Call For Papers: Special Issue of "Signs: Journal of Women In Culture and Society"

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society has issued a Call for Papers for a special issue titled "Displacement."

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society invites submissions for a special issue titled “Displacement,” slated for publication in spring 2018.
The current refugee crisis gives new urgency to questions of gendered displacement. The United Nations’ most recent statistics place the number of registered Syrian refugees at 4.7 million, 50.7 percent of whom are women and over half of whom are children under eighteen. During the same period, tens of thousands of Central American women and children have crossed the Rio Grande into the United States. Feminists have already responded to concerns about sexual violence in refugee camps and during refugees’ journeys and to the gendered response to the crisis on the part of receiving states (i.e., demographic concerns surrounding gender ratios of migrants admitted). What are the larger questions of “displacement” that require an interdisciplinary and transnational feminist lens?
This special issue of Signs seeks submissions reflecting multifaceted, innovative, and interdisciplinary approaches to the question of displacement, as well as the potential for attention to displacement to address and transform central questions in feminist theory, including how feminists approach larger questions of space, place, and subjectivity. Feminist scholars have a long history of engagement with the question of displacement; across disciplines, feminist scholars have described, theorized, and critiqued gendered forms of displacement and how these displacements have shaped and reshaped geopolitics, national borders, political discourses, narrative form, and ethnic and racial formations both contemporarily and historically. Questions of place and belonging have long been at the heart of cultural work in literature, theater, visual culture, and the arts. We invite submissions on the theme of displacement widely conceived and at multiple scales—the subjective, the family, the city; regional, national, transnational, and global.  Possible subjects include:

• How humanitarian and state responses to displaced persons depend on, reinforce, or transform gendered, racial, and sexual norms.
• Visual and narrative representations of displacement in relation to gendered and racialized subjectivities.
• Cultural representations of displacement, migration, belonging, and exile. Critical and historical investigations and comparisons of feminist ideas of these subjects.
• Reverberations of historical displacements in the contemporary world.
• Claims to space and place as forms of resistance to displacement or as the basis for social movements (i.e., landless movements, right to the city).
• Dispossession and displacement as central to neoliberalism, capitalist development, colonization, and slavery. How are dispossession and displacement related?
• How experiences of displacement reshape constructions of “home” or the nation.
• Critical assessments of homophobic and gender-based violence as sources of displacement.
• Gendered figurations of internally and externally displaced persons as threats to national sovereignty or borders. The production of new forms of intimacy through displacement or the creation of new social movements through and in response to displacement.
• The way that ethical norms and perspectives ignore or undervalue the importance of gender and gendered perspectives with regard to displacement.

Pieces that critically examine or call into question distinctions between migrants, refugees, and internally displaced persons are also welcome.
Signs particularly encourages transdisciplinary and transnational essays that address large questions, debates, and controversies without employing disciplinary or academic jargon. We welcome essays that make a forceful case for why displacement demands a specific and thoughtfully formulated interdisciplinary feminist analysis and why it demands our attention now.  We seek essays that are forceful, passionate, strongly argued, and willing to take risks.
The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2016. Denise Horn, Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Simmons College, and Serena Parekh, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Northeastern University, will serve as guest editors of the issue.
Manuscripts may be submitted electronically through Signs’ Editorial Manager system at http://signs.edmgr.com and must conform to the guidelines for submission available at http://signsjournal.org/for-authors/author-guidelines/.

Miller on Native American Constitutions and Their Influence on the United States Constitution

Robert J. Miller, Arizona State University College of Law, has published American Indian Constitutions and Their Influence on the United States Constitution in volume 159 of the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (March 2015). Here is the abstract.

This paper analyzes modern-day American Indian constitutionalism. It describes the development of written constitutions by Indian nations and primarily focuses on constitutions developed since 1934 under the auspices of the federal Indian Reorganization Act. This paper also briefly examines the evidence that American Indian political philosophies, and traditional tribal governmental structures and ideas, influenced many of the Founding Fathers and the drafting of the United States Constitution.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Oakley on Australian Judicial Humor

Jack Oakley, Clifford Chance, is publishing Banter from the Bench: The Use of Humour in the Exercise of Judicial Functions in volume 41 of the Australian Bar Review (2016). Here is the abstract.

