CALL FOR PAPERS: Weimar and the Constitutional Cycle Post Great War - In the Centenary of the Weimar Constitution, 1919-2019 (Lisbon: Lisbon Geographic Society, 28-29 NOV 2019); DEADLINE 30 SEP 2019

(image source: Bayern Radio)

Abstract:

Elapsing in 2019, a century since the creation and implementation of the Weimar Constitution, the Lisbon Geographic Society promotes, in co-organization with the European Centre for the Study of Constitutional History (CHC), with the Institute of Contemporary History (IHC) of NOVA University Lisbon, with the CEDIS – Research Centre on Law and Society of NOVA University Lisbon, and with the Universidade Europeia, the holding of an International Congress dedicated to this event. The Congress will take place on 28 and 29 November, seeking to bring together the contribution of researchers and interested, around the following thematic areas:

I – Weimar Constitution Weimar in constitutional history and historiography II – The historical-political context of the Weimar Constitution III – The Weimar Constitution: sources, works and constituents IV – The organization of political power in the Weimar Constitution V – The fundamental rights in the Weimar Constitution VI – The coeval Constitutions of Weimar: The Constitutions of the End of the Great War VII – The coeval Constitutions of Weimar: The Constitutions of the immediate post War VIII – The influence of the Weimar Constitution 

Practical details:

 Experts and interested in participating are invited to send, until September 30, to the congress email: congressoweimar2019@hotmail.com, the theme and the respective abstract (maximum of two pages), accompanied by a biographical note. After examination by the Scientific Council, the authors will be duly notified until October 10. The final program, as well as the volume with abstracts of the communications, will be available from November 9. Participants in the Congress are requested to send their final text by December 31. The official languages of the Congress are Portuguese, Spanish, French, English and German.

Scientific Committee:

Profs. Doutores Luís Aires de Barros, Armando Marques Guedes, Diogo Freitas do Amaral, Eduardo Vera Cruz, Fernando Larcher, Isabel Graes, José João Abrantes, Jorge Bacelar Gouveia, Miguel Ayuso, Paula Borges Santos e Pedro Velez 

(source: calenda)

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Junior Scholars’ Workshop on the Pure Theory of Law (Freiburg) (DEADLINE: 31 October 2019)

(Source: HSozKult)

Via H/Soz/Kult, we learned of a call for applications for a workshop on the Pure Theory of Law, organized by the Hans‐Kelsen‐Forschungsstelle.

The Hans Kelsen Research Group holds annual two‐day Junior Scholars’ Workshops on the Pure Theory of Law in the Black Forest. Junior scholars (PhD students and above) will present papers and cutting‐edge research ideas on Hans Kelsen and the Pure Theory of Law and discuss them in an intensive workshop with both the presenters as well as experienced scholars working on Kelsen in attendance. Participants will also be introduced to the Mainz Academy of Sciences and Literature’s long‐running edition of the complete works of Hans Kelsen (‘Hans Kelsen Werke’) […]

The full call can be found here

JOB: Associate Professor or Full Professor – Legal History of the United States (Princeton University)

(Source: Princeton)

Princeton University has an open application for a professorship with a strong focus on the history of American law and society. Here the call (review of files to start on 7 October 2019). Here the call:

Legal History of the United States. Associate or Full Professor. Anticipated start date: September 1, 2020. The Department of History at Princeton University invites applications from scholars with a strong engagement with the history of American law and society. The time period--from the colonial period to the present--and field of specialization are open, but the candidate should be prepared to offer an undergraduate survey on American legal history, as well as upper-level undergraduate courses and graduate seminars on specialized aspects of this field. Review of files will begin October 7, 2019, but applications will be considered until the department chooses to close the search. Applicants should provide a detailed letter of application, curriculum vitae, book abstract(s) and chapter outline(s), and one chapter- or article-length writing sample. Applicants should also provide contact information for at least three potential recommenders as part of the online application process. Please apply online at https://www.princeton.edu/acad-positions/position/12681

This position is subject to the University's background check policy.

All info to be found here

ARTICLE: Dylan LINO, "The Rule of Law and the Rule of Empire: A.V. Dicey in Imperial Context", Modern Law Review LXXXI (2018) 739

(image: Albert Venn Dicey; source: Wikimedia Commons)

Abstract:

The idea of the rule of law, more ubiquitous globally today than ever before, owes a lasting debt to the work of Victorian legal theorist A.V. Dicey. But for all of Dicey’s influence, very little attention has been paid to the imperial entanglements of his thought, including on the rule of law. This article seeks to bring the imperial dimensions of Dicey’s thinking about the rule of law into view. On Dicey’s account, the rule of law represented a distinctive English civilisational achievement, one that furnished a liberal justification for British imperialism. And yet Dicey was forced to acknowledge that imperial rule at times required arbitrariness and formal inequality at odds with the rule of law. At a moment when the rule of law has once more come to license all sorts of transnational interventions by globally powerful political actors, Dicey’s preoccupations and ambivalences are in many ways our own.

Read the full article on SSRN.

FELLOWSHIP: Application for Visiting Research Scholar – Historians working on revolutionary change (Princeton University) (DEADLINE: 1 December 2019)

(Source: Princeton)

We learned that the Davis Center at Princeton University has an open application for visiting research scholars. Here the call:

Historians have always considered moments of revolutionary change to be central objects of study. These moments do not necessarily involve politics, and are not limited to the modern world. The word "revolutionary" itself may be a relatively recent coinage (dating from the early modern period), but the sorts of change that it denotes have taken place in every area of human activity, and in every time and place. Revolutionary change is rapid and destabilizing. It is also dynamic, in the sense that it does not simply reflect or extend the forces which originally generated it, but builds on itself in original and often wholly-unpredictable ways. It can be both destructive and creative. It can entail a frightful human cost, but it can also open up new human possibilities and freedoms. It can take place on many different spatial and temporal scales-and at the same time, it can radically transform human understandings of the scales themselves.

