New DVDs

Out on July 12: The Lincoln Lawyer, starring Marisa Tomei and Matthew McConaughey, based on the
Michael Connelly novel. Also available now: the re-release of Tell It To the Judge, a 1949 comedy about a judicial nominee Marsha Meredith (Rosalind Russell) who may not be confirmed because she's (horrors) divorced. Worry not: ex-hubby Pete (Robert Cummings), also an attorney, still loves her and wasn't really involved with Another Woman (Marie McDonald).

New Books

Some new books that may be of interest:

Cassidy-Welch, Megan, Imprisonment in the Medieval Religious Imagination, c. 1150-1400 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

Caudill, David S., Stories About Science in Law: Literary and Historical Images of Acquired Expertise (Ashgate Press, 2011).


Chanter, Tina, Whose Antigone? The Tragic Marginalization of Slavery (State University of New York Press, 2011).


Exploring Courtroom Discourse: The Language of Power and Control (Anne Wagner and Le Cheng, eds.; Ashgate Press, 2011).


Schwabach, Aaron, Fan Fiction and Copyright: Outsider Works and Intellectual Property Protection (Ashgate Press, 2011).


Sherberg, Michael, The Governance of Friendship: Law and Gender in the Decameron (Ohio State University, 2011).

Call For Papers

Special Issue of the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law




Visual Semiotics of the Spaces We Inhabit



Edited By Sarah Marusek, Department of Political Science, University of Hawaii Hilo



In our everyday lives, we live and dwell in a variety of places that, upon first consideration, do not seem either legal or political. Upon closer examination, the spaces where we live and do things reveal a uniquely visual semiotics of place that generate meaning and contestation through structure, signage, and symbolism. As sites of power. these places can be urban, rural, or simply in between. The ways in which power manifests itself here is as law, legality, governance. Visual representations of meaning in our quotidian terrain of habitation constitute our relationships and govern who we are and how we understand our place in the world. The visual engagement with the semiotic construction of who we are as individuals, as a collective, and the presence of both within different communities is visibly marked by the banal as well as by the overtly distinct. In the routine places of our lives, identities fostered by rules and structures challenge us to reconsider how we conceptualize ourselves, each other, the state, and the spectrum of rights therein. Themes of consumption, reproduction, sexuality, religion, ownership, race, ethnicity, equality, access, death, and culture contribute to this visually semiotic relationship between law, power, and place.



The International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, a peer-reviewed international journal published by Springer, will publish a special issue on “Visual Semiotics of the Spaces We Inhabit”. Articles are invited to focus specifically, but not exclusively, upon the following ideas:



1. Spatiality that gives meaning to how and where we live

2. Visible constructions of governmentality and discipline

3. Everyday contestation of rights involving a visual sense of legality

4. Constitutive approach to law involving semiotics

5. Meaning of law through visual symbols, cues, and other modes of semiotic communication



Comparative and interdisciplinary approaches are particularly welcome.



Article proposals in US English (max. 1000 words) will be sent to Sarah Marusek marusek@hawaii.edu no later than 15 March 2012.



Date of submission: Article proposal in US English (max. 1000 words) to be submitted by 15 March 2012.

Decision for authors: 15 April 2012

Full paper submission: Full papers to be submitted by 15 December 2012 for the blind peer-reviewing process.

Length of papers: between 7,500 words and 10,000 words

Volume of publication: volume 27



Anne Wagner, Ph. D., Associate Professor, Université du Littoral Côte d'Opale (France)

Research Professor, China University of Political Science and Law (Beijing - China)

http://fr.linkedin.com/in/annewagner





Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - http://www.springer.com/law/journal/11196

Series Editor, Law, Language and Communication - Ashgate Publisher (http://www.ashgate.com/Default.aspx?page=3916)

President of the International Roundtables for the Semiotics of Law - http://www.semioticsoflaw.com/

Editor for SemiotiX New Series - http://semioticon.com/semiotix/

Ceremonies of Law Conference, Wollongong, December 2011: Information and Call for Papers

From Marett Leiboff, Associate Professor
Faculty of Law, University of Wollongong

The Legal Intersections Research Centre of the Faculty of Law, University of Wollongong, is hosting a joint conference of the Law Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia and the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand on 7 – 9 December 2011. The conference will provide a unique opportunity for dialogue and exchange between scholars, practitioners and policy based researchers working in and around the questions to be addressed by the conference.



We would be delighted if you could participate in the conference. We would also be grateful if you could forward this email to colleagues who might be interested in participating. Detailed information about the call for papers, the conference themes, the associations, registration, and the location are available on the conference website: http://www.uow.edu.au/law/LIRC/conference2011/index.html. For any further conference enquiries, please contact: conference2011@uow.edu.au.







NSW 2522
Australia

 +61 2 4221 3456
Fax: +61 2 4221 3188

Doing Them In, Domestically

Agatha Christie and the rest of the cosy mystery writers were onto something, but they got some of their inspiration from life. As Deborah Blum writes in this article for Lapham's Quarterly, cooks, manufacturers, and killers (and they might have been the same folks) have for centuries accidentally and purposefully "done in" those around them. And the government and scientists have been trailing along behind slowly catching up.

Sometimes the culprits were food additives.

Oh. Charming.

Read on. It's great stuff. But don't read it around mealtime.

 

[T]he ancients were also fully aware that foods could be dangerous without human help, hence the warnings regarding meat consumption. And they’d learned from long-time experience that even routinely safe foods carried unexpected risks. Consider the wonderfully bizarre story of “mad honey” and the Greek army commanded by Xenophon in 401 bc. Returning from an unsuccessful raid in Persia, Xenophon’s men raided beehives along the eastern edge of the Black Sea, acquiring a treasure trove of local honey. By day’s end, the raiding party was immobilized. They were like men “greatly intoxicated,” wrote Xenophon, whose army was suffering from nausea, inability to walk straight, and lethargy. Over three centuries later, the Roman general Pompey’s troops also encamped by the Black Sea and gorged themselves on the local honey. Pompey lost three squadrons to the enemy fighters who had deliberately placed honeycombs in the path of his troops.

Borax came first on the list, partly because it was so widely used by meat processors. Derived from the element boron, it slowed decomposition but could also react with proteins and firm them up, giving rotting meat a more shapely appearance. Borax had thus figured in the “embalmed beef” scandal of the Spanish-American War, in which officers in the U.S. Army accused their suppliers of shipping tins of refrigerated beef that was treated with “secret chemicals” and canned beef that was no more than a “bundle of fibers.” “It looked well but had an odor similar to that of a dead human body after being injected with preservatives,” an Army medical officer wrote of the refrigerated meat, adding that when cooked, the product tasted rather depressingly like boric acid.

New Publication: The Collected Essays of John Finnis, Volumes I-V

New from Oxford University Press:

The Collected Essays of John Finnis, Volumes I-V

Description


For over forty years John Finnis has pioneered the development of a new classical theory of natural law, a systematic philosophical explanation of human life that offers an integrated account of personal identity, practical reason, morality, political community, and law. The core of Finnis' theory, articulated in his seminal work Natural Law and Natural Rights, has profoundly influenced later work in the philosophy of law and practical reason, while his contributions to the ethical debates surrounding nuclear deterrence, abortion, and sexual morality have been a powerful, and controversial exposition of the practical implications of his theory of natural law.



The Collected Essays of John Finnis brings together 122 papers, including over two dozen previously unpublished works. Thematically arranged, the five volumes provide ready access to his contributions across central areas of modern practical philosophy - the philosophy of practical reason; the philosophy of personal identity and intention; political philosophy; the philosophy of law; and the philosophy of revelation and the role of religion in public life. Fully cross-referenced, cross-indexed, and introduced by the author, the Collected Essays reveal the connections and coherence of the different branches of Finnis' work, showing the full picture of his philosophical contribution for the first time.



Covering topics from the nature of divine revelation, the morality of abortion, to the adoption of Bills of Rights, the work in these volumes offer a unique insight into the intellectual currents and political debates that have transformed major areas of public morality and law over the last half century. Together with the new edition of Natural Law and Natural Rights, they will be an essential resource for all those engaged with the philosophy of law and broader questions in practical philosophy.

Features

Provides access to the full range of John Finnis's work across legal, political, and moral philosophy, and theology

Includes thirty-three essays published here for the first time

The essays engage with the central intellectual currents shaping modern ethical and political debates, from the foundational to the practical level

Each volume features an original introduction by the author drawing together his work on the area
 
Product Details


2176 pages; 9.2 x 6.1;

ISBN13: 978-0-19-958004-0

ISBN10: 0-19-958004-9

About the Author(s)

John Finnis is Professor of Law and Legal Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of University College. He is Professor of Law at the University of Notre Dame.