Australians are often said to have a sense of humour that is dry, irreverent and ironic. In such a culture, one might expect those who exercise judicial power to feel at liberty to unleash their wit. Yet most judicial officers in Australia today exercise caution and restraint in using humour in courtrooms and judgments. This stringent attitude is reflected in the paucity of Australian examples of judicial humour, especially in written decisions. However, this conventional view deserves to be challenged. This article assesses whether there is an appropriate role for humour in the exercise of judicial functions in hearing and determining cases. This article considers the primary stakeholders in legal proceedings — litigants, judges, advocates and society-at-large — and examines how their different interests are affected by the use of judicial humour. The article then discusses four arguments in support of judicial humour, namely, that humour is a quintessentially human quality we should expect judges to display; promotes open justice by demystifying the language and rituals of the courtroom; oils the wheels of justice by easing courtroom tensions and aiding digestion of complex written reasons; and serves as a social corrective by allowing judges to gently admonish. Balanced against these considerations is the concern that excessive use of humour may conflict with a judge’s ethical duty to acquit his or her role with independence, integrity, propriety and diligence. In extreme cases, a judge’s use of humour might give rise to an apprehension of bias in discharging judicial functions. The use of humour also has to avoid claims of judicial misconduct. While it is fanciful to suggest that even an egregious use of humour could amount to misconduct that warrants removal from office, it could form the basis of a complaint against a judicial officer, and has done so on occasion. Despite these legitimate constraints on judicial behaviour, the article concludes that humour has a place in the curial process. From time to time the use of humour by judges may be called in question, but judges are chosen for their capacity to judge. Extreme cases aside, we should let humour lie within the sound discretion of the court.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

David Carlson's New Book on American Indian Law and Literature, Published by the University of Oklahoma Press

David J. Carlson, Professor of English, California State University, San Bernadino, has published Imagining Sovereignty: Self-Determination in American Indian Law and Literature (University of Oklahoma Press, 2016)(American Indian Literature and Critical Studies Series; 66). Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

“Sovereignty” is perhaps the most ubiquitous term in American Indian writing today—but its meaning and function are anything but universally understood. This is as it should be, David J. Carlson suggests, for a concept frequently at the center of various—and often competing—claims to authority. In Imagining Sovereignty, Carlson explores sovereignty as a discursive middle ground between tribal communities and the United States as a settler-colonial power. His work reveals the complementary ways in which legal and literary texts have generated politically significant representations of the world, which in turn have produced particular effects on readers and advanced the cause of tribal self-determination. Drawing on western legal historical sources and American Indian texts, Carlson traces a dual genealogy of sovereignty. Imagining Sovereignty identifies the concept as a marker, one that allows both the colonizing power of the United States and the resisting powers of various American Indian nations to organize themselves and their various claims to authority. In the process, sovereignty also functions as a point of exchange where these claims compete with and complicate one another. To this end, Carlson analyzes how several contemporary American Indian writers and critics have sought to fuse literary practices and legal structures into fully formed discourses of self-determination. After charting the development of the concept of sovereignty in natural law and its permutations in federal Indian policy, Carlson maps out the nature and function of sovereignty discourses in the work of contemporary Native scholars such as Russel Barsh, Gerald Taiaiake Alfred, D’Arcy McNickle, and Vine Deloria, and in the work of more expressly literary American Indian writers such as Craig Womack, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Gerald Vizenor, and Francisco Patencio.

 

Performing the Renaissance Body: A New Collection of Essays Edited by Sidia Fiorato and John Drakakis

Performing the Renaissance Body: Essays on Drama, Law, and Representation (Sidia Fiorato and John Drakakis, eds.; De Gruyter, 2016) (Law & Literature, 11) is available this month. Here is a description of the contents of the book from the publisher's website.

In the Renaissance period the body emerges as the repository of social and cultural forces and a privileged metaphor for political practices and legal codification. Due to its ambivalent expressive force, it represents the seat and the means for the performance of normative identity and at the same time of alterity. The essays of the collection address the manifold articulations of this topic, demonstrating how the inscription of the body within the discursive spheres of gender identity, sexuality, law, and politics align its materiality with discourses whose effects are themselves material. The aesthetic and performative dimension of law inform the debates on the juridical constitution of authority, as well as its reflection on the formation and the moulding of individual subjectivity. Moreover, the inherently theatrical elements of the law find an analogy in the popular theatre, where juridical practices are represented, challenged, occasionally subverted or created. The works analyzed in the volume, in their ample spectre of topics and contexts aim at demonstrating how in the Renaissance period the body was the privileged focus of the social, legal and cultural imagination.

Julia Roberts Cast As Attorney In New Film "Train Man"

Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich, The Pelican Brief) takes on another law-related movie in Train Man. She'll play Sally Butler, the long-time lawyer for Darius McCollum, who loved to impersonate New York public transit employees in order to drive buses, trains, and subway cars. Mr. McCollum, who has Asperger's was arrested more than 20 times, the first time when he was 15.

The Gotham Group is developing the project; Simon Stephenson is writing the screenplay. More here from The Hollywood Reporter.  Here's more about Ms. Butler's defense of her client, Mr. McCollum, concerning his arrest late last year.

Coulson on Legal Oratory in the Processus Sathanae

Doug Coulson, Department of English, Carnegie Mellon University, has published The Devil's Advocate and Legal Oratory in the Processus Sathanae at 33 Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 409 (2015). Here is the abstract.