In 2020-22, the Davis Center seeks applications from historians working on revolutionary change in any period of human history, and in any area, including (but not limited to) the histories of politics, culture, ideas, social structure, gender relations, sexuality, race relations, religion and the environment. We also welcome applications from historians working on the concept of revolutionary change itself, on how moments of such change are retrospectively identified, and on failed, incomplete or ineffective examples. We are particularly interested in developing conversations among historians working on revolutionary change in different areas and periods.

Fellowships are awarded for one semester or one academic year to employed scholars who are expected to return to their position. Verification of employment and salary will be requested prior to approval by the Dean of the Faculty. PhD required.

To apply for a visiting position, please visit: https://www.princeton.edu/acad-positions/position/12662

The deadline for receipt of applications and letters of recommendation for fellowships is December 1, 2019, 11:59 p.m. EST. Applicants must apply online and submit a CV, cover letter, research proposal, abstract of proposal, and contact information for three references.

More info here

ADVANCE ARTICLE: Greg CONTI, "‘L’âme générale d’une assemblée’: A neglected parliamentarian and the restoration theory of representation" (Global Intellectual History)

(image source: Taylor&Francis)

Abstract:

The Restoration remains an underserved era in the historiography of French political thought, particularly in scholarship focused on liberalism and representation. This article begins to remedy that deficit by reconstructing and contextualizing the views of a forgotten liberal theorist of representation, Pierre-François Flaugergues, who published two tracts on the subject in the electoral-reform controversies of 1820. Flaugergues is revealed to have been a thinker of force and originality, who advocated an electoral system anchored in class-based constituencies. Not only did Flaugergues ground his preferred representative arrangements in the first principles of moral psychology and natural right, but he linked his proposed scheme to a rich realm of values including deliberation, inclusivity, corporate agency, and stability. While Flaugergues's ideas of representation did not find much of a following in France, he can be understood as participating in a broader liberal tradition of thinking about the purpose and design of representative institutions.

(more with Taylor&Francis)

CALL FOR PAPERS: Resistance, Religion and Justice Symposium IV (MPI for European Legal History) (DEADLINE: 31 JULY 2019)

(Source: MPI for European Legal History)

We learned of a call for papers for the fourth symposium of the project RESISTANCE: Rebellion and Resistance in the Iberian Empires, 16th-19th centuries at the Max Planck Institute in Frankfurt.

The Max Planck Institute for European Legal History is hosting the fourth symposium of the project RESISTANCE: Rebellion and Resistance in the Iberian Empires, 16th-19th centuries (778076-H2020-MSCA-RISE-2017) in Frankfurt am Main (Germany) from 22-24 October 2019. The theme is ‘Resistance, Religion and Justice’.

Resistance is not limited to violent outbreaks or specific events but can also be practiced in long-term processes as well as in everyday life. The same diversity applies to the great variety of social actors and complex means that can be involved in a certain campaign of resistance. Within such a plural approach to the phenomenon of dissension and resistance, the symposium addresses different processes and episodes that took place within religious and judicial institutions in the Iberian Empires between 16th and 19th century. Even if usually driven by subaltern groups, most of these practices of resistance were not considered a threat to established orders and dominant groups. Nevertheless, they had could give new meanings to both secular and ecclesiastical normative production and governance practices, and had a significant impact on their framing. Moreover, the analysis of the entanglements between resistance practices and secular and ecclesiastical normativities allows a greater focus on the agency of social groups often neglected or discussed without proper attention to their specific contexts by traditional historiography.

Topics of interest for abstract submission include (but are not limited to) dependency relations, governance practices, and the circulation and materiality of different expressions of resistance.

Abstract proposals should be sent to Dr Benedetta Albani (albani@rg.mpg.de) before 31st July 2019.For more details, see the Call for Papers.

For more information on the RESISTANCE project, see here.

BOOK: Stefano VINCI, La Giustizia Penale nelle sentenze della Cassazione Napoletana (1809-1861) [IusRegni; Collana di Storia del diritto medievale, moderno e contemporaneo, vol. 7; ed. Francesco MASTROBERTI & Giacomo PACE GRAVINA] (Napoli: Editoriale Scientifica, 2019), 446 p. ISBN 9788893915465, € 32

(image source: Stefano Vinci)

Book abstract:

The book presents a research carried out on criminal judgements issued by the Grand Court of Cassation of Naples (1809-1816), and by the Supreme Court of Justice of Naples (1817-1861), through which the Author has tried to offer a reading in the history of criminal justice in the Kingdom of Naples. The visual angle of the judicial casuistry has allowed, in fact, to examine the various problems that have developed during the course of the time, relating to the excesses of arbitrariness perpetrated by the courts, the difficulties of interpretation, the guidelines for the the appellants, the contrasts in case-law and the law doubts that have been brought to the attention of the government. This reconstruction has allowed, in addition, to conduct a study on the supreme body of justice of Naples, which in the French decade and in the five-year period of the Restoration took a leading role in driving of the lower courts towards the application of the new codes and of the law and that, after the crisis of the Twenties, would gradually take over the leadership position undisputed of the judicial pyramid, with the consolidation of judicial guidelines of legitimacy.

