October 18, 2018

Call For Applications, Tenure Track Positions, Legal Studies, St. Jerome's University

Two Faculty Positions Open, Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, St. Jerome's University
The Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at St. Jerome’s University invites applications for two (2) positions in Legal Studies, both commencing July 1, 2019. One is tenured or tenure stream at the rank of Associate Professor; the other is tenure stream at the rank of Assistant Professor and is subject to budgetary approval. Successful candidates will have a PhD in the interdisciplinary field of Legal Studies or a relevant interdisciplinary or disciplinary field in the humanities or social sciences. Candidates with a doctorate in law may also apply. We are especially interested in candidates who conduct interdisciplinary research in and can teach any of the following subjects: environment and law, history and law, gender and law, Indigenous studies and law, international law and global justice, political/social theory and law, psychology and law, and religion and law. A history of innovation in the area of teaching and learning is also desired.
Successful candidates should be able to teach first-year Introduction to Legal Studies, second-year Criminal Law, fourth-year seminars, as well as courses that correspond to the applicant’s areas of specialization. Successful candidates should also be committed to participating in administrative service. Applicants for the Associate Professor position must have an excellent track record in teaching, research, and service, particularly in academic leadership. Applicants for the Assistant Professor position must demonstrate a commitment to excellence in teaching, research, and service. As of May 1, 2018, the base salary for an Associate Professor is $100,868, and the base salary for an Assistant Professor is $80,143.
Legal Studies is an interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary program that offers Honours, Joint Honours, and Four-Year General undergraduate degrees. Successful candidates will work with colleagues across disciplines as well as with our partners at the University of Waterloo. For further information on the Department at St. Jerome’s University, visit www.sju.ca/sociology-legal-studies.
Complete applications from interested candidates will include:
  • cover letter detailing interest in and suitability for the position – clearly state your intent to apply for either the Associate or Assistant position
  • curriculum vitae
  • teaching dossier – include evidence of excellence and innovation in teaching
  • in lieu of a teaching philosophy, please answer the following question in 1000 words or less:
How does your teaching and research advance your vision of interdisciplinary scholarship?
  • outline of a research agenda
  • two sample publications
  • contact information for three referees – to be contacted if your application is shortlisted
Send applications by email to Dr. Kieran Bonner, Chair, Department of Sociology and Legal Studies, St. Jerome’s University: legalstudies@sju.ca. All applications must be submitted by January 15, 2019.St. Jerome’s University, situated on the University of Waterloo campus, is a public Roman Catholic university federated with the University of Waterloo. The University is committed to advancing the Catholic intellectual tradition and welcomes faculty and students from all faiths and backgrounds. St. Jerome’s University is also committed to the principles of employment equity and in accordance with Canadian immigration requirements this advertisement is directed in the first instance to Canadian citizens and permanent residents of Canada. Candidates requiring accommodation should contact the Director of Human Resources. For further information, visit www.sju.ca.

Extended Deadline: ASLCH CFP October 24, 2018 @Law_Cult_Huma

Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities: Call for Proposals



Extended Deadline

We are pleased to announce that the Twenty-Second Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities will be held at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada on March 22-23, 2019. The event is co-sponsored by The Pauline Jewett Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies, Carleton University and the University of Ottawa. Information regarding the pre-conference Graduate Student Workshop will follow shortly.

We welcome quality proposals on any topic related to law and legal studies. We warmly welcome proposals on all topics, and are particularly interested in proposals addressing the intersections between gender, sexuality, race and law.
Individual proposals should include title and an abstract of no more than 250 words.
We also welcome proposals for panels, roundtables, and streams (two panels on one theme). Panels should include three papers (or, exceptionally, four papers). Specify a title and a chair of your panel. The panel chair may also be a panel presenter. It is not necessary to write an abstract or proposal for the panel itself. To indicate your pre-constituted panel, roundtable, or stream, please ensure that individual registrants provide the name of the panel and the chair in their individual submissions on the registration site. All panel, roundtable, or stream participants must make an individual submission on the registration site.  
Notifications will be sent by mid-December, 2018.
The fees for participation in the Conference, which include membership to the Association, will be:
·      Graduate students and post-doctoral scholars: $35
            • Income less than $75,000: $125
            • Income between $75,000-$99,999: $155
            • Income between $100,000-$124,999: $210
            • Income $125,000 and over: $260
The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities is an organization of scholars engaged in interdisciplinary, humanistically-oriented legal scholarship. The Association brings together a wide range of people engaged in scholarship on legal history, legal theory and jurisprudence, political, law and cultural studies, law and anthropology, law and literature, law and the performing arts, and legal hermeneutics. We want to encourage dialogue across and among these fields about issues of interpretation, identity, and values, about authority, obligation, and justice, and about law's role as a constituent part of cultures and communities. If you have any general questions about the conference, please do not hesitate to contact us law.culture.humanities@gmail.com

Funny, Funny Judges @laphamsquart

Lapham's Quarterly offers this selection of interesting footnotes from cases, some well-known, some obscure. Included is a Ninth Circuit case that introduces the phrase, "Holy Copyright Law, Batman!" to the legal lexicon, and a cite to "Who Let the Dogs Out?" with the wry comment from Judge Philip S. Straniere that although the song "allegedly has nothing to do with canines[,] ...I have not been able to understand the lyrics to any song written since the Fillmore East closed, I have appropriated the title solely to make a point and will ignore the content of the song."


CFP: Television Drama, Law, and National Identity, Symposium at Centre for Law, Society, Popular Culture, Westminster Law School, September 6, 2019 @@UW_WLS ‏


Centre for Law, Society and Popular Culture
Westminster Law School

Television drama, law and national identity

Symposium Announcement and First Call for Papers

Friday 6 September 2019
University of Westminster

Television drama plays a seminal role in the cultural life of nations, and the way in which it depicts national identities merits scholarly exploration.  In this regard national identity’s relationship with law as its crystallisation is particularly worthy of academic attention and lends itself to interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives.  Police, crime, justice and dystopian dramas frequently place law and social attitudes to law centre-stage in the delineation of national identity. 

