Call For Papers: Law and Literature Conference, Masaryk University, May 31-June 2, 2017

From the mailbox:

Call for papers

Law and literature conference 2017

Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic)
31 May – 2 june 2017

 The Law and Literature movement is still quite new in the Central Europe but its importance is growing lately. A unique legal and cultural experience of this area can provide a new inspiration to the Law and Literature discussions so the ambition of the conference is to provide a new platform to explore current possibilities and spaces of the Law and Literature field. It is thus our intention to bring new stimuli to the traditional approach to the mainly West-oriented Law and Literature movement.

Brno is the second largest city of the Czech Republic, home country of Franz Kafka, Milan Kundera and Vaclav Havel. Czech culture is a combination of Slavic, Austro/Hungarian, German and both Christian and Jewish cultural tradition. As well as the multicultural background, also Nazism and Communism left their traces both at the legal and cultural environment. Brno itself is a centre of the Czech judiciary: the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court and the Supreme Administrative Court. Thanks to all these various influences and conditions, the Czech Republic and especially Brno is a perfect venue for the Law and Literature conference.

The conference will take place at the Faculty of Law of Masaryk University which is situated in the city centre of Brno. Keynote speech and welcome toast will be held in the Villa Tugendhat, designed by the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and inscribed in the list of UNESCO World Cultural Heritage sites. Thursday sections and dinner will take place in the Villa Stiassny, designed by architect Ernst Wiesner in 1927 and combining a progressive architectural design and civic tradition.

Streams are as follows:

•        Metamodernism and the Transformation of Narrative (New Trends and Possibilities in Law and Literature) - co-convened by Daniela Carpi (English Literature, University of Verona, Italy) and Jeanne Gaakeer (Legal Theory, Erasmus School of Law, Rotterdam, Netherlands) (Further details.)

•        Muss es Sein? Kundera and Law - convened by Rafał Mańko (University of Amsterdam) (Further details.)

•        Fictional-world Jurisprudence – convened by Terezie Smejkalová (Masaryk University, Brno) (Further details.)

•        General Stream – co-convened by Martin Škop and Markéta Štěpáníková (Masaryk University, Brno)

 Important dates                                     

Abstract submission deadline:                                 31 October 2016

Notice on acceptance deadline:                                30 November 2016

Draft submission deadline:                                       30 April 2017

Conference date:                                                          31 May – 2 June 2017

 Draft formal requirements

Range:                                                                             min. 2.000 words

Submission:                                                                   on-line at Easychair. 

Conference proceedings

Best papers will be eventually included in the printed book in English.

There will be also an opportunity to publish your conference papers in a special issue of “Časopis pro právní vědu a praxi”, a legal journal of the Law faculty, Masaryk University. 

Conference fees

Early bird registration / students + guests                           200 EUR / 100 EUR

Regular registration / students                                250 EUR / 150 EUR

Conference dinner in Villa Stiassny                                       35 EUR (In order to register you have to create an account at the Faculty of Law Conference System.) Further information is to be found at https://lawandliterature2017.wordpress.com/ and prezi.

Working language of the conference is English.

The titles and the abstracts (200-300 words) of the presentations should be submitted by mail to lawandliterature@law.muni.cz or directly to the stream convenors.

Please indicate your full name, affiliation and e-mail address for contact. We are looking forward to your applications. Kind regards, The Organizing Commitee of the Conference

Pye on African-American Lawyers and the Civil Rights Movement Before Brown v. Board of Education

David Kenneth Pye has published Before Civil Rights Was in Vogue: The Black Lawyer Before Brown. Here is the abstract.

Scholars cannot become too infatuated with Equal Protection arguments. Doing so blinds them to the various tactics employed by the pre-Civil Rights Movement African American bar to combat racial segregation and discrimination. Ignoring the actual arguments of historical actors is a form of teleology, in which we allow our knowledge of the present to direct how we interpret the past. History becomes less objective when done in this manner. Moreover, lawyers of today, when presented with teleological scholarship, can remain blind to possibilities open to them to defend clients in the embattled black community and beyond.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Upcoming: A Lecture on "Comics and Human Rights: at the Radcliffe Humanities Building, Oxford, March 2, 2017 @TORCHOxford

The TORCH Fiction and Human Rights and Comics and Graphic Novels: The Politics of Form networks are co-hosting a lecture on 'Comics and Human Rights'. Speakers include Benjamin Dix; Ruth Kelly (ActionAid); Dominic Davies (University of Oxford). Chaired by Tessa Roynon. The Lecture will take place March 2, 2017.

More here from TORCH: The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities.

2017 Constitutional Law Symposium at Drake University Law School, April 8, 2017 @DrakeLawSchool

From the mailbox:

Save the Date

The 2017 Constitutional Law Symposium, “President Obama’s Constitutional Law Legacy” will be held on Saturday, April 8, 2017 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.  The symposium is sponsored by Drake University Law School’s Constitutional Law Center.

Speakers include: 

·       Taunya Lovell Banks, Jacob A. France Professor of Equality, Francis King Carey School of Law, University of Maryland

·       John Eastman, Henry Salvatori Professor of Law & Community Service, Dale E. Fowler School of Law, Chapman University

·       Reva Siegel, Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law, Yale Law School

·       Ilya Somin, Professor of Law, Antonin Scalia Law School, George Mason University

 

Moderators: 

Mark Kende, Director of Constitutional Law Center, James Madison Chair in Constitutional Law, Professor of Law

Miguel Schor, Professor of Law

 

For  more information, go to http://www.drake.edu/law/clinics-centers/conlaw/events/

 

CLE credit will be available.

Thank you to the law firm of Dorsey & Whitney for its  sponsorship, and to Congressman Neal Smith for his support.

 

The Symposium will be held at Drake University in Cartwright Hall, Room 213  (2621 Carpenter Avenue, Des Moines, IA  50311) .

 

 

Graduate Student Workshop at ASLCH, March 30, 2017 @Law_Cult_Huma

From the mailbox:

The 20^th annual meeting of the Association for the study of Law, Culture and the Humanities will be held on March 31st and April 1st, 2017 at Stanford University. The Association is pleased to offer a graduate student workshop that will be held on Thursday, March 30st, 2017, the day before the annual meeting begins.

The workshop is designed for graduate students who are undertaking research that cuts across law, cultural studies, literature, philosophy, legal studies, anthropology, political science, among others. The workshop is designed to have some fun while, first, affording graduate students the opportunity to experience the LCH community in a smaller venue with more sustained contact with one another and some faculty and, second, providing graduate students with an opportunity to present their own work in anticipation of such things as job talks and publication.