Modern readers have been baffled by the combination of legal, dramatic, and theological elements in the 14th century Processus Sathanae, a mock trial drama in which the devil’s advocate and the Virgin Mary employ various Roman law concepts in a courtroom debate regarding the devil’s claim that he was wrongfully dispossessed of humanity. This article examines the Processus Sathanae along with an early source of the drama in a Marcionite creation dialogue and argues that by foregrounding equitable and emotional appeals the drama taught late medieval law students important lessons regarding legal oratory during a crucial period in the development of European jurisprudence. 

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Schauer on Vagueness In Law

Frederick Schauer, University of Virginia School of Law, is publishing Second-Order Vagueness in Law in Vagueness in Law: Philosophical & Legal Approaches (G. Keil and R. Poscher, eds., Oxford University Press, 2016). Here is the abstract.

Most of the philosophical literature on vagueness starts with the identification of the term whose vagueness is at issue -- tall, short, night, day, bald, tadpole, etc. But in legal interpretation an additional problem arises, because it is not always obvious which term in a legal text, or even which legal text, is the operative one. H.L.A. Hart's idea of a rule of recognition conceptualizes the way in which some second-order rule is necessary to identify which first-order rule is applicable to some form of conduct, but it is often the case that the second-order rule itself exhibits various forms of vagueness. When that is so, vagueness appears as a distinct problem with important but often unrecognized implications.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Murray on Law, Literature, and Courtroom Proceedings

Yxta Maya Murray, Loyola (Los Angeles) Law School, is publishing The Tyranny of Small Things in the Michigan Journal of Race & Law. Here is the abstract.

This legal-literary essay recounts a day I spent watching criminal sentencings in an Alhambra, California courthouse, emphasizing the sometimes quotidian, sometimes despairing, imports of those proceedings. I take leave of the courthouse marshaling arguments that resemble those of other scholars who tackle state overcriminalization and selective enforcement. My original addition exists in the granular attention I pay to the moment-by-moment effects of a sometimes baffling state power on poor and minority people. In this approach, I align myself with advocates of the law and literature school of thought who believe that the study (or, in this case, practice) of literature will aid the aims of justice by disclosing buried yet critical human experience and emotions.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Gulick on Literature, Law, and Rhetorical Performance in the Anticolonial Atlantic

Anne W. Gulick, Professor of English, University of South Carolina, has published Literature, Law, and Rhetorical Performance in the Anticolonial Atlantic (The Ohio State University Press, 2016). Here is a description of the book's contents from the publisher's website.

The era of national liberation and decolonization may have come and gone, but postcolonialism remains a largely elusive ideal in the early twenty-first century. In Literature, Law, and Rhetorical Performance in the Anticolonial Atlantic, Anne W. Gulick uncovers a dynamic literary history of African and Caribbean critical engagements with First World law. This transatlantic archive attests to the continuing vitality of anticolonialism as a model for intellectual inquiry and political performance. Gulick argues that experimentation with declarative forms is a vital rhetorical strategy in the anticolonial Atlantic—one through which writers have asked: Who gets to “write” the law, and under what circumstances? Responses to this question take shape across the black Atlantic from Haiti to South Africa, in texts ranging from Haiti’s Declaration of Independence and work by C. L. R. James to South Africa’s Freedom Charter, Aimé Césaire’s poem Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, and Ngűgĩ wa Thiong'o’s A Grain of Wheat. These texts constitute a robust transatlantic tradition of challenging colonial and imperial authority through rhetorical performance. Drawing on the cosmopolitan aspirations and emancipatory energies of the political declaration, this tradition aims to radically reinvent the possibilities for law and political belonging in the postcolonial future.

Now available from the Ohio State University Press: The Politics of Ecology: Land, Life, and Law in Medieval Britain

Now available: The Politics of Ecology: Land, Life, and Law in Medieval Britain (Randy P. Schiff and Joseph Taylor, eds.; Ohio State University Press, 2016) (Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Culture). From the publisher's description of the contents:

If medieval literary studies is, like so many fields, currently conditioned by an ecological turn that dislodges the human from its central place in materialist analysis, then why now focus on the law? Is not the law the most human, if not indeed the human, institution? In proposing that all life in medieval Britain, whether animal or vegetable, was subject to the same legal machine that enabled claims on land, are we not ignoring the ecocritical demand that we counteract human exceptionalism and reframe the past with inhuman eyes? This volume, edited by Randy P. Schiff and Joseph Taylor, responds to these questions by infusing biopolitical material and theory into ecocentric studies of medieval life. The Politics of Ecology: Land, Life, and Law in Medieval Britain pursues the political power of sovereign law as it disciplines and manages various forms of natural life, and discloses the literary biopolitics played out in texts that work out the fraught interactions of life and law, in all its forms. Contributors to this volume explore such issues as legal networks and death, Arthurian bare life, Chaucerian medical biopolitics, the biopolitics of fur, ecologies of sainthood, arboreal political theology, conservation and political ecology, and geographical melancholy. Bringing together both established and rising critical voices, The Politics of Ecology creates a place for cutting-edge medievalist ecocriticism focused on the intersections of land, life, and law in medieval English, French, and Latin literature. Randy P. Schiff is Associate Professor of English at SUNY Buffalo. Joseph Taylor is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

New In Paperback: Kristin Kalsem's In Contempt: Nineteenth-Century Women, Law, and LIterature

New in paperback from Ohio State University Press: Kristin Kalsem's In Contempt: Nineteenth-Century Women, Law, & Literature. $21.95.

