Graber on The Unwritten Constitutions of the United States @UMDLaw

Mark Graber, University of Maryland School of Law, has published The Unwritten Constitutions of the United States as University of Maryland Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2019-13. Here is the abstract.

This paper outlines the various unwritten constitutions of the United States, from the Aristotelian and Gödelian Constitutions to the various constitutions in and outside of the courts, to the features of distinctive constitutional regimes in the United States. One goal of this paper is simply to detail how many unwritten constitutions exist and bring some clarity to the different phenomena that might go under the heading of the unwritten constitution. A second goal is to highlight the empirical dimensions of constitutionalism in general and of American constitutionalism in particular, with particular emphasis on how the empirical and normative dimensions of constitutionalism cannot be separated. Constitutionalism is an intricate blend of law and politics rather than a means of separating law from politics. Written and unwritten constitutional politics intertwine with written and unwritten constitutional law in ways ignored by both legal and political science versions of the law/politics distinction. The third goal is to highlight some features of contemporary constitutional politics in the United States. Constitutional angst in the United States, the following pages suggest, is being fueled by changes in unwritten constitutional politics that have not yet been captured by written or unwritten constitutional law. Bringing the structure of constitutional politics back into the structure of constitutionalism promises better constitutional analysis and, perhaps, better constitutional practice.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

ICYMI: Ledwon on The Poetics of Evidence: Some Applications from Law & Literature @StThomasLaw

ICYMI: Lenora P. Ledwon, St. Thomas University School of Law, has published The Poetics of Evidence: Some Applications from Law & Literature at 21 QLR 1145 (2003). Here is the abstract.

Evidence thus has force beyond any linear scheme of reasoning, and as its pieces come together a narrative gains momentum, with power not only to support conclusions but to sustain the willingness of jurors to draw the inferences, whatever they may be, necessary to reach an honest verdict .... Thus, the prosecution may fairly seek to place its evidence before the jurors, as much to tell a story of guiltiness as to support an inference of guilt .... "A syllogism is not a story, and a naked proposition in a courtroom may be no match for the robust evidence that would be used to prove it." The above quotations seem astonishing at first glance. The Supreme Court, in the process of analyzing the 403 balancing test under the Federal Rules of Evidence, appears to be moving beyond a simple rationalist tradition by acknowledging the legitimacy of evidence that is "beyond any linear scheme of reasoning." Even the most jaded legal reader must pause at such a phrase in a Supreme Court opinion. What could lie beyond linear reasoning? (Elliptical reasoning, perhaps?) What kind of force will such evidence have? (Emotional force, rather than logical force? The aesthetic force of a well-constructed narrative?) And what in heaven's name is the Supreme Court doing by speaking approvingly of a prosecutor's right to tell "a story of guiltiness"? This sounds suspiciously as if the prosecutor is a creative fiction writer, rather than a rational, scientific presenter of proofs. Why not employ more sober, judicious phrasing, perhaps something along the lines of "the right to present the evidence from which jurors could logically infer guilt"? But perhaps all this is not so astonishing after all. In Old Chief Justice Souter's majority opinion underscores the importance of storytelling and narrative integrity as factors worthy of consideration in a 403 balancing of probative value versus prejudicial effect. And, of course, we "get" it. Evidentiary alternatives, such as stipulations, may be perfectly good evidence, but bad storytelling. We understand that the right to tell a richly detailed story at trial is crucial in persuading a jury. A good, juicy story is more than a match for a logical, dry syllogism any day. So what else is new? There has, in fact, always been a profound connection, a synergy between storytelling and law. There is a similar (although often unacknowledged) synergy between evidence and law and literature scholarship. In the same way that the Supreme Court's comments on the role of narrative in Old Chief may at first strike us as perhaps radical or new, but then seem familiar, so, too, the affinities between evidence scholarship and the law and literature movement, which may at first seem tenuous, are in fact robust. The question is not so much whether there is a poetics of evidence, but rather, of what does it consist? This essay will suggest some possibilities for ways to begin thinking about a poetics of evidence, and attempt to make explicit some already implicit connections between evidence and law and literature. First, I will briefly define "poetics," characterizing it generally as a form of narratology, or a particular interest in the techniques of story. Second, I will provide an overview of some of the existing evidence scholarship, which draws on literary theory or storytelling, and include some suggestions for future scholarship advancing a poetics of evidence. Third, I will borrow a page from the "law as literature" school, and read the Federal Rules of Evidence as a story. By reading the statute as a narrative (and looking at familiar material with new eyes), I hope to advance the ongoing scholarly conversation concerning how to interpret the Federal Rules. I argue that identifying potential themes and plots in the Rules can assist us in imagining interpretive possibilities for this sometimes vexing statute. In particular, identifying the thematic heart of the rules assists us in envisioning a certain kind of interpretive argument: an argument for flexibility and organic growth of evidence law, and a reminder to think of the Rules holistically.

Download the article from SSRN at the link. 

Page on President Trump's Legal Narratives @ProfCathrenPage

Cathren Page, Barry University School of Law, has published Astonishingly Excellent Success or Sad! Loser! Failure: Why President Trump's Legal Narratives "Win" with Some Audiences and "Lose" with Others at 18 Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal 53 (2018).

Download the article at the link.

ICYMI: Ledwon on Maternity as a Legal Fiction: Infanticide and Scott's The Heart of Midlothian @StThomasLaw

ICYMI: Lenora Ledwon, St. Thomas University School of Law, has published Maternity as a Legal Fiction: Infanticide and Sir Walter Scott's The Heart of Midlothian at 18 Women's Rts. L. Rep. 1 (1996). Here is the abstract.

She sat down below a thorn Fine flowers in the valley, And there she has her sweet babe born And the green leaves they grow rarely. "Smile na sae sweet, my bonny babe," Fine flowers in the valley, "And ye smile sae sweet, ye'll smile me dead," And the green leaves they grow rarely. She's taen out her little pen-knife, Fine flowers in the valley, And twinned the sweet babe o' its life, And the green leaves they life, grow rarely.