Call For Papers

From Andrew Majeske, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY

Save the Date/Call For Papers


Third Biennial Literature and Law Conference



• Conference Date:

o TENTATIVE DATE March 30, 2012 (Friday). Please check conference website for confirmation of final conference date—this date will be posted in mid-September.



• Conference Location

o John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY) (59th Street and 10th Avenue). The conference will take place on the newly expanded John Jay campus, near Lincoln Center in Manhattan. The facilities include a brand new, state of the art conference center.



• Conference Organizer and Contact Person

o Andrew Majeske, ajmajeske@gmail.com



• Conference Theme and Overview:

o Theme: The Idea of Justice

o Overview: This conference aims to bring scholars of literature and law into an interdisciplinary setting to share the fruits of their research and scholarship. Generally this full day conference consists of between 8 and 10 paper panels and roundtables, two talks by prominent speakers, and a post-conference reception. The conference fee will be $75, which will be payable by credit card through a link on the conference website.



• Conference Speakers

o Amartya Sen, Keynote Speaker: The conference’s keynote speaker is Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics, the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University and, until recently, the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He has served as President of the Econometric Society, the Indian Economic Association, the American Economic Association and the International Economic Association. He was formerly Honorary President of OXFAM and is now its Honorary Advisor. Of particular interest to this conference is Professor Sen’s celebrated 2009 book, The Idea of Justice. His other books, which have been translated into more than thirty languages, include Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (2006), The Argumentative Indian (2005), Rationality and Freedom (2002), Development as Freedom (1999), Inequality Reexamined (1992), The Standard of Living (1987), On Ethics and Economics (1987), Resources, Values and Development (1984), Choice, Welfare and Measurement (1982), Poverty and Famines (1981), and On Economic Inequality (1973, 1997) . His research has ranged over a number of fields in economics, philosophy, and decision theory, including social choice theory, welfare economics, theory of measurement, development economics, public health, gender studies, moral and political philosophy, and the economics of peace and war.



o George Anastaplo, Feaured Speaker: The conference’s featured speaker is Professor George Anastaplo from Loyola University School of Law in Chicago, whose life and career been devoted to the idea of justice, both in theory and practice. Professor Anastaplo is the author of more than 15 books, and innumerable articles, including The Constitutionalist: Notes on the First Amendment (1971, 2005), But Not Philosophy: Seven Introductions to Non-Western Thought (2002), The Thinker as Artist: From Homer to Plato & Aristotle (1997), The American Moralist: On Law, Ethics and Government (1992), The Constitution of 1787: A Commentary (1989), The Artist As Thinker: From Shakespeare to Joyce (1983) and Human Being and Citizen: Essays on Virtue, Freedom, and the Common Good (1975). Professor Anastaplo, during his Illinois Bar interview in 1950, took a principled stand against McCarthy era questions asking about his political affiliations, and whether he believed in a right of revolution—he cited the Declaration of Independence to support his view that he and all Americans believe or should believe in such a right. The committee interviewing him was not pleased with his responses, and as a consequence, he has never been admitted to the Bar. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, in his dissent in Professor Anastaplo’s case seeking admission to the Illinois Bar (In Re Anastaplo 1961—which Anastaplo lost 5-4), vigorously defended Anastaplo’s position on first amendment grounds and asserted, among other things, that “we must not be afraid to be free”—Justice Black arranged for this quote, and others from his dissent, to be read at his funeral.



• Call For Papers and Panels

o We invite proposals for papers and panels that address topics that relate the humanities & arts (especially literary texts (broadly conceived)), to this year’s conference theme, the “idea of justice.” Of particular interest are papers and panels that in addition engage aspects of Professor Sen’s book, The Idea of Justice, or that attempt to integrate the theory with the practice of justice, and/or that engage and compare differing notions and perspectives of justice.



• CFP Deadline

o Please submit abstracts (250 words or less) to Andrew Majeske, ajmajeske@gmail.com, by Friday, January 13, 2012.



• The Daily Show/The Colbert Report

o A limited number of “Daily Show” and/or “The Colbert Report” tickets may be available for the evening before the conference (Thursday March 29) on a first-requested basis. We have succeeded in obtaining a small block of these for the prior two conferences. These shows are taped in studios only a few blocks walk from John Jay.



• Conference Website

o More information will be available in September 2011 at http://litandlawjjay.blogspot.com/

Alchemy As Opera

Damon Albarn has composed an opera about Dr. Dee, Elizabeth I's alchemist. The New York Times' Jon Pareles discusses the work, which premieres at the Manchester International Festival, here.

The Music Trade In Georgian England

A new book from Ashgate concentrates on music publishing and IP rights in Georgian England. Here's a description of the contents and an introduction to the contributors.

In contrast to today's music industry, whose principal products are recorded songs sold to customers round the world, the music trade in Georgian England was based upon London firms that published and sold printed music and manufactured and sold instruments on which this music could be played. The destruction of business records and other primary sources has hampered investigation of this trade, but recent research into legal proceedings, apprenticeship registers, surviving correspondence and other archived documentation has enabled aspects of its workings to be reconstructed.




The first part of the book deals with Longman & Broderip, arguably the foremost English music seller in the late eighteenth century, and the firm's two successors – Broderip & Wilkinson and Muzio Clementi's variously styled partnerships – who carried on after Longman & Broderip's assets were divided in 1798. The next part shows how a rival music seller, John Bland, and his successors, used textual and thematic catalogues to advertise their publications. This is followed by a comprehensive review of the development of musical copyright in this period, a report of efforts by a leading inventor, Charles 3rd Earl Stanhope, to transform the ways in which music was printed and recorded, and a study of Georg Jacob Vollweiler's endeavour to introduce music lithography into England.



The book should appeal not only to music historians but also to readers interested in English business history, publishing history and legal history between 1714 and 1830.





Contents: Preface; Part I Longman, Broderip and Their Successors: Chronology of the business begun by James Longman; Longman and Broderip, Jenny Nex; Broderip and Wilkinson, Michael Kassler; Clementi's music business, David Rowland; Clementi as publisher, David Rowland. Part II Music Sellers' Catalogues: A Case Study: The periodical music collections of John Bland and his successors, Yu Lee An. Part III The Legal Context: The development of musical copyright, John Small. Part IV New Technologies: Earl Stanhope's 'letter-music', Michael Kassler; Stanhope's novel musical instruments, Michael Kassler; Vollweiler's introduction of music lithography to England, Michael Kassler; Summary of legal cases; Index of persons.



About the Editor: Michael Kassler is an Australian musicologist. His works include Samuel Wesley (1766-1837): A Source Book (written with Philip Olleson), Charles Edward Horn's Memoirs of his Father and Himself, Music Entries at Stationers' Hall, 1710-1818, The English Bach Awakening: Knowledge of J. S. Bach and his Music in England 1750-1830, and A. F. C. Kollmann's Quarterly Musical Register (1812): An Annotated Edition with an Introduction to his Life and Works, all published by Ashgate.



Yu Lee An is Librarian in Scholarly Information, University of Technology, Sydney. Her recent Ph.D. dissertation was on Music Publishing in London from 1780 to 1837 as reflected in Music Publishers' Catalogues of Music for Sale.



Jenny Nex is Curator of Musical Instruments, Royal College of Music. She has published widely on musical instrument makers in Georgian England based upon archival research of their activities.



David Rowland is Professor of Music and Dean of Arts at the Open University and Director of Music at Christ's College, Cambridge. His books include A History of Pianoforte Pedalling, The Cambridge Companion to the Piano, Early Keyboard Instruments: A Practical Guide and The Correspondence of Muzio Clementi.



John Small is a private researcher based in Sydney. He has worked for the National Library of Australia and as an information technology manager for the Australian Broadcasting Authority.

Dictionaries, Language and the WTO

Bradly J. Condon, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), School of Law and Bond University - School of Law, has published  Language Discrepancies in WTO Law

The purpose of this paper is to establish a starting point for the discussions on linguistic discrepancies. Section I outlines the problem of discrepancies between English, French and Spanish versions of WTO legal texts. Section II provides examples of the types of issues and discrepancies that can arise and provides a preliminary categorization of discrepancies. Section III surveys discrepancies in the Agreement on Safeguards.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Understanding Plain Meaning

Stephen C. Mouritsen has published The Dictionary Is Not a Fortress: Definitional Fallacies and a Corpus-Based Approach to Plain Meaning at 2010 Brigham Young University 1915. Here is the abstract.

