SOURCE PUBLICATION: Adrien WYSSBROD & Arnaud BESSON (eds.), Les points de coutume neuchâtelois; Adrien WYSSBROD (ed.), Le coutumier Hory [Les sources du droit suisse, XXIe partie : Les sources du droit du canton de Neuchâtel, Tome 3 et 4] (St. Gallen: Fondation des sources du droit suisse, 2021) ISBN 978-3-7965-4211-4 and 978-3-7965-4212-1

 

(image: Neuchâtel in 1645; source: Wikimedia Commons)

Abstract: 

Commandé au chancelier Jean Hory par les Orléans-Longueville au début du XVIIe siècle, le coutumier Hory constitue un projet très abouti de mise par écrit de la coutume neuchâteloise. En raison de la résistance du Petit Conseil, ce coutumier n’est jamais entré en vigueur. Il demeure toutefois un témoin privilégié du droit Neuchâtelois, ainsi qu’une ambitieuse tentative de systématisation de la coutume, voire un essai précoce de codification. (vol IV)

 Les points de coutumes constituent la principale source de la coutume neuchâteloise d’Ancien Régime. Ces déclarations renseignent également sur le fonctionnement de la justice et donnent des détails sur des affaires privées et sur les individus impliqués. Elles concernent essentiellement des affaires civiles et ont été rendues entre 1529 et 1846. Cette édition reproduit intégralement la totalité des déclarations connues et remplace ainsi l’édition partielle de Georges-Auguste Matile de 1836. (vol III)

Read more with the Foundation for the Publication of the Sources of Swiss Law. The books can either be ordered on paper, or be consulted online.

JOURNAL: Rechtskultur - Zeitschrift für Europäische Rechtsgeschichte/European Journal of Legal History/Journal éuropéen d'histoire du droit IX (2020): Widerstand gegen Rechtsvereinheitlichung - Against Unification of Law - Contre l'unification du droit

 

(image source: Rechtskultur)

Table of contents:

Daniel Schläppi (Bern) - Gelebtes und erlebtes Recht. Die Rechtskultur von Kommunen und Korporationen in der alten Eidgenossenschaft als Bollwerk gegen Rechtsvereinheitlichung

Peter Hess (Austin/Texas) - Resistance to the Rise of Roman Law in Early Sixteenth-Century Germany

Adrien Wyssbrod (Cambridge) - Die Macht der Sitte: Widerstand gegen Kodifikation

Michael Lauener (Zürich) - Jeremias Gotthelf - Der Kritiker der Rechtsvereinheitlichung der "eiskalten Freisinnigkeit"

Peter A.J. van den Berg (Groningen) - E pluribus unum? Some remarks on the future of ‘regional’ legal systems of private law in the European Union from a historical perspective

Kamila Staudigl-Ciechowicz (Wien) - (Keine) Vereinheitlichung des Österreichischen Eherechts in der Zwischenkriegszeit

The journal Rechtskultur publishes its back-issues in open access here.

Read more here. 

ONLINE SEMINAR (Spring 2021): ESCLH Seminar Series: Reading circle on Comparative Legal History Methods

1)      Readings of Ugo Mattei’s articles on Legal Transplants and Taxonomies

Friday 12 March 2021, 10.00-11.00 (CET)

 Ugo Mattei, « Why The Wind Changed: Intellectual Leadership in Western Law », The American Journal of Comparative Law, 42:1 (1994), 195-218.

Ugo Mattei, « Three Patterns of Law: Taxonomy and Change in the World's Legal Systems », The American Journal of Comparative Law, 45:1 (1997), 5-44.

Zoom link: https://utu.zoom.us/j/69552029048 

Keynote: Dolores Freda (Napoli, Italy)

Discussant: Agustín Parise (Maastricht, The Netherlands)

 

2)      Readings of Glenn’s concept of common laws

Tuesday 30 March 2021, 13.00-14.00 (CET)

 

H. Patrick Glenn, On Common Laws, Oxford, OUP, 2007.

Keynote: Heikki Pihlajamäki (Helsinki, Finland)

Discussant: Judit Beke Martos (Bochum, Germany)

 

3)      Readings of Watson’s Theory of Legal Transplants

Monday 3 May 2021, 13.00-14.00 (CET)

 Alan Watson, Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law, Edinburgh, 1974; second edition Athens, 1993.

 Keynote: Anna Klimaszewska (Gdansk, Poland)

Discussant: Aniceto Masferrer (Valencia, Spain)

More informations on these sessions with Prof. Mia Korpiola (Turku) 

NEW JOURNAL: "LawArt" - Rivista di Diritto, Arte, Storia / Journal of Law, Art and History - first issue, 2020 (open access)

 

(Source: Giappichelli)

ABOUT THE JOURNAL

‘LawArt. Rivista di Diritto, Arte, Storia / Journal of Law, Art and History’ is an editorial project that stems from legal history and aspires to interdisciplinary dialogue. This is something legal history has always been involved in given the open epistemological standpoint which, constitutively, characterizes this discipline. However, the areas in which this dialogue can be exercised change over time; currently, in view of the need for interaction with the other legal sciences, one of the most fruitful terrains, this is precisely the forum that this journal intends to establish. Published online open access, LawArt aims to encourage a discussion among scholars involved in the various aspects of the relationship between law, art and history. The aim is to capture the different ways in which art shapes, expresses and narrates both the abstract and historically contextualized legal dimensions. In addition to the convergence of law with literature in history, therefore, the fruitful intersections with the visual arts, cinema, music, theatre, new media and emerging forms of expression, will also be of interest to this journal. At the same time, LawArt also intends to cover legal issues related to both international and domestic regulation, trade and protection of artworks and cultural heritage.

