A Conference on the Great Society

[Via Legal Scholarship Blog, we have the following call for papers.]

The University of Baltimore School of Law hosts the 19th Annual Mid-Atlantic People of Color Legal Scholarship Conference (MAPOC) 2014, "President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society and Beyond: The Historical and Contemporary Implications of Progressive Action and Human Fulfillment Honoring and Critiquing the 50th Anniversary of Johnson’s Vision," January 23-25, 2014.

In May 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson unveiled his revolutionary plans for the Great Society. As he explained it, Americans “have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society. . . . The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice.” At MAPOC 2014, we intend to explore the furthest implications of President Johnson’s domestic and foreign policies, especially the impact of these policies on progressive action and human fulfillment, as we collectively explore and analyze the contemporary implications of Johnson’s Great Society.

As part of the annual conference, the MAPOC Planning Committee provides scholars with an opportunity to present works-in-progress (WIPs) and receive feedback from a designated moderator and other conference attendees. We accept various types of proposals for WIP presentations, such as draft articles, article outlines, and article ideas. WIPs can cover any subject matter that is publishable in a law journal.  The submission deadline for WIP abstracts is Saturday, November 30, 2013.  If you would like to present a WIP, please send your abstract to Rosana Chavez at chavez.e.rosana@gmail.com.  If you have any questions about the WIPs abstract submission process, please contact Cris Houston at chouston@udc.edu.

MAPOC 2014 Planning Committee:
Reginald Leamon Robinson, Howard University, Chair
Odeana Neal, University of Baltimore, Site Chair
Cris Houston, University of the District of Columbia, Works-in-Progress Chair
dré pond cummings, Indiana Tech University
Paul Finkelman, Albany Law School

Ms. Peppercorn Considers: "How to Survive the Conference"

As we mentioned last month, guest blogger Sarah Barringer Gordon is helping us launch a new, reader-driven feature here on the blog:

Readers have responded so enthusiastically to [Gordon's] posts that we have invited her to stay on as a sort of advice columnist in residence -- someone to respond to questions about everything from applying to graduate school to publishing a third or fourth book.

She is doing this for nothing -- a peppercorn consideration, as they say in contract law -- and offers her advice with the proverbial grain of salt. With a nod to advice columnists past ("Dear Abby," "Dorothy Dix"), we will title these occasional posts "Ms. Peppercorn Considers."

Today Ms. Peppercorn considers how to survive the academic conference:

DEAR MS PEPPERCORN: I am planning to attend the ASLH meetingfor the first time.  I am a graduate student in history, and I have been to the AHA, where nobody talked to me other than a couple of equally lonely grad students.  I have heard that nobody at ASLH goes to any panels, and that the conference is full of people who all know each other. Like many academics, I’m kind of geeky, so I’m really excited to meet some fellow legal history geeks but terrified at the prospect of 72 hours of social awkwardness. Should I cancel my registration and come back when I am a more established scholar?

JOYLESS IN CHICAGO

DEAR JOYLESS:  you have raised a fundamental question about “how to survive the conference.”  One could write a treatise on the subject.  For certain, the AHA is its own beast, and Peppercorn has nothing to say about that.  The ASLH, however, has distinct qualities, some of which are virtues, and others are tolerable.  First, the panels.  Very very substantive, and full of strong new work.  Yes, you are right, there is a coterie of those who spend their time drinking coffee, and doing things like laughing and gossiping.  Believe me, when you get to that point, you have arrived!  You may well be the next in line for president of the society.

Read more »

CFP: Cadavers and Proofs in Early Modern European Forensic Medicine

[We have the following CFP for the conference, "The Corpse of Evidence: Cadavers and Proofs in Early Modern European Forensic Medicine."]

We invite scholars to submit abstracts for a proposed volume on the history of early modern European forensic medicine. At the center of the volume is the cadaver, observed, dissected and manipulated to provide answers to the questions of doctors, lawyers, theologians. How did the practices of interrogation of the dead body evolve in the different European countries and how did the concept of proof change?