From "The Cruel Mother"' (traditional Scottish ballad)

Laws tell stories-stories that create a typology of female legal subjects (or more properly, legal objects). Such stories about women historically have been written by men and delineate a mythical feminine sexual ideal with punishments for deviations from that ideal. Because legal stories (such as those contained in common law or statutes) are ostensibly impartial, they are all the more authoritative. Simple criticism, let alone outright attack, becomes an uphill task in the face of an official discourse that can lay epistemological claim to Right, Justice and Truth. As Antonio Gramsci notes, the most trenchant hegemony is that which inspires both the powerful and the oppressed to acquiesce in its ideology because no other worldview seems imaginable. But imagining the unimaginable is precisely the province of another privileged discourse-the novel. The novel's favored position, like that of a court jester, gives it the freedom to criticize the established order in a manner that, under other circumstances, would result in severe punishment. Law, as one kind of fiction., exists in a complex symbiosis with that other great fiction, the novel. The law and the novel are constructed on the same epistemology, empirical and circumstantial, but both are inherently fictional, that is, artificial and symbolic. Thus, Ian Watt notes the similarities between a novel reader and a juror: both attempt to ascertain the truth of a case, take the "circumstantial view of life" and want to know "all the particulars" of a case. And Norman 0. Brown, commenting on the similarities between the symbol systems of law and literature, cites nineteenth century legal scholar Rudolf Von Ihering for the proposition that courtroom action "is a trial or contest, an agon, as in the Greek stage plays, in which 'the parties litigant are not definite individuals, but abstract persons in the mask of plaintiff and defendant. But while law and literature share similarities in epistemology and in symbol systems, they differ in gender. While the law has been identified as masculine (i.e., rational, real and worldly) the novel has been identified as feminine (imaginative, pleasurable and domestic). Novels which address women's legal rights and obligations, therefore, enter into an ambiguously gendered space-a space where real-life female suffering under the law is made visible, but only within the structure of fiction. It is precisely in the encounter between legal fictions (concepts at law) and fictions of legality (novels addressing legal issues) that social and cultural paradigms of the category "mother" are revealed in their most complex, multivalent form. The novel, in its privileged position, has the ability to mediate between the loquacity of the law and the silence of the disenfranchised. But in mediating these extremes, a text is in constant danger of rupturing under the strain and falling into its own patterns of oppression. Despite the growing interest in the connections between legal studies and literary studies (demonstrated by the writings of James Boyd White, Stanley Fish, Richard Posner, Alexander Welsh and Richard Weisberg, among others in a growing field), comparatively little attention has been given to feminist issues in Law and Literature studies. The area I am interested in is precisely that space where legal studies, literary studies and feminism intersect. This article explores the complex reification and mythologizing of the feminine in law and literature, using Sir Walter Scott's influential historical novel, The Heart of Midlothian, to explicate the legal stories surrounding the category of "maternity." First, we will begin with Scott's legal background in order to examine how his legal expertise influences his novels. Second, we will examine the law of infanticide in Scotland and England during the time frame of the novel, focusing on the legal fiction of presumptive guilt underpinning the infanticide statute at issue. Third, we will explore the interrelated maternity narratives of the statute and the novel in light of Rene Girard's work on "persecution texts" (i.e., documents legitimizing collective violence against a scapegoat figure). My conclusion is that Walter Scott's The Heart of Midlothian and the 1690 infanticide statute which fuels its plot activate a complex of tensions around the concept of maternity. The text's narrative structure mirrors the key element of the statute-concealment. Scott gives us depths and surfaces, interiors and exteriors. He conceals in order to reveal, hides in order that we may find. In particular, Scott reveals the statute's operation as a persecution text and critiques the scapegoat role into which unwed mothers are forced. But in critiquing an already obsolete statute and revealing the persecution of women underpinning that statute, the text itself also constructs another, hidden scapegoat-the murderous mother.

The full text is not available for download from SSRN.

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics Call for Papers: Special Issue on Indian Graphic Narratives @JGNandComics

The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics has published a Call for Papers for a special issue on Indian graphic narratives. Here's the description of the Call.

The post-millennial years have witnessed significant developments in the field of popular visuality in South Asia and for India at least, a liberalised economy, advancements in digital technology, satellite television, urban beautification projects and a publishing boom have all shaped what we see, how we see it and why we see it. Within this post-millennial, economic, socio-cultural context Indian graphic narratives have prospered. Now, nearly twenty years into a sustained period of their production, there is a need to take stock of the field in order to bring together the various facets of scholarship that continue to emerge about this body of cultural production. Although the early years of the 2000s saw steady production and (in particular, domestic) circulation of Indian graphic narratives, research and scholarship has taken a little time to gain similar momentum but as the canon of creative work has grown, scholarship, particularly in the last seven to ten years has proved to be more sustained and wider in its scope of enquiry. The field now has some key academic texts with many chapters and academic papers supporting this field of interest and research. The aim of this Special Issue is to publish a selection of academic papers that reflect on and take stock of the field, exploring and presenting key themes, tropes and directions that the Indian graphic narratives scene has pursued collectively over the last 15-20 years. We are interested in examining the last twenty years of Indian graphic narratives production through the following (and related) topics with the over-arching theme of ‘reflection’ and ‘taking stock’: The post-millennial Indian publishing scene and Indian graphic narratives (global corporates, domestic, independent presses and story houses) Theoretical approaches to post-millennial Indian graphic narratives Graphic narratives of the early post-millennial years - Sarnath Banerjee, Orijit Sen, Vishwajyoti Ghosh as examples Comics collectives in India and co-created/curated anthologies of graphic narrative work The works of Appupen The works of Amruta Patil Biography-based graphic narratives Graphic non-fiction (such as the First Hand volumes of work)

More at this link.

Bateman on Radbruch, Fuller, and Hart on the Choice Between Natural Law and Legal Positivism @cg_bateman

C. G. Bateman, University of British Columbia, Faculty of Law, has published There Ought to be a Law: Gustav Radbruch, Lon L. Fuller, and H.L.A. Hart on the Choice Between Natural Law and Legal Positivism at 40 Journal of Jurisprudence 271-329 (2019). Here is the abstract.

In legal philosophy, there is a question that has troubled scholars for at least two centuries: that of how we ought to understand what the law is, in so far as it may be either something which exists on its own apart from any system of morals, legal positivism, or whether law is intrinsically connected to morality, natural law. Whether the view one takes on this question will produce either better or worse results stemming from the professional actions of lawyers, judges, and legal scholars in both domestic and international legal contexts was both passionately contended by Gustav Radbruch (1878-1949), as a once positivist converted to natural law, and hotly debated by Lon Fuller (1902-1978) and Herbert Hart (1907-1992) on behalf of natural law and positivism, respectively. After living through World War 2 and witnessing the horrible crimes against individuals and humanity carried out by the Nazis, Radbruch came to the conclusion that even if a legal system rested on legal certainty and laws equally applied to equals, if it was bereft of justice, the foundation of law, it was no law at all. Radbruch became convinced that how lawyers, judges, and legal scholars answer the question of ‘what is law’ is of central importance because he saw how the blind fidelity of judges and lawyers to the legal system under the Nazis resulted in gross injustices which law was supposed to protect against, not furnish. In this paper I want to both briefly sketch out how this question came to be of such importance in the legal philosophy of Gustav Radbruch, Lon Fuller, and Herbert Hart, and I want to pose the question as to whether or not we are better off, whether better results will follow for society, if we choose to understand law either as dependent on morality or separate from it. I conclude that some via media, some middle way, between the two perspectives offers the best option, for the simple reason that both perspectives teach us essential things about the nature of law, and it would be irresponsible to merely cling to the good things one perspective offers at the expense of the important things we learn from the other.

Download the article from SSRN at the link. 

