of law, to disorder or illegitimacy. The relationship between legitimacy and order explains the necessary rituals for establishing this order, rituals which have a symbolic power.

From a socio-political perspective, legitimacy represents people's faith in legitimacy, induced by the ability of a political system of imposing and maintaining it; the belief that the existing political institutions are the most appropriate for a given society (Weber, Lipset). Legitimacy is often conceived as a quality attributed to the regime by the people through the trust induced by the regime (Merelman). In this respect the legitimacy can be seen as an umbrella protecting the government in their actions. Moreover, legitimacy justifies the government’s actions and even the general command-obedience relation. Therefore, the power is concerned to find arguments to support its own legitimacy (legality, values and consensus) and when a crisis of legitimacy occurs, to find a way to regain it.

Legitimacy arises in competitive contexts and interrogates the democratic procedures and their righteousness (free elections and the principle of majority).

To investigate such diverse areas we had to deal with taxonomy, the analysis of the types of legitimacy, its different species: from the classical division of legal-rational legitimacy, traditional and charismatic legitimacy to noncompetitive and competitive legitimacy; then the input legitimacy versus output legitimacy; legitimacy through formation versus the legitimacy by mandate; to new forms of legitimacy: legitimacy of impartiality, legitimacy of reflexivity, legitimacy of proximity and so on.

Modern society cannot be conceived outside the legal order, the principle of legality and the rule of law, or outside the primacy of human rights. Thus, the evolution of legitimacy on the stage intersects with the values agreed upon by society, in order to achieve the above mentioned objectives. In our world, both the state actors and the private actors, who claim the right to act in the sphere of legitimacy, contribute to their achievement. Moreover, we are talking about international legitimacy and on the "over-state of law". Legitimacy thus invaded broader spheres: the private one, the sphere of national political-constitutional systems, the international one, comprising interstate relations and the community one -- European Union (EU).

An important part of the study regards the symbolic, ritual and discursive answers to the current issues of legitimacy, especially as alternatives to the contemporary legitimacy crisis. Political power oscillates between using rational means of legitimation (legality perspective) or symbolic means through myth and ritual, generally through magical thinking. All this takes place and develops through a public discourse, benefiting from media dissemination and coverage and becoming a show and a game that fascinates the public, manipulating it and anesthetizing its critical spirit.

But speech doesn’t have the required force to achieve the desired objectives unless it is an authorized, legitimate discourse. The instrumentalization of the discourse requires persuasive strategies configuration that is based on cognitive and pragmatic behavior in order to increase its performance.

These areas are the current playground of the public sphere, where there is an unsettling shift from a conventional to a postconvenţional stage, where moral conscience faces increasingly difficult challenges and where legitimacy rethinks its criteria.

Legal Tradition, Legal Reform, and Louisiana

Christopher K. Odinet, Southern University Law Center, has published Commerce, Commonality, and Contract Law: Legal Reform in a Mixed Jurisdiction in volume 75 of the Louisiana Law Review (2015). Here is the abstract.

This Article explores the tradition/reform dichotomy as it exists in certain jurisdictions that, because of their unique history and nature, are particularly susceptible to the struggle between legal tradition and legal reform — mixed jurisdictions. In order to more closely examine the tradition/reform dichotomy and its theoretical and practical effects, this Article analyzes the role that traditional legal institutions play in the legal reform process through the lens of America’s lone mixed jurisdiction — Louisiana.

By exploring Louisiana’s subtle, yet prevalent, anchor-like legal conundrum caused by the struggle between progress and tradition — the process of mooring oneself to existing institutions to such a degree that newly adopted institutions are rendered less effective and the law as a whole suffers — one is able to extrapolate as to how historical forces play a role in the much larger sphere of mixed jurisdictions globally. This Article also explores the broader social science and psychology behind this anchoring effect by looking at society’s inherent desire to hold on to traditional customs and practices, and to resist, even if only subconsciously, letting go of the past.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Hinduism and Law

Timothy Lubin, Washington and Lee University School of Law, has published Hinduism and Law in Hinduism in India: Modern and Contemporary Movements (Will Sweetman and Aditya Malik, Sage Publications, 2015).   Here is the abstract.