"Plain meaning," said Judge Frank Easterbrook, "as a way to understand language is silly. In interesting cases, meaning is not 'plain'; it must be imputed; and the choice among meanings must have a footing more solid than a dictionary."



This paper proposes an empirical method for determining the "ordinary meaning" of statutory terms; an approach grounded in a linguistic methodology known as Corpus Linguistics. I begin by addressing a number of commonly held, but ultimately erroneous assumptions about the content and structure of dictionaries – assumptions that find their way into judicial reasoning with alarming frequency.



I then outline an approach to the resolution of lexical ambiguity in statutory interpretation – an approach based on Corpus Linguistics methods. Corpus Linguistics is an empirical methodology that analyzes language function and use by means of large electronic databases called corpora. A corpus is a principled collection of naturally occurring language data, typically tagged with grammatical content and searchable in such a way that the ordinary use of a given term in a given context may be ascertained.



Though Corpus Linguistics is not a panacea, the methodology has the potential to remove the determination of ordinary meaning from the black box of the judge's mental impression and render the discussion of the ordinary meaning of statutory terms one of tangible and quantifiable reality.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Law and Communications Theory

Mark Greenberg, UCLA School of Law and Department of Philosophy, has published Legislation as Communication? Legal Interpretation and the Study of Linguistic Communication in Philosophical Foundations of Language in the Law (A. Marmor & S. Soames eds.; Oxford University Press, 2011).

According to a view – really a family of related views – that has considerable currency at the moment, philosophy of language and linguistics have a direct bearing on the content of the law. I call this view the communicative-content theory of law or, for short, the communication theory. According to the communication theorists, the study of language and communication reveals that the full linguistic meaning of an utterance is what the speaker or author communicates by the utterance – call it communicative content – which may go well beyond the literal meaning of the words. (On the standard understanding, communicative content is constituted by the content of certain specific communicative intentions of the speaker.) The communication theorists conclude that a statute's contribution to the content of the law is its communicative content. In this chapter, I grant many of the assumptions of the communication theorists and then argue that there are many candidates for a statute’s contribution to the content of the law, including different linguistic and mental contents. The study of language can be important in helping us to make and clarify such distinctions, but beyond this information-providing role, it has nothing to say about which, if any, of these candidates constitutes a statute’s contribution to the law. The communication theory therefore lacks the resources to say what any statute’s contribution is. Ultimately, I suggest that trying to understand legislation on the model of communication is misguided because legislation and legislative systems have purposes that have no parallel in the case of communication and that may be better served if a statute’s contribution to the content of the law is not constituted by what is communicated by the legislature.

Download the text from SSRN at the link.

Using Trials As Teaching Materials

Rupert Macey-Dare, St. Cross College, Oxford, has published True Crime - Guilty or Not Guilty - David Bain. Here is the abstract.

This paper is a cut down version of Advocacy Masterclass – Retrial of David Bain, but with detailed analysis and answers removed. This shorter paper is designed for use in classroom teaching and examination of real courtroom advocacy, e.g. with students watching and discussing the video links and stepping in to read out trial transcripts and re-enact examples whenever necessary.



Early on the morning of Monday 20 June 1994, five members of the Bain family: Robin (58), Margaret (5'7 and their teenage children Arawa (19), Laniet (18) and Stephen (14) were slaughtered in the family home at 65 Every St, Dunedin, New Zealand. There was one survivor, the eldest son, David Bain (22), a student of music and classics at Otago University, who reported the scene of carnage after his morning paper round. Next year, on 29 May 1995, David Bain was himself convicted on all five counts of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment, without parole for the first 16 years.



Fourteen years later, on 6 March 2009, and after two references from the New Zealand Governor General, three hearings by the New Zealand Court of Appeal and a final, quashing review by the Privy Council, the stage was set for one of most notorious criminal cases in New Zealand and Commonwealth history, the retrial of David Bain.



How did the two sides fight this case? Who won the advocacy battle and what techniques, explicit and implicit, did they use? What was the verdict, indeed, what could or should it have been?

Download the text from SSRN at the link.

A jury initially convicted David Bain of the murders of his family in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1995. He was retried and acquitted in 2009.

Interpretation In Legal Reasoning

Timothy A. O. Endicott, University of Oxford Faculty of Law, has published Legal Interpretation in the Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Law (A. Marmor ed., Routledge, 2012). Here is the abstract.

The focus of this work is the role of interpretation in “legal reasoning,” defined to mean "finding rational support for legal conclusions (general or particular)". My argument is that each of the following aspects of legal reasoning need not involve interpretation: 1. Resolving indeterminacies as to the content of the law; 2. Working out the requirements of abstract legal provisions; 3. Deciding what is just; 4. Equitable interference with legal duties or powers or rights; 5. Understanding the law. I do not claim that interpretation is unimportant to legal reasoning, but that most legal reasoning is not interpretative. Much of what is commonly called “interpretation” can be done with no interpretation at all.

Download the text from SSRN at the link.

Assocation for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities Open For Proposals For Next Year's Conference

From Professor Linda Meyer, Quinnipiac College of Law

Call for Participation: 15th Annual ASLCH Conference




March 16-17, 2012

Texas Wesleyan School of Law (Fort Worth, TX)



The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities is an organization of scholars engaged in interdisciplinary, humanistic legal scholarship. The Association brings together a wide range of people engaged in scholarship on legal history, legal theory, 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 questions of meaning, value, and interpretation, particularly as they bear upon ideas or issues of justice, identity, authority, and obligation, and more broadly, an understanding of law’s place in culture. How do ideas of justice change over time and under what conditions? How does law appear in the cultural imagination? What are the linguistic, literary, and cultural processes at work in the law, and what are its institutional processes? How is the legal subject conceptualized and mobilized, and what are the limits on its freedom and authority?



We invite scholars with interests across the range of areas, fields, and disciplines encompassed by Law, Culture and the Humanities to organize panels or submit proposals for individual paper presentations. Examples of recent panel topics include:



Interpreting Cases, Creating Law

Roundtable: Dead Certainty: The Death Penalty and the Problem of Judgment

Imagining Rights in the Era of Globalization

Explorations in Law, Science, and Governance

What Can the Humanities Offer to Law?

Humanistic Critiques of Legal Education

Law and the Sacred

Visual Media and The Law

Underwriting Society: Law and Literature as Mutual Modes of Imagining Community



(The complete programs from past conferences are available on the ASLCH website: http://www.law.syr.edu/academics/centers/lch/past.html)



We urge those interested in participating to consider submitting complete panels or session proposals. We welcome a variety of formats and subjects, such as: panels; roundtables; film screenings and performance art; sessions in which the focus is on pedagogy; sessions that create a space for participants to join in a directed reading of a text (e.g., a lyric poem); author-meets-readers sessions, which provide a forum for conversation about a recently published book in the field; sessions in which commentators respond to a single paper or issue, or in which the chair presents the papers and the authors respond.



Ideally, traditional panels should include NO MORE THAN 3 PAPERS. All panel proposals should indicate the name of the chair. In most cases having a discussant is desirable, and the discussant can be, but does not have to be, the chair. All panels should be planned in such a way that 30 minutes of the 1 hour and 45 minutes generally allotted for sessions is reserved for discussion/comments by the audience. Proposals must indicate whether a “smart room” with computer, audio or video presentation technology will be needed. More detailed instructions about participation rules and limits are listed on the first page of the online conference submission system, but please note that we will accept a maximum of NO MORE THAN ONE PAPER AND ONE ROUNDTABLE presentation for any individual participant, although participants may chair more than one panel. Additionally, each paper submission [abstract] is limited to 150 words, and because the site will not save partial submissions, it is important to have all the information for your proposed paper or panel completed before you begin the submission process.



We would also welcome you to volunteer to serve as a chair and/or discussant, whether you are submitting a paper proposal or not. If you would like to serve as a chair and/or discussant, please indicate the areas or subjects of your interest/expertise.



We will accept proposals for panels, papers, roundtables, and other session proposals, and volunteers to serve as panel chairs or discussants, from July 1 until October 15, 2011.



PLEASE NOTE: To submit proposals, please go to the online submission site: http://www.regonline.com/15thannualmeetingLCH



As it becomes available, additional information about accommodations and other conference matters, will be posted to the, "ASLCH Annual Conference Information" page on the ASLCH webpage at: http://www.law.syr.edu/academics/centers/lch/conference.html.