Applications to the workshop should include a current curriculum vitae, a 5-page maximum abstract of a current project, as well as a short (5-page maximum) “text” relating to that project. This “text” could be a case, literary work, time-line, photo, sound or video file or whatever source-“text” will help the workshop participants reflect on the subject of their work. Use your judgment and best guesses in deciding how audio, visual, or audio-visual materials "translate" into pages of text.

Applicants whose proposals are accepted will receive support towards an extra night’s accommodation by ASLCH as well as support (varying, depending on distance traveled) towards the cost of transportation to the annual meeting site.

Send your applications to both Jill Stauffer (jstauffe@haverford.edu) and Mark Antaki (mark.antaki@mcgill.ca) by November 15th, 2016. For inquiries, please write to Mark.

New Poetry From Monica Youn @GraywolfPress

Via Concurring Opinions:

Lawyer-poet Monica Youn has published Blackacre (Graywolf Press, 2016), which contains some "vaguely legal themes," according to legal blogger Gerard Magliocca, and certainly has a law-related title. Says Stanley Fish of this new collection, “In Monica Youn’s remarkable series of poems, words and objects are alike subjected to a probing intelligence that is at once philosophical and psychological. The precision of observation at every level is almost overwhelming.”

Professor Youn teaches at Princeton (JD Yale, M. Phil. Oxford; Rhodes Scholar).

Call For Nominations: Penny Pether Law and Language Scholarship Award 2016

From the mailbox:

Call for Nominations: The Penny Pether Law and Language Scholarship Award 2016 A passionate advocate for interdisciplinary scholarship in law, literature, and language,

Penelope J. Pether (1957-2013) was Professor of Law at Villanova University School of Law and former Professor of Law and Director of Legal Rhetoric at the American University Washington College of Law. Her own scholarship focused not only on law, literature, and language, but also on constitutional and comparative constitutional law; legal theory, including constitutional theory; common law legal institutions, judging practices, and professional subject formation. 

Beginning in November 2013, the Penny Pether Award for Law & Language Scholarship has been given annually to an article or essay published during the preceding year (September 1 to September 1) that exemplifies Penny’s commitment to law and language scholarship and pedagogy. 

The Committee selecting award recipients from among the articles and essays nominated will look for scholarship that not only embodies Penny’s passion and spirit but also has some or all of the following characteristics: 1. “[S]cholarship concerning itself with the unique or distinctive insights that might emerge from interdisciplinary inquiries into ‘law’ grounded in the work of influential theorists of language and discourse.” 2. Scholarship that “attempts to think through the relations among subject formation, language, and law.” 3. Scholarship that provides “accounts of—and linguistic interventions in—acute and yet abiding crises in law, its institutions and discourses.” 4. Scholarship and pedagogy, including work addressing injustices in legal-academic institutions and practices, that is “[c]arefully theorized and situated, insisting on engaging politics and law, [and that] charts ways for law and its subjects to use power, do justice.” 

More explanations and descriptions of these characteristics can be found in Penny’s chapter from which these quotations are drawn: Language, in Law and the Humanities: An Introduction (Austin Sarat et al. eds., Cambridge U. Press 2010). Nominations should be sent by November 30, 2016 to J. Amy Dillard at adillard@ubalt.edu. You are free to nominate more than one work and to nominate work you’ve written. Please provide a citation for each work you nominate. 

The Selection Committee includes Linda Berger, David Caudill, Amy Dillard, Bruce Hay, Ian Gallacher, Melissa Marlow, Jeremy Mullem, Nancy Modesitt, and Terry Pollman. Members of the Selection Committee are not eligible for the award.

 J. Amy Dillard

Visiting Professor of Law

IU-McKinney School of Law

530 West New York Street

Indianapolis, IN 46202

(703) 625-6675

adillard@ubalt.edu

Warburg Institute, University of London, Accepting Applications for Long-Term Research Fellowships in Cultural and Intellectual History

From the mailbox:

LONG-TERM RESEARCH FELLOWSHIPS IN CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

The Warburg Institute is the premier institute in the world for the study of cultural history and the role of images in culture. It is cross-disciplinary and global. It is concerned with the histories of art and science, and their relationship with superstition, magic, and popular beliefs. Its researches are historical, philological and anthropological. It is dedicated to the study of the survival and transmission of cultural forms – whether in literature, art, music or science – across borders and from the earliest times to the present. In setting out the historical, psychological, anthropological and political dimensions of art and culture, the work of Aby Warburg underlines the continuing relevance of the humanities today. 

The Institute is offering a number of Frances A. Yates Fellowships for the academic year 2017-18.  Typically the Fellowships will be awarded from 1 October 2017 to 31 July 2018. Fellows’ interests may lie in any aspect of cultural and intellectual history but, other things being equal, preference will be given to those whose work is concerned with those areas of the medieval and Renaissance encyclopedia of knowledge to which Dame Frances herself made such distinguished contributions.

Eligibility

The Fellowships are generally intended for scholars in the early stages of their careers. Candidates may be pre- or postdoctoral but must have completed at least one year’s research on their doctoral dissertation by the time they submit their application for a Fellowship and, if postdoctoral, must normally have been awarded their doctorate within the preceding five years, i.e. after 1 October 2011. If their doctorate was awarded before this date, candidates must make a clear case in their application for any modification of this general rule.
Value of Long-term Fellowship

The starting salary of the Fellowship is expected to be £28,954 pro rata for nine months cluding London Allowance (value as at 1.8.2016 – small increase due in August 2017).

How to apply

To apply for this role, applications must be made using the application form which can be downloaded by clicking the button below. Applications must be completed in English and uploaded in Microsoft Word version by the position deadline which is Friday 2 December 2016. 

The application form asks you to provide the following: 
1. The names and addresses of two people who have agreed to write a reference in support of your application. We prefer to receive references in English but if necessary will accept references only in French, Italian, Spanish or German. It is the applicant’s responsibility to ask his/her two referees to supply letters of reference, and it is strongly advised that referees are contacted well in advance. References must be emailed by your referees as Word or PDF document attachments (on headed paper, signed and scanned) direct to ulrecruit@london.ac.uk and the applicant’s surname must appear in the subject line of the email. The deadline for references to be received at ulrecruit@london.ac.uk is midnight (GMT) on Friday, 2 December 2016. 

2. An outline of proposed research (of not more than 800 words) and the title of your research project. You should explain how your research project would benefit from being carried out at the Warburg Institute and from having access to the Institute’s resources. The project must be achievable within the Fellowship period. 

3. A curriculum vitae giving full details of name, date of birth, address (including e-mail address), present occupation, school and university education, degrees, teaching and research experience, publications. Please ensure that you include the start and end dates for all positions/scholarships/study periods/funding etc held. 

Reminder: Candidates should not submit publications or written work with their application. Those who are shortlisted will be contacted in late January 2017 and will be invited to send material at that stage. 