Television drama may be perceived as a communicative event in which history is transformed into myth through a stylised set of codes.  The transmission of coded messages about national identity, and their interpretation (both hegemonic and oppositional) become particularly worthy of analysis as the nation comes under strain through patterns of globalised and regional integration coupled with acts of national resistance.  Multiple genres of television drama provide scope for the expression of national identity, including the use by period dramas of creative nostalgia to represent the contemporary nation or the warnings to the nation posed by science fiction television.  In all contexts the interplay between projections of national identity and television’s treatment of race, class and gender warrants critical scrutiny.  

Proposals for 20-minute papers are therefore invited for a symposium on 6 September 2019, to be held in the University of Westminster’s historic Regent Street building just metres away from BBC headquarters.  Possible subjects for papers might include, but are by no means limited to:
  • is national identity empirical or normative in television drama?
  • internet/social media amplification of debates on TV drama, law and identity
  • national identity on television as ideology
  • depictions of trials and national identity
  • national security dramas: ‘war against terrorism’, identity and law(lessness)
  • political dramas: uniform global elite or national diversity?
  • fan responses to the portrayal of the nation
  • globalisation/globalised law – depicted as threat to national identity?
  • feminist crime drama and national identity
  • science fiction or dystopian fiction, law and national identity
  • ‘heritage’ drama: commodification of (rose-tinted) ideas of national identity for global consumption?
Abstracts should be 250 words in length, accompanied by a 100-word biography of the author, and sent to nicold@wmin.ac.uk by the deadline of 1 February 2019.

Via @Doubledegree

October 17, 2018

Positions Available: Department of Law and Legal Studies, Carleton University @Carleton_U


The Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada) is currently seeking candidates for two tenure-track assistant professors in the following areas:

1) Law and Work

Law and Legal Studies (Law and Work) – Assistant Professor

Field of Specialization: Law and Work
Academic Unit: Law and Legal Studies
Category of Appointment: Preliminary (Tenure-Track)
Rank/Position Title: Assistant Professor
Start Date: July 1, 2019
Closing Date: Consideration of complete applications will begin on October 29, 2018 and continue until the position is filled

About the Position:

The Department of Law and Legal Studies invites applications from qualified candidates for a preliminary (tenure-track) appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor beginning July 1, 2019.

The Department invites applications from qualified candidates with a demonstrated interest and interdisciplinary research agenda in the area of Law and Work. The successful candidate will be expected to conduct theoretically informed research, teach, and supervise in one or more of the following areas: labour, employment, the political economy of labour, the social construction and regulation of work (including paid and unpaid labour), workers’ social movements, transformations in the nature of work and the place of work in the community. The Department encourages innovative, critical and interdisciplinary approaches to these issues. The successful candidate will teach core courses in our Law, Policy and Government or Business Law concentrations and contribute to the development of these areas at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Full ad available here: https://carleton.ca/provost/2018/law-and-legal-studies-law-and-work-assistant-professor/

2) Law and Criminalization

Law and Legal Studies (Law and Criminalization) – Assistant Professor

Field of Specialization: Law and Criminalization
Academic Unit: Law and Legal Studies
Category of Appointment: Preliminary (Tenure-Track)
Rank/Position Title: Assistant Professor
Start Date: July 1, 2019
Closing Date: Consideration of complete applications will begin on October 29, 2018 and continue until the position is filled

About the Position:

The Department of Law and Legal Studies invites applications from qualified candidates for a preliminary (tenure-track) appointment at the rank of Assistant Professor beginning July 1, 2019.

The Department invites applications from qualified candidates with a demonstrated interest and interdisciplinary research agenda in the area of Law and Criminalization. The successful candidate will be expected to conduct theoretically informed research, teach, and supervise in one or more of the following areas: criminal law, criminal justice and/or the practices and processes of criminalization of various activities and populations. The Department encourages innovative, critical and interdisciplinary approaches to these issues. At the undergraduate level, the successful applicant will be expected to teach core courses in these areas and contribute to the Department’s support of the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice. At the graduate level, the successful applicant will contribute to the Department’s offerings in the specialization areas of “Crime, Governance and Security” for the M.A. and “Crime, Law and Security” for the Ph.D. in Legal Studies.

Full ad available here: https://carleton.ca/provost/2018/law-and-legal-studies-law-and-criminalization-assistant-professor/

October 15, 2018

Fairweather on Redressing Inequality in Personal Credit Transactions: 1700-1974 @AucklandUni

Karen Fairweather, University of Auckland, has published Redressing Inequality in Personal Credit Transactions: 1700-1974 in 2017 Private Law and Power 53 (Kit Barker, Simone Degeling, Karen Fairweather, and Ross Grantham, eds., Hart Publishing, 2018). Here is the abstract.
While the phenomenon of consumerism can be traced back at least as far as the eighteenth century, the idea of protecting individuals qua consumers is far more recent.
The full text is not available from SSRN.

Machuskyy on The Right of Blood-Revenge in a Medieval Ukraine

Volodymyr Machuskyy, Kyiv National Economic Univesrity named after Vadym Hetman, has published The Right of Blood-Revenge in a Medieval Ukraine: The Concept and the Evolution. Here is the abstract.
The idea and practice of blood-revenge existed in ancient societies around the world. Because of its high prevalence and significance, blood-revenge as a social phenomenon for a long time was the subject of study of a sufficiently large number of scientists, representatives of various sciences from many countries. The scientific diversity in the context of the study of blood revenge paradoxically leads to contradictory scientific results and, as a consequence, makes it difficult to obtain true knowledge about the nature of blood-revenge. Hence, there was an objective need to study the general patterns of the emergence, functioning and gradual withering away of blood-revenge as a special institute in the system of social regulation of the medieval society on the territory of modern Ukraine. Main conclusions: 1. The right of blood-revenge is a social institution of collective security in a primitive society aimed at protecting individuals from violent crimes. 2. The evolution of the right of blood-revenge in Kyivan Rus was due to the transformation from the right of blood-revenge into a cash ransom and, subsequently, in the death penalty as a surrogate of the right of blood-revenge.
The full text is not available from SSRN.