On the author (in Italian):

Stefano Vinci insegna Storia della Giustizia nel Corso di Laurea ma- gistrale in Giurisprudenza presso il Dipartimento Jonico in Sistemi giuridici ed economici del Mediterraneo: società, ambiente, culture dell’Ateneo barese. È autore di saggi sulla storia giuridica del Mezzo- giorno nell’Ottocento e sulla storia dell’Avvocatura nel ventennio fa- scista. Tra le sue monografie: Regimento et guberno. Amministrazione e finanza nei comuni di Terra d’Otranto tra antico e nuovo regime (Bari, Cacucci 2013); Il dibattito sul giudice unico in Italia tra Ottocento e No- vecento. Processo civile, processo penale e ordinamento giudiziario (Na- poli, Editoriale Scientifica 2016).

Sponsorship:

Opera realizzata con il contributo dell’Università degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro, Dipartimento Jonico in Sistemi Giuridici ed Economici del Mediterraneo: società, ambiente, culture. 

More with the publisher here.

BOOK: Patrick ARABEYRE & Olivier PONCET (dir.), La Règle de l’unité ? Le juge et le droit dans la France moderne (XVe-XVIIIe siècle) [Histoire du droit, 5] (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2019), 243 p. 978-2-4060-8281-1, € 29

(image source: Nomôdos)

Abstract:

Cet ouvrage collectif apporte des réponses à la question suivante : dans quelle mesure les juges ont-ils accompagné le mouvement d’unification conceptuelle du droit au profit du pouvoir royal, soit pour s’en faire les critiques, soit pour s’en faire les initiateurs ?

Table of contents:

Olivier Poncet, Introduction. Un roi, un droit : syllogismes modernes ?, p. 7

Première Partie. Une construction intellectuelle. Les arrêtistes
Anne Rousselet-Pimont, L’unité du droit vue par un arrêtiste toulousain. Géraud de Maynard (1537-1607), p. 19

Deuxième partie. Les leçons de la pratique. la part des situations locales
Elise Frêlon, Une activité juridique entre unité nationale et diversité locale. La jurisprudence du Parlement de Bordeaux à l’époque moderne, p. 47
Raphaëlle Lapôtre, Deux législations matrimoniales pour un royaume ? Concurrences et collaborations dans la pratique des tribunaux du Beauvaisis, xviie-xviiie siècles, p. 65

Troisième partie. Les leçons de la pratique. Entre grâce et logiques de pouvoir
Julie Claustre-Mayade, Le juge, interprète de la grâce ? La jurisprudence du Châtelet de Paris sur les lettres de grâce royale en faveur des endettés (xve siècle), p. 89
Katia Weidenfeld, La répression de la fraude fiscale, un accompagnement ambigu du pouvoir royal d’imposer (xive-xviiie siècle), p. 105

Quatrième partie. La voie de la procédure
Boris Bernabé, La procédure civile et la règle des trois unités ou la distinction de la procédure et de l’organisation judiciaire, p. 127
Ugo Bellagamba, Avocats et juges au xviiie siècle et durant la période révolutionnaire. De l’amitié entre gens de justice, p. 151
Xavier Godin, Le Conseil du roi et les réformes judiciaires civiles en Bretagne dans la première moitié du xvie siècle, p. 171

Cinquième partie. La mémoire des magistrats
Clément Pieyre, Des bibliothèques hautes de dix coudées. Les sources du droit dans les catalogues de vente publique des bibliothèques de magistrats du parlement de Paris au xviiie siècle, p. 197

Patrick Arabeyre, Conclusions. L’unité, une règle ?, p. 225

(more on Nomôdos)

BOOK : Florent GARNIER et al., eds., Cultures fiscales en Occident du Xe au XVIIe siècle : études offertes à Denis Menjot (Toulouse, 2019). ISBN 978-2-8107-0631-0, €27.00

(Source: PUM)

The Presses Universitaires du Midi has published a new book on fiscal cultures in Western Europe between the 10^th-17^th century, in honor of Professor Denis Menjot.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Denis Menjot est de ceux qui défrichent de nouveaux champs de la recherche, questionnent des sources pas toujours très bavardes, décryptent les processus de formation et les dynamiques des systèmes fiscaux. Il est encore de ceux qui défendent une histoire globale de la fiscalité et se refusent à n’y voir que techniques et chiffres. Il est enfin de ceux qui s’interrogent et croisent les fils entre histoire et présent. Le prélèvement fiscal, la fraude, la redistribution des ressources sont quelques-uns des champs explorés, intéressant tant l’idée de bien commun au Moyen Âge que celle de civisme fiscal de nos jours.

Les 28 contributions réunies en l’honneur de Denis Menjot s’inscrivent dans cette veine et voudraient témoigner de la pérennité de la dynamique qu’il a insufflée. Du Xe au XVIIe siècle pour de multiples espaces en Europe et en faisant jouer différents niveaux d’échelle, des cultures fiscales se donnent à voir. Elles sont d’abord perçues à partir de la construction de discours, de ce dire fiscal dont les retorses subtilités s’insinuent dans les moindres recoins de l’activité humaine. Il s’agit ensuite de descendre dans les entrailles du gouvernement des finances et sa mécanique parfois bien complexe, avant de tenter d’évaluer ce que l’on pourrait dénommer « les effets sociaux » tant sur le plan des structures que sur celui de la critique et des contestations, ce qui ramène de toute évidence au discours.