Barrett on Moral Rights and Immoral Artists @VicUniWgtn

Jonathan M. Barrett, Victoria University of Wellington, has published Moral Rights and Immoral Artists, a paper presented at the Asian Pacific Copyright Association Conference, Wellington, New Zealand, November 2019. Here is the abstract.

The word ‘moral’ used to denote upright behaviour and ‘moral’ to denote certain authorial rights (droit moral), are homonyms: the things signified by the same signifier are different. Because Germany’s moral rights equivalent is the personality right (Persönlichkeitsrecht), the German language does not permit the wordplay employed in the title. Nevertheless, this paper argues that personhood (Persönlichkeit), which is intertwined with the fundamental human rights principle of respect for equal and inherent human dignity, is the critical consideration for both understanding moral rights and engaging with the vexed issue of artworks created by immoral artists. This paper, which should be read as a sample of ongoing research, therefore approaches moral rights from a personhood perspective in order to construct analytical tools for engaging with immoral artists and their artworks.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Ledwon on "Breaking Bad" Contracts: Bargaining For Masculinity in Popular Culture @StThomasLaw

Lenora Ledwon, St. Thomas University School of Law, has published 'Breaking Bad' Contracts: Bargaining for Masculinity in Popular Culture at 23 William & Mary Journal of Women & the Law 397 (2017). Here is the abstract.

This Article examines the award-winning television show, Breaking Bad, to illustrate how the idea of a contract in popular culture can become inflected with a style of retrograde masculinity. Deals in Breaking Bad take place in the classic contract imaginary, which resembles the classic Western shootout: two antagonists face each other down in a duel. The show interrogates the frontier thesis, with its links to the American Dream and dangerous masculinities, through the ruthless contracts of Walter White. "I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you." -Walt Whitman, Song of Myself'

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Papers: Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence @thePJCV

Call for Papers

Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence (PJCV)

Special Edition on Conflict and Violence in Plato’s Philosophy

Edited by Joan-Antoine Mallet (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3)

We invite contributions dealing with all facets of conflict and violence in Plato’s philosophy. A variety of philosophical perspectives are welcome, including history of philosophy, continental tradition, phenomenology, analytical philosophy, non-Western philosophy, and theology. We are also interested in approaches from other fields in relation to Platonic philosophy as history, anthropology, archeology and philology. We are looking for global analyses of conflict and violence in Plato’s work and/or particular studies focused on one or a few dialogues. The selected articles will be published by Trivent Publishing in December 2020.

Possible general topics include, but are not restricted to, the following:

●    Sources and influences of Plato’s conception of conflict and violence (Homer, Hesiod, Presocratics …)
●    Socrates, crime, conflict and violence
●    Plato and the Sophists about crime and violence
●    Plato’s politics and ethics
●    Plato’s conception of war (polemos and stasis)
●    Plato’s critical approaches of political violence
●    Plato’s views about crime and retribution
●    Plato’s view about potential way of solving conflicts
●    Plato’s conception of sacrifice
●    Violence and myths in Plato’s work
●    Plato’s metaphysics and ontology
●    Plato’s epistemology
●    Plato’s aesthetics
●    Conflict and violence in Neoplatonism
●    Influence of Plato’s legacy on philosophical interpretations of conflict and violence

Deadlines

Those interested in contributing to this issue should submit an abstract of 100–250 words to Joan-Antoine Mallet at joan.mallet@trivent-publishing.eu and Andreas Wilmes at andreas.wilmes@trivent-publishing.eu no later than April 1, 2020. Authors will be informed of acceptance by no later than May 1, 2020. Full papers should be submitted by June 15, 2020, be written in the PJCV template available on trivent-publishing.eu/pjcv.html, and have a maximum of 20 pages.

Langford and Bryan on The Transformation of the Notion of Civitas Maxima @edgehill @LancasterUni

Peter Langford, Edge Hill University, and Ian Bryan, Lancaster University, have published 'From Wolff to Kelsen: The Transformation of the Notion of Civitas Maxima' in Hans Kelsen and the Natural Law Tradition 161-187 (P. Langford, I. Bryan, and J. McGarry, eds., Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2019).

A significant part of Kelsen’s work is devoted to the theoretical and methodological separation of positive law from natural law. The predominant impression of this process is of a determination to entirely sunder the conceptual framework of positive law from any continuing reliance upon natural law. However, certain of Kelsen’s works involve the appropriation of the notion of civitas maxima from Christian Wolff’s Jus Gentium Methodo Scientifica Pertractatum (1749). The presence of this notion raises the question of the relationship between Kelsen’s theoretical framework and the conception of natural law developed by Christian Wolff. It is through an examination of the transformation of Wolff’s notion of civitas maxima that an important aspect of Kelsen’s relationship to the natural law tradition becomes apparent. The appropriation will be traced through the initial discussion of civitas maxima in Kelsen’s Das Problem der Souveränität und die Theorie des Völkerrechts. Beitrag Zu Einer Reinen Rechtslehre (1920/1928), and its further exposition and development in Kelsen’s 1926 Lecture Course (‘Les Rapports de Système entre le Droit Interne et le Droit International’) at the l’Académie de droit international, in the Hague. In this manner, the significant methodological divergences between a Kelsenian theory of positive law, as a theory of legal monism according primacy to international law, and the Wolffian theory of natural law, as a theory of the law of nations, will become evident. This methodological divergence, however, should not obscure a more than residual affinity between Kelsen and Wolff concerning the cosmopolitical orientation of their thought.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Weill on Brexit and the Anglo-American Model @RivkaWeill

Rivka Weill, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliyah - Radzyner School of Law; University of Chicago Law School; Yale Law School, has published From Earl Grey to Boris Johnson: Brexit and the Anglo-American Constitutional Model. Here is the abstract.

Trump and Brexit are at the forefront of political discussions around the world. Many treat them as symptoms of the same phenomenon: the rise of populism, nationalism, and xenophobia towards immigrants and refugees. Both seem to repeatedly challenge constitutional limits on a variety of fronts. Brexit was approved in a referendum by a slim majority, with wavering public support and in spite of a reluctant Parliament. Yet, all British political players feel bound by its results and have taken steps to withdraw from the EU, absorbing the costs of trillions of dollars to their economy. Exclusionary policies may not be enough to explain the extraordinary politics involved. This Article argues that the forces affecting Brexit are rooted in nineteenth century Britain. It deconstructs the familiar narrative that casts the US as the archetype of a constitutional model, with a formal supreme Constitution, judicial review, and popular sovereignty. In that narrative, the UK is cast as the antithesis, because Parliament reigns supreme, it has no formal Constitution, and it lacks a doctrine of judicial review. This Article reveals that, even as this narrative was becoming orthodoxy during the nineteenth century, the UK was already operating under a model similar to the US, demonstrating a continued commitment to popular, rather than parliamentary, sovereignty. The fact that Parliament refers major decisions to the People and carries out those decisions, as exemplified in the British determination to go ahead with Brexit, signals that the People is the sovereign, not Parliament. The challenges encountering popular sovereignty have remained the same over the past two centuries though gaining new dimensions: enfranchisement, protectionism, territorial divisions, and allocation of legislative power. This Article demonstrates how Britain has been operating under a common Anglo-American constitutional model for the past 200 years and highlights its implications for comparative constitutional law. The common Anglo-American model sheds new light on the meaning of the government’s mandate at elections, the rise of party power, and the conditions that would legitimize packing the courts.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

A Law Review Issue Devoted to Felix Gonzalez-Torres @JLPP @Clancco_ArtLaw

ICYMI: Check out Journal of Law and Public Policy (v. 26, issue 3, Spring 2017), devoted to the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres. See the following articles.