Participants will be notified by December 31, 2011. We cannot promise that we will be able to accommodate all proposals.





Questions, please contact Matthew Anderson (manderson@une.edu)

Call for Nominations, Dissertation Award, Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities

From Professor Linda Meyer, Quinnipiac College of Law

Julien Mezey Dissertation Award




The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities invites submissions for its 2012 Julien Mezey Dissertation Award. This annual prize is awarded to the dissertation that most promises to enrich and advance interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of law, culture and the humanities. The award will be presented at the Association's 2012 annual meeting, which will be hosted by Texas Wesleyan University School of Law on March 15-17, 2012.



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 2012 award must have defended their dissertations successfully between September 1, 2010 and August 31, 2011.



The deadline for nominations for the 2012 award is November 1, 2011. On or before that date, each nominee must submit the following:



1) a letter by the nominee detailing the genesis, goal, and contribution of the dissertation;

2) a letter of support from a faculty member familiar with the work;

3) an abstract, outline, and selected chapter of the dissertation;

4) contact information for the nominee.



All materials should be sent to:

Leonard Feldman, lfeldman@hunter.cuny.edu



Award finalists will be notified by December 1, 2011. Finalists must then submit an electronic version of the entire dissertation. The winner will be determined by early February and invited to the 2012 ASLCH annual meeting in Dallas. ASLCH will pay travel and lodging costs.



Questions should be addressed to Leonard Feldman, lfeldman@hunter.cuny.edu.

Call for Applications, Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities, Graduate Student Workshop

From Professor Linda Meyer, Quinnipiac College of Law

The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities (ASLCH) welcomes applications for its first ever Graduate Student Workshop, to be held March 15, 2012. The half day Workshop immediately precedes the ASLCH Annual Meetings, to be hosted by Texas Wesleyan University School of Law March 16-17, 2012. Applicants can be graduate students from any discipline or law students with scholarly interests in Law, Culture, and the Humanities.




The Workshop’s aims are to promote the future development of the field of Law, Culture and the Humanities through the development of our junior colleagues by bringing together graduate students and established scholars in Law, Culture, and the Humanities. During seminars, panel discussions, informal conversation, and shared meals, we will discuss scholarly work, give feedback on student research projects, address issues pertinent to professional development, and facilitate scholarly networks between graduate and faculty colleagues by encouraging intellectual community.



The Graduate Student Committee of ASLCH for 2011-2012, who will be planning the Workshop, includes Paul A. Passavant, Chair (Department of Political Science, Hobart and William Smith Colleges), Austin Sarat (Departments of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought and Political Science, Amherst College), Stewart Motha (Kent Law School, University of Kent), Marianne Constable (Department of Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley), and Ravit Reichman (Department of English, Brown University).



ASLCH will subsidize the participation of up to 15 successful graduate student applications. The deadline for applications is Friday December 2, 2011. Applications should be sent electronically to Professor Paul A. Passavant, Department of Political Science, Hobart and William Smith Colleges (Passavant@hws.edu).



Applications should include a Curriculum Vitae (CV), the title and abstract of the student’s proposed paper for the ASLCH Annual Meetings March 16-17, 2012, and a letter not longer than two pages describing the student’s status in graduate school, the student’s dissertation or significant interest in Law, Culture, and the Humanities, and what the student hopes to gain from attending the Workshop.

Call For Papers

From Robert L. Tsai, Professor of Law, American University, Washington College of Law

CALL FOR PAPERS


Deadline: March 15, 2012

“Hate and Political Discourse”

Journal of Hate Studies

Volume X, No. 1 (2012/13)

Guest Editor:

Robert L. Tsai, J.D.

Professor of Law, American University, Washington College of Law

About the Theme

Often shielded by constitutional rules and nurtured by political discourse, hate has a
mercurial existence in the popular imagination. In the “arena of angry minds,” as Richard Hofstadter called American political life, political actors sometimes choose to condemn hatred, distance themselves from it, appeal to its existence, or foment it.

Even when subjugation, discrimination, or violence is not the goal, the politics of hate can pay off. Rather than seeking its total eradication, many democracies assume the permanence of hate and seek to minimize its excesses or to punish and prohibit specific expressions. Are such assumptions well-founded, and such strategies wise?
Some of the social groups marked through the techniques of hatred have changed over time, as the political dividends for resorting to strategies of hate have shifted, while other groups seem to be consistent targets of hate.

Technological advances offer new tools to combat hatemongering even as they can make demagogues more effective.

What are the structural conditions that allow hate to thrive or might permit its isolation? How might inroads be made in the law or politics of inclusion, especially in countries with strong commitments to rhetorical freedom and popular sovereignty?

Call for Submissions

The Journal of Hate Studies welcomes original papers treating the theme, “Hate and
Political Discourse,” from a wide range of disciplines, including history, law, philosophy, political science, sociology, criminal justice, social psychology, economics, anthropology,
geography, journalism, communications, rhetoric, literature, educational studies, and
cultural studies.

We especially encourage original treatments of the following topics:

• Hate and popular sovereignty

• How hate can foster alternative communities and movements

• Cultural foundations of hate

• Historical changes in rhetorical strategies

• Political parties and hate

• Necessary political conditions for hate

• Empirical approaches to the problem of hate

• The role of hate in nation-building

• How literature, rhetoric, journalism or other forms of communication can fuel
or discourage hate

• Geographical differences in how hatred is sustained or combated

• Comparative approaches and cross-cultural challenges

• New technologies in combating or fomenting hatred in the realm of political
discourse

We anticipate hosting an invitational Symposium in Fall 2012, either at American
University or Gonzaga University, in conjunction with the publication of this Volume.

Authors published in this Volume would be invited to present their work at the
Symposium.

About the Journal

The Journal of Hate Studies is a peer-reviewed publication of the Gonzaga University
Institute for Hate Studies. The Journal of Hate Studies is an international scholarly
journal promoting the sharing of interdisciplinary ideas and research relating to the study
of what hate is, where it comes from, and how to combat it. It presents cutting-edge
essays, theory, and research that deepen the understanding of the development and
expression of hate.

Guidelines for Submissions

Submissions are typically expected to be between 5,000 and 10,000 words.

Submissions may be made in either of the following ways.

• As an attachment sent by email to hatestudies@gonzaga.edu

• Through the Journal’s online site

(http://journals.gonzaga.edu/index.php/johs/information/authors)

Submissions should be made in MS Word format. Please do not submit PDFs.

Submissions should be presented in APA format, with endnotes rather than footnotes.

However, legal scholarship may be presented in Bluebook or ALWD.

More information about submission guidelines, the Journal of Hate Studies, and the

Gonzaga University Institute for Hate Studies can be found at

http://gonzaga.edu/hatestudies

For Questions or Communications

Robert L. Tsai, J.D.

Guest Editor

Professor, American University Washington College of Law

rtsai@wcl.american.edu

202.274.4370

John Shuford, J.D., Ph.D.

Director, Gonzaga University Institute for Hate Studies

hatestudies@gonzaga.edu

509.313.3665

Fighting It Out In a Seventeenth Century Literary Venue

José Calvo González, University of Málaga Faculty of Law, has published Quevedo en tela de juicio, o sea El Tribvnal de la ivsta vengança de Luis Pacheco de Narváez. (De contiendas literarias y Derecho en la España del s. XVII),  525 in Estudios Jurídicos en Homenaje al Profesor Alejandro Guzmán Brito, volume 1 (Patricio-Ignacio Carvajal and Massimo Miglietta eds; Edizioni dell'Orso, Alessandria, 2011). Here is the abstract.

The paper examines the “procedural drama” created by Luis Pacheco de Narváez (1570 - 1640) in his Tribunal de la justa venganza [Court the just vengeance] (1635) for the prosecution of literary aesthetics (and moral ideas and values) Quevedo´s [Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas (1580-1645)].

The uniqueness of the case in the frequent literary controversies of the time lies in the nature of judicial inquiry that was built. In this legal-procedural dimension reprimanded experiencing a profound rethinking of the semantic roles in the “production of sens” between Law and Literature/ Literature and Law.
The essay is also available online at the Italian Society for Law and Literature (ISLL) website.

Distinctions Between Construction and Interpretation

Lawrence B. Solum, Georgetown Law School, has published The Interpretation-Construction Distinction at 27 Constitutional Commentary 95 (2010). Here is the abstract.