The ToC can be found here

More info here

JOURNAL: Journal of the History of International Law XXI (2019), No. 2 [Special Issue: Revisiting State Socialist Approaches to International Criminal and Humanitarian Law, ed. by Raluca GROSESCU & Ned RICHARDSON-LITTLE]

(image source: Brill)

Revisiting State Socialist Approaches to International Criminal and Humanitarian Law: An Introduction (Raluca Grosescu & Ned Richardson-Little)
Abstract:

This introductory essay provides an overview of the scholarship on state socialist engagements with international criminal and humanitarian law, arguing for a closer scrutiny of the socialist world’s role in shaping these fields of law. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the historiography on post-1945 international law-making has been generally dominated by a post-1989 sense of Western triumphalism over socialism, where the Soviet Union and its allies have been presented as obstructionists of liberal progress. A wave of neo-Marxist scholarship has more recently sought to recover socialist legal contributions to international law, without however fully addressing them in the context of Cold War political conflict and of gross human rights violations committed within the Socialist Bloc. In contrast, this collection provides a balanced understanding of the socialist engagements with international criminal and humanitarian law, looking at the realpolitik agendas of state socialist countries while acknowledging their progressive contributions to the post-war international legal order.

The Protagonism of the USSR and Socialist States in the Revision of International Humanitarian Law (Giovanni Mantilla)
Abstract:

The USSR and Socialist states played a crucial and still largely underappreciated role in the re-negotiation of international humanitarian law (IHL) in 1949 and 1977. Drawing on new multi-archival research, I demonstrate that the support of the Soviet Union and Socialist Bloc states was essential to the negotiation of key legal achievements with regard to non-traditional conflict forms and actors, including rules on internal conflicts, national liberation war, and irregular fighters. They exerted influence chiefly through concerted action to create or side with majority coalitions alongside neutral Western or Third World countries, forcing their principal Western foes to accept rules they found undesirable. Yet Soviet-Western interactions in the re-making of IHL were not simply confrontational. In the 1970s, as Cold War hostilities cooled, East and West engaged in partial backdoor cooperativeness, leading to critical features of the Additional Protocols I and II, including rules for the protection of civilians and IHL oversight.

Socialist Internationalism and Decolonizing Moralities in the UN Anti-Trafficking Regime, 1947–1954 (Sonja Dolinsek & Philippa Hetherington)
Abstract:

In the late 1940s, state socialist governments proclaimed that commercial sex did not exist under socialism. At the same time, they were enthusiastic participants in the drafting of a new UN Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others. This article explores state socialist involvement in the global moral reform drive accompanying the 1949 Convention. It traces the ideological coherence between Socialist Bloc and ‘Western’ delegations on the desirability of prostitution’s abolition. Conversely, it highlights splits on issues of jurisdiction, manifesting in the Soviet call for the eradication of the draft Convention’s ‘colonial clause’, which allowed states to adhere to or withdraw from international instruments on behalf of ‘non-self-governing territories’. We argue that critiques of the colonial clause discursively stitched together global moral reform and opposition to imperialism, according socialist and newly decolonized delegations an ideological win in the early Cold War.

State Socialist Endeavours for the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to International Crimes: Historical Roots and Current Implications (Raluca Grosescu)
Abstract:

This article analyses the role of Eastern European socialist governments and legal experts in encoding the non-applicability of statutory limitations to international crimes. It argues that socialist elites put this topic on the agenda of the international community in the 1960s through two interrelated processes. On the one hand, legal scholars cooperated with Western European lawyers in order to enforce the idea that the international crimes codified by the Nuremberg Charter should not be subject to prescription. On the other hand, Eastern European governments proposed and enabled – through their cooperation with African and Asian states – the adoption of the 1968 UN Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, this instrument became an important tool for advancing prosecutions of international crimes committed under dictatorships and violent conflicts, particularly in Central Eastern Europe and Latin America.

The Drug War in a Land Without Drugs: East Germany and the Socialist Embrace of International Narcotics Law (Ned Richardson-Little)
Abstract:

This article examines how the German Democratic Republic (GDR) engaged with the problem of international anti-narcotics law and how it came to embrace the global drug war. The international anti-narcotics system provided a means of signalling the GDR’s normalcy to the international community and allowed East Germany to highlight its absence of drug abuse at home as a demonstration of socialism’s superiority in comparison with the narcotics abuse crisis of the capitalist world. By the 1980s, however, the GDR’s support for the international prohibition of drug trafficking shifted from one of competition with the West to that of collaboration. Through cooperation between international experts from both East and West, GDR elites abandoned earlier concerns about state sovereignty to endorse the global harmonization of drug laws as part of the 1988 Vienna Narcotics Convention.

Crimes against the People – a Sui Generis Socialist International Crime? (Tamal Hoffmann)
Abstract:

Crimes against humanity is one of the core crimes in international criminal law, whose existence is treated as a natural reaction to mass atrocities. This idea of linear progress is challenged by this article, which demonstrates that in post-Second World War Hungary an alternative approach was developed to prosecute human rights violation committed against civilian populations. Even though this concept was eventually used as a political weapon by the Communist Party, it had long-lasting effects on the prosecution of international crimes in Hungary.

Book reviews:

• System, Order, and International Law: The Early History of International Legal Thought from Machiavelli to Hegel, edited by Kadelbach, Stefan, Thomas Kleinlein, and David Roth-Isigkeit (Claire Vergerio)
• Restricted Access Opfer – Die Wahrnehmung von Krieg und Gewalt in der Moderne, written by Svenja Goltermann (Milos Vec)

(source: ESILHIL Blog)

BOOK: Antoine LECA, Histoire juridique de la construction de l’État (Paris: Lexis Nexis, 2019). ISBN 9782711031085, €35.00

(Source: LexisNexis)

Lexis Nexis has published a new book on the legal construction of the French state, from its origins until 1958.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Cette histoire débute avec la respublica (terme latin qui a ouvert la voie à la notion moderne d’État). Celui-ci préfigure l’idée contemporaine de la « majesté de l’État » (Machiavel).