Closing date: Applications must be uploaded to the University's online recruitment system no later than midnight on Friday, 2 December 2016.

Law & Order: SVU, False Confessions, and Pop Culture: Analysis From @robsoncrim and Jurisculture

A post providing analysis of false confessions in popular culture through a discussion of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. Posted to Jurisculture and the Robson Crim Legal Blog. 

Webb on Slave Narratives and the Sentencing Court

Lindsey Webb, University of Denver Sturm College of Law, is publishing Slave Narratives and the Sentencing Court in the NYU Review of Law and Social Change. Here is the abstract.

The United States incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than any other country in the world. Courts are substantially more likely to sentence African American and Latino people to prison than white people in similar circumstances, and African Americans in particular represent a grossly disproportionate percentage of the incarcerated population. Violence and other ills endemic to jails and prisons are thus disproportionately experienced by people of color. This Article argues that criminal defense lawyers should explicitly address conditions of confinement at sentencing. In doing so, a criminal defense lawyer has the opportunity to serve as both advocate and abolitionist. As advocates, defense lawyers can incorporate information about conditions of confinement into sentencing narratives to support arguments for shorter sentences or against imprisonment altogether. As abolitionists, defense lawyers can juxtapose the humanity of their clients with the poor or even dire conditions of confinement in our jails and prisons – not only to influence the court’s decision about an individual client’s sentence, but to impact the court’s view of our systems of incarceration as a whole. Defense lawyers acting as abolitionists thus seek to disrupt and dismantle a system of imprisonment that disproportionately affects African American and Latino people in significant and damaging ways. In examining how invoking conditions of confinement at sentencing engages defense attorneys as advocates and abolitionists, this Article seeks insight from a tool of abolitionists and advocates from a different time: Civil War-era slave narratives. Slave narratives exposed the hidden conditions of slavery while also seeking to humanize the enslaved people subjected to those conditions. Using slave narratives as a touchstone in a conversation about sentencing advocacy provides a new perspective on the role of storytelling in litigation and social movements, including questions of who tells the story and which stories are told, in the context of systems of control with deep disparate impacts based on race.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

TIlburg University Establishes Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities

From the mailbox:

Tilburg University has established the annual Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities in order to commemorate the life and work of Willem Witteveen. The fellowship aims to enable a junior scholar (PhD or postdoc level) to further develop his or her research in the area of ‘Law and Humanities’ during a visit to Tilburg. Professor Willem Witteveen was an early representative of the interdisciplinary and contextual approach to legal scholarship in The Netherlands and Tilburg Law School. Whereas the emphasis often is on social sciences, Willem’s focus was on law and humanities. Rhetoric, literature, political philosophy and (intellectual and cultural) history in particular were breeding grounds for Willem’s many contributions to academia, politics and society. Willem attached a lot of importance to student formation in the sense of the classic Bildungsideal to which expression (rhetoric, language) and contact with classical texts are central. As progressive as much of his work is, as strong was his attachment to traditional forms of academic life, with their opportunities for direct exchange of ideas.   What the Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities offers:

The Witteveen Memorial Fellow will have office space and facilities at the Department of Public Law, Jurisprudence and Legal History of Tilburg Law School, as well as full library access.

 We offer reimbursement of travel expenses and accommodation expenses (max. 5250 Euro). The Witteveen Memorial Fellowship does not constitute an employment relationship. For this reason, Tilburg Law School will not make social insurance contributions or contributions to pension or unemployment insurance. In principle the Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities is for a duration of three months in the Spring following the application deadline. Candidates are welcome to propose a different period. In case the fellowship is awarded for less than three month the maximum amount to be reimbursed will be proportionately lower. If the fellowship is awarded for longer than three months, the total amount to be reimbursed, travel or commuting costs included, remains 5250 euro. What is expected of the Witteveen Memorial Fellow:

During the period of the fellowship the scholar will be present in Tilburg, participate in the academic life of both Tilburg Law School and the Tilburg School of Humanities and deliver a guest lecture to students. Any publications resulting from the fellowship should mention the Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities explicitly. Application procedure

Scholars who are currently working on a PhD dissertation or who defended one not longer than five years ago are eligible. Candidates are requested to submit their application before 15-11-2016. Applications can only be submitted online (www.tilburguniversity.edu/about-tilburg-university/working-at/wp/). Candidates must submit a cover letter, a CV including publications, a statement of intent (‘what do you plan to do during the fellowship?’, ‘what is the end product?’) and one reference letter.In principle, the selection committee will decide on the basis of the written application only. The extent to which a candidate’s background is in law and humanities as well as evidence of interaction between both disciplines in the candidate’s work is an important selection criterion For questions, please contact Jacoba Floor (J.W.Floor@uvt.nl). 

Civil Liberties In a Time of Fear: The Japanese American Incarceration and the Threat To Muslim Americans: Panel Discussion Oct. 27, 2016 at the Japanese American National Museum

From the mailbox:

The Harvard Law School Association of Los Angeles, the Japanese American National Museum, and the Japanese American Bar Association invite you to join them for a panel discussion:

Civil Liberties In a Time of Fear: The Japanese American Incarceration and the Threat To Muslim Americans

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Speakers include Karen Korematsu, Dr. Irum Shiekh, Edina Lekovic. Warren Olney, host and executive producer of To the Point, moderates. 

  

More here at the HLSA website.

A Website Devoted To Judicial Images

Via Maks Del Mar @maksdelmar: A terrific website devoted to judicial images: Judicial Images: Production, Management, & Consumption. 

Check it out.

A Pop Culture Election: Entertainment Weekly @EW Asks Us To Vote For the Best Pop Culture U.S. President

Entertainment Weekly offers a round robin for you to decide the "best pop culture U.S. President." There are an amazing number of candidates available. Are any of your favorites missing?

Vote here.

Paul Raffield's New Book on The Art of Law In Shakespeare, Forthcoming From @hartpublishing

Paul Raffield, University of Warwick, is publishing The Art of Law in Shakespeare (Hart Publishing, 2017). Here is a description of the book's contents from the publisher's website.

Through an examination of five plays by Shakespeare, the author analyses the contiguous development of common law and poetic drama during the first decade of Jacobean rule. The broad premise of the book is that the 'artificial reason' of law was a complex art form, which shared the same rhetorical strategy as the plays of Shakespeare. Common law and Shakespearean drama of this period employed various aesthetic devices to capture the imagination and the emotional attachment of their respective audiences. Common law of the Jacobean era, as spoken in the law courts, learnt at the Inns of Court, and recorded in the law reports, used imagery that would have been familiar to audiences at the plays of Shakespeare. In its juridical form, English law was intrinsically dramatic, its adversarial mode of expression being founded on an agonistic model. Conversely, Shakespeare borrowed from the common law some of its most critical themes: justice, legitimacy, sovereignty, community, fairness, and (above all else) humanity. Each chapter investigates a particular aspect of the common law, seen through the lens of a specific play by Shakespeare. Topics include the unprecedented significance of rhetorical skills to the practice and learning of common law (Love's Labour's Lost); the early modern treason trial as exemplar of the theatre of law (Macbeth); the art of law as the legitimate distillation of the law of nature (The Winter's Tale); the efforts of common lawyers to create an image of nationhood from both classical and Judaeo-Christian mythography (Cymbeline); and the theatrical device of the island as microcosm of the Jacobean state and the project of imperial expansion (The Tempest). 