Bastias Saavedra on Jurisdictional Autonomy and the Autonomy of Law

Manuel Bastias Saavedra, Max Planck Society for the Advancement of the Sciences - Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, has published Jurisdictional Autonomy and the Autonomy of Law: End of Empire and the Functional Differentiation of Law in 19th-Century Latin America at 26 Rechtsgeschichte/Legal History 325 (2018). Here is the abstract.
This contribution discusses the collapse of the Iberian Empire and the transformation of legal regimes in 19th-century Latin America. While most of the literature on this period centers on the process of state-building and the reform of legal institutions, my discussion will focus on the important changes produced in the form of law according to Luhmann’s theory of functional differentiation. The main argument is that systems theory can provide a re-evaluation of the history of law in the 19th and 20th centuries if one focuses on the idea of the autonomy of law. I argue that this way of reading the functioning of law is analogous to the legal historical re-evaluation of early-modern Iberian legal regimes through the idea of jurisdictional autonomy. Taken together both ways of understanding autonomy in legal observation direct our attention to shifts in law that go beyond the question of empire and nation-state building.
The full text is not available from SSRN.

Moore on The Past, Present, and Future of Law Reform in Canada

Marcus Moore, University of Oxford, Faculty of Law, has published The Past, Present, and Future of Law Reform in Canada at 6 Theory and Practice of Legislation 225 (2018). Here is the abstract.
The story of institutional law reform in Canada has been described by one veteran as ‘somewhat troubling.’ It is a story not without significant successes: In Québec civil law, the codifications were remarkable achievements which realised sweeping and highly-esteemed reforms. Among Canadian common law provinces, Ontario founded the Commonwealth’s first law reform commission in 1964, and as early as 1967 Alberta innovated the now internationally-influential joint venture design of its commission. Further, Canada’s original national commission was notable for its ambitious pursuit of social issues, and the second national commission challenged conventional legal paradigms at unparalleled depth. Across the country, many law commissions were established. Yet, what is ‘troubling’ is how many, including long-established and prominent commissions, were since closed or constrained, impeded from accomplishing what they might have. Meanwhile, in Québec civil law, the codifiers’ repeated calls for a permanent commission have gone unheeded. What does the future hold for institutional law reform in Canada? In Québec civil law, there are some signs of movement towards reform continuity. An important question will be whether processes of continuous incremental reform can be developed and managed to alleviate reliance on overwhelming legal overhauls. Elsewhere in Canada, a few Canadian provinces that shuttered commissions have since re-established them in altered forms. The common themes of austerity, ideology, and alleged redundancy in the downfall of past Canadian commissions remain an ever present concern to the survivors, as they simultaneously confront newly emerging challenges. Time will tell whether, because of their experience in reforming themselves in response to their troubling story to date, Canada’s law commissions may be best-positioned to meet institutional law reform’s challenges of the future.
Download the article from SSRN at the link.

October 12, 2018

CFP: 2019 Symposium, Women and the Law, Detroit Mercy Law Review @UDMLawReview

From the e-mailbox:


The Detroit Mercy Law Review will host its 2019 Symposium, Women and the Law, on Mar. 8, 2019. The deadline for proposals is Nov. 9, 2018 at 5:00pm EST.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to: the history of women in the law, how women have impacted the law, how the law impacts women today, how future legal decisions could affect women’s rights (e.g. if Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) were to be overturned), what challenges women still face in the legal profession, the role of gender in the law, and any other topic regarding women and the law.
Proposals should be approximately 250-500 words, double-spaced, and detail the proposed topic and presentation. Submit to Samantha Buck, Symposium Director, at bucksl@udmercy.edu.
Please indicate whether your proposal is for a presentation only or if you would also like to publish an article with the Detroit Mercy Law Review on your presentation topic. If you are interested in submitting an article, it will be due to the Law Review on Friday, Mar.15, 2019.
Please submit a current CV or resume along with your proposal. We will notify chosen speakers by Nov. 30, 2018. Preference will be given to those willing to submit an article for publication.

Click on this link for more information.
 



October 10, 2018

ASLCH Annual Meeting, Call For Papers, Due October 17, 2018 @Law_Cult_Huma

From Karl Shoemaker:


We are pleased to announce that the Twenty-Second Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities will be held at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada on March 22-23, 2019. The event is co-sponsored by The Pauline Jewett Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies, Carleton University and the University of Ottawa. Information regarding the pre-conference Graduate Student Workshop will follow shortly.

We welcome quality proposals on any topic related to law and legal studies. We warmly welcome proposals on all topics, and are particularly interested in proposals addressing the intersections between gender, sexuality, race and law.
All proposals are due Wednesday, October 17, 2018.
Individual proposals should include title and an abstract of no more than 250 words.

We also welcome proposals for panels, roundtables, and streams (two panels on one theme). Panels should include three papers (or, exceptionally, four papers). Specify a title and a chair of your panel. The panel chair may also be a panel presenter. It is not necessary to write an abstract or proposal for the panel itself. To indicate your pre-constituted panel, roundtable, or stream, please ensure that individual registrants provide the name of the panel and the chair in their individual submissions on the registration site. All panel, roundtable, or stream participants must make an individual submission on the registration site.  


Notifications will be sent by mid-December, 2018.

The fees for participation in the Conference, which include membership to the Association, will be:

·      Graduate students and post-doctoral scholars: $35

            • Income less than $75,000: $125

            • Income between $75,000-$99,999: $155

            • Income between $100,000-$124,999: $210

            • Income $125,000 and over: $260

The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities is an organization of scholars engaged in interdisciplinary, humanistically-oriented legal scholarship. The Association brings together a wide range of people engaged in scholarship on legal history, legal theory and jurisprudence, political, law and cultural studies, law and anthropology, law and literature, law and the performing arts, and legal hermeneutics. We want to encourage dialogue across and among these fields about issues of interpretation, identity, and values, about authority, obligation, and justice, and about law's role as a constituent part of cultures and communities. If you have any general questions about the conference, please do not hesitate to contact us law.culture.humanities@gmail.com

Goldmann on European Integration in the History of International Law @MattHGoldmann

Matthias Goldmann, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law; Goethe University Frankfurt - Research Center SAFE; Goethe University Frankfurt - Cluster of Excellence Normative Orders; Goethe University Frankfurt, has published Hopes of Progress: European Integration in the History of International Law as Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law & International Law (MPIL) Research Paper No. 2018-26. Here is the abstract.
This paper argues that the Treaties of Rome and the process of European integration they heralded had a lasting impact on the development of international law. However, their significance is usually misattributed. While European law has had little impact on international legal doctrine, and while European integration has remained unique as a political project, European law and the process of European integration have served international law as an important progress narrative. In this respect, they have had an influence on important background understandings characterizing international law since the postwar era, including on the perception of international law as universal, autonomous, pluralistic, and economically liberal. The progress narrative culminates in the view that international law is in a normatively ambitious process of constitutionalization, an idea imported from European law. This progress narrative is now under threat as European integration faces existential difficulties.The crisis of European integration might therefore anticipate a crisis of international law.
Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Publishing Kafka @thenation @evankindley

Evan Kindley examines Franz Kafka's desire to have his works destroyed after his death, his literary executor Max Brod's decision to disregard that command, and the result of Brod's decision, here, in an essay for The Nation.