Eduardo M. Peñakver and Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento, Law in the Works of Felix Gonzales-Torres

Rosa R. de la Cruz, Carlos and Rosa de la Cruz Introductory Remarks

Gregory S. Alexander, Objects of Art, Objects of Property

Martha Buskirk, Public Experience/Private Authority

Robert Hobbs, Felix Gonzalez-Torres' Epistemic Art

Sonya K. Katyal, The Public Good in Poetic Justice

Joan Kee, Felix Gonzales-Torres on Contracts

Donelson on Describing Law @LSULawCenter

Raff Donelson, Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge), is publishing Describing Law in volume 33 of the Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence (2020). Here is the abstract.

Legal philosophers make a number of bold, contentious claims about the nature of law. For instance, some claim that law necessarily involves coercion, while others disagree. Some claim that all law enjoys presumptive moral validity, while others disagree. We can see these claims in at least three ways: (1) We can see them as descriptions of law’s nature (descriptivism), (2) we can see them as expressing non-descriptive attitudes of the legal philosophers in question (expressivism), or (3) we can see them as claims that must be assessed on the basis of practical reasons (pragmatism). Ultimately, this paper argues that we should understand these claims in the pragmatist way; as such, jurisprudential claims are about what to do, e.g., what to treat as law and how to order society.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Stern on A Mistake of Natural Law: Sir William Blackstone and the Anglican Law @RegentLaw

Craig A. Stern, Regent University School of Law, is publishing A Mistake of Natural Law: Sir William Blackstone and the Anglican Way in volume 4 of the University of Bologna Law Review (2019). Here is the abstract.

Despite charges to the contrary, Blackstone’s use of natural law in his Commentaries is coherent and actually shapes the whole, but it takes eyes alerted to Blackstone’s grounding in Roman Law and in the Anglican Church to see this truth. Once seen, it speaks directly to the study and practice of law in America today.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Menkel-Meadow on Negotiating the American Constitution (1787-1789) @CMenkelMeadow @GeorgetownLaw

Carrie Menkel-Meadow, University of California, Irvine School of Law; Georgetown University Law Center; is published Negotiating the American Constitution (1787-1789) Coalitions, Process Rules, and Compromises in Landmark Negotiations from Around the World: Lessons for Modern Diplomacy (Emmanuel Vivet, editor, Intersentia 2019.) Here is the abstract.

This essay describes the multi-party, multi-issue negotiations of the American Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia (1787), using the lens of negotiation theory. Expert process leadership by George Washington, James Madison and Benjamin Franklin, with deliberation about process rules (e.g. speaking rules, confidentiality) and decision rules (voting and reconsideration, packaging) as well as the use of committees and task groups to facilitate both cross-geopolitical and issue coalitions and specialization, rather than Committee of the Whole (plenary) meetings for all of the deliberations, allowed the negotiation, drafting and (later!) ratification of a monumental political document, with dubious political (and moral) legitimacy at the time of its completion, but considerable robustness, with a large number of amendments (including the “afterthoughts” of the Bill of Rights) over time. While there has been much replication of the text of the US Constitution (in later enacted Constitutions by other countries), not enough consideration has been given to the importance of process choices in comparative political theory (cf. Jon Elster’s work). This essay attempts to illustrate the use of “applied history” in understanding complex diplomatic and political negotiations, by using current theories to explore past behavior.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Kjaer on Translation of Judgments of the ECtHR into Non-Official Languages @KjrAnne @OxUniPress

Anne Lise Kjaer, Translation of Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights into Non-official Languages: The Politics and Practice of European Multilingualism, in Language and Legal Interpretation in International Law (Anne Lise Kjaer and Joanna Lam, eds.,Oxford University Press, Forthcoming)(Oxford Studies in Language and Law).

The paper examines the role that translation of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has played in the dialogue between the Member States of the Council of Europe and the Court over time. The judgments of the ECHR are produced in the two official languages, English and French, only. Translation into other languages was never an issue in the discussions leading to the adoption of the European Convention on Human Rights, and not until the beginning of the reform process at the turn of the century was translation of ECHR judgments into non-official languages put on the agenda. It was introduced into the reform discourse under the heading of Member States’ implementation of the convention and their knowledge and understanding of the Court’s case law. The paper traces the development of translation arguments in the reform discourse and discusses the possible reasons why translation into languages other than English and French was not an issue until the Court faced challenges from the Member States in the early 2000s. It is argued that the choice of language policy and considerations regarding translation into the national languages of the Member States indicate the institutional balance that exists at any given time in the interface between the national and European level of lHuman Riights law.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Ramshaw on Law and Humanities: A Field Without a Canon @UVicLaw

Sara Ramshaw, University of Victoria Faculty of Law, has published Law and Humanities: A Field Without a Canon. Here is the abstract.

This short Commentary imagines law and humanities not as a “canon” per se, but as a “field without a canon”; or a canon that resists canonization. Arts-based practices utilized in legal research and teaching expose the law and humanities “canon” to its dual (and somewhat contradictory) nature: ever straining towards a pre-established archive, it must also leap ahead fearlessly to properly defy disciplinary boundaries and move the field beyond siloed thinking, which is one of the preliminary aims of law and humanities scholarship and pedagogy. Arts-based practices consist not of a stable collection of set texts, but instead signify a process of experimentation that is ever in flux and alive to possibility. It is this process of discovering new arts-based practices that ensures law and humanities remains a vibrant, yet ever-changing, field for years to come. To that end, this Commentary surveys a sampling of outsider approaches to law and humanities scholarship and pedagogy, those more concerned with process than product, and which are coming from outside of or beyond the more traditionally conceived canon of law and humanities. These approaches fall into two broad categories: (1) arts-based scholarly legal practices; and (2) arts-based legal pedagogical practices. A uniting feature of both these approaches is that they are being undertaken and explored by Canadian legal scholars at a small law school on Vancouver Island on the West Coast of Canada, namely the University of Victoria Faculty of Law, where there is an impressive number of faculty members using arts-based practices in their research and teaching.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

AISB20: Communication and Conversation, April 6-9, 2020, St. Mary's University @AISB_soc

From Dr Yasemin J. Erden, AISB Vice Chair, Senior Lecturer, Philosophy, St Mary's University

AISB20: Communication and Conversation, 6 – 9 April 2020, St Mary’s University, Twickenham, London, UK

The society for the study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (the AISB) annual convention will be held at St Mary’s University, Twickenham in London, UK from 6 - 9 April 2020. 