Call For Papers: Pepperdine Law Review Symposium, 2017: The Supreme Court, Politics, and Reform

From the mailbox:

The Supreme Court, Politics and Reform

The 2017 Pepperdine Law Review Symposium

Malibu, California—April 8, 2017

Announcement and Call for Proposals

Next April, the Pepperdine Law Review will hold its annual symposium on the question of whether the political deadlock over the Merrick Garland nomination provides a stark indication the U.S. Supreme Court has become an unduly political institution, and, if so, what internal and external reforms might address this problem.  We invite all interested scholars to submit a relevant proposal to present at the symposium and be considered for publication in a special edition of our law review.

Confirmed featured commentators include:

Akhil Amar (Yale)

Erwin Chemerinsky (UC Irvine)

Michael McConnell (Stanford)

Hon. Richard Posner (by teleconference)

Deanell Tacha (Pepperdine)

Mark Tushnet (Harvard)

 Speaking slots are limited and proposals will be selected on the basis of, among other things, how well they facilitate comprehensive coverage of the questions to be examined.  Where proposals identify problems, those that also explore specific reform measures will be accorded additional weight.  Selected speakers will present their ideas in breakout panel sessions, and are requested to submit papers for potential publication.  However, due to space and resource constraints, not all papers will be selected.  Except for meals provided at the symposium, speakers are expected to cover their own expenses of attending and make their own travel and lodging arrangements.  Symposium staff will be available to make lodging recommendations and assist with other logistics.
 If you are interested in submitting a proposal, please do so by Friday, November 11, 2016.  Proposals and accompanying biographies should be no longer than one page each.  They should be submitted to Sophia Sipsas at sophia.sipsas@pepperdine.edu.  For questions about the conference, you may contact our events manager Suzanne Inman at suzanne.inman@pepperdine.edu.
 We hope that you will consider submitting a proposal to join us for this important dialogue.
 Best regards,

Barry P. McDonald, Professor of Law and Faculty Symposium Advisor

Alice Anderson,  Law Review Symposium  Editor

Stern @ArsScripta on Coke's Institutes and the Epistemology of the String Cite

Simon Stern, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, has published Margins of Authority: Coke's Institutes and the Epistemology of the String Cite. Here is the abstract.

Precedential authority has an important place in doctrinal explication and analysis in Anglo-American law. Efforts to manage these precedents visually, in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, display a variety of solutions to the question of where precedents belong and how to represent them. Sir Edward Coke’s approach, in his Institutes (1628-44), was to place the citations in the margin; this way of managing textual authority connected legal concepts in a way that lent new significance to the citations. The discussion examines this development by considering it in relation to the introduction of perspective in visual art, in the early fifteenth century, and the use of infinitesimals in the new mathematics of the early seventeenth century.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Crocker on Dystopian Constitutionalism

Thomas P. Crocker, University of South Carolina School of Law, is publishing Dystopian Constitutionalism in volume 18 of the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law (2015). Here is the abstract.

This article describes and defends the distinctive role and rich tradition of using contrastive dystopian states in constitutional theory and practice. As constitutional tradition going back to the founding, U.S. constitutional analysis was replete with arguments about what practices would lead to an undesirable state of tyranny. In more recent constitutional history, the use of contrasting examples of the “police state,” totalitarianism, or Orwellian references have been prevalent in Supreme Court opinions across doctrinal domains, most recently making a prominent appearance at oral argument in the Fourth Amendment case, United States v. Jones. In contrast to more comprehensive constitutional theories, what differentiates dystopian constitutionalism is that it does not purport to provide a comprehensive way of understanding the Constitution. Rather, in the spirit of what Judith Shklar calls the “liberalism of fear,” it provides a way of organizing constitutional argumentation in opposition to states of government Americans might wish to avoid. It helps in understanding how to better implement constitutional principles into workable rules, not by holding up an ideal, but by urging us away from the negative alternative. In this respect, dystopian constitutionalism is focused less on obtaining an ideal state of governance than on achieving a workable system of self-governance that would avoid descent into tyranny. It has been particularly salient in criminal procedure and First Amendment cases, on which this article focuses. As a mode of argumentation, dystopian constitutional analysis uses consequence avoidance arguments often taking the form of slippery slopes. It also makes use of negative exemplars and legal archetypes — the latter first developed by Jeremy Waldron as a way of organizing our understanding of more holistic bodies of law. This article also explores how consequence avoidance arguments can be turned on their head by a different ordering of priorities. Practices once thought undesirable can lose their taint, a shift reflected in the relationship between the logical argument forms of modus tollens and modus ponens. This shift in argument form is exemplified, as this article discusses, in the contrast between the Fourth Amendment reasoning found in the 1948 case Johnson v. United States and the 2011 case Kentucky v. King. Beyond describing how dystopian analysis works, I argue normatively that there are a number of positive effects in using a dystopian analysis. One of the chief virtues of which is to encourage more holistic analysis of legal rules, which has particular salience in Fourth Amendment cases. Moreover, holistic consideration of constitutional values in service of consequence avoidance arguments does not render dystopian constitutionalism into a version of irrational “tyrranaphobia,” as some scholars have argued. Rather, methodologically it is about keeping in mind negative boundaries, and providing a grammar for talking about how to construct rules that steer us away from negative consequences. Substantively, it is about affirming national agreements on core values and commitments comprising a constitutional identity. When agreement proves elusive, dystopian constitutional analysis supplements other constitutional arguments to facilitate analysis of the more comprehensive constitutional fidelity and fit we might expect from a proposed decision.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Reid on Alexander Hamilton's Bank of the United States as the United States' First Great Constitutional Controversy

Charles J. Reid, Jr., University of St. Thomas School of Law (Minnesota), has published America's First Great Constitutional Controversy: Alexander Hamilton's Bank of the United States as U. of St. Thomas (Minnesota) Legal Studies Research Paper No. 16-21. Here is the abstract.