Proposals are encouraged which, while based on specific case studies, can provide ample stimulus for reflection and allow for comparisons between countries with different cultural, and particularly scientific, traditions.

We welcome submissions on the following subjects:

- Medical-legal Literature
- Dissection practices and narratives
- Resistance to dissection
- Postmortem phenomena
- The corpse in the history of mentalités
- Comparative analyses between the various European legal systems
- Comparisons of doctors, lawyers and theologians
- Pathological anatomy and teratology
- Processes of beatification and sanctification in the Catholic Church

Those interested should submit a 300 word abstract describing the essay they propose to write. Authors should include a short cv, affiliation and contact information with their abstracts, which should be sent electronically to Dr. Francesco Paolo de Ceglia: francescopaolo.deceglia@uniba.it

The deadline for submission is November 1, 2013.."]

We invite scholars to submit abstracts for a proposed volume on the history of early modern European forensic medicine. At the center of the volume is the cadaver, observed, dissected and manipulated to provide answers to the questions of doctors, lawyers, theologians. How did the practices of interrogation of the dead body evolve in the different European countries and how did the concept of proof change?

Proposals are encouraged which, while based on specific case studies, can provide ample stimulus for reflection and allow for comparisons between countries with different cultural, and particularly scientific, traditions.

We welcome submissions on the following subjects:
- Medical-legal Literature
- Dissection practices and narratives
- Resistance to dissection
- Postmortem phenomena
- The corpse in the history of mentalités
- Comparative analyses between the various European legal systems
- Comparisons of doctors, lawyers and theologians
- Pathological anatomy and teratology
- Processes of beatification and sanctification in the Catholic Church

Those interested should submit a 300 word abstract describing the essay they propose to write. Authors should include a short cv, affiliation and contact information with their abstracts, which should be sent electronically to Dr. Francesco Paolo de Ceglia: francescopaolo.deceglia@uniba.it

The deadline for submission is November 1, 2013.

CFP: ASLH-ESCLH Panel on Traditions and Change

[Via H-Law, we have the followng CFP sent out by Christopher Tomlins, the Chancellor's Professor of Law, at the School of Law, University of California, Irvine,]

Proposals are invited from ASLH members interested in joining an ASLH-sponsored panel at the European Society for Comparative Legal History's biennial meeting, to be held 8-9 July 2014 in Macerata, Italy, at the University of Macerata.  (Conference proceedings will be in English.)

As part of its policy of international outreach, the ASLH has entered into an agreement with the ESCLH by which each association will sponsor a panel to take part in the other association's meeting on a biennial basis.  In 2013 the ASLH will host an ESCLH panel at its Miami meeting.  In turn, the ESCLH will host an ASLH panel at its Macerata meeting.

The theme of the ESCLH meeting is "Traditions and Changes."  The meeting organizers elaborate on the theme [here], where  additional information is available).  Here is a compressed version of the conference call:

"The conference encourages scholars to use comparative-historical approaches for working on the complex concepts of 'tradition' and 'change', both separately and in correlation.  What do we think tradition is? How is it made up, 'built' or 'invented'?  How does it relate to concepts like recollection, historical store-room, juridical experience, legal culture, and/or legal system?  What purpose does a tradition serve? Why and how is it used to promote or reject change and transformation?  Is tradition a synonym of 'past,' and change a synonym of 'future.' or does a dialectic prevail which can, at times, unite or separate tradition and change?  What role do jurists and doctrine carry in this field?  We encourage reflection not only on 'tradition' and 'change' as categories, but also on how they are used.  It is clear that power in general and public or private institutions in particular seek legitimacy though recourse to 'tradition,' or alternatively 'rationalization.'  Note also the growing use of polyvalent categories like 'western legal tradition' (both in the singular and the plural) or 'common constitutional traditions.'"