Cushman on Vote Fluidity on the Hughes Court, 1934-1936

Barry Cushman, Notre Dame Law School, is publishing Vote Fluidity on the Hughes Court: The Critical Terms, 1934-1936 in the University of Illinois Law Review. Here is the abstract.

This article makes four principal claims. The first is that the justices of the Hughes Court often changed their positions in major cases between the time that they cast their votes in conference and their final votes on the merits. The second is that the Court achieved comparatively high rates of unanimity even during its most turbulent Terms because justices who had served on earlier Courts had internalized a norm counseling those who lost at the conference vote to acquiesce in the judgment of the majority. The third is that the justices who most frequently did so in this period’s major cases were those widely considered to be its most recalcitrant conservatives: James Clark McReynolds and Pierce Butler. The fourth concerns the common claim that Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, for the purpose of lending greater credibility to judgments rendered by a divided Court, frequently changed his vote in major cases so as transform what would have been 5-4 decisions into cases decided by a vote of 6-3. This article contends that such a claim finds little support in the sources by which it could be most reliably verified or refuted. Until recently, it would have been quite challenging to substantiate any of these claims. For many years, the docket books kept by a number of the Hughes Court justices have been held by the Office of the Curator of the Supreme Court. Yet the existence of these docket books was not widely known, and access to them was highly restricted. Recently, however, the Court adopted new guidelines designed to increase access to the docket books for researchers. This article offers a report and analysis based on a review of all of the docket books that the Curator’s Office holds from the critical 1934-1936 Terms of the Hughes Court. This review includes sixty-two major decisions concerning the Commerce Clause, the dormant Commerce Clause, substantive due process, equal protection, labor relations, intergovernmental tax immunities, criminal procedure, civil rights, and civil liberties. Analysis of the voting data in the docket books offers a novel contribution to the extensive political science literature on judicial behavior, specifically to the scholarship on vote fluidity and unanimity norms in the Supreme Court.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Hunt on Legal Speech and Implicit Content in the Law

Luke William Hunt, University of Virginia, has published Legal Speech and Implicit Content in the Law at 29 Ratio Juris 3 (2016). Here is the abstract.

Interpreting the content of the law is not limited to what a relevant lawmaker utters. This paper examines the extent to which implied and implicit content is part of the law, and specifically whether the Gricean concept of conversational implicature is relevant in determining the content of law. Recent work has focused on how this question relates to acts of legislation. This paper extends the analysis to case law and departs from the literature on several key issues. The paper's argument is based upon two points: (1) Precedent‐setting judicial opinions may consist of multiple conversations, of which some entail opposing implicata, and (2) if a particular precedent‐setting judicial opinion consists of multiple conversations, of which some entail opposing implicata, then no meaningful conversational implicatum is part of the content of that particular precedent‐setting opinion. Nevertheless, the paper's conclusion leaves open the prospect of gleaning something in between conversational implicature and what is literally said, namely, conversational impliciture.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Call for Panelists, Law and Humanities Forum, Modern Language Association Convention, January 5-8, 2017

From Melissa J. Ganz, Marquette University, Department of English:

Please consider submitting a proposal for one of the panels that the Law and the Humanities Forum is sponsoring at the Modern Language Association (MLA) convention next year.  The conference will meet in Philadelphia from January 5-8, 2017.

We are organizing one guaranteed session and two special (non-guaranteed) sessions:

1.  Object Lessons in Personhood (Guaranteed Session) 10-minute papers

on a single “thing.” How do theoretical issues surrounding legal personhood--questions of consent, responsibility, rights, freedom--manifest themselves at the level of substance, form, environment? 150-word abstracts. by 15 March 2016;Kevin Curran  (kdcurran@gmail.com).

 2. Transnational Justice and the Literary Imagination (Non-Guaranteed

 Session) How do imaginative texts explore questions of justice that transcend national borders? Papers on all genres, periods, and regions welcome. 300-word abstract and brief cv by 15 March 2016; Melissa J. Ganz (melissa.ganz@marquette.edu).

 3. The Mexican Legal Code and its Glitches (Non-Guaranteed Session)

 The Mexico & Law and Humanities Sections ask: How might Mexican literature and legal codes illuminate one another? 200-word abstract and one-page cv by 15 March 2016; Emily Hind (emilyhind@yahoo.com) and Peter Lancelot Mallios (mallios@umd.edu).

 We hope to see you in Philadelphia next year!