The interpretation-construction distinction, which marks the difference between linguistic meaning and legal effect, is much discussed these days. I shall argue that the distinction is both real and fundamental – that it marks a deep difference in two different stages (or moments) in the way that legal and political actors process legal texts. My account of the distinction will not be precisely the same as some others, but I shall argue that it is the correct account and captures the essential insights of its rivals. This Essay aims to mark the distinction clearly!



The basic idea can be explained by distinguishing two different moments or stages that occur when an authoritative legal text (a constitution, statute, regulation, or rule) is applied or explicated. The first of these moments is interpretation – which I shall stipulate is the process (or activity) that recognizes or discovers the linguistic meaning or semantic content of the legal text. The second moment is construction – which I shall stipulate is the process that gives a text legal effect (either my translating the linguistic meaning into legal doctrine or by applying or implementing the text). I shall then claim that the difference between interpretation and construction is real and fundamental. Although the terminology (the words "interpretation" and "construction" that express the distinction) could vary, legal theorists cannot do without the distinction.



One more preliminary point: the topic of this Essay is narrow and conceptual. This Essay, has three goals: (1) to explicate the nature of the interpretation-construction distinction, (2) to argue that this distinction marks a real difference, and (3) to suggest that the distinction is helpful in that it enables legal theorists to clarify the nature of important debates, for example debates about constitutional interpretation. The Essay does not offer any particular theory of interpretation or construction – that it is, it remains agnostic about questions as to how linguistic meaning can be discerned or how legal content ought to be determined. Nor does this theory offer an account of the history and origins of the distinction. Those topics are important, but raising them in this Essay might shift attention away from prior questions about the nature and value of the distinction itself.



Here is the roadmap. In Part II, this Essay shall discuss two preliminary sets of ideas: (1) vagueness and ambiguity, and (2) semantic content and legal content. In Part III, this Essay shall use these preliminary ideas to answer the questions, "What is interpretation?" and "What is construction?" In Part IV, this Essay shall consider some objections to the interpretation-construction distinction. In Part V, this Essay shall develop the argument that the distinction is fundamental and indispensable.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Categorizing Approaches To Law and Culture

Menachem Mautner, Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University, has published Three Approaches to Law and Culture at 96 Cornell Law Review 839 (2011). Here is the abstract.

This article discusses three major approaches connecting culture to law. The first is the historical school that arose in German jurisprudence in the first half of the nineteenth century. It views law as a product of a nation’s culture and as embedded in the daily practices of its people. The second approach is the constitutive approach that developed in American jurisprudence in the 1980s. This approach views law as participating in the constitution of culture and thereby in the constitution of people’s minds, practices, and social relations. The third approach, found in twentieth-century Anglo-American jurisprudence, views the law that the courts create and apply as a distinct cultural system. Law practitioners internalize this culture in the course of their studies and professional activity, and this internalization comes to constitute, direct, and delimit the way these practitioners think, argue, resolve cases, and provide justifications. The writings of Karl Llewellyn, James Boyd White, Pierre Bourdieu and Stanley Fish are discussed. Beyond these three approaches the article points out nine additional approaches in legal scholarship concerning the relationship between law and culture. This mapping is tentative. It is hoped, however, that it gives readers a preliminary idea of the widespread use of the concept of culture in the law and that it invites further reflection on other possible ways to employ the concept of culture in legal scholarship for a richer understanding of the legal phenomenon.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Law, Literature, and the Media

Maria Francisca Carneiro, Federal University of Paraná, and Maria Fernanda Loureiro have published Law, Literature and the Media. Here is the abstract.

In this article we consider the relation between Law and Literature. The possibility of investigating literary elements of Law implicit in popular culture leads us to inquire whether the media can also be an object of studies of juridical literature.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

A New Journal Devoted To Christopher Marlowe

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: A new journal on Christopher Marlowe is making its debut. Indiana University/Purdue University, Fort Wayne is publishing Marlowe Studies as an annual.

In the first issue:

Meghan C. Andrews, University of Texas, Austin, “The 1663 Doctor Faustus and the Royalist Marlowe”


James Biester, Loyola University of Chicago, “A Storm Brewing: Inspirations for The Tempest in Marlowe and Jonson”

Bruce Brandt, South Dakota State University, “A Decade Bibliography of Christopher Marlowe, 2000-2009”

Douglas Bruster, University of Texas, Austin, “Christopher Marlowe and the Verse / Prose Bilingual System”

Sara Munson Deats, University of South Florida, “Mars or Gorgon? Tamburlaine and Henry V”

R. Carter Hailey, College of William and Mary, “The Publication Date of Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris, with a Note on the Massacre Manuscript Leaf, Folger J.b.8”

Lisa Hopkins, Sheffield Hallam University, “Playing with Matches: Christopher Marlowe’s Incendiary Imagination”

Jeremy Lopez, University of Toronto, “Alleyn Resurrected”

Paul Menzer, Mary Baldwin College, “Shades of Marlowe”

Barbara Parker, William Paterson University, “‘Cursèd Necromancy’: Marlowe’s Faustus as Anti-Catholic Satire”

Jeffrey Rufo, Trinity University, “Marlowe’s Minions: Sodomitical Politics in Edward II and The Massacre at Paris”

Evolutionary Rap

After taking the rap for the decline of morality for so many decades, Charles Darwin now has a rap of his own. Scholar Baba Brinkman, described as "[a] tall blond Canadian of Dutch ancestry," has put Mr. Darwin and a lot of other cool evolution stuff into 90 minutes' worth of rappa-tainment at Manhattan's Soho Playhouse. Olivia Judson reviewed the show for the New York Times last year and loved it, as does David Rooney, who points out that Mr. Brinkman's show is also a guide to the evolution of hip-hop. Can't make it to Manhattan? Swag is available via the website, and at retailers online.

Good Bye To Nearly All That

Alessandra Stanley provides a look back at yet another series in Dick Wolf's venerable franchise, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, which aired its last first-run episode this week.

The Protection of Folklore

Ayoyemi Lawal Arowolo, Babcock University School of Law and Security Studies, has published Copyright Law and the Recognition of 'Folkloric Creations' and 'Folk Medicine' in Africa, at 5 Journal of Black and African Arts and Civilization 33 (2011). Here is the abstract.

Creations in traditional African societies are often categorized as folklore which is protectable under copyright law as expressions of folklore. They are indeed precious jewels which bear eloquent testimony to the wonderful civilisation and culture flourishing in traditional communities in Africa. The rich cultural heritage of Africa is a sign of the creative activities of the past. The present has not given enough recognition to the role and protection of works based on folklore thus compounding the misappropriation of folkloric works and folk medicine. The controversy on the protection of folklore is an issue African countries face and need to resolve. The invaluable role of folklore in African societies and the deficiencies in protecting creative works within traditional parameters to encourage intellectual creations is examined in this paper.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Law and Aesthetics

Maria Francisca Carneiro, Federal University of Parana, has published Law and Aesthetics. Here is the abstract.

The aim of this article is to describe some aspects of the relation between law and aesthetics. To do this, two lines of aesthetics are examined, one gnoseological and the other artistic. The beautiful and the good are related to the just by considering the possibility of the existence of poetics in law, including autopoiesis. An aesthetic theory of justice is sketched out based on the criterion of proportionality, which is common to both art and law, as well as the faculty of judging. The similarities and differences between aesthetic judgment and juridical judgment are therefore discussed. It is concluded that the ludic impulse, and therefore the game, is an element which is common to both aesthetics and law, in light of which the importance is stressed of carrying out deeper studies concerning the aesthetic game in law, for example through theories of the balance between determination and indetermination. Both in the game as in law, there are defined and undefined rules to be followed, and in both there are also psychological and behavioral aspects in common.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Law, Culture and the Humanities, June 2011 Issue

The June 2011 issue of Law, Culture and the Humanities contains the following articles:

Austin Sarat, Editorial


Colin Dayan, Who Owns the Body, and When Does It Die

Irus Braverman, Hidden In Plain View: Legal Geography From a Visual Perspective

Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Law’s Spatial Turn: Geography, Justice and a Certain Fear of Space

Nicholas Blomley, Cuts, Flows, and the Geographies of Property

Lior Barshack, The Constituent Power of Architecture

Paul Raffield, The Elizabethan Rhetoric of Signs: Representations of Res Publica at the Early Modern Inns of Court

Lynn Mills Eckert, A Critique of the Content and Viewpoint Neutrality Principle in Modern Free Speech Doctrine