Beginning with a review of the interaction between religion and law in premodern periods, this essay presents in more detail the complex developments since the seventeenth century up to the present day. This includes the creation of ‘Anglo-Hindu’ law, colonial administration of justice (including the legal treatment of disapproved Hindu practices), and the gradual restriction of Hindu law to matters of family law; legal treatment of Hindus and Hindu institutions under secular law in modern India and Nepal; and Hindu religion under modern secular law outside of South Asia. Throughout, the emphasis is on the fruits of research in the last thirty years or so, especially current developments.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Problems of Exclusion, the Occupy Montreal Movement and the Homeless

Veronique Fortin, University of California, Irvine, Department of Criminology, Law and Society, has published Occupation, Exclusion and the 'Homeless Problem' during Occupy Montreal as Oñati Socio-Legal Series, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2015. Here is the abstract.

English Abstract: As part of the Occupy movement in the fall of 2011, the Indignés in Montreal occupied a public square and set up an autonomous encampment to protest against socio-economic inequality. However, cohabitation problems soon arose in the camp and tensions between so-called homeless occupiers and Indignés occupiers developed, leading to the exclusion of the homeless people. This paper addresses this tension and inscribes the concept of occupation in a larger historical context. It teases out the legal histories of occupation-as-exclusive-appropriation to cast another light on occupation-as-protest.

Spanish Abstract: Como parte del movimiento “Ocupa” del otoño de 2011, los indignados de Montreal ocuparon una plaza pública, y levantaron un campamento autónomo para protestar por la desigualdad socio-económica. Sin embargo, en el campamento pronto se dieron problemas de cohabitación, y se produjeron tensiones entre los llamados ocupantes sin-techo y los ocupantes indignados, que llevaron a la exclusión de los primeros. Este artículo refleja esta tensión, y sitúa el concepto de ocupación en un contexto histórico mayor. Clarifica la historia legal de “ocupación como apropiación exclusiva” para dar una luz diferente a la “ocupación como protesta”.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Kevin, Save Their Bacon

I've blogged elsewhere about Taber, Alberta's new bylaw (4-2015) which bans swearing, yelling, spitting, loud music, and gathering in groups of three or more, if local police reasonably believe the gatherers are likely to breach the peace. Fines range from the low hundreds for the swearing to the high hundreds to failing to disperse, and on up from there. Local attorneys have already suggested that the bylaw runs afoul of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and have announced that they will meet with citizens who receive tickets to evaluate their cases.

Now, some local residents have decided to try to raise funds to pay for Kevin (Footloose) Bacon to visit Taber and cut a rug, cavort, twirl, trip the light fantastic, what you will, and participate in a "raucous dance party/protest against an embarrassing, archaic, vaguely worded law passed by an out of touch town-council — held of course, just outside of Taber." Well, of course, he couldn't do it in town--remember that restriction on more than two people assembling.  Excellent: law and popular culture meet on the Alberta plains to guarantee the right to dance. I like it.

               

Engaging the Homeless Through New Media

Suzanne Bouclin, University of Ottawa Common Law Section, has published Homeless Nation: Producing Legal Subjectivities Through New Media as Ottawa Faculty of Law Working Paper No. 2015-10. Here is the abstract.

This book chapter describes “Homeless Nation” [HN], a Montreal-based non-profit organization dedicated to “democratizing technology” throughout Quebec and elsewhere in Canada. The overarching goal of Homeless Nation is to facilitate the street community’s ability to “tell their stories and have their voices heard” through written, audio, and video testimonials.

Its primary vehicle for doing so is a website that has been designed ‘for and by the street community’. In step with new user-friendly medial (file-sharing, portable cinematographic equipment, camera-ready phones, and new exposition venues such as YouTube), HN has, since 2003, provided access to interactive communication technologies (e-mail, blogging) and training in new media technologies (digital cameras, sound equipment, and editing software) to its members. The organization boasts more than six thousand users and one hundred guests (or “members”). Street-involved people who use the HN social media write poetry, post information about rallies, and suggest appropriate shelter or other survival strategies such as how to cash a check without identification and how to pass a driver’s test. Contributors provide “life updates” and also express political views such as critiquing cuts to social programs.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

A New Book From a French Scholar About Law In Star Trek

Of interest: a new book (in French) on law in Star Trek, Le droit selon Star Trek, by Professor Fabrice Defferard, of the University of Reims  and the University of Paris I, and the University of Ottawa, and published by Mare et Martin. Here's the description from the publisher's website.