 Best wishes,

 Kevin Curran

 Melissa Ganz

 Peter Mallios

 Imani Perry

 Richard Weisberg

> 

> ---

Lehavi on the Culture of Private Law

Amnon Lehavi, Interdisciplinary Center Herzliyah, Radzyner School of Law, has published The Culture of Private Law. Here is the abstract.

The chief goal of private law is to guide and facilitate interpersonal conduct. In fields such as contracts, property, and corporate governance, lawmakers have an essential normative role of envisioning ideal types of collective action and designing legal and organizational mechanisms that will streamline these types of action, while also giving parties substantial leeway to tailor their interpersonal legal relations. This Article argues that for such a legal design to be effective, regardless of the substantive content of its underlying normative values, lawmakers must consider the actual congruence between the ideal types of collective action envisioned by private law norms and the prevailing cultural orientations, values, and beliefs that practically guide everyday interactions in a certain society or group. To the extent that a private law reform wishes to promote a new type of collective action that is not initially supported by such grassroots forces, it must find ways to enable at least an incremental shift in the relevant cultural traits to facilitate the desired modes of interpersonal collaboration. Rejecting an all-or-nothing approach to cultural change, this Article underscores the key role of collective-action organizations, such as business corporations or homeowner associations, in mediating between private law reforms and incremental cultural shifts.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Kearley on Roman Law in Twentieth Century America

Timothy G. Kearley, University of Wyoming College of Law, is publishing From Rome to the Restatement: S.P. Scott, Fred Blume, Clyde Pharr, and Roman Law in Early Twentieth-Century America in volume 108 of the Law Library Journal (2016). Here is the abstract.

This article describes how the classical past, including Roman law and a classics-based education, influenced elite legal culture in the United States and university-educated Americans into the twentieth century and helped to encourage Scott, Blume, and Pharr to labor for many years on their English translations of ancient Roman law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The Seccessionist Papers From the Calhoun Review

The Secessionist Papers (Barry Lee Clark et al., The Calhoun Review, 2016) is available. Here is the abstract.

Why is it important to talk about secession? Few people that believe secession is a legitimate political theory, right and recourse also believe that in a practical sense it is achievable, reasonable or even preferable. Devolution is a complicated matter and requires a more or less united political will among a people within a region or area – within the confines of modern America it seems unlikely any such will of a sufficient majority will soon emerge, anywhere. The question thus remains, why even discuss the subject? It is important to honestly discuss the matter because it goes to the very heart of how the Union of States was formed, what the Constitution was to mean and what relation the central government was to have to the people. Many of our contemporary political problems stem directly from a failure to understand foundational principles. Perhaps in engendering more honest discussions about foundational principles we might actually see contemporary problems more correctly.

This publication contains essays by Barry Lee Clark, Brian McCandliss, Walter Block, Thomas E. Woods, Kevin L. Clauson, Kirkpatrick Sale, Forrest McDonald, Gene H. Kizer, Thomas J. DiLorenzo, and Donald W. Livingston.

Getman-Pavlova on The Founders of 16th Century Belgian Realism in Private International Law

Irina Getman-Pavlova, National Research University Higher School of Economics (Moscow) has published The Founders of 16th Century Belgian Realism in Private International Law Doctrine as Higher School of Economics Research Paper No. WP BRP 64/LAW/2016. Here is the abstract.

This article restores to academic circulation the names of representatives of the 16th century Belgian School of Realism, who have been unjustly forgotten in modern Private International Law [PIL] doctrine — Nicolas Everhard, Pieter Peck and Johannes à Sande. These scholars are the founders of the Belgian-Dutch theory of conflicts of laws which anticipated the classic Dutch “comity” doctrine and provided the framework for the Anglo-American doctrine of the regulation of international civil relations. The theory of Belgian realism was first outlined by Everhard, Peck and Sande and was formed on the theory of statutes — the sole doctrine of PIL for 500 years. Belgian Realism is a separate direction in the theory of statutes which triggered the process of a strongly territorial concept of conflict resolution between choice of law rules of different states. However, despite their outstanding contribution to the legal practice and doctrine of their time, these scholars are not known to modern jurisprudence. The article concludes that Everhard, Peck and Sande developed the choice of law rules which are now adopted by modern legislation; moreover, their works may serve to develop international comity doctrine, which has been adopted by modern PIL.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Goldstein on How the Constitution Became Christian

Jared A. Goldstein, Roger Williams University School of Law, has published How the Constitution Became Christian as Roger Williams University Legal Studies Paper No. 167. Here is the abstract.