Ruth M. Buchanan, "Passing through the Mirror": Dead Man, Legal Pluralism and the De-territorialization of the West

Diana Young, Law and the Foucauldian Wild West in Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate

Keally McBride, Book Review: Emergency Politics: Paradox, Law, Democracy By Bonnie Honig, Princeton University Press, 2009, 218 pp. $26.95 (Cloth). ISBN-10: 069114298X

Rebecca Johnson, Book Review: The Scene of Violence: Cinema, Crime, Affect By Alison Young, Routledge, 2009, 200 pp. $53.95 (Paperback), $130 (Cloth). ISBN 978-0-415-58508-8

Judith Ferster, Book Review: Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption By Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton (with Erin Torneo), St. Martin’s Press, 2009. 298 pp. $25.95 (Cloth). ISBN-13: 978-0-312-37653-6; ISBN-10: 0-312-377653-7

Paola Pasquali, Book Review: The Spatial, the Legal and the Pragmatics of World-Making. Nomospheric Investigations By David Delaney, Routledge-Cavendish, 2010, 224 pp. $125, £75 (Cloth). ISBN 978-0-415-46319

Roger S. Fisher, Book Review: Law’s Cosmos: Juridical Discourse in Athenian Forensic Oratory By Victoria Wohl, Cambridge University Press, 2010, 362 pp. $99.00 (Cloth). ISBN 978-0-521-11074-7

Frederick Cowell, Book Review: Individual Human Rights: A History By David Whelan, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010, 328 pp. $59.95, £39.00 (Cloth). ISBN 978-0-8122-4240-9

Thomas Jefferson and Slavery

Aaron Schwabach, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, has published Thomas Jefferson, Slavery, and Slaves, in volume 33 of the Thomas Jefferson Law Review (2010). Here is the abstract.

Thomas Jefferson was a controversial and divisive figure during his own lifetime, and has not grown less so with time. Perhaps no other person had a greater impact on the shaping of the American legal system than Jefferson. And perhaps no other person so completely embodied the contradictions and hypocrisies of the early American approach to questions of slavery and race: as Frederick Douglass put it, "the contradiction in the Constitution." Arguments may and do rage about Jefferson's religious faith or lack thereof, and on his views on federalism and states' rights or on the balance between government and individual liberty. Yet nothing about Jefferson elicits as immediate and emotional a response as his peculiarly complex relationship to the institution of slavery, and consequently to race.

The three sections of this article provide a preliminary exploration of Jefferson's views on slavery and race, and his relationships with slavery and slaves. The first attempts to describe Jefferson's relationship to the institution of slavery, both as a slave owner and as a political figure; as much as possible, it presents Jefferson's views on slavery and on race in his own words. This section also sets forth some of the notable features of the law of slavery in Jefferson's time, and attempts to measure Jefferson's impact on slavery.



The second section discusses the case of Howell v. Netherland, one of the two cases argued by Thomas Jefferson preserved in the law reports of colonial Virginia (compiled by Jefferson himself). Samuel Howell, an indentured servant, brought an action against his master for freedom; Jefferson represented him, unsuccessfully, before a judge (George Wythe, Jefferson's former law professor) who was far less ambivalent than Jefferson in his personal opposition to slavery.



The third section discusses the relationship, or what is known and what is believed and disbelieved about it, between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Hemings, a slave, was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, and he was and is widely believed to have been the father of her children. The lives of Jefferson, Hemings, and their children and other family members are historically interesting. Our latter-day reactions to ongoing discoveries about them are at least as interesting for what they say about us and the degree to which, as a nation, we have succeeded or failed in coming to terms with the divide that defined Jefferson and his times.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The History of Cohabitation, 1600-2010

Rebecca Probert, University of Warwick School of Law, has published 'From Fornicators to Family: Cohabitants and the Law, 1600-2010'. Here is the abstract.

There is a widespread assumption among scholars and other commentators that the modern popularity of cohabitation is nothing new, but simply a reversion to older trends. Yet this is based on fundamental misunderstandings of the language used to describe relationships outside marriage and their treatment by the law. In the eighteenth century – and well into the twentieth – the term ‘cohabitation’ did not necessarily mean that the parties were sharing a home. Nor was there any concept of ‘common-law marriage’: rather than being treated as married, couples who were cohabiting risked punishment for fornication. This paper traces the way in which the law has moved from treating cohabitants as ‘fornicators’ to accepting them as ‘family’. It provides new evidence on the extent of cohabitation in earlier centuries, identifies linguistic faux amis, and evaluates the relationship between law and practice. While the increase in cohabitation may seem to have occurred without legal encouragement, an analysis of women’s magazines and newspapers suggests that the way in which the law was misunderstood was more important than what it actually was.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Dictionaries and Legal Interpretation

Stephen C. Mouritsen has published The Dictionary Is Not a Fortress: Definitional Fallacies and a Corpus-Based Approach to Plain Meaning at 2010 Brigham Young University Law Review 1915. Here is the abstract.

"Plain meaning," said Judge Frank Easterbrook, "as a way to understand language is silly. In interesting cases, meaning is not 'plain'; it must be imputed; and the choice among meanings must have a footing more solid than a dictionary."



This paper proposes an empirical method for determining the "ordinary meaning" of statutory terms; an approach grounded in a linguistic methodology known as Corpus Linguistics. I begin by addressing a number of commonly held, but ultimately erroneous assumptions about the content and structure of dictionaries – assumptions that find their way into judicial reasoning with alarming frequency.

I then outline an approach to the resolution of lexical ambiguity in statutory interpretation – an approach based on Corpus Linguistics methods. Corpus Linguistics is an empirical methodology that analyzes language function and use by means of large electronic databases called corpora. A corpus is a principled collection of naturally occurring language data, typically tagged with grammatical content and searchable in such a way that the ordinary use of a given term in a given context may be ascertained.



Though Corpus Linguistics is not a panacea, the methodology has the potential to remove the determination of ordinary meaning from the black box of the judge's mental impression and render the discussion of the ordinary meaning of statutory terms one of tangible and quantifiable reality.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Foucault's Footsteps

Mariana Valverde, University of Toronto Centre of Criminology, has published Specters of Foucault in Law and Society Scholarship at 6 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 45 (2010). Here is the abstract.

To reflect on how we, in 2010, might make the best use of the analytical tools developed by Michel Foucault, we need first to go back to the 1970s and situate his work in the intellectual history of the European left. We then see that Foucault was extremely careful to avoid developing a new model, a grand social theory that might replace the Marxism that was dominant then. Instead, he cultivated more empirically grounded, historically specific habits of thought, in a series of books that did not follow a consistent plan. In Foucault's work, the basic terms are themselves tactical weapons, and hence do not have fixed meanings. That is, the terms are not concepts. This has gone largely unnoticed in the literature: Most of the scholars who use Foucault adopt the content but use it to prop up old forms. The governmentality literature has been particularly influential in many law and society circles, and it tends to use Foucault to produce an improved sociology of modernity - rather than to question our own desire to call ourselves modern and challenge our yearning for static models. This review examines one attempt to turn Foucault into a legal philosopher, a more novel but equally problematic effort to use Foucault to renovate old disciplines. The key argument of the review is that Foucault's work is most useful when, rather than attempt to “apply” it, we use it as inspiration to ourselves to examine the preconditions and foundations of our own present's intellectual habits.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Law and Humanities, June 2011 Issue

The June issue of Law and Humanities contains:

Paul Raffield and Gary Watt, Editorial

Christian Biet and Lissa Lincoln, Introduction: Law and Literature

Gilles Lhuilier, Law & Literature (as an epistemological break in legal theory)


Allison Tait and Luke Norris, Narrative and the Origins of Law

Leif Dahlbert, Before the Temple of Justice: Reading Roman Law Reading

Klaus Stierstorfer, Klaus, Law and (which?) Literature: New Directions in Post-Theory?

Sebastian McEvoy, Slot-Thinking, or Categorisation, in Law and Literature

Laurent de Sutter, Piracy as Method: Nine Theses on Law and Literature

Marie Bouhaïk-Gironès, Simon Gabay, Jelle Koopmans, and Katell Lavéant, Legal Theory, Legal Practice and Drama

Joël Blanchard, A Logic of Appropriation: Practical Relationships between Law and Literature in the Middle Ages

Bruno Méniel, Law and Literature in the Humanist Period: Encyclopaedic versus Specialised Thought


Romain Descendre, The Experience of Law and Art Literature in the Sixteenth Century: Benvenuto Cellini's La Vita

Romain Jobez, From Obsessive Metaphors to Juridical Myth: Some Proposals for a Metaphorical Reading of Early Modern Law and Literature

Dominique Goy-Blanquet, Schools of Law, School of Drama

Natacha Israël, A Possible Co-Constitution of Theatre, Literature and Law, through the Example of Seventeenth-Century England


Stéphanie Loncle, Freedom of the Theatre: A Matter of Law?