Papers for the ASLH panel will be selected with the following criteria in mind: appropriateness to the conference theme; historiographical/substantive originality; thematic unity for a single panel; and capacity to engage with the host society's scholarly audience.  Proposals on any area of comparative legal history that relates to the general theme of "Traditions and Changes" are welcome. Paper proposals submitted for the ASLH panel but not selected will be forwarded to the conference organizers for their consideration.

Participants in the ASLH panel are expected to seek funding support from their home institutions to meet the costs of conference attendance in the first instance.  "Top-up" support (maximum $5000 for the panel as a whole) will be available from the ASLH for participants whose home institutions will not meet their full expenses.  Proposals should consist of (1) a 250 word synopsis of the proposed paper, and (2) a US$ estimate of the prospective participant's expenses accompanied by a reliable estimate of the US$ funds available to the prospective participant to meet those expenses.

Proposals should be sent by email attachment to ctomlins@law.uci.edu.  Deadline for receipt of proposals is 15 December 2013.

CFP: Cuius Regio, Eius Religio

[We have the following CFP, from Gabriela Grochola, "Leader of the Section of State and Law History, Students Learned Society," Jagiellonian University.]

Jagiellonian University. Collegium Maius. Assembly Hall.  Credit

I am writing to give you information on an international conference Cuius regio, eius religio – history of relationship between Church and State, 14-15th December, 2013. The event is organized by employers, PhD students and members of the Student Learned Society of the Faculty of Law and Administration at the Jagiellonian University.  We would like to invite young researchers of law and the history of law: graduate students, PhD students and PhD graduates. Applications for the conference should be received until the 17th November 2013 on an application form and should include a short summary of main theses (maximum 300 words; methodology, bibliography). The applications will be verified and subsequently a response will be send. What is essential, the positive decision is required to make a payment. A presentation cannot take longer than 20 minutes and texts for publishing cannot exceed the length of 20000 characters. Two languages will be used during the conference: Polish and English. An edited book, composed of verified texts, is expected to be published, likewise antecedent events.

We provide participants with one meal during the conference.  A conference fee is fixed at 70 zlotys (PLN)/18 (euro). Accommodation is not included, nevertheless help with finding hotel or hostel will be provided. Bank account number will be attached to the response to your application.  For more information please contact us via e-mail: konferencjakrakow@gmail.com.  We strongly invite you to come to Krakow.

"Saving the Neigborhood": A Conference at Arizona

We have an announcement of a conference on Richard Brooks and Carol M. Rose’s Saving the Neighborhood: Racially Restrictive Covenants, Law and Social Norms, to be held at the University of Arizona College of Law, in Tucson, Arizona, on January 31, 2014.  Moderators are Robert Glennon and Brent White.  Featured panelists include Robert Gordon, Lani Guinier, Gabriel "Jack" Chin, Risa Goluboff. Gerald Torres, and Price Fishback.  Space is limited; register here.

The Law and the Child in Historical Perspective

[We have the following announcement for the conference "The Law and the Child in Historical Perspective, 1400-2000," to be held June 1-2, 2014, at the University of Minnesota Law School, 229 19th Ave. South, Minneapolis, MN 55455.]

The study of the history of children, youth and childhood has grown dramatically in the last two decades, making age a new category of historical analysis.  The Law and the Child will focus on law's central role in changing understandings of childhood and children's experiences, considering among other things selfhood, family, market relations, society, and state.  Our hope is for a broad reach geographically and chronologically, from the Medieval World to the Twenty-First Century, and for papers that consider the multiple sources that intersect in the legal construction of childhood and in children's lived legal experiences.  These include race, class, gender, disability, sexuality, ethnicity, psychology, dependency, agency, citizenship, and (il)legitimacy.  We also hope papers will address topics in both civil and criminal law.  The conference, one of a series begun in 2007, is intended to showcase the work of junior scholars working the field of legal history and to bring them into conversation with senior scholars.  It is co-sponsored by the University of Minnesota Law School and History Department, the Childhood and Youth Studies Across the Disciplines IAS Research Collaborative at the University of Minnesota, the Indiana University School of Law, the University of Pennsylvania Law School and History Department, the University of Illinois College of Law, the University of Michigan Law School, and the University of Chicago Department of History.