This year the theme broadly covers topics in language, communication and conversation, though there will be a range of symposia covering a range of topics in philosophy, AI, computing, etc.

The convention will follow the same overall structure as previous conventions, namely a set of co-located parallel symposia, as well as invited and plenary lectures and sessions.

Based in leafy Richmond borough, St Mary's University has a long and distinguished history. Strawberry Hill House, located in the University grounds, is Britain's finest example of Georgian Gothic Revival architecture (known locally as the Gothic Castle). The institute benefits from lots of green spaces, whilst being only a short distance from The Thames, Richmond Park, and central London (we’re just 35 minutes on the train from Waterloo). You can view a virtual tour of the campus here: https://www.stmarys.ac.uk/contact/virtual-tour.aspxhttps://www.stmarys.ac.uk/contact/virtual-tour.aspx

Here is a full list of symposia for the conference.

• AISB AI & Games 2020 (AI&G)
• 2nd Symposium on AI and Robotics Normative Spheres: Towards a Sustainable Society and Technology (AIRoNoS)
• AI and Moral Learning (AIML)
• 7th Computational creativity symposium (CC20)
• First AISB Symposium on Conversational AI (SoCAI)
• Do Robots Talk? Philosophical Implications of Describing Human-Machine Communication (DoRoTa)
• Habits and rituals in real and virtual societies (H&R)
• The Impact of Anthropomorphism on Human Understanding of Intelligent Systems (Anthro2020)
• Philosophy after AI: meaning and understanding (PhAI2020)
• Overcoming Opacity in Machine Learning (Opacity)
• Representation and Reality In Humans, Other Living Organisms and Machines (R&R)
• Responsibility and control: communication and conversation through technology (RACCT)
• Social Interactions in Complex Intelligent Systems (SICIS) 

More information is available here.

Recently Published: Marett Leiboff, Towards a Theatrical Jurisprudence (Routledge, 2019) @legalintersect @routledgebooks

ICYMI:

Marett Leiboff, Towards a Theatrical Jurisprudence (Routledge, 2019).

This book brings the insights of theatre theory to law, legal interpretation and the jurisprudential to reshape law as a practice of response and responsibility. Confronting a Baconian antitheatrical legality embedded in its jurisprudences and interpretative practices, Marett Leiboff turns to theatre theory and practice to ground a theatrical jurisprudence, taking its cues from Han-Thies Lehmann’s conception of the post-dramatic theatre and the early work of theatre visionary Jerzy Grotowski. She asks law to move beyond an imagined ideal grounded in Aristotelian drama and tragedy, and turns to the formation of the legal interpreter ・ lawyer, judge, jurisprudent ・ as fundamental to understanding what’s “noticed” or not noticed in law. We “notice” most easily through that which is written into the body of the legal interpreter, in a way that can’t be replicated through law’s standard practices of thinking and reasoning. Without more, thinking and reasoning are the epitome of antitheatricality legality; a set of theatrical antonyms, including transgression and instinct, offer instead a set of possibilities through which to reconceive assumptions and foundational concepts etched into the legal imaginary. And by turning to critical dramaturgy, the book reveals that the liveliness that sits behind theatrical jurisprudence isn’t a new concept in law at all, but has a long pedigree and lineage that had been lost and hidden. Theatrical jurisprudence, which demands an awareness of self and beyond self, grounds a responsiveness that can’t be found within doctrine, principle, or the technocratic, but also challenges us to notice what it is we think we know as well as what we know of lives in law that aren’t our own. The book will be of interest to scholars and students in the field of jurisprudence, legal theory, theatre and performance studies, cultural studies and philosophy.

 

Rubin on Early US Prison History Beyond Rothman: Revisiting @ashleyrubin

Ashley T. Rubin, Unviersity of Toronto, Mississauga, has published Early US Prison History Beyond Rothman: Revisiting at 15 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 137-154 (2019). Here is the abstract.

David J. Rothman's , one of the first major works to critically interrogate the beginning of America's extensive reliance on institutionalization, effectively launched the contemporary field of prison history. Rothman traced the first modern prisons’ (1820s–1850s) roots to the post-Revolution social turmoil and reformers’ desire for perfectly ordered spaces. In the nearly 50 years since his pioneering work, several generations of historians, inspired by Rothman, have amassed a wealth of information about the early prisons, much of it correcting inaccuracies and blind spots in his account. This review examines the knowledge about the rise of the prison, focusing on this post-Rothman work. In particular, this review discusses this newer work organized into three categories: the claim that prisons were an invention of Jacksonian America, reformers’ other motivations for creating and supporting prisons, and the frequently gendered and racialized experiences of prisoners. The review closes by reflecting on the importance of prison history in the contemporary context and suggesting areas for future research.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Abbasi on the Politics of Exclusion through Language in the Presidential Speeches of Donald Trump

Ameer Ali Abbasi, National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad, has published Politics of Exclusion through Language in the Presidential Speeches of Donald Trump. Here is the abstract.

The current research is an attempt to define and discuss the mechanisms of power as used by Trump in his presidential speeches that he has made during the year, 2017, in accordance with Foucault’s Theory of Power/Knowledge. However, a number of research articles have been published on the speeches of Trump, but no one has analysed the mechanisms of power in his speeches as discussed by Foucault. So the present research fills up the gap by analysing Trump’s speeches using Foucault’s Power and Knowledge Theory. The researcher aims to answer the problem of mechanisms of power such as politics of exclusion in the concerned speeches, the way Trump employs to create discourse and knowledge. In order to discuss and analyse the speeches, the study embraces the qualitative method that enables to answer the question related to power mechanisms. The discussion and analysis consists of the mechanisms such as American nationalism, Islam and politics of exclusion, and paranoia. Besides, he also makes use of purposive, explanatory and descriptive designs of research to collect and analyse data using the above given theory. Thus, the study explores Trump's mechanisms of exclusionary politics as used in his presidential speeches.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

ICYMI: Seabourne on Qualifying For Tenancy By the Curtesy of England in the Reign of Edward I @gcseabourne

ICYMI:

Gwen Seabourne, "It Is Necessary That the Issue Be Heard To Cry Or Squall Within The Four [Walls]": Qualifying For Tenancy By the Curtesy of England in the Reign of Edward I, 40 Journal of Legal History 44-68 (2019).

This article considers the test used to determine the presence or absence of life in newborn babies, in relation to a widower’s entitlement to remain in land brought to the marriage by his wife, as tenant by the curtesy of England. To qualify for curtesy, a widower needed to have produced a live and legitimate child, but, since even a short period of life was sufficient, there might be disputes as to whether a child which was now dead had ever been alive. The common law therefore had to develop a way of settling this difficult matter of confirming or denying the presence of life. Several thirteenth-century sources show an emphasis on a sound as an indicator of life. This article considers the use of a sound criterion in this area, arguing that thinking and practice surrounding the appropriate test were more complex, less settled, and more interesting than has been represented in somewhat perfunctory accounts in the work of later lawyers and legal historians. This is significant for the understanding of this area of medieval law, but also has broader implications within legal history and historiography, and for scholars from other fields such as medieval social and medical history.