Martial Poirson, For Extending the Domain of Research between Law, Economics and Literature

Christian Delage, Creating an International Court: A Movie Project

Jeanne Gaakeer, The Future of Literary-Legal Jurisprudence: Mere Theory or Just Practice?

Anna Krakus, Crime Stories: The Polish Secret Police File and the Conflation of the Legal and the Literary

Barbara Villez, Law and Literature: A Conjunction Revisited

Daniela Carpi, Equity: Assessing the Results of a Project

Gary Watt, The To Be Of And: Reflections on the Bridge

Paul Raffield, The Oneiric Imagination and the Dream of Law

Sandra Travers de Faultrier, Appearing, or 'Face-to-Face' Dialogue

Guy Spielmann, Judicial Spectacle Events as Reality and as Fiction

Lissa Lincoln, Justice Imagined: Albert Camus' Politics of Subversion

Richard H. Weisberg, A-N-D

The Intellectual Foundations of International Legal Discourse

Ulkf Linderfalk, Lund University Faculty of Law, has published On the Many Functions of International Legal Concepts, Part One. Here is the abstract.

According to the ontological stance adopted in this essay, a concept is a mental representation. It is the generalized idea of an empirical or normative phenomenon or state of affairs or a class of such phenomena or state of affairs. This essay is concerned with a specific category of concepts typically referred to as “concepts of international or international law” or “international legal concepts.” International legal concepts figure prominently in the way international lawyers think and talk about international law. This raises questions about their possible function or functions. Arguably, international legal concepts would not be used on such a large scale if they did not also fill important needs. What exactly are those needs? What does international legal discourse need legal concepts for? The Danish professor Alf Ross wrote on this topic in the beginning of the 1950’s. As he observed, the function of legal concepts is intimately connected with their role as meddling links or connectives in legal inferences. This observation led Ross to the conclusion that legal concepts serve to economize the expression of law in verbal form. As I will argue, by reason of their role as meddling links in legal inferences exactly, legal concepts serve a number of other functions as well. To substantiate my argument, in this essay I will illustrate the “camouflaging,” “normative,” “disclosing,” “systemizing,” and “formative” functions of legal concepts in international legal discourse.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Capturing the "What" of International Criminal Law

Markus D. Dubber, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, has published Common Civility: The Culture of Alegality in International Criminal Law

Least ambitiously, this paper tries to capture the ethos of international criminal law. More ambitiously, it argues that international criminal law is, or can profitably be seen as, an ethos, rather than a body of law. In this telling, international criminal law, despite its name, emerges as an ethical-administrative enterprise rather than a legal one. If placed alongside global administrative law, international criminal law appears as alegal rather than illegal, as ignoring the principle of legality, say, rather than violating it, so that to criticize international criminal law for its illegality would be like faulting apples for not producing orange juice, and oranges for not making apple pie.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Ever More Potter

J. K. Rowling has announced her new interactive website, Pottermore. Potter around it (a litter) here.  I'm sure Potter fans are already raven about it, even though it doesn't actually launch until October. The faithful, though, can sign up via email, to get sneak peeks on July 31st. 

More from the Daily Telegraph and the Hollywood Reporter.

Meanwhile, I direct your attention to these tomes:

The Law and Harry Potter (Jeffrey Snyder and Franklin Snyder, Carolina Academic Press, 2010).
The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts For Muggles (William Irwin and Greg Bassham, eds.; Wiley, 2010).
Want, Robert S., Harry Potter and the Order of the Court: The J. K. Rowling Copyright Case and the Question of Fair Use (NationsCourts.com, 2008).

Call For Papers: Justice In Ottoman Society

Juris Diversitas notes a  call for papers for a Workshop on Justice in Ottoman Society, being held January 7-8, 2012, at the Institut Français d’études Anatoliennes in Istanbul.

Looking For Like-ness

Bernard E. Harcourt, University of Chicago Law School, is publising Radical Thought from Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, Through Foucault, to the Present: Comments on Steven Lukes’ ‘In Defense of False Consciousness’ in the University of Chicago Legal Forum. Here is the abstract.

In his essay “In Defense of ‘False Consciousness’” and book, Power: A Radical View, Steven Lukes mounts a forceful defense of the idea of false consciousness; however, Lukes presents false consciousness and the notion of truth regimes as mutually exclusive. In this essay, I suggest that there are important family resemblances between the theory of ideology in the Marxian tradition, especially as developed by the Frankfurt School, and the critique of truth regimes rooted in the Nietzschean tradition of genealogy, especially as developed by Foucault – family resemblances that make it counter-productive to argue that one theory would make us reject the other. The task is not to defend one theory at the expense of the other, but to explore the intricate relationship between the two in order to sharpen our own critical interventions. That is the goal of this essay, drawing on the radical thought of Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Foucault. In addition, I go further and call for resistance, not simply to this or that way of being governed, but resistance to truth. The task, as I see it, is to unmask and enlighten, but then to shed the tools we have used before those very beliefs become oppressive themselves.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Anarchy

Sirus Kashefi, York University, Osgoode Hall Law School, has published A Look at Anarchism: The Broad, Paradoxical, and Living Ideas and Movements at the Core of Our Hierarchical, Dominative, and Oppressive Societies. Here is the abstract.

As a critical look, this paper analyzes that anarchism is not only a political philosophy (idea), but also a way of life or of protest against State law and existing order (action). Thus, unlike common opinion, anarchism is not a utopia. Indeed, due to the varieties and paradoxes of anarchist thought according to end and means, the anarchist movements have hitherto been heterogeneous and plural. Despite the vagueness, diverse, and paradoxical anarchist concepts, these movements share some common characteristics (freedom, mutuality, anti-imperisliam, and anti-war, for example), and fight against our hierarchical, dominative, and oppressive societies around the world by emphasizing individual and social freedoms, equality, and justice. As a matter of fact, heterogeneity and direct action have constituted two forces that keep alive the anarchist movements. Are they able to present some alternatives to our hierarchical, dominative, and oppressive societies? I will answer this question at the end of my paper through other critical questions.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Resistance To Law

Richard A. Brisbin, West Virginia University, has published Resistance to Legality at
6 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 25 (2010). Here is the abstract.

The contingency of legality creates opportunities for individuals and collective associations to oppose its norms and requirements. This article examines the context and dimensions of resistance or opposition to legality, why resistance occurs, the strategies and tactics used to conduct resistance, the outcomes of acts of resistance, and whether resistance is a meaningful social and political activity.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Federalist 10: Its Interpretation and Construction

Ian C. Bartrum, Drake Law School & Yale Law School, is publishing Constructing the Constitutional Canon: The Metonymic Evolution of Federalist 10 in Constitutional Commentary. Here is the abstract.

This paper is part of [sic] larger symposium convened for the 2010 AALS annual meeting. In it I adapt some of my earlier constitutional theoretical work to engage the topic of that symposium: the so-called “interpretation/construction distinction.” I make two related criticisms of the distinction: (1) it relies on a flawed conception of linguistic meaning, and (2) while these flaws may be harmless in the “easy” cases of interpretation, they are much more problematic in the difficult cases of most concern. Thus, I doubt the ultimate utility of the distinction as part of a “true and correct” model of constitutional theory.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.
First, I disagree that there are such things as “linguistic facts” that we might discover as part of an initial search for a clause’s bare “semantic meaning.” A great many sentences make assertions about the world whose correspondence cannot be verified as an empirical matter. This is most obviously true when we make vague assertions such as “John is bald.” This assertion may or may not correspond with the world; it depends upon the linguistic rules and convention surrounding our particular use of the word “bald” - it depends on what we think counts as “baldness.” One of the ways that we might make arguments for or against John’s baldness is by reference to paradigm cases of baldness and not-baldness; and in this essay I argue that this is analogous to the ways that we use canonical texts in our constitutional argument. But the important point for purposes of the interpretation/construction distinction is that “sentence meaning” depends upon the rules of proper linguistic usage, not the discovery of linguistic facts.