This article aims at a careful reconstruction of what has been called America’s first great constitutional controversy — the 1791 debate over Alexander Hamilton’s Bank of the United States. This article reviews this debate both at the congressional level and within the executive branch. The debate over the bank led to the articulation of theories of constitutional interpretation that are with us still. On the one hand, we find theories of interpretation that stress implied constitutional powers and an expansive role for the federal government. On the other hand, we encounter theories of interpretation that emphasize limited federal authority and a preeminent role for the states. These debates included not only well known figures, such as Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, but other leading figures of the time less well known today, such as Fisher Ames, Theodore Sedgwick, and Elbridge Gerry.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Tamanaha on How History Bears on Jurisprudence

Brian Z. Tamanaha, Washington University, Saint Louis, School of Law, is publishing How History Bears on Jurisprudence in Law in Theory and Jurisprudence (Maks Del Mar and Michael Lobban eds.; Oxford: Hart Publishing 2016). Here is the abstract.

The relevance of history to jurisprudence is a burning topic of late, the focus of a forthcoming book, Law in Theory and Jurisprudence, as well as of a recent symposium issue in the Virginia Law Review, “Jurisprudence and (Its) History,” both with contributions from eminent historians and theorists. That jurisprudence neglects history to its impoverishment is the thrust of these collections. The editors for the Virginia symposium write, “there may be reason to think that turning to history could broaden the boundaries, and raise the ambitions, of a [jurisprudential] field that many lawyers, judges, and even legal scholars have written off as esoteric and dominated by concerns remote from their own.” This essay, the Afterword to the former volume, examines how history bears on jurisprudence. The presentation is organized around the following themes that emerge from the collection: Law is historical or temporal; Law and jurisprudence interact over time; Jurisprudence is influenced by social-historical circumstances; Historical jurisprudence; Must legal philosophy be historical? (No); Should legal philosophy be historical? (Yes).

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

A New Book on Conan Doyle and His Most Famous Literary Creation

Via @MichaelSimsBook and @pastoffences

Michael Sims is publishing Arthur and Sherlock: Conan Doyle and the Creation of Holmes (Bloomsbury, 2017). Here is a description of the book's contents from the publisher's website.

As a young medical student, Arthur Conan Doyle studied in Edinburgh under the vigilant eye of a diagnostic genius, Dr. Joseph Bell. Doyle often observed Bell identifying a patient's occupation, hometown, and ailments from the smallest details of dress, gait, and speech. Although Doyle was training to be a surgeon, he was meanwhile cultivating essential knowledge that would feed his epistolary dreams and help him develop the most iconic detective in fiction. 

Michael Sims traces the circuitous development of Conan Doyle as the father of the modern mystery, from his early days in Edinburgh surrounded by poverty and violence, through his escape to University (where he gained terrifying firsthand knowledge of poisons), leading to his own medical practice in 1882. Five hardworking years later--after Doyle's only modest success in both medicine and literature--Sherlock Holmes emerged in A Study in Scarlet. Sims deftly shows Holmes to be a product of Doyle's varied lessons in the classroom and professional life, as well as built out of the traditions of Edgar Allan Poe, Émile Gaboriau, Wilkie Collins, and Charles Dickens--not just a skillful translator of clues, but a veritable superhero of the mind in the tradition of Doyle's esteemed teacher.

Filled with details that will surprise even the most knowledgeable Sherlockian, Arthur and Sherlock is a literary genesis story for detective fans everywhere.

 

Call For Essays: Special Issue of The Space Between

From the mailbox:

The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914-1945
                      

Special Issue Call for Essays

International Intrigue: Plotting Espionage as Cultural Artifact 

When former head of the MI5 Stella Rimington compared literary critics to the KGB, she might have extended the analogy to include the cultures, histories, and theories of espionage. Her elision highlights the growing interest in the genre and its international reach, as it calls into question divisions between nation states and ideologies and suggests new ways of thinking about relations between gender, race, citizenship, nationhood, refugee, agency, and subjectivity.Strikingly, John le Carré has called international intrigue and its opportunities for interpretation -- neverending From legendary stories of Lawrence in Arabia and Mata Hari in the 1920s, to Borges’ parody of the genre, “The Garden of Forking Paths,” to Rebecca West’s 1949 study of fascist treachery, and onwards to retrospective films of WWII and Cold War espionage, the proliferation of spy fictions, reportage, biographies, and histories provides a mobile set of metaphors for artists working through conditions of belonging, exile, and outsider.  While Stevie Smith’s 1938 novel Over the Frontier poses life itself as “living in enemy territory,” Vladimir Nabokov’s 1930 novel Sogliadata (trans. ‘the spy’) explores the émigré as suspect. Fictions of state surveillance and secret intelligence also bleed into real politics, as with George Orwell, who helped underground translators and publishers devise ever more ingenious ways of smuggling his political dystopia 1984 into Poland, and the 2007 release of MI5 files that exposed the widespread practice of spying on writers. This special issue of The Space Between brings together new work and approaches to literary, film, TV, and interdisciplinary media studies of espionage and international intrigue from 1914-1945, including retrospective representations of the period.  Suggested topics include:    --- The genre’s intervention in literary history and theory, including modernism,        intermodernism, the middlebrow, popular culture, and pulp fiction.   --- The genre’s challenges to boundaries between history, fiction, memoir, reportage.   --- The roles of propaganda, polemics, and/or parody in narratives of international espionage.   --- Tropes of spying, surveillance, voyeurism and pastiche as they inflect literary technique.   --- Philosophical and theoretical implications of espionage
 

Please submit inquiries and Essays of 6,000-7,500 words in Times New Roman 12 pt. font, with MLA citation style, to the editors by December 31, 2016.
 

Clare Hanson: c.hanson@soton.ac.uk

Phyllis Lassner: phyllisl@northwestern.edu

Will May: w.may@soton.ac.uk  

Call For Papers For a Special Issue of The Black Scholar

From the mailbox:

Black Liberation: From Political Thought to Political PowerA Special Issue of The Black Scholar