Interested participants should submit a proposal of no more than 300 words, in Word format, accompanied by a cv of no more than 3 pages to Barbara Welke at welke004@umn.edu.  All proposals are due by 20 December 2013.  Applicants will be notified by email no later than 17 February 2014 whether their proposals have been accepted for presentation.  No previously published work will be accepted, as the conference is designed to provide a forum for productive and supportive discussion of works in progress.

Accepted participants will be required to submit a full paper, in Word format, of no more than 10,000 words by 1 May 2014.  All papers will be pre-circulated on a password-protected website, and read by all participants.  A modest travel and accommodations budget will be provided for all presenters.

"The 100th Anniversary of the Revenue Act of 1913"

New York Law School is marking the 100th anniversary of the Revenue Act of 1913 with a day of events. Here's the description and the schedule:

President Woodrow Wilson signed the Revenue Act of 1913 into law on October 3, 1913. On October 4, 2013, the 100th Anniversary Symposium will consider the past and future of the income tax and the practice of tax law. Keynote speakers Edward Kleinbard (former Chief of Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation) and Karen Hawkins (Director of the IRS Office of Chief Counsel) will be joined by Lee Sheppard (star Tax Notes columnist), Meghan Brackney (Chair of the NYCLA Tax Section), Michael Hirschfeld (Chair of the ABA Tax Section) and other luminaries of the New York tax bar and the tax professoriate.

8:30am Registration and breakfast

9:00 to 9:30am – Welcome and Keynote Address

Edward Kleinbard, Professor of Law, USC Gould School of Law

9:30 to 11:00am Panel I – Withholding and Information Reporting from 1913 to FATCA

Ann F. Thomas (Chair), Otto L. Walter Distinguished Professor of Tax Law and Director of the Graduate Tax Program, New York Law School; Alan Appel, Professor of Law and Director, International Tax Program, New York Law School; Valeriya Avdeev, Assistant Professor, Cotsakos College of Business, William Paterson University; Lee A. Sheppard, Contributing Editor, Tax Analysts

11:15 to 12:30pm Panel II – Debt, Taxes and the Economy

Richard Beck (Chair), Professor of Law and founding director of the Graduate Tax Program, New York Law School; Diane Fahey, Associate Professor of Law, New York Law School; Maria Pirrone, Assistant Professor, The Peter Tobin College of Business, St. John’s University; Dennis Ventry, Professor of Law, UC Davis School of Law

12:30 to 1:00pm – Lunch

1:00 to 1:45pm – A Conversation with Lawrence Feld and Alan Appel: Highlights From the History of Criminal Tax Law Enforcement

Lawrence Feld, Partner, Law Office of Lawrence S. Feld

2:00 to 3:30pm Panel III – U.S. Tax Policy in a Global Economy

Reuven Avi-Yonah (Chair), Professor of Law, University of Michigan School of Law; Peter H. Blessing, Head of Cross-Border Corporate Transactions, KPMG, LLP; Diane Ring, Professor of Law, Boston College School of Law; Fadi Shaheen, Assistant Professor of Law, Rutgers-Newark School of Law

3:30 to 4:45pm Panel IV – Perspectives on the Practice of Tax Law

William LaPiana (Chair), Rita and Joseph Solomon Professor of Law, New York Law School; Megan Brackney, Partner, Kostelanetz & Fink LLP, and Chair, NYCLA Tax Committee; Michael Hirschfeld, Partner, Dechert LLP, and Chair, ABA Tax Section; Elizabeth Kessenides, Principal, Berdon LLP; Michael L. Schler, Partner, Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP

4:45 to 5:30pm – Closing Keynote Address

Karen L. Hawkins, Director of the Office of Professional Responsibility, Internal Revenue Service

5:30pm to 6:30pm – Wine and Cheese Reception

 Follow the link to register.