Depuis près de 50 ans, Star Trek compte des millions de fans à travers le monde. Mais cet univers de science-fiction n'est pas qu'un simple délassement. Il propose un idéal social reposant sur une organisation juridique et des règles de droit très élaborées, qui servent notamment de guide pour explorer des mondes étranges et découvrir de nouvelles civilisations dans la galaxie. Au fil des séries et des films, plusieurs dizaines d'intrigues constituent autant de cas susceptibles de donner lieu à une jurisprudence dans des domaines très variés du droit. Le capitaine Kirk peut-il ainsi déroger à la Directive première, clef de voûte légale de l'exploration spatiale, sans encourir la réprobation de Spock et les foudres de ses supérieurs ? L'androïde Data, qui sert sur l'Enterprise sous les ordres du capitaine Picard, est-il une personne ou une chose ? Le lieutenant Jadzia Dax, officier scientifique de la station Deep Space 9, peut-elle être déclarée pénalement responsable pour un crime qu'aurait commis le symbiote qu'elle porte en elle ? B'Elanna Torres, ingénieur en chef sur l'U.S.S. Voyager, doit-elle répondre devant un juge de simples pensées hostiles ?
Du fin fond de l'espace, nos héros et nos héroïnes de Starfleet doivent affronter des situations aussi complexes qu'inédites, parfois dangereuses, et c'est bien souvent par l'application d'une règle de droit qu'ils trouvent une solution équitable et, si possible, sans violence.
Conçu de manière très accessible, fourmillant d'exemples, cet ouvrage s'adresse à tous les amateurs de science-fiction, mais également aux étudiants désireux de découvrir le droit de façon originale. Plus généralement, Le droit selon Star Trek veut illustrer que la science-fiction est un genre constamment préoccupé par notre temps et que la science juridique peut s'enrichir à son contact.

Professor Defferrard is also a novelist. More here. 

Tip of the beret to my friend Arnaud Coutant; more about the book at his blog here.

Locating the Legality of Wikipedia

Ayelet Oz, Harvard University Law School, has published The Legal Consciousness of Wikipedia as her SJD dissertation. Here is the abstract.

For the last two decades, socio-legal scholars have studied the way ordinary people, and predominantly disempowered people, experience and understand law. Only a few studies have focused on the legal consciousness of the upper-middle class or those who hold greater economic, social or symbolic power.

The following dissertation adds to this body of knowledge through an online ethnography of the legal consciousness of the editors of Wikipedia. As the dissertation reveals, legality holds a surprisingly central place in Wikipedia, especially given the expressed rejection of legality in the community’s ethos. Wikipedians manage a complex and delicate system of formal rules and dispute-resolution institutions that extensively use legal vocabulary and rely on the paradigmatic structures and images of national law. The centrality of legality in Wikipedia further poses the question of the interrelations that are created when an egalitarian, open, participatory and ad-hoc community incorporates formality, strict procedures and semi-legal institutions and vocabulary.

Download the full text from SSRN at the link.

Government Gobbledygook

Rachel Stabler, University of Miami School of Law, has published 'What We've Got Here is Failure to Communicate': The Plain Writing Act of 2010 at 40 Journal of Legislation 280 (2014).  Here is the abstract.

Lawyers — including those writing for the government — have long been criticized for using language that the general population cannot easily understand. In what was seen as a victory for the plain language movement, Congress passed the Plain Writing Act of 2010 to help solve this problem. Although many laws existed requiring plain language in the private sector, the Act was the first law of its kind to require the government itself to use plain language in its communications with the public. While the Act has done some good, this article demonstrates that it has largely failed to achieve its goal of clear government communication. Instead, a close analysis of covered documents published since the Act took effect demonstrates that the government continues to use the same complicated legal language that it has always used. The reason for the Act’s failure is that it lacks any oversight and enforcement; it relies on the public to enforce its mandate, but the public is not aware that the Act exists. If Congress is serious about ensuring that the government communicates with its constituents in a way that they understand, it needs to amend the Act to provide additional oversight and enforcement that will help ensure that government agencies take its mandate seriously.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Photographers' Rights, Copyright Protection, and Cultural Heritage

Thomas Margoni, University of Amsterdam, Institute for Information Law (IViR), has published The Digitisation of Cultural Heritage: Originality, Derivative Works and (Non) Original Photographs. Here is the abstract.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the legal consequences of the digitisation of cultural heritage institutions' archives and in particular to establish whether digitisation processes involve the originality required to trigger new copyright or copyright-related protection.