En effet, l’appareil étatique n’est pas une simple superstructure technique destinée à faire fonctionner la société : l’État transcende celle-ci.

Et ceci explique que des hommes puissent vivre et mourir pour lui, ne quid detrimenti respublica capiat (afin que l’Etat n’éprouve aucun dommage).

D’autant qu’avec la greffe chrétienne, l’État romain a élargi ses compétences ratio pastoralis : il a pris en charge le gouvernement pastoral des âmes.

Puis, après l’effondrement de l’Empire de Rome, l’ouvrage s’attarde sur le passage progressif d’une royauté avec un prince défendant son état c’est-à-dire agissant pour

préserver sa place, à un État avec un prince chargé de le défendre. Ensuite, le Roi n’a plus existé que par l’État et, avec les vicissitudes de l’histoire politique du XIXe siècle, il a pu se concevoir sans le Roi.

À partir de là, les pays d’Europe ont suivi plusieurs voies, parmi lesquelles celle de la France ayant abouti à l’établissement d’un État, revêtant une forme républicaine

démocratique et libérale, consacrée par la Constitution de la Ve République (1958).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Antoine Leca est agrégé des facultés de droit et professeur à Aix-Marseille Université.

More info here

JOURNAL: Jus Gentium. Journal of International Legal History IV (2019), No. 1

(image source: Lawbook Exchange)

Vol. 4, No. 1

January 2019

ARTICLES

Archives on Historical Titles to South China Sea Islands: The Spratlys

A. Carty

Ignatii Ivanovskii: First Head of the Chair of International Law at St. Petersburg University

V. I. Ivanenko

Island of Hope in the Vortex of Revolution: The Georgian Consul General in Odessa, 1918-1919

T. Korotkyi

A. Khevtsurian

Petrażycki’s Psychological Theory of Private International Law

O. O. Merezhko

NOTES AND COMMENTS

F. F. Martens: Russian Scholar, Diplomat, and Arbitrator

W. E. Butler

V. I. Ivanenko

DOCUMENTS AND OTHER EVIDENCE OF STATE PRACTICE

Imperial Russian Marine Legislation: 1803/1817

W. E. Butler

Vsevolod Pievich Danevskii: A Life Well-Lived

G. S. Starodubtsev

Latin American Treaty Collections and International Law Textbooks: From Independence to World War One

P. Macalister-Smith

J. Schwietzke

FROM THE LITERATURE

(more information on the journal's website)

(source: ESILHIL Blog)

BOOK: Hiroshi OKAYAMA, Judicializing the Administrative State The Rise of the Independent Regulatory Commissions in the United States, 1883-1937, 1st Edition (London: Routledge, 2019). ISBN 9781138306653,

(Source: Routledge)

Routledge is publishing a new book on the Independent Regulatory Commissions (1883-1937) in the United States.

ABOUT THE BOOK

A basic feature of the modern US administrative state taken for granted by legal scholars but neglected by political scientists and historians is its strong judiciality. Formal, or court-like, adjudication was the primary method of first-order agency policy making during the first half of the twentieth century. Even today, most US administrative agencies hire administrative law judges and other adjudicators conducting hearings using formal procedures autonomously from the agency head. No other industrialized democracy has even come close to experiencing the systematic state judicialization that took place in the United States.

Why did the American administrative state become highly judicialized, rather than developing a more efficiency-oriented Weberian bureaucracy? Legal scholars argue that lawyers as a profession imposed the judicial procedures they were the most familiar with on agencies. But this explanation fails to show why the judicialization took place only in the United States at the time it did. Okayama demonstrates that the American institutional combination of common law and the presidential system favored policy implementation through formal procedures by autonomous agencies and that it induced the creation and development of independent regulatory commissions explicitly modeled after courts from the late nineteenth century. These commissions judicialized the state not only through their proliferation but also through the diffusion of their formal procedures to executive agencies over the next half century, which led to a highly fairness-oriented administrative state.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hiroshi Okayama is Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of Law at Keio University, Tokyo, Japan.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

1. Chapter 1: Why Did the U.S. Administrative State Judicialize?

2. Chapter 2: The Judicial Roots of the Interstate Commerce Commission

3. Chapter 3: Creating the "Supreme Court of Finance"

4. Chapter 4: Retrenching Administrative Commissions, Expanding State Judiciality

5. Chapter 5: The Institutional Consolidation of the Independent Regulatory Commissions

Conclusion

Notes

Works Cited

Index

More information here

BOOK: Robin L. WEST, Civil Rights Rethinking their Natural Foundation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). ISBN 9781108736947, $ 29.99

(Source: CUP)

Cambridge University Press is publishing a new book dealing with the US’ Civil Rights Acts of the 19^th century and the foundations of civil rights.

ABOUT THE BOOK

All of us are entitled to the protections of law against violence, to a high quality education, to decent employment that respects our dignity, and to necessary assistance with our caregiving. Our civil rights are our rights to the protections of ordinary law - not constitutional law, and not only antidiscrimination law - that will ensure that we can participate in civil society, and hence lead flourishing lives. In this innovative work, Robin L. West looks back to nineteenth-century Civil Rights Acts to argue that the point of civil rights law is not only non-discrimination, but also to assure that all of us receive the protection of legal rights that promote human flourishing. Since the 1960s, Supreme Court decisions on civil rights issues have focused on non-discrimination and thus have 'hollowed out' this broader meaning of civil rights law. This book reconceives civil rights as a set of legal guarantees that all will be included in the legal, political, economic and social projects central to civil society.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