CFP: Law & Humanities Junior Scholar Workshop

[We have the following call for papers.]

The University of Southern California Center for Law, History & Culture, UCLA School of Law, Columbia Law School, and Georgetown University Law School invite submissions for the tenth meeting of the Law & Humanities Junior Scholar Workshop to be held at USC School of Law in Los Angeles, CA on June 8 & 9, 2014.

PAPER COMPETITION:

The paper competition is open to untenured professors, advanced graduate students, and post-doctoral scholars in law and the humanities; in addition to drawing from numerous humanistic fields, we welcome critical, qualitative work in the social sciences.  Based on anonymous evaluation by an interdisciplinary selection committee, between five and ten papers will be chosen for presentation at the June Workshop.  At the Workshop, two senior scholars will comment on each paper.  Commentators and other Workshop participants will be asked to focus specifically on the strengths and weaknesses of the selected scholarly projects, with respect to subject and methodology. The selected papers will then serve as the basis for a larger conversation among all the participants about the evolving standards by which we judge excellence and creativity in interdisciplinary scholarship, as well as about the nature of interdisciplinarity itself.

Papers should be works-in-progress between 10,000 and 15,000 words in length (including footnotes/endnotes), and must include an abstract of no more than 200 words.  A dissertation chapter may be submitted, but we strongly suggest that it be edited so that it stands alone as a piece of work with its own integrity.  A paper that has been submitted for publication is eligible so long as it will not be in galley proofs or in print at the time of the Workshop.  The selected papers will appear in a special issue of the Legal Scholarship Network; there is no other publication commitment.  The Workshop will pay the travel and hotel expenses of authors whose papers are selected for presentation.

Submissions (in Word, no pdf files) will be accepted until January 6, 2014, and should be sent by e-mail to:? Center for the Study of Law and Culture,culture@law.columbia.edu.  Please be sure to include your name, institutional affiliation (if any), telephone and e-mail contact information. 

For more information contact Cindy Gao, 212.854.0167 or culture@law.columbia.edu.  Past winners are here.

CFP for LSA: Colonial Law around the Indian Ocean

[We have the following CFP.]

We seek panelists for the 2014 Law and Society Association meeting in Minneapolis (May 29-June 1) for a panel entitled Colonial Law around the Indian Ocean. We are looking for scholars interested in colonial law around the Indian Ocean littoral, including East Africa, Persian Gulf, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. We are particularly interested in papers that probe legal classifications, different understandings of imperial and/or indigenous legal knowledge, and related topics. Our panel currently comprises one paper that would explore legal classification of Arabs in the Netherlands Indies and another that would focus on colonial versus metropolitan classifications of legal knowledge and legal conceptions of publicity in the French Indian Ocean colonies.

If you're interested in joining our panel, please contact both Laurie Wood at lmwood2@wisc.edu and Fadzilah Yahaya at nyahaya@wustl.edu before October 7.

Trials for International Crimes in Asia

We have an announcement for the conference, "Trials for International Crimes in Asia," hosted by the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, on October, 17-18, 2013.  According to the announcement, the conference

will examine the legal issues arising from the tribunals convened in Asia to deal with crimes of international import - namely, aggression, war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. It will consider both tribunals that have been established on the initiative of Asian governments and tribunals mounted in Asia at the behest of non-Asian governments or international organisations. In keeping with the legal theme, it will lay particular stress on the different modes of liability developed within these courts' respective jurisdictions - among them, joint criminal enterprise, command responsibility, complicity, and defences against them.