As the European Commission and many MS reported, copyright and in particular "photographers rights" are cause of legal uncertainty during digitisation processes. A major role in this legally uncertain field is played by the standard of originality which is one of the main requirements for copyright protection. Only when a subject matter achieves the requested level of originality, it can be considered a work of authorship. Therefore, a first key issue analysed in this study is whether – and under which conditions – digitisation activities can be considered to be original enough as to constitute works (usually a photographic work) in their own right. A second element of uncertainty is connected with the type of work eventually created by acts of digitisation. If the process of digitisation of a (protected) work can be considered authorial, then the resulting work will be a derivative composed by two works: the original work digitally reproduced and the – probably – photographic work reproducing it. Finally, a third element of uncertainty is found in the protection afforded to "other photographs" by the last sentence of Art. 6 Term Directive and implemented in a handful of European countries.

Accordingly, the paper is structured as follows: Part I is dedicated to the analysis of copyright law key concepts such as the originality standard, the definition of derivative works and the forms of protection available in cases of digital (or film-based) representations of objects (photographs). The second part of the study is devoted to a survey of a selection of EU Member States in an attempt to verify how the general concepts identified in Part I are applied by national legislatures and courts. The selected countries are Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands and the UK. The country analysis fulfils a double function: on the one hand it provides a specific overview of the national implementation of the solutions found at international and EU level. On the other hand, it constitutes the only possible approach in order to analyse the protection afforded by some MS to those "other photographs" (also called non original photographs or mere/simple photographs) provided for by the last sentence of Art. 6 Copyright Term Directive. Part III presents some conclusions and recommendations for cultural heritage institutions and for legislatures.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Lego Justices

Maia Weinstock creates female U.S. Supreme Court Justices in Legos!

Tip of the beret to Bridget Crawford.

Justness In Aristotle and Cicero

Dmitry Dozhdev, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences; Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of State and Law, has published 'Aequitas' as Real Law: Sources of the European Legal Tradition, in "The Best In the West": Educator, Jurist, Arbitrator: Liber Amicorum in Honour of Professor William Butler (Natalya Iu. Erpyleva and Maryann E. Gashi-Butler, Wildy, Simmonds, and Hill, 2014). Here is the abstract.

Concepts of Justness in Aristotle and Cicero are analysed. Both follow formal approach to Justness, proper to legal science. Looking for model of moral perfection and dignity Cicero appeals to the findings of Quintus Mucius Scaevola (II-I BC), founder of european legal science, who revealed the nature of just in proper application of formal equality (bonum et aequum). For Roman lawyers just person was a person that was following a model of a 'vir bonus' (good man). Abstract qualities of a good man were products of law and at the same time elemenst of legal system. The very conformity to the principles of law makes a participant of legal interaction 'good man'. Abstract notion of 'aequity' (justness) was seen as a source of law. In Byzantine times 'aequity' became a quality of the Emperor, while the just nature of law was substituted by 'justness' of the ruler. Some scholars connect the abstraction of 'aequity' with this new approach and deem Roman law texts corrupted in later times. However, the autenticity of the traditional texts can be proved.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Narrative In Trial Discourse

Marcelo C. Galuppo, UC Minas; Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais and University of Baltimore School of Law, has published Mimesis, Imagination and Law. Here is the abstract.