All of us are entitled to the protections of law against violence, to a high quality education, to decent employment that respects our dignity, and to necessary assistance with our caregiving. Our civil rights are our rights to the protections of ordinary law - not constitutional law, and not only antidiscrimination law - that will ensure that we can participate in civil society, and hence lead flourishing lives. In this innovative work, Robin L. West looks back to nineteenth-century Civil Rights Acts to argue that the point of civil rights law is not only non-discrimination, but also to assure that all of us receive the protection of legal rights that promote human flourishing. Since the 1960s, Supreme Court decisions on civil rights issues have focused on non-discrimination and thus have 'hollowed out' this broader meaning of civil rights law. This book reconceives civil rights as a set of legal guarantees that all will be included in the legal, political, economic and social projects central to civil society.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

1. The antidiscrimination principle and its discontents

2. Residues of injustice: formal equality and civil rights

3. Toward a jurisprudence of civil rights

4. A frayed quilt: our lost, imperfect, and unimagined civil rights

5. Protecting rights to enter: constitutional rights and civil rights in conflict

Conclusion.

More info here

VIDEO: The life and work of Jean Barbeyrac (Groningen, 2014)

The University of Groningen celebrated its 400th anniversary in 2014. Prof. em. Arno Vanderjagt (History of Ideas) comments in this video on Professor of Public and Private Law Jean Barbeyrac's life and work. Barbeyrac translated numerous authors from Latin into French, including Grotius, Pufendorf and Bynkershoek. His elaborate introductions and glossae achived the highest recognition by later scholars. Moreover, he published the volume on Greek and Roman treaties in the Supplément au Corps Universel Diplomatique du Droit des Gens in 1739.

(source: University of Groningen)

CALL FOR BIDS: ESCLH Biennial Conference, 2022

(image source: ESCLH)

The ESCLH would welcome bids to host the 2022 biennial conference. The event is a highlight of the comparative legal history calendar and we have been lucky in having excellent organisers for our conferences in the past. Bids should be sent to the President of the ESCLH, Matthew Dyson, on matthew.dyson@law.ox.ac.uk by 15 September 2019; Matt can also be contacted informally for feedback on a bid being put together.

CALL FOR EDITORS: Comparative Legal History (DEADLINE 15 OCT 2019)

(image source: ESCLH)

The ESCLH is seeking applications for talented and dedicated scholars to join the editorial board of our flagship Journal, Comparative Legal History.

We are particularly interested in one or more Editor, Articles Editor and Copy-editor. Evidence of scholarly ability, experience in editing or a willingness to learn quickly, and membership (or a commitment to become a member if appointed) of the ESCLH are requirements, but full training in the journal's processes will be provided as needed.

You would become part of an outstanding tradition of scholars (for example, our first and excellent Editors, Sean Donlan and Heikki Pihlajamäki) and contribute to the advancement of comparative legal history as part of a warm, supportive and dedicated team.

Applications, with a brief cover letter and short CV (no more than 4 pages) should be sent to Matthew Dyson, matthew.dyson@law.ox.ac.uk (President of the ESCLH) by 15 October 2019.

This position is not paid.

JOURNAL: Revue Française d'Histoire des Idées Politiques n° 49 (2019/1): Varia

(image source: cairn)

Rousseau et ses Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne ou Rousseau historien et législateur antimoderne ? (Alfred Dufour)
Abstract:

Réputé « mauvais historien » et théoricien politique plus que législateur, Rousseau offre dans le texte ici présenté un flagrant démenti à ces préjugés. Sollicité par le représentant de la confédération de Bar en France, le comte Wielhorski, de faire part entre 1770 et 1771 de ses réflexions sur la réforme de la constitution de la Pologne dans le vaste débat en cours à ce sujet aussi bien entre philosophes des Lumières qu’entre cours européennes ou magnats polonais, il s’y révèle aussi pénétrant connaisseur de l’histoire des institutions polonaises que véritable réformateur, tenant d’un « républicanisme conservateur », soucieux du respect des institutions nationales comme celles du liberum veto et des confédérations autant que de l’électivité de la couronne, mais aussi de l’émancipation des serfs et de la promotion progressive de la paysannerie.

Penser la liberté religieuse en 1789 : Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre (Patrice Rolland)
Abstract:

Pour assurer la liberté d’opinion religieuse en 1789, Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre est seul à proposer la séparation des Églises et de l’État contre la nationalisation des biens du clergé. Sa philosophie individualiste de la liberté religieuse s’oppose à la constitution civile du clergé, à l’idée de « religion civile nationale » et de service public du culte. Du seul principe de liberté d’opinion, il déduit un statut juridique de la religion anticipant celui des démocraties libérales contemporaines. Sur ce terrain il est le maître revendiqué de Benjamin Constant.

Pavane pour une révolution heureuse. Aperçu de la pensée politique de Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre, 1757-1792 (Jean-Guy Rens)
Abstract:

Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre a bataillé en 1789 pour permettre aux Juifs d’obtenir la nationalité française. Mais on oublie l’homme qui se cache derrière ce geste d’éclat. Partisan du « principe de lenteur » en matière politique, il lutta au sein du groupe monarchien (Mounier, Lally-Tollendal et Malouet) pour établir un pouvoir exécutif fort qui préfigure la fonction présidentielle sous la Ve République.

De l’industrialisme saint-simonien aux fondateurs du management scientifique : l’utopie de la coopération (Baptiste Rapin)
Abstract:

Cet article présente une généalogie de l’industrialisme à travers deux figures marquantes de son histoire : en premier lieu celle de Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon, père de la doctrine industrialiste, puis celle de Frederick Winslow Taylor, fondateur et vulgarisateur du management scientifique. Au centre de notre analyse se trouve le projet politique de la fabrique utopique d’une société intégralement régulée par la coopération.