McMurtry-Chubb on Still Writing at the Master's Table @genremixtress

Teri A. McMurtry-Chubb, John Marshall Law School; Mercer University School of Law, has published Still Writing at the Master's Table: Decolonizing Rhetoric in Legal Writing For a 'Woke' Legal Academy at 21 Scholar 255 (2019). Here is the abstract.

When I wrote Writing At the Master’s Table: Reflections on Theft, Criminality, and Otherness in the Legal Writing Profession almost 10 years ago, my aim was to bring a Critical Race Theory/Feminism (CRTF) analysis to scholarship about the marginalization of White women law professors of legal writing. I focused on the convergence of race, gender, and status to highlight the distinct inequities women of color face in entering their ranks. My concern was that barriers to entry for women of color made it less likely that the existing legal writing professorate, predominantly White and female, would problematize the ways students are taught legal reasoning, analysis and writing. I argued: “If the traditional [dominant] legal analytical process is normalized and passed off as objective, both in the content of the legal writing curriculum and in the body of the person teaching the curriculum, most students unwittingly will continue to replicate racist and elitist legal structures as they learn the very process of legal reasoning and analysis in law school and as they undertake the practice of law.” I pick up that major theme in this article by focusing on how law professors of legal writing are forced to serve as handmaidens of hierarchy in the maintenance of the legal academy as an elite and closed discourse community. It considers how in teaching students how to “do” law - employ legal reasoning and analysis through written communication - legal writing curricula provide for no critique of the colonized formal rhetorical structures in which critical thinking, reading, analysis and writing skills are grounded. Part I problematizes the relationship of the five canons of rhetoric, specifically Invention and Dispositio, to Western/European epistemologies. Part II introduces Indigenous, African and Asian Diasporic Rhetorics, and Latinx Rhetorics as critiques of the canons of rhetoric and the Western concept of canonicity; examines them as new sites for Inventio and Dispositio; and considers the implications for teaching legal reasoning, analysis, and communication. Part III explores how de-centering Western epistemologies as the sole acceptable source of rhetoric opens possibilities for decolonizing the legal academy, and for preparing law students to become change agents in the practice of law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Jukier on From La Beauce to Le Bayou @LawMcGill @JournalCivilLaw

Rosalie Jukier, McGill Faculty of Law, has published From La Beauce to Le Bayou: A Transsystemic Voyage at 12 Journal of Civil Law Studies 1 (2019). Here is the abstract.

This paper is an adaptation of the Tucker Lecture that I delivered in October of 2017. Its title depicts two iconic places, one in the Canadian province of Quebec, from where I hail, and the other in Louisiana, the locale of my audience. In this paper, I attempt to guide an allegorical voyage from la Beauce to le Bayou, from Quebec to Louisiana, from Montreal to Baton Rouge, from McGill to LSU, using a transsystemic itinerary. This voyage will showcase the unique way of teaching and thinking about law that has defined the program of legal education, and the imaginations of legal scholars, at McGill’s Faculty of Law for almost two decades. In addition to demystifying the elusive term “transsystemic,” and outlining the pedagogical and intellectual benefits of teaching and thinking about law in this way, this paper will focus on the increasing relevance of the transsystemic approach as a way of preparing jurists, wherever they may be, for the complexity and novelty of contemporary legal practice. By instilling creative, critical and flexible thinking skills, it enables jurists to deal with novel legal problems, to be more adept at envisaging a multiplicity of creative ways to solve legal problems through alternative methods of dispute resolution, and to keep pace with novel comparative judicial methodology. Just as la Beauce and le Bayou are different places with different geographical features, so too are Quebec and Louisiana different legal jurisdictions. However, they are, in many ways, sister jurisdictions, sharing a common mixity in their legal systems. This makes law schools in Louisiana a particularly fertile environment in which to showcase this unique itinerary in the hope that some of you will come along on this interesting voyage.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Applications, Law and Society Association Workshop, Denver, CO, May 26-27, 2020 @law_soc

The Law and Society Association announces the call for applications for the Graduate Student & Early Career Workshop, May 26-27, 2020, in Denver, Colorado (USA). The workshop immediately precedes the LSA Annual Meeting.

Apply here.

Waldron on Non-Normative Principles @JeremyJWaldron

Jeremy Waldron, New York University School of Law, has published Non-Normative Principles. Here is the abstract.

How should we think about legal principles? In analytic jurisprudence, the best-known account of legal principles — Ronald Dworkin’s account — assigns them a normative function in law, albeit not a hard or determinate one. But legal principles sometimes serve a characterizing rather than a normative function: they tell us about the character of a legal system rather than giving us instructions about how to deal with difficult cases. There is a further question whether characterizing principles can nevertheless perform some sort of normative function in legal argument. In the second half of this paper, I consider the operation of constitutional principles, like the rule of law and the separation of powers.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Kemmerer and Wolhleben on Mythos und Recht: Poetick und Politik in Christa Wolfs Kassandra-Projekt @kemmereralex @Uni-MR

Alexandra Kemmerer, Max Planck Society for the Advancement of the Sciences; Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International law, and Doren Wohlleben, University of Marberg, have published Im Kalten Krieg der Geschlechter. Mythos und Recht, Poetik und Politik in Christa Wolfs Kassandra-Projekt (Cold War, Gendered: Myth and Law, Poetics and Politics in Christa Wolf's Kassandra Project) as the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law & International Law (MPIL) Research Paper No. 2019-21. Here is the abstract.