This paper assumes that a trial consists of a narrative that encompasses other narratives held in the Lawsuit. As such, the first question that arises is whether it is possible to transpose events into discourse, i.e., if it is possible to represent mimetically the reality in the judicial discourse. In order to this narrative process be legitimate, it needs to present narrative coherence so that it makes possible that other narratives (plaintiff`s, defendant's, and witnesses' ones) be understood as dialectically overcame in sentence’s narrative. Imagination plays a key role in narratives, and especially in judicial narratives, linking the events, disconnected and isolated in themselves, into a coherent, meaningful whole. This paper assumes that not only the phenomenology of trials can be better understood if one takes them at as a narrative, but also that Judge's (and Jury's) imagination plays a major role in building the meaning of this narrative. This perspective also rejects the traditional positivistic view that court decision may be an objective description (neutral) of the facts involved in the case.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Call For Proposals: Second Biennial Conference on Teaching Globalization, Boston University, June 27, 2015

Call for Proposals:

June 27th, 2015 at the Boston University Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS EXTENDED TO APRIL 10, 2015.

Keynote Address by Paul Robbins, director of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

The second biennial conference on Teaching Globalization at Boston University will explore the convergence of science and the humanities as we seek to understand the impact of current ecological and technological trends on the planet and on humanity itself. We invite presentations of interdisciplinary research and pedagogy addressing what has variously been termed the “end of Nature” and the “Anthropocene.”

Featured topics will include, but will not be limited to, the following: catastrophic climate change, mass extinctions, geoengineering, synthetic biology, AI, and transhumanism. We seek original papers that integrate topics from science and the humanities in order to confront those aspects of globalization that have compelled scholars to rethink their conceptions of both “nature” and “human nature” in the twenty-first century. Papers presented at this conference will be considered for publication in a forthcoming volume published by Lexington Books (Rowman & Littlefield) as part of an ongoing series on Ecocritical Theory and Practice edited by Douglas Vakoch.

Please send a curriculum vitae and a 200 to 250 word paper proposal by April 3 to Richard Samuel Deese, Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning at Boston University: rsdeese@bu.edu

Creating the State, Defining Treason

Alison L. LaCroix, University of Chicago Law School, has published A Man for All Treasons: Crimes by and Against the Tudor State in the Novels of Hilary Mantel in Fatal Fictions: Crime in Law and Literature (Martha C. Nussbau, Richard H. McAdams and Alison L. LaCroix, eds.; forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

This essay, written for a forthcoming volume titled Fatal Fictions: Crime in Law and Literature (Martha Nussbaum, Richard McAdams & Alison LaCroix, eds.), examines the crime of treason as depicted in Hilary Mantel’s novels Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012). In the novels, Mantel provides a corrective to the enduringly popular view of Thomas Cromwell as at best a Tudor-era fixer, and at worst as a murderer and torturer – a view made famous by Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons (1960). Instead, Mantel’s Cromwell is the industrious creator of the modern administrative state. In this characterization, Mantel follows in the scholarly path of Geoffrey Elton, whose Tudor Revolution in Government (1953) rehabilitated Cromwell by arguing that he reformed English government by replacing personal rule with modern bureaucracy and systematizing the royal finances. In different ways, both Mantel’s and Elton’s account rebut the image of Cromwell as a criminal. But I argue that Mantel’s Cromwell in fact should be seen as representing two species of crime: crimes against the state, in the form of treason; and crimes by the state, in the form of espionage and torture. The novels present both forms of crime as occurring at the same historical moment in which the modern state was being formed. Because crimes against the state and by the state both presuppose the existence of the state itself, Mantel’s and Elton’s modernizing Cromwell may not be as distinct from Bolt’s devious Cromwell as the competing accounts would suggest.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Call For Papers: Freedom of (and from) Religion: Debates Over the Accommodation of Religion in the Public Sphere

From Kathleen Moore, Professor and Chair, Department of Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara:

Call for Papers

The UCSB Department of Religious Studies, with support from the Cordano Endowment in Catholic Studies, will host a conference on Freedom of (and from) Religion: Debates Over the Accommodation of Religion in the Public Sphere April 30, 2015 to Saturday May 2, 2015.

An Interdisciplinary Conference at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Accommodation of religion in the public sphere has often been a source of contention in the American context. Historically the Supreme Court of the United States has made clear that the separation of church and state must be preserved at almost all cost. However, this position has been increasingly challenged over the last thirty years. Since the Equal Access Act was legislated in 1984 --which guaranteed public school student groups, whether religious or secular, equal access to meeting spaces and school publications -- the practice of public accommodation has burgeoned. And the very legislation that Christian groups lobbied for in order to insure that high school students could hold after-school Bible study groups on public school property was subsequently also used to insure the right to form gay student alliances and to form campus groups that focused on any religion or on secularism. In a similar vein, laws guaranteeing religious freedom have been used to demand accommodations of religious objections to, and exemptions from, valid public policy (e.g., the Affordable Care Act). These and many other examples suggest that accommodation has become a new front in the culture wars and implicate important questions about freedom from religion as well as the freedom to act on the basis of religious beliefs.