Brod, in particular, felt a “fanatical veneration” for his friend’s talent and took it as his mission to combat the depressive Kafka’s extreme reluctance to publish his work. “I wrested from Kafka nearly everything he published [during his lifetime] either by persuasion or guile,” Brod recalled. “At times I stood over him like a rod, drove him and forced him…again and again by new means and new tricks…. What mattered to me was the thing itself, the helping of a friend even against the wish of the friend.” When Kafka finally did publish a book—the 1912 short-story collection Meditation—Brod was there to give it one of its few reviews, which included the following statement: “I could easily imagine someone getting hold of this book and finding his whole life altered from that moment on, and realizing he would become a new person.”

October 9, 2018

Strong Female Characters On Television: Is the Message That the Battle For Gender Equality Is Over?

From BBC News: Strong women in leading roles on British TV, like Bodyguard's Anne Sampson (played by Gina McKee), and Killing Eve's Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) and Villanelle (Jodie Comer),  send the message that sexism in society is no longer a problem, according to Victoria screenwriter Daisy Goodwin.

Brescia on Subversive Stories and Counter-Narratives of Cooperation @rbrescia

Raymond H. Brescia, Albany Law School, is publishing Dominance and Disintermediation: Subversive Stories and Counter-Narratives of Cooperation in volume 27 of the Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal (2018). Here is the abstract.
Humans tell stories, and the stories they tell do many things. These stories communicate morals and norms and build morale. They establish orthodoxy and challenge it. They offer a narrative to make sense of the past and generate a vision of the future. Humans tell stories in and through the law as well. Clients provide their stories to their lawyers and the lawyers, in turn, narrate to juries. We make story-based pleas to judges and regulators. Stories inform our understanding of the law and law evolves as new stories and new narratives shape and color new visions for and versions of the law. One of the stories in the law that is pervasive is that human nature is acquisitive and self-interested: that humans find it hard to cooperate to reach mutual ends. Because of this, we should protect ourselves from not just others, but, at times, ourselves. In property law, perhaps more than in most other areas of law, storytelling that speaks of the origins of property regimes, using phrases like the “state of nature” and the “Tragedy of the Commons,” among other themes, has been used to help explain and justify private property-based systems that often accomplish many things, including the preservation of a status quo that is rife with inequities and asymmetries of power and influence, and which is, in turn, highly resistant to change. This durability is, in part, a product of the attractiveness and perhaps intuitiveness of the narrative such stories convey. There is a possible counter-narrative, however. This counter-narrative describes humans’ capacity for cooperation. It recognizes that we possess not just self-interest but also an appreciation for the value of cooperation; indeed, true self-interest, what Alexis de Tocqueville called “self-interest, rightly understood,” embraces that notion that our long-term well-being is fostered by cooperation, by thinking about long-term payoffs and by working collaboratively to achieve better overall outcomes. This Article explores two issues around the use of narratives of cooperation and non-cooperation. The first is the idea that embedded in the research, literature, and scholarship on cooperation is the notion that humans do not just compete, but they also cooperate, despite the dominant narrative that cooperation is unlikely given the stories told about the selfishness of humans. While a counter-narrative of cooperation has always existed, it has likely been suppressed by both the hegemonic power and the attractiveness of narratives of non-cooperation to dominant elites. But this dominance and the capacity for dominance may be slipping. Indeed, the second idea I will attempt to explore here is the power that now exists for non-elites to tell the counter-narrative. New technologies are placing story-telling capacities in the hands of the many, democratizing the power of narrative. This disintermediation is creating the capacity for the emergence of new narratives of mutual care and cooperation. But these new tools do so much more than simply place the means of generating new narratives in the hands of the many. They also help individuals overcome the natural impediments to cooperation in the first place, the transaction costs associated with cooperative action that can lead to self-interested, non-cooperative behavior. This Article explores whether, when we have new communication and coordination tools at our disposal, such tools can help us communicate about and coordinate our cooperative ventures. I will examine whether these tools give us not just the ability to tell counter-narratives of cooperation but also a means of overcoming barriers to collective action itself.
Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Stolzenberg on Divine Accommodation and the Lost Language of Law

Nomi Stolzenberg, University of Southern California School of Law, has published From Eternity to Here: Divine Accommodation and the Lost Language of Law as USC Law Legal Studies Paper No. 18-2. Here is the abstract.
This paper asserts that the discourse of religious accommodation has stopped making sense, and that the reason it has stopped making sense is because our terminology (including such terms as "religion," "accommodation," and "secularism") is inherited from tradition of political theological discourse that has been forgotten: the theology of divine accommodation. The paper reconstructs the content of that tradition of political theology in broad strokes, arguing that the birthplace of secularism and the birthplace of liberalism both lie here and that, once we recognize that, a number of doctrinal and conceptual puzzles can be solved, including how to define religion, whether to characterize secular humanism as a religion, and whether to accept the broad (virtually boundless) conception of a right to religious accommodation now being promoted by religious conservatives. The answers proposed are that (a) religion, from the standpoint of this tradition of political theology, refers to beliefs about the content and source of the moral law, and is not contingent on continued belief in a deity; (b) secular humanism is a religion in this sense, and is indeed the religion promoted by accommodationist political theology; (c) the broad conception of a right to religious accommodation must be rejected for the same reasons that the "religion" of secular humanism must be accepted. The paper further argues, as a matter of political theory/history of political thought, that locating the origins of liberalism and secularism in the tradition of divine accommodation reveals conservative political theology and liberal political theory to be one and the same. Finally, it underscores the centrality of law to the humanist tradition and the centrality of humanism to law.
Download the article from SSRN at the link.