German Abstract: Im Wintersemester 2018/19 lud die Neuphilologische Fakultät der Universität Heidelberg in der Vortragsreihe „ModerneKrisenLiteratur“ dazu ein, im Dialog zwischen jeweils einem Literaturwissenschaftler und einem Vertreter einer anderen kultur-, sozial- oder geschichtswissenschaftlichen Disziplin darüber nachzudenken, wie sich die Umbrüche und Erschütterungen der ökonomischen, politischen und kulturellen Moderne in literarischen Werken des 20. Jahrhunderts niedergeschlagen haben. Am 15. Januar 2019 sprachen in der Neuen Universität Heidelberg die Rechtswissenschaftlerin Alexandra Kemmerer (Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht) und die Literaturwissenschaftlerin Doren Wohlleben (Universität Marburg) über Christa Wolfs Kassandra-Projekt – ein in vier Vorlesungen und eine Erzählung gegliedertes Werk, das als mediales Großereignis bereits beim ersten öffentlichen Vortrag im Rahmen der Frankfurter Poetik-Vorlesungen im Mai 1982 große internationale Beachtung fand und inzwischen, übersetzt in dutzende Sprachen, zur Weltliteratur des 20. Jahrhunderts zu zählen ist. In der Begegnung von Rechts- und Literaturwissenschaft, von „Law & Literature“, erweist sich Christa Wolfs Kassandra-Projekt als Schlüssel zu einem differenzierten Verständnis des geteilten Deutschland in der Endphase des Kalten Krieges, des Wendejahres 1989 und der nachfolgenden politischen, sozialen, rechtlichen und kulturellen Transformationen. Herausgefordert und sensibilisiert von der je anderen Disziplin, gewinnen im Blick auf Mythos und Recht, Poetik und Politik Krisenmomente Kontur, deren Brüche und Verwerfungen noch unsere Gegenwart prägen. English Abstract: In the winter semester of 2018/19, the Neuphilologische Fakultät (Faculty of Modern Languages) at the University of Heidelberg hosted a lecture series inviting reflections on ruptures and upheavals in economic, political and cultural modernity, and their repercussions on 20th-century literature. Organised as dialogue between a literary scholar and a scholar of another field of the humanities, social sciences or cultural studies, the series „ModerneKrisenLiteratur“ invited in each of its weekly sessions contextual and reflexive explorations of literary works. On January 15, 2019, at Neue Universität Heidelberg, legal scholar Alexandra Kemmerer (Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law) and literary scholar Doren Wohlleben (University of Marburg), discussed Christa Wolf's Kassandra Project - a complex and highly original literary work which attracted great international attention already at its first public presentation in May 1982, in the Frankfurt Lectures on Poetics series, and has since become part of 20th century world literature. In Kemmerer’s and Wohlleben’s Heidelberg encounter, from a Law& Literature perspective, Christa Wolf's Kassandra Project is explored as key to a differentiated understanding of Divided Germany in the final phase of the Cold War, of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the “Wende“, of 1989, and of subsequent political, social, legal and cultural transformations. Based on close readings of Wolf’s literary work, their transdisciplinary reflections on myth and law, poetics and politics highlight moments of crisis, ruptures and upheavals that are still shaping our present.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

van den Berge on Law, King of All: Schmitt, Agemben, Pindar @UtrechtUni

Lukas van den Berge, Utrecht University, is publishing Law, King of All: Schmitt, Agamben, Pindar in volume 13 of Law and Humanities (2019). Here is the abstract.

Both Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben draw on the ancient Greek concept of nomos as an important element underpinning their legal theories. Aiming to restore that concept to its pre-sophistic meaning, they grant central weight to a piece of poetry in which Pindar famously proclaims that ‘law (nomos) is king of all’, guiding both mortals and immortals while ‘justifying the utmost violence with a powerful hand’. For Schmitt as for Agamben, this means that the Pindaric fragment exposes the violent origins of law that normativist jurisprudence typically shields from view. For one thing, I will explain in this article why Schmitt’s and Agamben’s use of the fragment is at odds with any acceptable interpretation of it in its wider literary and historical context. More importantly, perhaps, my aim is ultimately to reconstruct a Pindaric jurisprudence as it should actually be preferred to that of both Schmitt and Agamben.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Ducato on Brief Notes on Law and Visualisation @RossanaDucato

Rossana Ducato, Université Catholique de Louvain and Université Saint-Louis - Bruxelles, has published De Iurisprudentia Picturata: Brief Notes on Law and Visualisation in the Journal of Open Access to Law, 2019. Here is the abstract.

Law is usually considered a textual phenomenon. From their first steps into a faculty of law students know they will have to prepare for exams on codes and text-books. In their practice lawyers have to formulate opinions, claims or defences in a document or in oral statements. Judges are called on to write decisions which will be read aloud in court and published. Notaries prepare (and confer authenticity on) legal documents and contracts for their clients. Legislators enact laws, decrees and regulations that consist of a series of rules expressed in verbal statements. Legal scholars write books, commentaries, essays and scientific articles starting from the literature review. However, a closer look at legal history demonstrates that textual form is not the only way in which legal concepts and knowledge can be expressed. The goal of the paper is to present how the interplay between law and visualisation can be structured and introduce the contributions to the JOAL first issue on visual law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Law and Humanities Roundtable 2020: Call For Papers, University of Southampton, Friday, July 3, 2020

Law and Humanities Roundtable 2020

CALL FOR PAPERS

University of Southampton, Friday, July 3, 2020 Theme: Law, the Senses and Beyond

This second annual Law and Humanities roundtable invites original paper presentations on the relationship between law and the senses, marking 250 years since the birth of Beethoven. Beethoven’s life and music are marked by acute ambivalences towards political power (initially dedicating his Symphony No.3 to Napoléon Bonaparte and then furiously withdrawing that dedication upon learning that Napoleon had declared himself ‘Emperor’), and towards community and social norms (the composer was [in Goethe’s words] ‘an utterly untamed personality’ who often found ‘the world detestable’ but nevertheless joyfully celebrated solidarity in the choral refrain of his Ninth Symphony – now the anthem of the European Union), as well as by uncanny triumph over his own sensory deprivation in his later years. All of these represent a timely provocation to scholars to reflect on how we experience law, justice and power: about the role and limitations of the senses in this regard, and the ways that law signifies beyond that which can be seen, heard, touched, felt and smelled.

Therefore, interdisciplinary humanities-focused paper presentations are invited for an intimate roundtable event on themes that speak to notions of, for example:

-   Law and acoustics: what can be heard, and not heard, in legal proceedings?

              -  Legal vistas, signs and symbolism: which aspects of law are conspicuous by their visibility, and which by their invisibility?

-          Law and touch: how does law physically touch us (roughly or otherwise), and in what ways does it physically withdraw?

-          Law’s taste and its smell: is it the fine red wine on a judge’s dining table, or the salt spray on a boat carrying undocumented migrants?

If you would like to present a paper at this workshop, please send your title and abstract (up to 500 words) by Friday 13th December 2019 to David Gurnham (School of Law, University of Southampton - d.gurnham@soton.ac.uk), Stephanie Jones (Department of English, Southampton - S.J.Jones@soton.ac.uk), or Gary Watt (School of Law, University of Warwick -g.watt@warwick.ac.uk).

Law and Humanities also welcomes submissions of full-length articles, and the editors are happy to discuss with presenters at this workshop how their piece might be worked up for submission. Please note however that publication cannot be guaranteed since all submissions are peer reviewed.

Greenberg on Legal Interpretation @UCLA_Law

Mark Greenberg, UCLA School of Law and Department of Philosophy, is publishing Legal Interpretation in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

This paper is a long version of my chapter on legal interpretation for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. A shorter and otherwise modified version will go online soon. But some readers may be interested in the full-length version. Legal interpretation involves scrutinizing legal texts such as the texts of statutes, constitutions, contracts, and wills. This chapter introduces the foundational question of what legal interpretation, by its nature, seeks—and competing answers to that question. It goes on to canvas leading substantive theories of legal interpretation and examines in greater depth a few influential theories and difficulties they encounter. Finally, the chapter considers how theories of legal interpretation should be defended and evaluated.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Pottage on Holocene Jurisprudence @LSELaw

Alain Pottage, London School of Economics, has published Holocene Jurisprudence at 10 Journal of Human Rights and the Environment 153 (2019). Here is the abstract.