Keynote Speaker is Winnifred Sullivan, Professor and Chair, Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University-Bloomington, and Affiliated Professor of Law, Maurer School of Law.

We invite papers that engage with the theme of public accommodation of religion, particularly as it comes into conflict with the values of equality and/or nondiscrimination. The conference will explore this topic from various disciplinary standpoints, such as history, law, political science, religious studies, sociology, ethics, public policy, or others. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to: • the projected effects of the Hobby Lobby decision for RFRA laws at federal and state levels • how religious freedom is represented through various types of media, including social media • how a variety of religions and denominations have been understood in legal cases • critical perspectives on concepts of religious freedom, freedom of conscience and accommodation • ramifications for health care, public safety, the workplace and other issues we're facing today • the various ways in which law intersects with religion and health care.

We welcome proposals from established scholars, graduate students, and independent researchers. Please send an abstract of 300 words to kmoore@religion.ucsb.edu by March 13. Please attach your abstract to your email in a Word or pdf format, and include your full name, home institution, and stage of your career (predoctoral, postdoctoral, early career, etc.). Notifications will be mailed by March 20. Limited financial assistance may be available based on need.

Sincerely,

Kathleen Moore Professor and Chair, Department of Religious Studies UC Santa Barbara

(NB: I have reformatted the original message).

The Naked City

In an exhibit called The International Center of Photography is once again highlighting stark and captivating photography of  New York by Weegee (Usher or Ascher Fellig, born 1899, died 1968). Photos taken from The Weegee Guide To New York (Prestel, 2015).

The ICP has devoted other exhibits to Weegee: see here.

Tip of the beret to Doug Coulson.

Lord Hoffmann's Jurisprudence

Hart Publishing has issued a volume dedicated to the philosophy and work of Leonard Hoffmann. Here's the description of the book, from the publisher's website.

Lord Leonard Hoffmann remains one of the most important and influential English jurists. Born in South Africa, he came to England as a Rhodes scholar to study law at the University of Oxford. After graduating from the Bachelor of Civil Laws as Vinerian Scholar, he was elected Stowell Civil Law Fellow of University College. There followed an extremely distinguished judicial career, including 14 years as a member of the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords (from 1995 to 2009).

In 2009, Lord Hoffmann returned to the Oxford Law Faculty as a Visiting Professor. In this volume, current and past colleagues of Lord Hoffmann from the University of Oxford examine different aspects of his jurisprudence in diverse areas of private and public law. The contributions are testament to the clarity and creativity of his judicial and extra-judicial writings, to his enduring influence and extraordinary intellectual breadth, and to the respect and affection in which he is held.

The Jurisprudence of Lord Hoffmann: A Festschrift in Honour of Lord Leonard Hoffmann is co-edited by Paul S. Davies, Associate Professor of Law, Oxford University, and Justine Pila, University Lecturer, St. Catherine's College, and is due out in July, 2015. More here. 

Teaching Legal Analysis

David J. Herring, University of New Mexico School of Law, is publishing Teaching Legal Frameworks in Supplementing Socrates (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

This book chapter describes the process of developing legal frameworks. Legal frameworks are a critical element in basic legal analysis. They set out the questions courts ask when addressing a particular issue. Law students need to learn the applicable framework before proceeding with any type of rigorous legal analysis. This chapter also discusses an approach to teaching law students the skill of constructing legal frameworks, providing three concrete examples in the areas of Civil Procedure and Constitutional Law.

Download the chapter from SSRN at the link. 

The Emperor Augustus and Law Reform

Charles J. Reid, Jr., University of St. Thomas School of Law (Minnesota), has published Law Reform in the Ancient World: Did the Emperor Augustus Succeed or Fail in His Morals Legislation? as University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) Legal Studies Research Paper No. 15-06. Here is the abstract.