October 8, 2018

Call For Applications: Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities @TilburgLawNews

Call For Applications: The Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities at Tilburg Law School.

Professor Willem Witteveen (1952-2014) was an early representative of the interdisciplinary and contextual approach to legal scholarship in the Netherlands. Whereas the emphasis of this approach has often been on the social sciences, Professor Witteveen’s focus was on intersections between law and the humanities. Professor Witteveen’s many contributions to academia, politics and society combined rhetoric, literary analysis, political philosophy and intellectual and cultural history. In his teaching, Professor Witteveen embraced  the classic Bildungsideal, and put textual interpretation at the heart of his classes. He fostered an academic environment that revolved around thinking and discussing.

After Professor Witteveen’s untimely death in 2014, Tilburg University established the annual Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities in order to commemorate his life and work. The fellowship aims to enable a junior scholar (PhD or postdoc level) to develop her or his research in the field of law and humanities during a visit to Tilburg. The fellowship seeks to promote research on the relations between law and language, rhetoric, narrative, image, sound, and/or culture.

What the Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities offers:
The Witteveen Memorial Fellow will have office space and facilities at Tilburg Law School, as well as full library access.

We offer reimbursement of travel expenses and accommodation expenses (max. 5,250 Euro). The Witteveen Memorial Fellowship does not constitute an employment relationship. For this reason, Tilburg Law School will not pay salary and will not make social insurance contributions or contributions to pension or unemployment insurance. Fellows will need to find their own accommodation.

In principle, the Witteveen Memorial Fellow in Law and Humanities will be at Tilburg Law School for the duration of three months in the spring following the application deadline. Candidates are welcome to propose a different period. In case the fellow will visit for less than three months, the maximum amount to be reimbursed will be proportionately lower. If the fellow’s visit will be longer, the total amount to be reimbursed remains 5,250 euro.

What is expected of the Witteveen Memorial Fellow:
During the period of the fellowship the scholar will be present at Tilburg Law School, participate in the academic life of both Tilburg Law School and the Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, and deliver a guest lecture to students. Any publications resulting from the fellowship should mention the Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities explicitly.

Eligible Candidates
Scholars who are currently working on a PhD dissertation (at least in the third or fourth year of their PhD trajectory) or who obtained their PhD within the last five years are eligible.

Application
Candidates are requested to submit their application before November 15, 2018. Applications can only be submitted online (www.tilburguniversity.edu/about-tilburg-university/working-at/wp/).
Candidates must submit a cover letter, a CV including a list of publications, a statement of intent (‘what do you plan to do during the fellowship?’, ‘what is the end product?’) and one letter of recommendation.
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 Prof. Vanessa Mak (substantive questions) and/or Jacoba Floor (other questions). They can both be reached at hrservices@uvt.nl.

Tilburg Law School
Tilburg Law School (TLS) is a modern and specialized university. With a broad variety of international programmes and innovating research, the Tilburg Law School stands for high quality. Research at the Tilburg Law School is conducted in an organisation that fosters diversity. The Tilburg Graduate Law School is responsible for the training and guidance of its Research Master students and of the Faculty’s PhD researchers. With its open and inspiring atmosphere, this school is a congenial working environment.

Tilburg Law School

Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences
Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences (TSHD) conducts scientific research and education in the fields of Communication and Information Sciences, Philosophy, Religious studies and Language and Culture studies. The School of Humanities features three departments, several research institutes and a faculty office. Each year around 275 students commence a Bachelor or (Pre) Master Program. The School has approximately 1300 students and 250 employees.

Recruitment code
Tilburg University applies the recruitmentcode of the Dutch Association for Personnel Management & Organization Development (NVP).

Disclaimer
The text of this vacancy advertisement is copyright-protected property of Tilburg University. Use, distribution and further disclosure of the advertisement without express permission from Tilburg University is not allowed, and this applies explicitly to use by recruitment and selection agencies which do not act directly on the instructions of Tilburg University. Responses resulting from recruitment by non-contractors of Tilburg Universities will not be handled.
 


Anello on The Phenomenology of Arnaldo Bertola

Giancarlo Anello, University of Parma, has published The Phenomenology of Arnaldo Bertola: Legal Categories, Cognitive Interests, Religious Habits, and Their Interaction into the Life of an Italian Colonialist. Here is the abstract.
Italian colonialism was brief, notably transient and disorganized, especially when compared to its European counterparts, but it was characterized by an amazing experimental inspiration from the legal field. Italian legal professionals working in the colonies were compelled to develop their own-often original and creative-legal approaches in managing the complex relationships between legal authorities and colonial subjectivities. This paper analyzes the extraordinary efforts of one such colonial jurist, Arnaldo Bertola. Bertola was a judge in Libya and Rhodes, a Professor of colonial law at the University of Turin 1930’s, and a legal expert in Mogadishu, Somalia, after the war. Bertola’s case is noteworthy because of his innovative thinking, his remarkable personality, his unusual cultural eclecticism, and his steady inner faith in the value of religious freedom. The essay explores his writings not only for his legal achievements, but also for his very human curiosities and uncertainties in confronting the stranger, the colonized, and the foreigner: in a word, the other.
Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Bignon and García-Peñalosa on The Toll of Tariffs: Protectionism, Education, and Fertility in Late 19th Century @BignonVincent

Vincent Bignon, Banque de France, Microeconomic Research Unit, and Cecilia Garcia-Peñalosa, Aix-Marseille University, have published The Toll of Tariffs: Protectionism, Education and Fertility in Late 19th Century France, as Banque de France Working Paper No. 690. Here is the abstract.
Vincent Bignon and Cecilia García-Peñalosa examine a novel negative impact of trade tariffs and the costs they induce by documenting how protectionism reversed the long-term improvements in education and the fertility transition that were well under way in late 19th-century France. The Méline tariff, a tariff on cereals introduced in 1892, was a major protectionist shock that shifted relative prices in favor of agriculture and away from industry. In a context in which the latter was more intensive in skills than agriculture, the tariff reduced the relative return to education, which in turn affected parents’ decisions about the quantity and quality of children. They use regional differences in the importance of cereal production in the local economy to estimate the impact of the tariff. Their findings indicate that the tariff reduced enrollment in primary education and increased birthrates and fertility. The magnitude of these effects was substantial. In regions with average shares of employment in cereal production, the tariff offset the (downward) trend in birthrates for 13 years; in those with the highest cereal employment shares, there was a delay of up to 22 years.
Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Golove and Hulsebosch on the Law of Nations and the Constitution