Over a seven-decade time-span, many tribunals have been convened in the region, from the earliest, established in Manila and Tokyo after the Second World War, to the latest, currently hearing cases in Phnom Penh and Dhaka. During the intervening years, lesser-known trials were also mounted by the colonial powers in Singapore, Hong Kong, Batavia, Saigon and elsewhere; by the Guomindang and People's Republic of China in the early Cold War period; and by the Vietnamese authorities after Khmer Rouge rule in the 1970s. Beyond the historical-political analysis, the conference aims to draw substantive conclusions about the legal legacy of these tribunals, and appraise the mechanisms evolving in Asia today, either at the 'hybrid' internationalised tribunals or within national systems.

Places are limited. For further details, please email: cals@nus.edu.sg.  The registration form is here.  The schedule appears after the jump.
Read more »

Policy History Plenaries Announced

The Institute for Political History and the Journal of Policy History are drumming up interest in next June’s Conference on Policy History by circulating news of three plenary sessions:

Wednesday June 4:  “Party Balance, Partisan Polarization, and Policy Conflict,” with Michael Holt, Daniel Walker Howe, Richard John, Gareth Davies, Sidney Milkis, Byron Shafer
   
Thursday June 5: “Can Social Activism Change Public Policy? If so, How? If not, Why Not?” with Mark Brilliant, Rhonda Williams, Nancy MacLean, Matthew Garcia
    
Friday, June 6: “New Perspectives on the Presidency and Party Politics,” with Jeffrey Pasley, Mark Summers, Irwin Gellman, Bruce Miroff, Daniel DiSalvo

The conference–the eighth biennial– will take place at the Sheraton Capitol Square Hotel in downtown Columbus, Ohio from June 4-7, 2014.  The organizers report:

We are currently accepting panel and paper proposals on all topics regarding American political and policy history, political development, and comparative historical analysis. Complete sessions, including two or three presenters with chair/commentator(s) are strongly encouraged. Individual paper proposals are welcome. Because the conference has grown in size, individual papers might have a more difficult time being placed on the program. In order to accommodate more participants, conference organizers have created a poster session which will allow younger scholars to display their research projects.  Participants may only appear once as a presenter in the program. 

 Proposals for posters, panels and papers must be submitted online here.  Deadline for submission is December 2, 2013.

Conference: Law and Governance in Britain

Via the Canadian Legal History Blog, we have the following announcement:

The University of Western Ontario is holding a conference, Law and Governance in Britain, October 25-26, with an impressive slate of historians from Canada and around the globe.

Here's some additional information, from the conference website:

Over the course of two days we will hear from an international group of social historians of the law that spans the full breadth of career stages, from doctoral students through postdoctoral fellows, young and mid-career faculty and full professors. The temporal focus is on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The theme of these conferences has always been intentionally broad, with speakers asked simply to talk about whatever aspect of their research interests them most at the time. The results have proved rewarding: in 2009 policing emerged as a key topic; in 2013 the relationship between justice and the press is an evident preoccupation for many of our participants. The initial paper thus considers the current historiography relating to crime and the press; one panel concentrates on various components of the newspapers, from law reports and advertisements to letters to the editor; another panel is devoted to press coverage of famous murder trials. We expect, however, that discussion will range widely over the field, covering issues of process and procedure, content and format. Courtrooms include the King's Bench as well as the Old Bailey, and the contribution of habeas corpus to the rule of law is considered. The media theme is not limited to text, but also includes analysis of satirical prints. Recent interest in the history of the emotions is represented in our offerings and foreign nationals' experience of British justice also emerges as a subtheme.

CFP: Law & Society, 2014 - Oct. 15 deadline

The Law & Society Association invites you to participate in its 2014 annual meeting, May 29-June 1, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This meeting coincides with the LSA's 50th anniversary. Here's the call:

credit

Law and Inequalities: Global and Local

Recent decades have seen the persistence and growth of powerful inequalities within and between groups and within and among nations. The 2014 program theme returns to a question central to the Association’s founding:  the role of law and legal institutions in sustaining, creating, interrogating, and ameliorating inequalities. The 2014 Program invites participants to explore and consider three questions:  

• How can Law and Society scholarship contribute to unearthing and understanding inequalities?
• How can Law and Society scholarship contribute to the critical interrogation of discourses of equality and inequality and help to reveal what is at stake in these concepts?
• What impact can we expect these scholarly contributions to have on the persistence of these inequalities and on public discourse about them?