This is an Article with a dual purpose. First, it is concerned with the process of law reform: How do we judge a given reform's success or failure? Do we adopt strictly linear metrics? Or do we look at non-linear impacts? Thus: In the campaign against tobacco, do we judge it a success because it has reduced cigarette smoking? Or because it reduced the political power of the tobacco companies?
In this Article, I apply this complex means of analyzing law reform to the Emperor Augustus' morals legislation. Legal historians have typically regarded Augustus' morals legislation as having achieved, at best, mixed results. These historians, however, have tended to perform a linear assessment of the legislation. Did Augustus achieve the results he professed to want: that is, were cases of adultery prosecuted more frequently? Was elite childbirth encouraged? I argue, in contrast, that the legislation must be seen against Augustus' larger political agenda, which was the subjection of elite families to the laws of the emerging Roman Empire. Seen in these political terms, I argue that the legislation can be judged in substantial measure as successful.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link. 

"Creole" and Its Meaning In Louisiana Law and History

James Etienne Viator, Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, has published Kreyol-Ye, Kadjen-Ye, E Lalwa a Langaj Dan Lalwizyann [Creoles, Cajuns, and Language Law in Louisiana] at 60 Loy. L. Rev. 273 (2014). Here is the abstract.

This article, written in Cajun French and English, examines the word “Creole” and the history of laws about the French language in Louisiana. In recent decades, a growing awareness of the historical diminution of linguistic minorities and their languages around the world has led to increased efforts to preserve the cultural heritage of such minorities. In Louisiana, after decades of relegating Cajun French to second class status, in 1968 the Louisiana legislature created the Council for the Development of French in Louisiana (CODOFIL), a state agency tasked with preserving “Louisiana’s French language, heritage and culture.” The act establishing CODOFIL mandated that the Council “do any and all things necessary to accomplish the development, utilization, and preservation of the French language as found in the State of Louisiana.” But instead of teaching Cajun French, most Louisiana schools taught standard French, the purpose of CODOFIL was never fully realized, and both the Cajun French language, and culture, are still at risk of disappearing.

(A version of this article, in standard French, is available at 60 Loyola Law Review 297 (2014) and at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2572642)

Download the text from SSRN at the link.

Law, Political Economy, and "Game of Thrones"

Matthew McCaffrey, University of Manchester, Manchester Business School, and Carmen Elena Dorobăt are publishing 'We Do Not Sow': The Economics and Politics of A Song of Ice and Fire in Capitalism and Commerce in Imaginative Literature (Ed Younkins, ed., Lexington Books, 2015).
Here is the abstract.

George R.R. Martin's fantasy epic A Song of Ice and Fire brilliantly illustrates a number of basic principles of political economy. In particular, the richness of his world allows for a detailed account of economic and political relations in human society, and the saga uses its fantasy setting to dramatize and explore important questions about power, conflict, and the state. This essay discusses three economic themes in A Song of Ice and Fire. First, Martin's novels illustrate some fundamental ideas about political institutions, showing that organized economic exploitation is the foundation of the state. Second, they dramatize the relationship between war-making and public finance, describing the immense (networks of) political power created through control of the treasury, as well as the political logic that drives Lord Baelish and the Lannisters from taxation to borrowing to inflation in order to sustain and conceal the crown's war debt. Third, we examine how the rhetoric of Westeros's ruling class prevents the emergence of institutions friendly to peace and social cooperation, especially in the form of market exchange.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

The Printing Press and Legal Culture

From Hart Publishing, a new book on the impact of the printing press on lawyers and legal culture. David J. Harvey, a New Zealand District Court Judge and a part-time lecturer at the Faculty of Law, University of Auckland, has published The Law Emprynted and Englysshed: The Printing Press as an Agent of Change in Law and Legal Culture 1475-1642.  (£70.00)

Here is a description of the content from the publisher's website:

What impact did the printing press – a new means of communicating the written word – have on early modern English lawyers? This book examines the way in which law printing developed in the period from 1475 up until 1642 and the start of the English Civil War. It offers a new perspective on the purposes and structures of the regulation of the printing press and considers how and why lawyers used the new technology. It examines the way in which lawyers adapted to the use of printed works and the way in which the new technology increased the availability of texts and books for lawyers and the administrative community. It also considers the wider humanist context within which law printing developed. The story is set against the backdrop of revolutionary changes in English society and the move not only to print the law, but also increase its accessibility by making information available in English. The book will be of interest to lawyers and legal historians, print and book historians and the general reader. 