Although the Constitution is conventionally portrayed as the embodiment of what it means to be American, it is more accurate to describe the Constitution as the battleground over which disputes over national identity are fought. This article illustrates the dynamics that transform conflicts over national identity into constitutional issues by examining three episodes in the recurring debate over whether the United States should be considered a “Christian nation” — the nineteenth-century movement to add an expression of Christian faith to the Constitution, mid-twentieth-century Judeo-Christian nationalism, and the New Christian Right that began in the 1970s. These episodes reveal that over the past century a shift has occurred among Christian nationalists, who have moved from denouncing the Constitution as a godless document unworthy of a Christian people to lauding the Constitution as an expression of the nation’s Christian identity. This article asks how the Constitution became (for many Americans at least) Christian. The answer lies in America’s constitutional culture, which channels conflicts over national identity into constitutional disputes. The episodes examined here follow a similar pattern. In each case, members of a dominant religious group mobilized in response to perceived threats to their status — from Catholics, immigrants, Communists, and secular humanists. In each episode, members of the movement believed Christian devotion to be part of America’s essence and therefore considered threats to Christian dominance as attacks on America itself. And in each case, the movement attempted to preserve the nation’s supposedly Christian identity by making constitutional demands, either to amend the Constitution to proclaim the nation’s Christian devotion or to interpret the Constitution to be Christian. Through this recurring pattern — in which a threat to group status is seen on nationalist terms and mobilizes a movement to make constitutional demands — fights about what it means to be American become fights over the meaning of the Constitution. Rather than embodying what it means to be American, the Constitution provides a seemingly neutral and patriotic language for making claims of national inclusion and exclusion, for asserting that some people and some values are authentically American, while others are dangerously foreign and must be rejected.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Netanel's Introduction to "From Maimonides to Microsoft: The Jewish Law of Copyright Since the Birth of Print"

Neil Weinstock Netanel, UCLA School of Law, has published Introduction to: From Maimonides to Microsoft: The Jewish Law of Copyright Since the Birth of Print, in From Maimonides to Microsoft: The Jewish Law of Copyright Since the Birth of Print (Oxford University Press, 2016). Here is the abstract.

In this book, Neil Netanel traces the historical development of Jewish copyright law. In so doing, he compares rabbinic reprinting bans with secular and papal book privileges and relays the stories of dramatic disputes among publishers of books of Jewish learning and liturgy, beginning with the early sixteenth century and continuing until today. He describes each dispute in its historical context and examines the rabbinic rulings that sought to resolve it. Remarkably, the rabbinic reprinting bans and copyright rulings address some of the same issues that animate copyright jurisprudence today: Is copyright a property right or just a right to receive fair compensation? How long should copyrights last? What purposes does copyright serve? While Jewish copyright law has borrowed from its secular counterpart at key junctures, it fashions strikingly different answers to those key questions.

Download the Introduction from SSRN at the link.

Rossum on Antonin Scalia's Jurisprudence

Ralph A. Rossum, Claremont McKenna College, has published Antonin Scalia's Jurisprudence: Text and Tradition (University Press of Kansas, 2016). Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

Lionized by the right and demonized by the left, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is the high court's quintessential conservative. Witty, outspoken, often abrasive, he is widely regarded as the most controversial member of the Court. This book is the first comprehensive, reasoned, and sympathetic analysis of how Scalia has decided cases during his entire twenty-year Supreme Court tenure. Ralph Rossum focuses on Scalia's more than 600 Supreme Court opinions and dissents—carefully wrought, passionately argued, and filled with well-turned phrases—which portray him as an eloquent defender of an "original meaning" jurisprudence. He also includes analyses of Scalia's Court of Appeals opinions for the D.C. circuit, his major law review articles as a law professor and judge, and his provocative book, A Matter of Interpretation. Rossum reveals Scalia's understanding of key issues confronting today's Court, such as the separation of powers, federalism, the free speech and press and religion clauses of the First Amendment, and the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. He suggests that Scalia displays such a keen interest in defending federalism that he sometimes departs from text and tradition, and reveals that he has disagreed with other justices most often in decisions involving the meaning of the First Amendment's establishment clause. He also analyzes Scalia's positions on the commerce clause and habeas corpus clause of Article I, the take care clause of Article II, the criminal procedural provisions of Amendments Four through Eight, protection of state sovereign immunity in the Eleventh Amendment, and Congress's enforcement power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The first book to fully articulate the contours of Scalia's constitutional philosophy and jurisprudence, Rossum's insightful study ultimately depicts Scalia as a principled, consistent, and intelligent textualist who is fearless and resolute, notwithstanding the controversy he often inspires. 