Second, in the easy cases - such as the age requirement for the Presidency - it may make little difference whether the phrase “35 years old” denotes a factual state of affairs or refers us to linguistic rules. In other words, there is such universal agreement about the interpretive rules in these cases that they may serve as something like “facts.” In such cases, it is possible to engage in the two-step kind of analysis that the interpretation/construction distinction suggests: We can agree upon a fairly objective interpretive referent, and then build out applicable legal rules. But in those cases where there is not broad agreement on the proper linguistic rules - such as the proper use of “equal protection” - it becomes quite apparent that there is no “linguistic fact" waiting for us to discover. Instead, our “interpretation” in these cases will depend upon what we can agree on as legitimate or proper uses of the phrase. Thus, in the cases of most concern, I think the underlying conceptual flaws impose a great limitation on the ultimate utility of the interpretation/construction distinction.



As I have said, in constitutional practice part of the argument about meaning will refer to paradigm cases of “equal protection” and “not-equal protection.” In our practice, I contend that canonical texts often serve as some these paradigm cases. But the symbolic meaning of these texts evolves also over time within our argumentative usage. And as the meaning of these texts change, so will the interpretive conventions surrounding constitutional language. Here I present the evolution of Federalist 10 as an illustrative example.

An Introduction To Law and Race Studies

Laura E. Gomez, University of New Mexico, has published Understanding Law and Race as Mutually Constitutive: An Invitation to Explore an Emerging Field in 6 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 487 (2010). Here is the abstract.

 

This article argues that law and race coconstruct each other. The idea that race is socially constructed has become widely accepted, and studies increasingly have explored law's role in shaping racial categories, racial conflict, racial ideology, and the racial order. Fewer studies have utilized a well-developed concept of race to examine how it has affected legislation, legal processes, legal ideology, and so forth. To explore how law and race are mutually constitutive, I draw on examples from a dozen monographs (all but one published since 1999) that are in-depth case studies of how law and race have interacted in diverse geographical regions over the past 400years. Cumulatively, they present new insights about how law and race are coconstructed to reproduce and transform racial inequality in society. They represent an emerging genre of sociolegal studies that reveals how law and race shape each other in an ongoing, dialectic process.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Speak Up, Memory

From the New Yorker this week: "Lit Lawyers"--a discussion of the implications when accusations are hurled. Greg Mortenson is only the latest author accused of fabricating parts of a popular book (Three Cups of Tea). Now two lawsuits are pending. Do buyers and readers of what publishers and authors claim is nonfiction have a real cause of action when works turn out to be fictionalized, in whole or in part? Or should caveat emptor rule? And in the matter of those lawsuits--cui bono?


More commentary here from Thomson Reuters News & Insight Blog.

U.S. Judges and Islam, 1800-1960

Marie A. Failinger, Hamline University School of Law, is publishing Islam in the Mind of American Courts: 1800-1960, in the Boston College Third World Law Journal. Here is the abstract.

This article surveys references to Islam and Muslims in American court opinions from 1800 to 1960. It argues that American judges as a group portray an ambivalent attitude toward Muslims, some treating Islam disparagingly or as an exotic and fanciful religion, and others emphasizing the religious equality that Muslims deserve.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The American Temperance Movement and the Rise of Crime

Emily Greene Owens, Cornell University, has published The Birth of the Organized Crime? The American Temperance Movement and Market-Based Violence. Here is the abstract.
 

Economic theory and anecdotal evidence suggest that the absence of formal contract enforcement increases systemic, or market-based, violence in illegal markets. Lack of substantial variation in market legality has prevented empirical evaluation of the strength of this association. Using a state-level panel of age-specific homicide rates between 1900 and 1940, I demonstrate that criminalization of alcohol markets led to a compression of the age distribution of homicide victims. Specifically, homicide rates for individuals between the ages of 20 and 30 increased relative to homicide rates for individuals under 20 and over 30. The compression of the age distribution of homicide victims was most evident in northern states and in states with large immigrant and urban populations. Using modern homicide data, I show that this age specific change in homicide rates is consistent with an increase in systemic violence, supporting the argument that the temperance movement contributed to the rise of organized crime in the United States. Banning the commercial sale of alcohol appears to have had a protective effect for children and mature adults, but this came at the expense of increasing the rate of violence among young adults.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Environmental Politics and Indigenous Peoples

Eve Darian-Smith, University of California, Santa Barbara, has published Environmental Law and Native American Law, at 6 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 359 (2010). Here is the abstract.

This review seeks to engage two bodies of scholarship that have typically been analyzed as discrete areas of inquiry - environmental law and American Indian law. In the twenty-first century, native peoples' involvement in environmental politics is becoming more assertive. In this context it is necessary to think about the impact indigenous involvement may have in shaping future U.S. environmental agendas and regulations. After briefly discussing the rise of environmental movements and environmental law in the United States, I turn to the historical treatment of native peoples and in particular the treatment of their natural resources. This historical backdrop is essential to understanding tribal status today under the Environmental Protection Agency, and the challenges some tribal governments now present to environmental exploitation and degradation by states and corporations. The review concludes by reflecting on the future of U.S. environmental law in the context of increasing pressure being exerted by international environmental law and global indigenous politics.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

The South African Constitutional Court Fifteen Years On

D. M. Davis, University of Cape Town, has published South African Constitutional Jurisprudence: The First Fifteen Years at 6 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 285 (2010). Here is the abstract.

South Africa became a constitutional democracy in 1994. This article reviews the first 15 years of constitutional jurisprudence produced by the country's first Constitutional Court. While the court interpreted the Constitution to eradicate racist, sexist, and homophobic legislation and similar common law rules, it did little to promote a comprehensive transformation of the legal system and thus the patterns of distribution that were supported by the law. This is illustrated particularly in the area of social and economic rights. The conclusion is thus reached that the new legal foundations are insufficiently resilient to hold the weight of constitutional expectation.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Research On Law

Mark C. Suchman, Brown University, and Elizabeth Mertz, University of Wisconsin, Madison, & American Bar Foundation, have published  Toward a New Legal Empiricism: Empirical Legal Studies and New Legal Realism at 6 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 555 (2010). Here is the abstract.

The past decade has seen a return of interest in empirical research within the U.S. legal academy, hearkening back to a similar empirical turn during the ascendancy of Legal Realism in the New Deal era. However, the current revival of legal empiricism has emerged against the backdrop of several well-established traditions of empirical sociolegal research in the interdisciplinary law-and-society movement and in the social science disciplines. This article examines two of the most prominent manifestations of the “new” legal empiricism, empirical legal studies (ELS) and new legal realism (NLR), and it situates them within the preexisting sociolegal terrain. The analysis concludes by considering possible futures for empirical research on law.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

The "Gatehouses and Mansions" After Fifty Years

Richard A. Leo, University of San Francisco School of Law, and Alexa Koenig, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, and University of San Francisco, have published The Gatehouses and Mansions: Fifty Years Later at 6 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 323 (2010). Here is the abstract.

In 1965, Yale Kamisar authored “Equal Justice in the Gatehouses and Mansions of American Criminal Procedure,” an article that came to have an enormous impact on the development of criminal procedure and American norms of criminal justice. Today, that article is a seminal work of scholarship, hailed for “playing a significant part in producing some of the [Warren] Court's most important criminal-procedure decisions” ( White 2003–2004 ), including Miranda v. Arizona. The most influential concept Kamisar promoted may have been his recognition of a gap that loomed between the Constitutional rights actualized in mansions (courts) versus gatehouses (police stations). Kamisar passionately detailed how the Constitution and its jurisprudential progeny failed to protect suspects when those rights mattered most: when facing questioning by police. This article discusses where this thesis stands today in light of nearly 50years of legal developments and social science research.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Law, Gender, and Crime

Malcolm M. Feeley, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, and Hadar Aviram, University of California, Hastings College of the Law, have published Social Historical Studies of Women, Crime, and Courts at 6 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 151 (2010). Here is the abstract.

While traditional criminology has ignored the historical dimension of female crime, social historical literature has examined the interplay between gender and the criminal process in a variety of historical settings. This review examines studies focusing on changes in crime, prosecution, conviction, and punishment patterns over time, as well as studies in particular settings. From these studies we conclude that crime has not always been a predominantly male phenomenon and that female crime rates have changed over time. We also conclude that, within the different categories, women defendants in particular were perceived through a gendered perspective, and their criminalization and punishment, as well as its representation in popular culture, reflected this special perspective.

The full text is not available from SSRN.