We are now accustomed to thinking of the Holocene as an epoch that we have left behind. But from what perspective do we close the Holocene and begin describing the Anthropocene? Academic disciplines have their own geology: epistemic or medial strata, sediments or condensations, which condition the apprehension and communication of fresh insight. The phrase ‘Holocene jurisprudence’ draws attention to a particular epistemic sediment: the figure of appropriation or ‘taking’, which is reactivated in many critical commentaries on the Anthropocene. And if, speaking figuratively, one were to identify an index fossil that compellingly expresses the epistemic traditions and potentialities that are sedimented into the Euro-American figure of appropriation, then Carl Schmitt's Nomos of the Earth would be a good candidate.

Read the full text at the link.

Kornhauser on Lobbying & Taxation, 1924-1936 @TulaneLaw

Marjorie E. Kornhauser, Tulane University School of Law, has published Lobbying & Taxation, 1924–1936 Part 2: American Voices in a Changing Democracy: Women, Lobbying, and Tax 1924–1936. Here is the abstract.

This Part of AMERICAN VOICES IN A CHANGING DEMOCRACY: WOMEN, LOBBYING, AND TAX 1924-1936 provides some background about two important aspects of American democracy that were greatly affected by societal changes during the 1924–1936 period: lobbying and taxation. It begins with a very brief discussion of the importance of lobbying in American politics and then focuses on the “new” lobbying of the 20th century. Although lobbying is as old as history, technological advances, especially in mass communications, facilitated changes in American lobbying that by the 1920s caused such concern among many politicians and commentators that they labeled lobbyists the “third house” of Congress. This Part then concludes with a brief overview of tax issues during 1924–1936 that persist today.

Download this part of the book from SSRN at the link.

Kornhauser on Women & Lobbying, 1924-1936: American Voices in a Changing Democracy @TulaneLaw

Marjorie E. Kornhauser, Tulane University School of Law, has published Women &  Lobbying, 1924–1936 Part 3: American Voices in a Changing Democracy: Women, Lobbying, and Tax 1924–1936. Here is the abstract.

This Part of AMERICAN VOICES IN A CHANGING DEMOCRACY: WOMEN, LOBBYING, AND TAX 1924-1936 provides background about women and lobbying during the 1924 – 1936 period of the book. It begins with a brief discussion of the changing role of women during this period. It describes the ways industrial and societal changes altered women’s roles in the domestic context as well as expanded their place in the public sphere. The chapter then proceeds to a discussion of women’s clubs, women’s political activity and women’s lobbying generally. It concludes with a brief analysis of women as progenitors of the 20th century’s “new” lobbying.

Download this part of the book from SSRN at the link.

Deadline Extended to November 30, 2019: Call For Papers For General Issue Australian Feminist Law Journal @austfem

Deadline extended:

AUSTRALIAN FEMINIST LAW JOURNAL

A Critical Legal Journal

CALL FOR PAPERS FOR GENERAL ISSUE

Volume 46.1, June 2020

 

Deadline EXTENDED – 30 November 2019

 

The Australian Feminist Law Journal is seeking articles for publication for the next General Issue of the Journal, namely Volume 46.1 (June 2020). The journal focuses upon scholarly research using critical feminist approaches to law and justice, broadly conceived. As an international Critical Legal Journal we publish research informed by critical theory, cultural and literary theory, jurisprudential, postcolonial and psychoanalytic approaches, amongst other critical research practices. The length of an article should be from 8,000 to 12,000 words, although shorter articles are welcome. We particularly wish to encourage interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary writing focusing on law.  Prospective authors are encouraged to submit a proposed abstract to the Managing Editors at an early stage before final submission.

Articles should be submitted electronically to the Managing Editors at: aflj@griffith.edu.au and should include an abstract (300 words), and a brief separate statement regarding their use of critical research methodologies or critical theory.

Refereeing of Articles

The Australian Feminist Law Journal referees all manuscripts submitted for publication as an article and follows the double-blind refereeing procedure. Referees will be selected with expertise in the author’s area of scholarship. Authors are requested to place their name and affiliation on a separate page, and eliminate any self-identifying citation of one’s own work. The journal will not accept manuscripts for consideration that are already under consideration by another journal. The AFLJ has Green Open Access status within national research funding policy.

Manuscript Style and Presentation

The journal style should be followed as closely as possible, to eliminate delays at the time of printing where an incorrect style would necessitate changes.
An electronic version of the journal style guide can be found on the AFLJ website:  http://www.griffith.edu.au/criminology-law/australian-feminist-law-journal/contributor-guide.
Academic and subscription enquiries may be forwarded to aflj@griffith.edu.au

Editor-in-Chief

Judith Grbich

Griffith Law School

Managing Editors

Karen Crawley & Laura Griffin

Griffith Law School

Since 2014 the Australian Feminist Law Journal has been published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis. www.tandfonline.com/rfem

Call For Participants, SEALS 2020 Discussion Group @capricelroberts

Call for Participants for a SEALS 2020 (July 30-Aug 5, Ft. Lauderdale Marriott) Discussion Group. 

If interested, please email the organizer, Professor Mitch Crusto (Loyola NoLa): 

mfcrusto@loyno.edu 

Interdisciplinary Problem-Solving: the Curious Case of Jeffrey Epstein 

Jeffrey Edward Epstein was an American financier and convicted sex offender. On August 8, 2019, Epstein reportedly executed a will (https://www.scribd.com/document/422423833/Jeffrey-Epstein-will#download&from_embed) that gave his vast wealth ($577 million) to a trust, dated the same day of the will. See https://time.com/5656776/jeffrey-epstein-will-estate/. At the time, Epstein was imprisoned, while facing trial for allegations of sexual assaults and sex trafficking. Two days later, he reportedly committed suicide by hanging himself in his jail cell. 

This episode raises both legal and ethics issues relating to the use of a trust to shield a settlor’s assets from the claims of sexual abuse victims. Fraudulent conveyance seems like a logical avenue for legal analysis, while analogizing the trust to a limited liability entity like a corporation or limited liability company also may provide insights.  

As law schools are required to establish learning outcomes that prepare students for real world practice, it is essential that students learn lawyering skill that require interdisciplinary analysis of the law and devise creative arguments to promote their clients’ goals, to attack or to defend the asset protection nature of a trust.

This discussion group explores how to teach creative problem-solving skills, by exploring the intersectionality of criminal law, trust laws, and corporate entity theory. For example, can “piercing the corporate veil” jurisprudence provide a winning argument as to why a court can or should disregard traditional trust law protection against sexual abuse claims of sexual assault by the trust settlor? Such a discussion might show the need for a novel approach to teaching problem-solving, one that is not limited to a narrow legal area of law.