See more on the theme

Call for Proposals

The Program Committee invites proposals that engage with the program theme and other topics in law and society research. Proposals for individual papers or fully formed panels will be considered. As with every Annual Meeting, panels need not be centered on the conference theme. Submissions on any law and society topic are welcome.

Note that the submission deadline is early this year: October 15, 2013. For more information, follow the link.

2013 Annual Meeting of the British Group of Early American Historians

Correspondence from Across the Pond

Norwich, UK, September 7, 2013

The 2013 annual meeting of the British Group of Early American Historians (BGEAH)  has featured several topics of considerable interest to legal historians.  Carla Pestana’s plenary address on Thursday was delivered in the medieval Dragon Hall.  Her talk focused on the unsuccessful seventeenth-century attack on Spanish Caribbean islands by Britain.  Debates over the validity of plunder under the law of war raged alongside powerful invocations of divine blessing and support on both sides of the fight. 

Other papers havetreated the law and practice of surrender, the granting of “peace bonds” by judges in colonial Pennsylvania, and the law of corporations in the early Republic, in addition to presentations on taverns, elite Mohawk culture, silkworms, and more.

BGEAH is a relatively new group.  The website records meetings going back to 2000, but others report the first meeting was several years earlier.  It is a delightfully collegial, non-hierarchical, and welcoming society (there is no membership fee, for example). 

This year's conference includes nine panel sessions, two plenaries, and tonight's conference dinner at the beautiful Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts. 

Founding member Betty Wood of Cambridge University has worked extensively on slavery and power.    She is currently studying relations between servants in the eighteenth-century Chesapeake, and welcomes insight into the law governing conflict between servants, including the practice of “auctioning” off newborn babies born to servant women at town fairs.

The Third Biennial UnCivil Wars Conference

Here is the schedule for the Third Biennial UnCivil Wars Conference, entitled “From Property to Personhood: The Intents and Unintended Consequences of the Reconstruction Amendments.”  It will take place on October 24-26, 2013, at the T.R.R. Cobb House, 157 Hill Street, Athens, GA.

Read more »

William E. Nelson, Scholar and Historian

[Via H-Law, we have the following announcement of the roundtable discussion, "William E. Nelson, Scholar and Historian."]


On Thursday, 7 November 2013, from 3:30 pm to 5:30 pm, the Chicago-Kent Law Review and Professors Felice Batlan and R. B. Bernstein present a roundtable discussion of the work of William E. Nelson in the Orchid D room of the Hyatt Regency Miami, the convention hotel for the 2013 convention of the American Society for Legal History.  The articles that will be the basis of the roundtable will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Chicago-Kent Law Review in 2014.  This session will not be an official part of the ASLH convention, but will complement its proceedings.  The roundtable will feature:

Moderators: Felice Batlan, Chicago-Kent Law School, and R. B. Bernstein, City College of New York and New York Law School

David Thomas Konig, Washington University in St. Louis, on Americanization of the Common Law: The Impact of Legal Change on Massachusetts Society, 1760-1800 and Dispute and Conflict Resolution in Plymouth County, 1725-1825

Gautham Rao, American University Law School, on The Roots of American Bureaucracy, 1830-1900

Paul Finkelman, Albany Law School, on The Fourteenth Amendment: From Political Principle to Judicial Doctrine

Mark McGarvie, William and Mary Law School, on Marbury v. Madison: The Origins of Judicial Review* and *Constitution and Rights in the Early American Republic

Edward A. Purcell, Jr., New York Law School, on The Legalist Reformation: Law, Politics, and Ideology in New York, 1920-1980 and Fighting for the City: A Legal History of the New York Corporation Counsel

Brad Snyder, University of Wisconsin Law School, on In Pursuit of Justice: Edward Weinfeld as Lawyer and Judge and Nelson's articles on Justice Byron R. White

Lauren Benton, New York University, on The Common Law in Colonial America, volumes 1 & 2.