Link to the table of contents.

Why the Road Runner Always Said "Beep-Beep" and the Coyote Always Shopped at Acme

Poor Coyote. He never had a chance. The Hollywood Reporter explains why here. (Coyote really needed a good lawyer--maybe Harvey Birdman).

A Blog Devoted To Crime Fiction and Film and True Crime in Popular Culture

Crime Culture, another blog of interest, devoted to crime and detective fiction and film and true crime in popular culture. Check it out here.

A Database of Canadian Crime Fiction

If you like crime fiction, check out this lovely site devoted to Canadian crime fiction: Crime Fiction Canada, created and maintained by Professor Marilyn Rose, Department of English, Professor Jeannette Sloniowski, Department of Communications, Popular Culture, and Film, both of Brock University, and Professor Philippa Gates, of Wilfred Laurier University, assisted by students and colleagues. The site includes citations to primary works, secondary works, and book reviews.  There is also a links page to other sources of information.

Developing Contract Theory

Efi Zemach and Omri Ben-Zvi, both at the University of Jerusalem Faculty of Law, have published The Aesthetics of Contract Theory. Here is the abstract.

This Article offers a novel descriptive theory of contract scholarship that focuses on the aesthetics of various contract theories. Following Pierre Schlag, we explore aesthetics as pre-theoretical commitments that determine the form (but not the substance) of legal discourse. The Article explores four leading contract theories – promissory, reliance, economic and pluralistic conceptions of contract – and illustrates the manner each theories' substantive insights are interwoven with aesthetics commitments, animating and giving the theories their unique character. The Article sheds new light on various contract theories and shows how the aesthetic point of view can better explain their specific strengths and weaknesses.

This inquiry also clarifies why decades of insightful theoretical work have failed to establish the supremacy of any contract theory. The Article's main thesis in this respect is that the continuing struggle between different contract theories is isomorphous to the battle of aesthetics that rages in the legal community as a whole. Since there is no meta-aesthetic way to determine which aesthetic construction is correct – contract theories, which rely on different aesthetics, cannot produce conclusive evidence of their superiority. Our explanation also predicts that contract scholarship is not likely to produce a widely accepted theory any time soon.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Telling Stories

Irene Watson, University of South Australia School of Law, has published First Nations Stories, Grandmother's Law: Too Many Stories Too (sic) Tell. Here is the abstract.

Where to begin? From the beginning, the sisters were running and running away from the man Ngurrunderi: they ran past our country at the edgy of the Coorong, the end of Tangane country, towards a placed called Thangul, the land of the Tanganekald. They are First Nations Peoples and to whom I belong. The sisters ran away from Ngurrunderi who was chasing his 'claimed women', his two wives.

Then Ngurrunderi came along to that same place and he was stopped by our ancestor Paramapari; Ngurrunderi and Paramapari fought right on the beach, where the Coorong lands end. Now this is a place where the old rocks come up out of the sea, the place where the grandmothers sit. Ngurrunderi fought Paramapari because he would not tell Ngurrunderi if he had seen the sisters and what direction they were heading in.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

ASLCH Meeting Begins Today At Georgetown Law

The Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities Annual Conference begins today at Georgetown Law School. Link here. Unfortuately, due to the snow emergency, the school is closed. James Martel, organizer of the conference, has sent out new information about registration and panels.

ARRIVAL

The conference will be held at the Georgetown University Law Center, located at 600 New Jersey Avenue, NW. Registration will take place in Hart Auditorium on the first floor of McDonough Hall. Construction is taking place on 2nd Street; Please enter McDonough Hall at the New Jersey Avenue entrance; all visitors will be required to show identification and sign in with the Department of Public Safety Officer stationed at the lobby desk adjacent to the door. All other external doors to the building are locked. Disabled visitors and guests utilizing wheel chairs are encouraged to use the F Street entrance to McDonough. To the right of this entrance is a yellow emergency box, push the red help button and let the Public Safety Office know that you are here for the PROGRAM NAME program.

If I get additional information, I will 1) post it here and 2) tweet it out.