In the past 15 years, a careful but primarily historical re-evaluation of the Black Power movement in the United States has emerged.  We have seen a proliferation of anthologies, case studies, and essays devoted to outlining its major trends and themes, with an emphasis on marking both its continuities and discontinuities with the Civil Rights Movement.  Such scholarship joins recent work on earlier legacies of black radicalism, stretching back to the beginning of the 20th century and highlighting the relationship of African American activists to the labor movement, socialism and communism, feminisms, and anti-colonial struggles worldwide. This work has helped transform the conventional and flawed narrative that depicts the trajectory of black struggle following the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and after the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968 as one of decline and outright failure. Indeed, the increasing frequency of riots, the armed nationalist militancy of groups like the Revolutionary Action Movement and the Black Panthers, and the seemingly separatist turn of organizations like SNCC were interpreted as forms of radicalism incompatible with mainstream paths to racial and social justice. These new studies have forced us to account for the multiple and often divergent ways in which calls for Black Power qua self-determination and autonomy were taken up in specific contexts and conjunctures, spanning the terrains of education, community control, urban housing, guerilla warfare, entrepreneurial endeavors, and more. These movements fit into a much longer history of political thought, as black radicals in the post-civil rights era revisited the analyses and practices of earlier movements and figures. The Black Power movement thus represents one moment in a long legacy of strategic and political experimentations, involving new sets of political subjects and organizational forms that cannot be restricted to ethnic or interest group-specific discourses.This special issue of The Black Scholar is concerned with developing further reflection on the theoretical contribution of these movements. We are concerned not only to elaborate on the social and political activity revealed by historical scholarship, but to reflect on the relationship of these movements to the overall body of political thought. Some topics of concern: the Black Panther Party’s inclusion of familial and domestic domains in its understanding of the possibilities of urban spatial politics; how the League of Revolutionary Black Workers strategized around the overlaps between workplace struggles and larger societal issues; SNCC’s attempts to develop local organs of political power in the South; the Black Liberation Army’s articulation of political sovereignty through their program of outright guerilla war; the rising power of street gangs in Chicago with explicitly political aims; the relationship of the Black Lives Matter movement to its theoretical forebears, and the nuanced negotiation of black nationalism and liberal integrationism by early black communists as they re-articulated the “identity” problems of race, class, gender, and community.  Black radicals and theoreticians have long drawn on the past to articulate new perspectives on old problems, and this issue of The Black Scholar seeks to both highlight and engage with those efforts.Seeking the insights of historians and political theorists alike, the issue invites essays with approaches to the following topics:

• examinations of the historical relationship between Black/Ethnic/Area Studies and Western or “mainstream” political theory

• intellectual histories of the influence of classical political thought on segments of the black liberation movement

• engagements with the theory and practice of black political organizations and movements particularly after 1968

• the theoretical and intellectual links between early 20th century and late 20th century black movements

• discussions of the continuities and breaks in the practices of black communisms and socialisms

• the political thought and practice of militant black revolutionary, guerilla, and “terrorist” organizations

• the history and theoretical groundings of black capitalism

• the theoretical, political, and economic import of U.S.-based gangs and organized crime

• theoretical analyses of infrapolitics and everyday resistance

• new constructions of gender and/or race as produced through black social movements

• the historical and political-theoretical genealogy of the Black Lives Matter movement

• historical debates within black social movements about the ideal site or object of political organization

This issue anticipates that the suggested topics in the list above, or relevant topics not listed, will engage scholars in Black/Africana Studies, Political Theory and Philosophy, Political Science and Social Movement Studies, History, Sociology, Geography, Feminist Studies, and Economics.

Abstracts (750 words max) should be submitted by October 16, 2016, and full articles (5000-7000 words) will be expected in late Spring 2017, to special guest editors Delio Vasquez and Patrick King at (blackthoughtpoliticalpowerTBS@gmail.com).

Publication of the special issue is slated for summer/fall 2018. When preparing manuscripts, please follow The Black Scholar Submission Guidelines.

http://www.theblackscholar.org/call-for-papers/black-liberation-from-political-thought-to-political-power/

A Transnational Study of Law and Justice on Television (Hart Publishing @hartpublishing) Will Be Available in November

Forthcoming from Hart Publishing:

A Transnational Study of Law and Justice on Television (Peter Robson and Jennifer Schulz, eds.; 2016).

Here is a description of the book's contents

This collection examines law and justice on television in different countries around the world. It provides a benchmark for further study of the nature and extent of television coverage of justice in fictional, reality and documentary forms. It does this by drawing on empirical work from a range of scholars in different jurisdictions. Each chapter looks at the raw data of how much "justice" material viewers were able to access in the multi-channel world of 2014 looking at three phases – apprehension (police); adjudication (lawyers), and disposition (prison/punishment).

All of the authors indicate how television developed in their countries. Some have extensive public service channels mixed with private media channels. Financing ranges from advertising to programme sponsorship to licensing arrangements. Some countries have mixtures of these. Each author also examines how "TV justice" has developed in each different jurisdiction. Readers will find interesting variations and some thought-provoking similarities. There are a lot of television shows focussed on legal themes that are imported around the world and the authors analyse these as well.
This book is a must-read for anyone interested in law, popular culture, TV, or justice and provides an important addition to the literature due to its grounding in empirical data.

Berger-Walliser, Barton, and Haapio on Visualization and Legal Design

Gerlinde Berger-Walliser, University of Connecticut, Thomas D. Barton, California Western School of Law, and Helena Haapio, University of Vaasa, Department of Economics and Business Law; Lexpert, Ltd., are publishing From Visualization to Legal Design: A Collaborative and Creative Process in volume 54 of the American Business Law Journal (2017). Here is the abstract.

Although the law remains predominately focused on the written word, a growing body of scholarship and legal practice reflect a dramatic increase in the use of visualization in virtually every legal context. Three starting assumptions underpin our ideas of implementing visualization ideas and techniques into what we call “Legal Design” that may aid contract simplification: First, we examine the use of images in business documents and in statutes, rather than for advocacy. Moving away from adversarial settings offers several advantages. It permits us to illustrate the use of images in a broader range of practical legal applications. It also enables us to adopt the thinking, values, and methods of a non-traditional approach to lawyering and the law: “Preventive Law” or “Proactive Law” (combined here as “PPL”). Second, we offer guidelines for using images in conjunction with words rather than in isolation, since the law only rarely abandons its verbal expression. Realistically, visualization is almost always used in hybrid ways — combinations of words and images to enhance the effectiveness of communication. That seems unlikely to change, given the need for detail and refinement when the law is imposing duties on people. Finally, our method analyzes variables surrounding choices and consequences about the process of generating, transmitting, and using images to accompany legal language. Examining this dynamic can deepen our understanding of the information conveyed; it can also reveal the potential of visualization for creating spillover value for businesses or regulatory agencies that employ the images to advance legal and organizational effectiveness.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Manko on Fantasies of Selfhood in Legal Texts

Rafał Mańko, University of Amsterdam, Centre for the Study of European Contract law (CSECL); European Parliamentary Research Service, has published 'Reality is for Those Who Cannot Sustain the Dream': Fantasies of Selfhood in Legal Texts as 5 Wroclaw Review of Law, Administration, and Economics 24 (2015). Here is the abstract.