« Le début du siècle nouveau » : le débat intellectuel et politique en Allemagne autour de 1800 (Lucien Calvié)
Abstract:

Face à la « dégénérescence » révolutionnaire du Directoire (1795-1799), « Le début du siècle nouveau » (Schiller, 1801) cristallise le débat allemand des années 1790-1800 autour de trois secteurs liés entre eux : la politique de Fichte, du « jacobinisme » au nationalisme des Discours à la nation allemande ; dans la dépendance du subjectivisme kantien et fichtéen, la genèse du premier romantisme (Novalis, Schlegel), son ironie et son « tournant » réactionnaire ; et le développement de la pensée de Hegel comme critique du subjectivisme fichtéen et de l’ironie romantique, la question centrale devenant celle de l’État face aux conflits de la société civile.

Complexification sociale et effacement de la souveraineté chez Léon Duguit (Emeric Travers)
Abstract:

Parce qu’à ses yeux théorie du droit et études des transformations sociales sont une seule et même chose, Léon Duguit regardera les difficultés théoriques de la science juridique de son époque comme l’indice du caractère obsolète de certaines notions. Les impasses doctrinales du droit public doivent, pour lui, être attribuées à l’inadéquation de certains concepts aux faits sociaux. Souveraineté et personnalité étatiques ont certes eu leur efficience, tant théorique que pratique, au cours de l’histoire. Il n’en demeure pas moins que les transformations sociales dont Duguit est le témoin impliquent l’exigence de les dépasser au profit de la notion de service public.

Quid leges sine moribus ? Jean Massabiau ou l’aporie constitutionnelle du républicanisme au premier XIXe siècle (Oscar Ferreira)
Abstract:

Oublié en France, Jean Massabiau (1765-1837) eut pourtant un impact au Brésil, en influençant un des pères de l’indépendance : Silva Lisboa. Conservateur de la bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, il laisse une œuvre marquée par le républicanisme classique. Convaincu que les garanties morales sont plus importantes que les garanties légales et constitutionnelles, il minimise l’intérêt du constitutionnalisme moderne, avant de se raviser sous Juillet, proposant alors une constitution mêlant garanties anciennes et modernes.

Quelle approche pour quelle histoire des idées politiques ? (Hugo Bonin, Francis Dupuis-Déri)
Abstract:

Comment faire l’histoire des idées politiques ? Nous proposons de présenter de manière systématique quatre approches qui tentent de répondre à cette question : la méthode contextualiste, dite École de Cambridge, l’histoire sociale des idées politiques marxiennes, l’histoire conceptuelle et l’histoire populaire des idées politiques. L’intérêt d’une telle comparaison est de mettre en lumière les convergences et divergences entre ces différentes méthodes et de permettre de saisir ce que chacune d’entre elles permet en termes d’interprétation.

Jacques de Cassan (François Monnier)
Abstract:

Jacques de Cassan est l’un des juristes politiques de Richelieu. Aujourd’hui bien oublié, il a tenté de démontrer la légitimité juridique des prétentions de la Couronne de France sur certaines possessions de ses voisins. Et comme il n’existait guère d’autres arguments, il s’est appuyé sur le vieux droit féodal pour démontrer la validité de ces prétentions, alors que l’époque était à la mise en place de monarchies modernes et d’États nationaux unitaires. La guerre de Trente Ans a redoublé toutes ses ambitions, même les plus anciennes. Les revendications sont spécieuses, le raisonnement osé, l’histoire instrumentalisée, mais Cassan lève le voile sur les dernières pudeurs du cardinal face à l’opinion et à l’Europe. Il en dit long sur l’état d’esprit des gouvernants d’alors, sur leur volonté de puissance et sur leur expansionnisme forcené.

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BOOK: Giuliano GARAVINI, The Rise and Fall of OPEC in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). ISBN 9780198832836, £30.00

(Source: OUP)

Oxford University Press is publishing a book on the history of the OPEC.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is one of the most recognizable acronyms among international organizations. It is mainly associated with the 'oil shock' of 1973 when prices of petroleum quadrupled and industrialized countries and consumers were forced to face the limits of their development model.

This is the first history of OPEC and of its members written by a professional historian. It carries the reader from the formation of the first petrostate in the world, Venezuela in the late 1920s, to the global ascent of petrostates and OPEC during the 1970s, to their crisis in the late-1980s and early- 1990s.

Formed in 1960, OPEC was the first international organization of the Global South. It was perceived as acting as the economic 'spearhead' of the Global South and acquired a role that went far beyond the realm of oil politics. Petrostates such as Venezuela, Nigeria, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran were (and continue to be) key regional actors, and their enduring cooperation, defying wide political and cultural differences and even wars, speaks to the centrality of natural resources in the history of the twentieth century, and to the underlying conflict between producers and consumers of these natural resources.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Giuliano Garavini, Senior Research Fellow in the Humanities, NYU Abu Dhabi

Giuliano Garavini is an Italian historian, currently Senior Research Fellow in the Humanities at NYU Abu Dhabi. His main research interests include European integration, decolonization, and global struggles over natural resources. He has taught classes at various universities and institutions, including the Graduate Institute in Geneva, the European University Institute in Florence, and NYU Abu Dhabi. He has published on the interconnection between European integration and decolonization (After Empires, 2012), and on the global history of petroleum and of energy, in particular on the origins and significance of the 1973 'oil shock' (Oil Shock: The 1973 Crisis and its Economic Legacy, 2016) and on the 'counter-shock' in 1986 (Counter-Shock: The Oil Counter-Revolution of the 1980s, 2018).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
1: Fifty-Fifty
2: OPEC
3: Petromodernization
4: The Energy Crisis
5: The Oil Revolution
6: Uneasy Dialogue
7: The Failed Cartel
Epilogue: The Crisis of the Petrostate

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BOOK: James LEES, Bureaucratic Culture in Early Colonial India District Officials, Armed Forces, and Personal Interest under the East India Company, 1760-1830 (London: Routledge, 2019). ISBN 9781138615496, £115.00

(Source: Routledge)

Routledge is publishing a book on the administration of early colonial India.