David M. Golove and Daniel J. Hulsebosch, both New York University School of Law, have published The Law of Nations and the Constitution: An Early Modern Perspective at 106 Georgetown law Journal 1593 (2018). Here is the abstract.
Many American scholars, lawyers, and judges born in the latter half of the twentieth century have found it difficult to comprehend, or even recognize, the Founding generation’s commitment to the law of nations as a system of law, jurisprudence, and morality. Perhaps for similar reasons, that commitment tends to get lost in much modern historical writing. So, too, with respect to a related, but, from a legal perspective, more consequential aspect of the Founding: the prominent place of the law of nations in the constitutional reform project that culminated in the Philadelphia Convention. It was the uncertain struggle to ensure that the United States complied with its (or their) treaty obligations and the law of nations that was arguably the most important, and the most consensual, reason for the drafting and ratification of the new Constitution. That imperative shaped the structure outlined in the text, as well as much of the way that judges, executive officials, and even legislators interpreted and administered the Constitution during the first generation of the federal government. The result was a government designed to interact productively with the law of nations. Some of those interpretations, and some aspects of federal administration, became enormously controversial and generated early partisan divisions. But the basic premise—that the law of nations was the law of the land—proved durable, creating a tradition of international “law- mindedness” that deserves more historical investigation than it has so far received. The result is not just a scholarly lacunae. Among many lawyers today, the Founders’ conception of the central position of the law of nations in the American legal order is even less appreciated than their cosmopolitan outlook. In offering a corrective to this forgetfulness, Professors Anthony Bellia and Bradford Clark, in The Law of Nations and the United States Constitution, make an important contribution to the ongoing dialogue over the Founding. Nonetheless, in our view, the legal theory that Professors Bellia and Clark offer downplays, misses, or misunderstands crucial features of the pertinent history, especially why and how the Founders struggled to interweave the law of nations into the Constitution. These errors and elisions are important, in part for purely academic reasons, bearing on the extent to which their approach accurately portrays a foundational period in U.S. constitutional history. They are also important, however, because they lead Professors Bellia and Clark to reach some sound, but also some unsound, conclusions about important issues of constitutional law.
Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Willison on Whether Banks Were Special: Contrasting Viewpoints in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain @bankofengland

Matthew Willison, Bank of England, has published Were Banks Special? Contrasting Viewpoints in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain as Bank of England Working Paper No. 755. Here is the abstract.
In 1853 a Royal Commission was set up to investigate whether laws related to limited liability in Britain needed to be modified. As part of its evidence gathering the commission issued a questionnaire that included a number of questions on whether banks should be subject to the same liability laws as other types of commercial enterprises. This paper analyses the responses to the questions about banks to understand whether banks were seen as a special case. Support for modifying the law to make limited liability more easily available to banks was lower than for enterprises in general. Banks were seen as a special case because of the risk of bank runs and because their creditors were not able to assess accurately the riskiness of banks. But the special nature of banks caused others to favour limited liability because it made banks’ capital levels more transparent. These arguments echo wider debates during the nineteenth century and are similar to contemporary theories for why banks are regulated.
The full text should be available from SSRN at the link.

October 7, 2018

Call For Applications: Postdocs at Newcomb College Institute, Tulane University

The Newcomb College Institute of Tulane University seeks two postdoctoral
fellows in law and society. We seek applicants whose research takes an
intersectional approach to law and society, reflecting how gender, race,
class, disability, sexuality, ethnic, community, immigration status, and
national identities shape law and, in turn, how law shapes those
identities. We will consider applicants beginning in the Spring of 2019,
Summer of 2019 or Fall of 2019 for a single semester, a calendar year, or
for the 2019-2020 academic year for up to two years of support per person.
We prefer a two-year appointment, but are open to shorter terms.



The fellows will receive mentoring from senior faculty, participate in our
interdisciplinary community focused on intersectionality, and mentor
undergraduate student research assistants. We expect fellow to participate
in brown bag seminars, receptions, and other programming, mentor one or
more undergraduate research assistants, and help to organize a workshop in
the fall of the second year of the fellowship. We especially invite
applicants whose research and teaching interests focus on and/or contribute
to increased understanding of law, intersectionality, and identity in New
Orleans, Louisiana, and/or the Gulf Coast South, as well as those with a
demonstrated commitment to building interdisciplinary community.



Applicants should apply via Interfolio (https://apply.interfolio.com/56162)=
and
should include:

=C2=B7     A cover letter explaining their research interests, length of ti=
me
they would want to be in residence, when they would want to start, and
identifying the Tulane faculty member or members they would work most
closely with

=C2=B7     A C.V.

=C2=B7     A list of three references

Questions may be addressed to Laura Wolford, Assistant Director of the
Newcomb College Institute at lwolford@tulane.edu. Screening will begin
November 15, 2018 and continue until the positions are filled.

Tulane University is an equal employment opportunity/affirmative
action/persons with disabilities/veterans employer committed to excellence
through diversity. Tulane will not discriminate against individuals with
disabilities or veterans. All eligible candidates are encouraged to apply.



Qualifications:



1.     PhD in Political Science, History, American Studies, Sociology,
Women and/or Gender Studies, Psychology, or other closely related fields.
Ph.D must be in hand when appointment starts.

2.     Demonstrated research interests which an intersectional approach to
law and society, reflecting how gender, race, class, disability, sexuality,
ethnic, community, immigration status, and national identities shape law
and, in turn, how law shapes those identities.

3.     Preference given to applicants whose research and teaching interests
focus on and/or contribute to increased understanding of law,
intersectionality, and identity in New Orleans, Louisiana, and/or the Gulf
Coast South, as well as those with a demonstrated commitment to building
interdisciplinary community.