Confronting the law as a form of ideology is not an easy task, especially for lawyers very strongly attached to the internal point of view as part of their professional habitus. Despite this difficulty, the present paper aims at contributing to the ideological demistification of law by proposing to apply Slavoj Žižek’s critique of ideology to the legal field. In particular, the paper elaborates a specific methodology of subjecting legal texts to a critique of ideology by way of identifying the symptoms, i.e. points of breakdown of the ideological field which are simultaneously necessary for that field to achieve its closure. The paradox of symptoms is that they are inevitable for the ideological field, yet at the same time they undermine it, opening up a space for its critique. In this context, the aim of this paper is to confront the fundamental fantasies conveyed by legal ideology. The paper approaches ideological fantasies in strict connection with ideological interpellation, i.e. the process in which a human individual is transformed into a subject of ideology. Ideological interpellation of individuals into subjects is one of the chief operations of the law, which, in its current form, is based on the fundamental assumption that human beings are subjects of rights and duties. Directing the critique of ideology at legal texts aims at undermining the efficacy of the ideological grip held by the Symbolic order upon individuals by insisting on the classical Lacanian thesis that ‘the big Other does not exist’. On a practical level, critique of legal ideology performed by lawyers themselves can help to bring about a more reflexive approach to their participation in the principal practices of legal culture and can help to raise lawyers’ awareness regarding their role in society.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Adler on the Pleasures of Punishment: Complicity, Spectatorship, and Abu Ghraib

Amy Adler, New York University School of Law, has published The Pleasures of Punishment: Complicity, Spectatorship, and Abu Ghraib, in Photography in Punishment in Popular Culture 236 (Austin Sarat and Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., eds., 2015). Here is the abstract.

At the same time that the Supreme Court has come to insist on a radical distinction between representations of sex and violence as a matter of constitutional law, never have the two genres been more deeply intertwined, in popular entertainment, of course, but also in certain practices of punishment. This paper considers the phenomenon of “torture porn” to explore not only representations of torture and humiliation in popular culture, but also the ways in which popular culture has shaped practices of punishment. Here I explore photographs of Abu Ghraib (as well as other legal and cultural disputes over the disclosure of photographs of torture) to explore the ways in which the popular vernaculars of pornography and smart phone photography informed the practice of torture. I compare the photos to a burgeoning genre of reality TV shows from the same era in which in which the spectacle of humiliation, punishment and even torture plays a pivotal and seemingly pleasurable role in the drama. In both scenarios, I focus not only on the mixture of sexuality and violence, pleasure and punishment, but also on the critical role of the camera. Ultimately by analyzing the similarities between “torture porn” in popular entertainment and the visual materials produced at Abu Ghraib, I suggest a mutually productive relationship between popular culture and punishment.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link. 

An Early Review of the New Legal Drama "Conviction"

Tim Goodman reviews the new ABC legal drama Conviction for The Hollywood Reporter. For him  this law procedural is derivative and repetitive. So, he finds it a trial. It lacks appeal. He judges it deficient. In brief, he dislikes it. Oh, dear.

Conviction premieres October 3 at 10 a.m., 9 Central time.

Bandes @BandesSusan on What Executioners Can and Cannot Teach Us About the Death Penalty

Susan A. Bandes, DePaul University College of Law, is publishing What Executioners Can -- And Cannot -- Teach Us About the Death Penalty in volume 35 of Criminal Justice Ethics (2016). Here is the abstract.

Executioners and others who come into close proximity with the condemned often come to reject the death penalty. They reject it not only in individual cases, and not only on the ground that the death penalty is poorly implemented. They conclude that capital punishment is wrong. I argue that the perspective of the executioner helps illuminate the debate about whether to abolish capital punishment, and raises the troubling possibility that support for the death penalty can survive only at a great remove. The essay responds to a recent article by Jeffrie Murphy focusing on the question of whether executioners can take pride in their work. I contend that the better question is whether anyone ought to be asked to do such work. On this latter question, the perspective of the executioner sheds important light. Like Murphy, I draw on works by and about Albert Pierrepoint, the “last hangman” of Britain. I also draw on the perspectives of numerous executioners, wardens, chaplains and other death row personnel. I argue that their perspectives offer a powerful argument against the main rationale for the death penalty: retribution. If retribution is keyed to the offender’s character as well as his wrongful act, then post-conviction character ought to matter. The executioners’ accounts share a common theme: that death row inmates change over time and hold the potential for redemption.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Edwards on The Humanities in the Law School Curriculum

Linda H. Edwards, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, School of Law, is publishing The Humanities in the Law School Curriculum: Courtship and Consummation in volume 21 of the Wake Forest Law Review (2016). Here is the abstract.

Today the humanities occupy a small corner of the law school curriculum. Might they instead become a more vibrant partner in legal education? Might law and humanities scholarship escape the pages of law reviews and teach us something important about how to read and understand the law? Despite the long theoretical dominance of legal realism in scholarly circles, much of legal education as we know it has remained mired in Langdell's formalist vision of the law — a vision of a narrow, abstract, impersonal system bereft of human meaning and value. But we can do better. We can approach law, and teach our students to approach law, not as a set of rules but as a form of life. If we decide to take up this life-giving journey, it is the humanities that can show us the way.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The Toothsome Delights of Vampires

The Telegraph discusses a new edition of Christopher Frayling's landmark Vampyres, and notes that the belief in vampires has been with us for centuries.  The idea that the undead walk among us, and mean to do us harm dates from at least the Middle Ages, and authors have remade and transformed these very real fears into metaphors for all kinds of culture shock. Get me some hot chocolate, a nice blanket, flickering light from a fire, and a good thunderstorm. I'm ready for the next adaption of Dracula.

Nicolas Dissaux's New Book on Law, Literature, and Anatole France

Via Arnaud Coutant, Professor of Law, University of Rheims: Nicolas Dissaux, Professor, Université de Lille, has published Anatole France, Leçons de droit (Editions Mare & Martin, 2016). Here is a description of the book's contents (in French) from the publisher's website.

Louis Aragon tenait tout admirateur d’Anatole France pour un être dégradé… Bigre : le présent livre serait-il celui d’une bande de dégénérés ? Assurément non. Au demeurant, nul besoin d’admirer Anatole France pour en tirer profit. L’éternel oublié des lettres françaises mérite sans cesse d’être redécouvert. Le juriste, lui, y puisera à tout le moins d’utiles leçons de droit. Si France ne prisait pas beaucoup le droit, auquel il ne croyait guère, ses doutes s’avèrent justement revigorants. Désabusé, l’auteur dénonce les faux semblants des constructions juridiques. Il entend révéler l’envers du décor : derrière les lois, la force ; derrière les juges, la servilité ; derrière la propriété, les rapines ; derrière l’ordre public, la violence organisée etc. Non sans une part de systématisme, il prétend donner une leçon de lucidité, sondant les failles d’un édifice construit par et pour les possédants. Il dispense surtout une leçon de courage. Qu’il faille se méfier du discours juridique ne condamne en effet personne à le subir. Bien au contraire : si le Droit n’est qu’une représentation, s’il n’est pas figé dans une essence qu’il conviendrait seulement de connaître, s’il est objet de lutte, alors il faut agir pour faire bouger les lignes. Le savant fait place au politique. Anatole France, c’est aussi, c’est surtout cela : un intellectuel engagé. Chacune des contributions rassemblées dans ce volume le montre à sa manière.