Picart on Law In and As Culture: Intellectual Property, Minority Rights, and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Caroline Joan "Kay" S. Picart has published Law In and As Culture: Intellectual Property, Minority Rights, and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Rowman & Littlefield, for Fairleigh Dickinson Press, 2016). Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

There are two oppositional narratives in relation to telling the story of indigenous peoples and minorities in relation to globalization and intellectual property rights. The first, the narrative of Optimism, is a story of the triumphant opening of brave new worlds of commercial integration and cultural inclusion. The second, the narrative of Fear, is a story of the endangerment, mourning, and loss of a traditional culture. While the story of Optimism deploys a rhetoric of commercial mobilization and “innovation,” the story of Fear emphasizes the rhetoric of preserving something “pure” and “traditional” that is “dying.” Both narratives have compelling rhetorical force, and actually need each other, in order to move their opposing audiences into action. However, as Picart shows, the realities behind these rhetorically framed political parables are more complex than a simple binary. Hence, the book steers a careful path between hope rather than unbounded Optimism, and caution, rather than Fear, in exploring how law functions in and as culture as it contours the landscape of intellectual property rights, as experienced by indigenous peoples and minorities. Picart uses, among a variety of tools derived from law, critical and cultural studies, anthropology and communication, case studies to illustrate this approach. She tracks the fascinating stories of the controversies surrounding the ownership of a Taiwanese folk song; the struggle over control of the Mapuche’s traditional land in Chile against the backdrop of Chile’s drive towards modernization; the collaboration between the Kani tribe in India and a multinational corporation to patent an anti-fatigue chemical agent; the drive for respect and recognition by Australian Aboriginal artists for their visual expressions of folklore; and the challenges American women of color such as Josephine Baker and Katherine Dunham faced in relation to the evolving issues of choreography, improvisation and copyright. The book also analyzes the cultural conflicts that result from these encounters between indigenous populations or minorities and majority groups, reflects upon the ways in which these conflicts were negotiated or resolved, both nationally and internationally, and carefully explores proposals to mediate such conflicts.

Cohen on the Influence of the Choice of Official and Working Languages on the Workings of Courts

Mathilde Cohen, University of Connecticut School of Law, is publishing On the Linguistic Design of Multinational Courts — The French Capture in volume 14 of the International Journal of Constitutional Law (2016). Here is the abstract.

This Article discusses the importance of language in the institutional design of European and international courts, which I refer to as “linguistic design.” What is at stake in the choice a court’s official or working language? Picking a language has far-reaching consequences on a court’s composition and internal organizational culture, possibly going as far as influencing the substantive law produced. This is the case because language choices impact the screening of the staff and the manufacture of judicial opinions. Linguistic design imposes costs on non-native speakers forced to use a second (or third) language and confers a set of advantages on native speakers. It has profound implications on judgments as it imports a set of writing conventions that live on even as the institution becomes more cosmopolitan. Using the example of French at the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Court of Human Rights, and the International Court of Justice, I argue that granting French the status of official language has led French lawyers and French judicial culture to disproportionately influence the courts’ inner workings. This is what I call the “French capture.”

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

A Conference on Forty Years in Law and Literature, April 17, 2016: Celebrating the Academic Career of Professor Richard H. Weisberg

From the Mailbox:

Forty Years in Law and Literature: A Festschrift Celebrating the Academic Career of Prof. Richard Weisberg

April 17, 2016 - 9:00am to 6:00pm

Forty Years in Law and Literature:A Festschrift Celebrating the Academic Career of Professor Richard Weisberg 

Jacob Burns Moot Court Room
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
55 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10003

RSVP to ellii.cho@law.cardozo.yu.edu

Speakers will present papers for discussion on a wide range of topics, including the genesis of Law and Literature as a field of study, its development as a movement, as well as its proliferation into other scholarly disciplines, such as Holocaust Studies and Constitutional Law.

Speakers will include:
 
Marguerite DeHuszar Allen, convener
Peter Brooks
Vivian Curran
Stanley Fish
Todd Grabarsky
Sanford Levinson
Susan Noakes
Michael Pantazakos
David A.J. Richards
Thane Rosenbaum
Jon-Christian Suggs
George Williams

This day-long event, including lunch and reception, is free and open to the public.

Call For Papers: Divided Authorities and Dispossessed Peoples: Conference at the Humanities Research Centre, ANU, 20-22 July 2016

From Professor Desmond Manderson, ANU College of Law and College of Arts & Social Sciences, Australian National University:

CALL FOR PAPERS

Divided Authorities and Dispossessed Peoples:

Aesthetic Dimensions of Political andCritical Theory in the 21st Century

20-22 July 2016, Humanities Research Centre

Australian National University

Invited Keynotes: Louise Amoore (Durham, UK), Chiara Bottici (New School NYC), Davide Panagia (UCLA), Dimitris Vardoulakis (Western Sydney University)

Forms of authority inhabit aesthetic events and practices, and equally suffuse political and social discourse. The intersection of these modalities is attracting unprecedented attention amongst contemporary political and critical theorists. Judith Butler, Jacques Rancière, Bonnie Honig, William Connolly, James Tully, Giorgio Agamben — and behind them figures as diverse as Arendt, Freud, Derrida, Deleuze, Benjamin, Wittgenstein and Nietzsche — all integrate political interpretation and critical reconstruction with lessons drawn from literary histories and artistic practices. The aesthetic forms in which authority is embedded (for example via tropes of realism, melodrama, reportage, abstraction, and tradition) animate political economy and theology. They also invite alternative modes of reflection and interrogation.