Professor William E. Nelson, New York University School of Law, will respond.

Light refreshments will be provided.

CFP: "Beyond Merchant and Missionary: Samuel Moyn and the quest for a holistic history of Human Rights, 1945-present"

Via H-Net, we have the following Call for Papers: Beyond Merchant and Missionary: Samuel Moyn and the quest for a holistic history of Human Rights, 1945-present. Here's the announcement:

With this conference we are making way for a new, comprehensive and interdisciplinary analysis of Human Rights history (1945-2013). We are bringing together different disciplines, but also renowned academics and talented young professionals. We intend to trigger those who study Human Rights to ask new questions and those who are working in a in an adjacent field to include the concept of Human Rights and the ideas of the Human Rights movement, and to face legal-philosophical complexity in their analysis.

In the last couple of years, in the United States, many books have been published on the post-War history of Human Rights. Especially Samuel Moyn’s contribution has made some challenging points. The modern concept of human rights, he says, differs radically from older claims of rights, like those that arose out of the French Revolution. According to Moyn, human rights in their current form can be traced not to the Enlightenment, nor to the humanitarian impulses of the 19th century nor to the impact of the Holocaust after World War II. Instead, he sees them as dating from the 1970s, exemplified by the efforts of the Carter presidency to make human rights a pillar of United States foreign policy and the Helsinki Accords.

Read more »

ASLH: Registration and Transportation

Via H-Law we have the following announcement:

Online registration is now open for the 2013 ASLH meeting in South Florida.  Access to the online registration is available at here.  A link for discounted rooms under the conference block will be emailed to members after they register for the conference. Please contact the ASLH webmaster if you do not receive the link.

To help in making travel plans, the local arraignments committee provides the following information on Transportation from the airport to Hyatt Regency Miami

Read more »

A Legal History "CRN" for the Law and Society Association

[We have the following announcement.]

Greetings from Law & History, recently established as a Collaborative Research Network (CRN) within the Law and Society Association. We are currently putting together a group of legal historians who might be interested in presenting at LSA meetings, and using this list to organize papers and panels.

This CRN brings together scholars interested in legal history, both American and non-American, of any time period from contemporary to ancient.  We welcome a broad array of scholarly interests and methodological approaches.  Our scholars explore the development of legal doctrines and jurisprudence, the evolution of legal institutions, and the changing role of law in society.  They apply and develop a diverse set of methods, including those of social, intellectual, cultural, and critical history.  The Law and Society Movement has long welcomed both legal historians and legal history and we hope this CRN extends the benefits of that relationship.  Our goals include supporting methodological discussions across sub-specialties and between historical and other approaches to studying law and society; creating opportunities for cross-generational and inter-disciplinary professionalization; and encouraging publication of CRN research, such as edited volumes and symposia in law and society journals, law reviews, and outlets in our home disciplines.  We discuss teaching methods and share syllabi and other teaching resources for undergraduate, graduate, and professional school classes on law and social movements.

The next LSA conference is May 29-June 1, 2014; the deadline is Sept. 15, 2013. More information is here.

If you are interested in joining, please email Joanna Grisinger at joanna.grisinger@northwestern.edu.

Sincerely,

Joanna Grisinger, Senior Lecturer, Center for Legal Studies, Northwestern University
Kimberly Welch, Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of West Virginia 
Logan Sawyer, Assistant Professor, University of Georgia Law School
Kathryn Schumaker, Lecturer, Institute for the American Constitutional Heritage, University of Oklahoma