Rosenbury @UFLawDean on Mary Jo Frug's Life, Work, and Scholarly Impact

Laura A. Rosenbury, University of Florida, Levin College of Law, is publishing Channeling Mary Joe Frug in volume 50 of the New England Law Review (2016). Here is the abstract.

This brief essay commemorates the work of Mary Joe Frug upon the twenty-fifth anniversary of her murder, analyzing the ongoing impact of her scholarship in the classroom and in scholarly debates. In particular, Frug’s work inspired the three questions that have structured my teaching and scholarship for over a decade: How does law participate in constructions of gender? How should law participate in constructions of gender? Who wins and who loses? The essay describes how students respond to these questions in the classroom and how the questions have influenced my scholarship analyzing how relationships construct gender and identity. Most of all, the essay mourns the loss of Frug’s ongoing contributions to these important dialogues.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Kramer on Moral Realism as a Moral Doctrine

Matthew H. Kramer, Churchill College, Cambridge University; University of Cambridge - Faculty of Law, has published There's Nothing Quasi About Quasi-Realism: Moral Realism as a Moral Doctrine as University of Cambridge Faculty of Law Research Paper No. 42/2016. Here is the abstract.

This paper seeks to clarify and defend the proposition that moral realism is best elaborated as a moral doctrine. I begin by upholding Ronald Dworkin’s anti-Archimedean critique of the error theory against some strictures by Michael Smith, and I then briefly suggest how a proponent of moral realism as a moral doctrine would respond to Smith’s defense of the Archimedeanism of expressivism. Thereafter, this paper moves to its chief endeavor. By differentiating clearly between expressivism and quasi-realism (or moral realism as a moral doctrine), the paper highlights both their distinctness and their compatibility. In so doing, it underscores the affinities between Blackburnian quasi-realism and moral realism as a moral doctrine. Finally, this paper contends ─ in line with my earlier work on these matters ─ that moral realism as a moral doctrine points to the need for some reorienting of meta-ethical enquiries rather than for the abandoning of them.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Munzer on Secularization, Anti-MInority Sentiment, and Cultural Norms in the German Circumcision Controversy

Stephen R. Munzer, University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, has published Secularization, Anti-Minority Sentiment, and Cultural Norms in the German Circumcision Controversy at 37 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 503 (2015). Here is the abstract.

After an appellate court made circumcision of minors effectively illegal in the absence of a medical justification, the German Parliament passed a statute that restored, with some limitations, the right of parents to seek ritual circumcisions for their sons. Between these events, a fierce controversy broke out in Germany involving Jews, Muslims, and other Germans. Whereas circumcision without medical indication is rare among most Germans, it is a common religious practice in Jewish and Muslim communities in Germany. The debate tapped into ongoing discussions of German cultural norms, German secularization, and a long history of anti-Semitism and a much shorter history of anti-Muslim sentiment in Germany. It also tapped into the religious and traditional practices - sometimes converging, sometimes diverging - of Jews and Muslims. This Article discusses the range of opinions on religious circumcision among Germans and other Europeans. It disentangles the social factors at work in the debate and analyzes the court decision and the new statute. It also examines some recent decisions under the new statute and explores problems with the statute's application. Given that roughly 700 million boys worldwide have undergone ritual circumcision, the German controversy has global implications. This Article shows that at day's end, the debate turns on issues of toleration and multiculturalism. It is scarcely possible to resolve this - debate without asking, "What is a child?" If a child is a proto-member of his parents' religious community and has only a weak right to bodily integrity, or if the risk-benefit ratio favors circumcision and the parents have a broad scope of consent, then circumcision without medical indication might be legally and morally permissible. Parents might then have discretion to place on his body a permanent physical symbol of his expected or hoped for religious affiliation as an adult. Yet if a child has a strong right to bodily integrity, and circumcision is not medically indicated, then the permanent physical modification of his body with a symbol of Jewish or Muslim identity might be problematic, and circumcising him for aesthetic or other nonreligious reasons might likewise be problematic.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Dennis @ProfALDennis on Black Contemporary Social Movements, Resource Mobilization, and Black Musical Activism

Andrea Dennis, University of Georgia Law School, is publishing Black Contemporary Social Movements, Resource Mobilization, and Black Musical Activism in volume 79 of Law and Contemporary Problems (2016). Here is the abstract.

In the last few years a grassroots social movement has emerged from the Black community. This movement aims to eliminate police and vigilante violence against Blacks nationwide. Blacks in America have long been subjected to this violence, and the issue has recently captured the country’s attention. Multiple groups are pressing for change, including Ferguson Action, Black Lives Matter, Say Her Name, and the leaderless social media effort organized by DeRay McKesson and Johnetta Elzie, to name a few. These fledgling activist groups have already experienced some success, garnering public attention and government response. As it currently stands, this nascent civil-rights movement has the potential to advance racial justice in twenty-first century America, but its path is not without obstacles. According to social-movement theory, the ability of activists to further marshal support is vital to the continued development of this civil-rights movement. Whether engaging in street-level activism or pursuing formal change through judicial, legislative, or electoral processes, movement organizers will have to think rationally and strategically about resource mobilization and oppositional forces. At a minimum, they must amass money and manpower for their activities, establish group credibility in the eyes of their participants and the public, and remain sensitive to the costs of movement participation imposed by government officials and counter-movements. To address these concerns, social-movement theory and history reveal that Black music and musicians can and should play a key role in Black America’s next-generation battle for criminal justice and civil rights. Social-movement activists should draw Black musicians, especially hip-hop artists, into the movement fold, encouraging Black musicians to initiate a massive wave of cultural activism.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Klaus Stierstorfer and Daniela Carpi's New Book on Diaspora, Law, & Literature

New in October: Diaspora, Law and Literature (Klaus Stierstorfer and Daniela Carpi, eds., DeGruyter, 2016) (Law & Literature; 12). Here is a description of the book's contents from the publisher's website.

[T]he well-known challenges of international migration have triggered new departures in academic approaches, with 'diaspora studies' evolving as an interdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary field of study. Its emerging methodology shares concerns with another interdisciplinary field, the study of the relations between law and literature, which focuses on the ways in which the two cultural practices of law and literature mutually negotiate each other and on the question after the ontological commensurability of the domains. This volume offers, for the first time, an attempt to provide an interface between these overlapping interdisciplinary endeavours of literary studies, legal studies, and diaspora studies. In doing so, it explores new approaches and invites new perspectives on diasporas, migration and the disciplines that study them, hopefull also adding to the cultural resources of coping with a swiftly changing social landscape in a globalizing world.