October 2, 2018

Wesson on The Limits of Constitutional Justice @MurrayWesson

Murray Wesson, The University of Western Australia Law School, has published The Limits of Constitutional Justice at 29 Public Law Review 63 (2018). Here is the abstract.
Especially in recent decades, in many jurisdictions there has been a shift away from a classical liberal conception of the constitution to a conception of the constitution as geared towards the alleviation of social and economic disadvantage. This development is the result of three interlocking trends: the growth of positive obligations; the embrace of substantive equality; and the proliferation of socio-economic rights. The article explores these developments from a liberal constitutionalist perspective, sourced in the work of John Rawls. With reference to A Theory of Justice, the article argues that liberal constitutionalism is not wedded to the classical liberal conception of the constitution and so is not inconsistent with these trends. However, in light of Political Liberalism, the article contends that the liberal understanding of the constitution as a social contract limits these developments by seeking the hypothetical consent of reasonable individuals. This results in an understanding of socio-economic rights as generating a social minimum, as opposed to more expansive forms of distributive justice; and an understanding of substantive equality as circumscribed by the need to maintain the hypothetical consent of reasonable individuals adversely affected by measures such as positive action. These arguments are illustrated with reference to decisions of the South African Constitutional Court.
Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Patterson on Theoretical Disagreement, Legal Positivism, and Interpretation

Dennis Patterson, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, has published Theoretical Disagreement, Legal Positivism, and Interpretation 31 Ratio Juris 260 (2018). Here is the abstract.
Ronald Dworkin famously argued that legal positivism is a defective account of law because it has no account of Theoretical Disagreement. In this article I argue that legal positivism—as advanced by H.L.A. Hart—does not need an account of Theoretical Disagreement. Legal positivism does, however, need a plausible account of interpretation in law. I provide such an account in this article.
The full text is not available from SSRN.

October 1, 2018

Kieran Tranter, Living in Technical Legality: Science Fiction and Law as Technology (Edinburgh University Press, 2018)

New from Kieran Tranter, Griffith University Law School:

Kieran Tranter, Living in Technical Legality: Science Fiction and Law as Technology (Edinburgh University Press, 2018).
What if this is not the end? This is the question that is pursued in my new book Living in Technical Legality (Edinburgh University Press, 2018). Many feel very insecure about the future due to rapid technological change. News feeds scroll to suggest that humans as a species are facing a degraded future; a future of uncertain employment, automation, and increased surveillance. In this book I try to tell a different story; a more hopeful story about human futures. I do so through science fiction. Science fiction is the place where technological beings dream themselves, their society and its future. This is why science fiction references accompanies public discussions about disruptive technologies. It also explains the popularity of science fiction within mainstream contemporary culture, with it grounding for much in the way of franchised cinema and digital gaming. So what happens if science fiction is taken seriously? Science fiction shows humans and related entities living, striving and failing with and through technology. It broadcasts that to be human is to be fundamentally engaged with technology. Whether humans were always so entwined with technology is a moot point. Some identify the palaeolithic emergence of tools and language as the decisive turn to technology. In this story humans as a species have evolved as technological beings. Others blame the classical Greek philosophers who set up the intellectual resources to count, theorise and reconstruct the world. Science fiction reinforces the suggestion that human life, autonomy and responsibility has been mediated by and through technology for a very long time. If there ever was an ‘end’ to some pre-technological sense of the human, it must have happened a long, long time ago. Nevertheless, life and living has endured after the supposed apocalypse. Humans have, and do, find meaning and worth in the technological world. So the question becomes how can a meaningful and worthwhile life be lived in the technological world? The first is to establish what does it mean to be a technological being? The second is how can that technological being live a worthwhile life? Science fiction has a role in imaging responses to both of these. Science fiction imagines technological beings as nodes within networks. It is a location where networks constrain, but also empower, doing in the world. The being that convention calls the ‘human’ is a hybrid entity composed of biology and culture that changes as it moves through time. The human as a technological being is a fluxing node where multiple networks meet. This can be terrifying. There are two dangers. The first is of over-determination. That the node in the network is pre-programmed. There is no choice of action, everything is set by the wider context so that there is no scope for discrete, purposeful doing in the world: ‘The computer says no’. However, this is not entirely true. While it total freedom of choice is illusionary, there is always a form of structured agency. The idea of ‘structured agency’ opens to the second terrifying danger; that its exercise is a value-free zone where any choice is equality valid. However, as nodes in the network there is a tendency to connection. In this there can be seen responsibility to the becoming of the world. For some this is expressed in terms of making the world more complex. For others there is a tangible sense of connection that can be nurtured and developed. It is this sense of responsibility that should inform the exercise of the structured agency available to technological beings on how to live a worthwhile life. In the book I examine three specific node locations (the legal subject, the lawyers and the scholar) for the exercise of responsibility to the becoming of the world through an intertwined reading with specific science fictions. In the chapter on the legal subject, Octavia E Butlers Xenogenesis story is discussed. This fantastic trilogy of novels from the late 1980s explores the limits and possibilities of action in a colonised, biological over-determined space. The struggles and partial victories of each of the novel’s protagonists show how to exercise structured agency in the personal, intimate and every-day. In short this is not the end; notwithstanding ever present anxieties about technological futures. But there is a need to let go of older forms of thought. To live well with technology involves embracing the science fictionality of the present. Rather than passively deferring to the machines that are making the world, it involves the seeing and seizing the opportunities for making a difference.
Kieran Tranter Griffith Law School Australia

Nielsen and Hartz on The Problem of Motivation in Hegel and Rawls

Carsten Fogh Nielsen, University of Aarhus, Department of Education, and Emily Hartz, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Organization, have published Why Be Just? The Problem of Motivation in Hegel and Rawls at 31 Ratio Juris 326 (2018). Here is the abstract.
At the heart of any theoretical problem of justice lies the problem of motivation: Even if we could conceive of a way to develop a comprehensive system of just laws, and even if we could rationally believe in the justice of these laws, how could we ever ensure that we—or anyone else—would be motivated to abide by them? By unearthing how the problem of motivation sways canonical discussions of justice, the article brings forth intrinsic similarities and differences in these discussions that are often overlooked in the literature. In particular, the article highlights intrinsic similarities in the analysis of the concept of justice in two central works that belong to the continental and the analytic tradition respectively and are otherwise rarely discussed together: Hegel’s Outlines of the Philosophy of Right and Rawls’s Theory of Justice.
The full text is not available from SSRN.