ABOUT THE BOOK

This book looks at how the fledgling British East India Company state of the 1760s developed into the mature Anglo-Indian empire of the 19th century. It investigates the bureaucratic culture of early Company administrators, primarily at the district level, and the influence of that culture on the nature and scope of colonial government in India. Drawing on a host of archival material and secondary sources, James Lees details the power relationship between local officials and their superiors at Fort William in Calcutta, and examines the wider implications of that relationship for Indian society.

The book brings to the fore the manner in which the Company’s roots in India were established despite its limited military resources and lack of governmental experience. It underlines how the early colonial polity was shaped by European administrators’ attitudes towards personal and corporate reputation, financial gain, and military governance.

A thoughtful intervention in understanding the impact of the Company’s government on Indian society, this volume will be of interest to researchers working within South Asian studies, British studies, administrative history, military history, and the history of colonialism.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Lees is a Research Advisor at Karlstad University in Sweden. He holds an MA and a PhD in Imperial and South Asian History from King’s College London. Dr Lees’s research has examined power relations and bureaucratic culture among the European civil servants of the East India Company state in the 18th and 19th century, with a particular focus on the use of armed force in a colonial context. He has worked in research administration and policy roles at universities and funding bodies, and also taught at universities in the UK and Asia.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction 2. The Company State after 1765 3. ‘The Essence of the State Itself’: Reputation and the Company’s Government 4. ‘A Gendarmerie of Last Resort’? The Roles of Armed Force, 1760–1820 5. Rangpur District, 1770–c. 1800 6. Chittagong District, 1760–c. 1800 7. The Company State in the 1820s 8. Conclusion

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LECTURE SERIES: Duncan KENNEDY, Chaire Michel Villey (Paris: Institut Villey, 13-14 JUN 2019)

(image source: Institut Villey)

Professor Duncan Kennedy (Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence (Emeritus), Harvard Law School) held the Chaire Michel Villey 2019. The lectures were scheduled for 13 and 14 June 2019, which is now in the past ("The Rise and Fall of the Western Legal Tradition" et "Legal Reasoning and Adjudication"). However, Professor Kennedy graciously shared his outline and (open access) references with preparatory readings.

See the website of the Institut Villey pour la culture juridique et la philosophie du droit.

BOOK: Kathryn TEMPLE, Loving Justice: Legal Emotions in William Blackstone’s England (New York: NYU Press, 2019). ISBN 9781479895274, $45.00

(Source: NYU Press)

NYU Press has published a new book on legal emotions and William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England.

ABOUT THE BOOK

A history of legal emotions in William Blackstone’s England and their relationship to justice

William Blackstone’s masterpiece, Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769), famously took the “ungodly jumble” of English law and transformed it into an elegant and easily transportable four-volume summary. Soon after publication, the work became an international monument not only to English law, but to universal English concepts of justice and what Blackstone called “the immutable laws of good and evil.”

Most legal historians regard the Commentaries as a brilliant application of Enlightenment reasoning to English legal history. Loving Justice contends that Blackstone’s work extends beyond making sense of English law to invoke emotions such as desire, disgust, sadness, embarrassment, terror, tenderness, and happiness. By enlisting an affective aesthetics to represent English law as just, Blackstone created an evocative poetics of justice whose influence persists across the Western world. In doing so, he encouraged readers to feel as much as reason their way to justice.

Ultimately, Temple argues that the Commentaries offers a complex map of our affective relationship to juridical culture, one that illuminates both individual and communal understandings of our search for justice, and is crucial for understanding both justice and injustice today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kathryn D. Temple is Associate Professor and former Chair of the English Department at Georgetown University. She is the author of Scandal Nation: Law and Authorship in England, and the recipient of numerous fellowships, including the NEH and the ACLS Burkhardt.

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PODCAST: Robin EAGLES (History of Parliament Trust) on the Impeachment and Trial of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford

(image: Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Harley and Mortimer; source: Wikimedia Commons)

The impeachment and trial of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford and Tory Cabinet Leader from 1710 to 1714, is a classical episode of British parliamentary and political history. Harley supported peace with France, and withdrew British troops from the front in May 1712. The Franco-British preliminaries of peace (October 1711) set out the blueprint of the later peace treaties of Utrecht (11 April 1713) and Rastatt (6 March 1714). Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI and the Dutch Republic felt betrayed by this decision. When Queen Anne died in August 1714, Hanoverian Elector Georg Ludwig von Braunschweig-Lüneburg, her closest Protestant relative, succeeded her. Shortly after his arrival in Britain, the new sovereign appointed a Whig-dominated Cabinet. Subsequently, the new majority, led by James Viscount Stanhope and the Earl of Sunderland, persecuted the previous political masters, accusing them of treason. Whereas Lord Bolingbroke (Secretary of State for the Southern Department) managed to escape to France, Lord Harley was sentenced and imprisoned in the Tower. This internal settlement of accounts, however, did not deter the new Whig-administration from pursuing a foreign policy akin to that of their predecessors.

Robin Eagles (History of Parliament Trust) discusses this well-documented case in a recent podcast (video, above or audio, here).