In opening the question of the power as well as the fragility of authority’s ‘forms’, certain contemporary political practices of dispossession might become ambivalent; harking back, perhaps, to the Dionysian moment that according to Nietzsche undoes identities ossified into hierarchy, dominance and mistrust. This conference aims to explore how key dimensions of contemporary political life obtain authority, visibility and contestability in aesthetic forms—literature, poetry, drama, cinema, painting, sculpture. Can plural sovereignties and the modes of constitution of authority in law/lore become more visible through aesthetic attention? How do critical approaches to international human rights regimes work through aesthetic forms? Do the divisions inherent in authority, especially where there are long histories of violence, conflict or oppression, particularly demand an aesthetic critique or (re)-mediation? How might an aesthetic register for thinking politics emancipate the material world from merely being man’s ‘object’, generating new institutional forms apt to the challenges of today?

Our call for papers invites both critical and reconstructive work in the relationship between aesthetics and politics as it pertains to the question of authority.

To submit an abstract, register your interest, or find out more, contact the organizers, Fiona Jenkins (Philosophy) and Desmond Manderson (CASS/Law)

Closing date: 18 March 2016

More at the conference website here.

Call For Papers: Law and Culture Conference 2016: "Invisibility"

From Tom Giddens, Co-Director, Centre for Law and Culture, St. Mary's University:

Law and Culture Conference 2016 ‘(In)visibility’ Call for Papers 

What does it mean to be seen? What does it mean to see? What can and cannot, should and should not, be visible? What are the limits of legal sight, and what lies beyond? What can academic and critical study make visible to law? Can (in)visibility produce (in)justice?

The Law and Culture Conference 2016 aims to stimulate a wide ranging and in-depth discussion on the tensions, significance, implications and critical dimensions of the open theme of ‘(In)visibility’. Indicative concerns include: • political and legal visibility/invisibility, including critical gender and race studies, the legal and cultural responses to current migration crises, the protection and rights of minorities • the visible/unseen dimensions of law and its institution, including legal aesthetics, law and visuality • law’s regulation of visibility, including law and art, the regulation of culture, illegitimate images • law’s (in)visibility within culture, including popular culture, film, comics, literature and television • legal history, including seen/unseen histories • ‘hidden victims’ in criminal and other contexts • visible and hidden voices in the legal academy

Please submit abstracts (250 words), plus 3 keywords and a short biography (50 words), via email by 30th April 2016.

Papers will be 20 minutes in length, with additional time for questions.

Confirmed Plenary Speakers: Sionaidh Douglass-Scott (Anniversary Chair in Law, Queen Mary University of London), Amanda Perry-Kessaris (Professor of Law, Kent Law School), Stuart Toddington (Professor of Jurisprudence, University of Huddersfield)

About the Centre for Law and Culture Launched by Lady Hale in 2014, the Centre for Law and Culture is an interdisciplinary hub for research at the intersections of law, justice, and the humanities.

It is a home for the cultural study of law, and as a rallying point for such culturally enriched legal research, the Centre engages legal study that spans topics and themes from across critical and cultural legal studies. It thereby aims to incubate and promote critical research that crosses and challenges traditional legal boundaries in a cultural context.

For more information, visit www.stmarys.ac.uk/law-and-culture. Location: St Mary’s University, Twickenham, London TW1 4SX www.stmarys.ac.uk/contact/location-maps.htm

For information and submissions, please contact Thomas Giddens (thomas.giddens@stmarys.ac.uk)

Registration: There is an anticipated £60 registration fee (plus booking), which will cover attendance, refreshments and lunch for both days and the conference dinner. Reduced cost packages will be available for single day attendance.

The Conference will take place at the Centre for Law and Culture, St. Mary's, 5-6th September, 2016.

Hutchinson on Using Interdisciplinary Methods In Law Reform

Terry Christine M. Hutchinson, Queensland University of Technology Faculty of Law, is publishing The Doctrinal Method: Incorporating Interdisciplinary Methods in Reforming the Law in volume 8 of the Erasmus Law Review (2015). Here is the abstract.

The doctrinal methodology is in a period of change and transition. Realising that the scope of the doctrinal method is too constricting, academic lawyers are becoming eclectic in their use of research method. In this transitional time, legal scholars are increasingly infusing evidence (and methods) from other disciplines into their reasoning to bolster their reform recommendations. This article considers three examples of the interplay of the discipline of law with other disciplines in the pursuit of law reform. Firstly the article reviews studies on the extent of methodologies and reformist frameworks in PhD research in Australia. Secondly it analyses a ‘snapshot’ of recently published Australian journal articles on criminal law reform. Thirdly, it focuses on the law reform commissions, those independent government committees that play such an important role in law reform in common law jurisdictions. This examination demonstrates that while the doctrinal core of legal scholarship remains intact, legal scholars are endeavouring to accommodate statistics, comparative perspectives, social science evidence and methods, and theoretical analysis, within the legal research framework, in order to provide additional ballast to the recommendations for reform.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.