Lieberman and Patrick on Disgust, Morality, and the Law @DebLieberman305

Debra Lieberman, University of Miami, and Carlton Patrick, University of Central Florida, have published Objection: Disgust, Morality, and the Law (Chapter 1) as a Chapter in Objection: Disgust, Morality, and the Law, Oxford University Press, 2018. Here is the abstract.
Why do we consider incest wrong, even when it occurs between consenting adults unable to have children? Why are words that gross us out more likely to be deemed "obscene" and denied the protection of the First Amendment? In a world where a gruesome photograph can decisively influence a jury and homosexual behavior is still condemned by some as "unnatural," it is worth asking: is our legal system really governed by the power of reason? Or do we allow a primitive human emotion, disgust, to guide us in our lawmaking? In Objection, psychologists Debra Lieberman and Carlton Patrick examine disgust and its impact on the legal system to show why the things that we find stomach-turning so often become the things that we render unlawful. Shedding light on the evolutionary and psychological origins of disgust, the authors reveal how ancient human intuitions about what is safe to eat or touch, or who would make an advantageous mate, have become co-opted by moral systems designed to condemn behavior and identify groups of people ripe for marginalization. Over time these moral stances have made their way into legal codes, and disgust has thereby served as the impetus for laws against behaviors almost universally held to be "disgusting" (corpse desecration, bestiality) - and as the implicit justification for more controversial prohibitions (homosexuality, use of pornography). Written with a critical eye on current events, Lieberman and Patrick build a case for a more reasoned approach to lawmaking in a system that often confuses "gross" with "wrong."
Download the chapter from SSRN at the link.

McClain on Reflections on Loving v Virginia at Fifty

Linda C. McClain, Boston University School of Law, has published Prejudice, Moral Progress, and Being 'On the Right Side of History': Reflections on Loving v. Virginia at Fifty as 86 Fordham Law Review 2701 (2018). Here is the abstract.
What does it mean to be on the “right” or “wrong” side of history? When Virginia’s Attorney General explained his decision not to defend Virginia’s “Defense of Marriage Law” prohibiting same-sex marriage, he asserted that it was time for Virginia to be on the “right” rather than the “wrong” side of history and the law. He criticized his predecessors, who defended the discriminatory laws at issue in Brown v. Board of Education, Loving v. Virginia, and United States v. Virginia. Loving played a crucial role in the majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, even as the dissenters disputed its relevance; it continues to feature in post-Obergefell controversies over religious liberty and LGBT rights. Looking back at the record in Loving, this article argues that Loving illustrates a theme of generational moral progress in constitutional interpretation: laws once justified by appeals to nature, history, tradition, divine law, and the well-being of children and society are repudiated as rooted in prejudice. Virginia sought to distance its antimiscegenation law from prejudice and white supremacy by appealing to social science that identified problems posed by “intermarriage” -- particularly for children -- and rejected the idea that intermarriage was a path toward progress and freedom from prejudice. Countering with narratives of constitutional moral progress, the Lovings and their amici argued that Virginia’s law was an odious relic of slavery and a present-day reflection of racial prejudice, unsupported by modern science. The article concludes with a look at Obergefell, and the competing arguments southern states made about Loving and the lessons of history.
Download the article from SSRN at the link.

CFP: Handbook of Heritage Law and Discourse: A Triadic Dimension: Protection, Regulation, and Identity

CALL FOR PAPERS FOR AN EDITED VOLUME

Handbook of Heritage Law and Discourse A Triadic Dimension: Protection, Regulation and Identity Editors: Le Cheng and Anne Wagner

The past four decades has witnessed the remarkable extension of enthusiasm in cultural heritage or property from the perspective of international laws, or international legal framework as the multilevel legal instruments for safeguarding, protection and maintenance of cultural heritage, property, or rights. In our project, the identification of “Heritage” employs specific discourses, codes, transcending values, and images that conceal assumption about members of a people comprising a people within a nation. Heritage narrates constructions of belongings that become tethered to negotiations for power and resistance over time and throughout a people’s history leading to powerful discursive narratives.

While such likeness may be preserved, conserved or even perpetuated, the idea of “Heritage” may be socially, politically, culturally, and historically contested to reveal competing pasts, presents, and futures, esp. with innovation in arts leading to new social norms and identities. Besides, the visual decoding of heritage is evocative and ideologically representative with meanings that prescribe a story of Protection, Regulation and Identity, since these meanings are subject to multiple interpretations and reinterpretations related to Rights, among the integrity of heritage right and human rights, and the integrated framework of right in rem and right in personae. Yet, through semiotic accumulation, evolution and confrontation, there may be different interdisciplinary paths leading to different truths, to tensions (contestation and/or negotiation), and applications of significance.

We should then investigate these transmitted values, discourses over time and space. We should therefore investigate these transmitted values under various perspectives (amongst others but not limited): - How to transmit Heritage and which values are being transmitted? - How are the narratives created? - Is there a social stratification in transmitting, preserving and conserving Heritage? - What are the cognitive and symbolic aspects of Heritage through different temporal parameters? Is there a shift in cultural and/or collective meaning from one space to another? - What are the sources? - What is the relationship between law and “heritage” (tangible or intangible elements) in visual representations? - What is the shared collective and/or cultural memory beyond this visual representation? - How Heritage is connected to the preservation and conservation of a people’s memory? - How Heritage is interpreted within legal settings or international legal framework from temporality and spatiality? - What are the interactions between cultural heritage and human rights within the diversity and tolerance within socio-legal contexts? Considering the complexity and diversity in the building of a common memory or discourse community through tangible and intangible cultural heritage, we would suggest our contributors interrogate the complex sign system of a particular country or region and their meanings attentive to a complex configuration of historical, social and cultural conditions that shift over time and space.

Keywords: Heritage, Sign System, Law, Discourse Narratives, Conservation, Preservation. Editors: Le Cheng & Anne Wagner Please send abstracts to both Anne Wagner (valwagnerfr@yahoo.com) and Le Cheng (chengle163@hotmail.com) by 28 Feburary 2019 at the latest.

Victorian Killer Plants and Other Dangers: A Special Issue of Green Letters @samlwalton

Via Samantha Walton, Bath Spa University:

Dr. Samantha Walton and Dr. Jo Walton, University of Sussex, have co-edited a special edition of Green Letters, which presents articles on Victorian killer plants; Christie's herbal poisons; interwar rural nostalgia; detection in the American West; Bengali ecocrime; Scandinavian folk horror; and new perspectives on conservation as a form of noir detection.