The journal sets out to encompass all relevant legal frameworks concerning the historical and aesthetic dimension of artworks and their economic value, including, ownership, intellectual property, authenticity, free movement, and other issues of private and business law, as well as international, administrative and criminal law. Indeed, the main objective is to promote the study of the link between law, art and history, beyond disciplinary and national boundaries in order to open up the view on this topic. The annual issue of LawArt will be divided into three sections. The first, Overtures, is conceived as a miscellaneous section for exploring new facets of the law/art prism. The second section, Itineraries, is monographic and intends to propose pathways within thematic areas characterized by a relative homogeneity, in order to identify (formal, substantial, methodological) areas of convergence in the field of legal and art studies. The third section, Colloquia, is intended as a place of interaction, in which to publish studies on research trends and perspectives, bibliographic reviews, interviews, project presentations, including news and reports on scientific and cultural events.

ABOUT THE FIRST ISSUE

The issue we are now presenting in the miscellany section offers three essays that open up the study of the relationship between law and art from original perspectives: the development of engraving in 18th century Spain and its relationship with the imagination of power (Carlos Petit); law as literature, encompassing the “representation” of nature and the “construction” of an aesthetic of truth in 19th century French legal thought (Nader Hakim); judiciary stories, the jury, the problem of communication and the time taken to come to a court decision in the narrative of investigations, based on the movie 12 Angry Men by Sidney Lumet (Mario Barenghi).

The monographic section Itineraries, covered for this first issue by the journal’s editors, is dedicated to the theme of “Performative Practices”. The proposed itinerary, inspired by the line of studies on law and narration, revolves around the idea of reflecting on the discursive function that legal knowledge and artistic expression share. This alludes to the capacity of these products of knowledge – especially in their interweaving – not only to express a representation of society and of human vicissitudes, but also to put them in perspective.

The essays published here address different aspects. Three of them insist on the performative value of the cultural event in relation to the legal problem. Giovanni Chiodi’s essay reconstructs the perspective of meaning which, in the difficult 1920s and 1930s, up until after the Second World War, guided Arturo Toscanini’s decisions regarding what was performed at his concerts and the venues for staging them. This highlights the close relationship that, in his life experience, is established between artistic commitment and the struggle for human rights and freedom; moreover, the link between the artistic dimension and the constitutional structure of society, at the service of a strong conception of democracy, is stressed.

Elisabetta Fusar Poli’s essay also deals with the emergence of a problem of freedom, in this case the “freedom of art” in Italy between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This essay focuses, however, on a different performative space, that represented by the field of tension between case-law on the protection of public morality and artistic expression. Whereas Giacomo Pace Gravina shifts attention to the productiveness of the link between art history and legal history, reconstructing, with an efficacious integrated approach, the events surrounding the painting of the Triptych by Meyer Ross, conserved in the Cathedral of Sora, Italy, in which the jurist Vincenzo Simoncelli is portrayed.

The performativity of literary discourse in relation to the legal dimension is then discussed in the two methodological essays that close the section Itineraries. Massimo Meccarelli considers the value of literature as a source for legal history. His reading of two novels that narrate the impermanence of transition, provides a closer look at the attributive effect that the temporal condition produces on the contents of the legal system. This makes it possible, in particular, to rediscover some dynamics of the objectivation of law and their importance for a more comprehensive understanding of its historicity.

Cristiano Paixão, on the other hand, ponders the possible role of literature in legal education. In imagining the literature taught in the Schools of Law, the essay highlights how it can contribute to forging legal knowledge as critical knowledge by promoting a recovery of the authentic dimension of contemporary law beyond its formal crystallizations and identifying an index of the problems that challenge it.

Two contributions are included in the section Colloquia. A retrospective by André Karam Trindade on the importance of José Calvo Gonzales regarding the establishment of a literary culture of law in Brazil. Gonzales was the leading figure of the law and literature movement in Spain who died prematurely in recent months. The journal closes with a conversation with Alberto Sciumè on the results of a recent conference dedicated to Gabriele D’Annunzio in the unusual role of “legislator” and “constituent father”, involved in the drafting of the Carta del Carnaro; a significant, but perhaps still too little considered event in the constitutional history of the twentieth century.

These elements make up the first proposal for discussion on law, art and history, which LawArt offers to the attention of its readers. With this, we are undertaking an endeavour whose scope can already be intuited even at this early stage.

For the PDF version of the table of contents, see here; for the PDF version of the issue, see here.

BOOK: Sandro NOTARI, Nel laboratorio parmense. La redazione del codice civile di Maria Luigia (1814-1820) (Roma: Aracne Editrice, 2021). ISBN: 978-88-255-3897-7, pp. 560, € 28,00

 

(Book: Aracne Editrice)

ABOUT THE BOOK

Considerato il miglior codice civile della Restaurazione, il Codice civile per gli Stati di Parma, Piacenza e Guastalla fu promulgato nel 1820 dalla duchessa Maria Luigia, figlia dell’imperatore d’Austria, già imperatrice dei francesi. L’elaborazione del testo normativo avvenne alla confluenza dei due grandi archetipi della codificazione civile europea dell’Ottocento: quello napoleonico del 1804 e quello austriaco del 1811. Dalla ricerca svolta sui lavori preparatori emerge il fondamentale contributo dei giuristi parmensi. Dopo una lunga gestazione di sei anni, al loro sapiente eclettismo, alla loro capacità di armonizzare la tradizione del diritto patrio con l’ordito napoleonico, si deve l’eccellenza di un prodotto pensato per le esigenze concrete della popolazione dei Ducati, destinato a grande fama negli ambienti giuridici nazionali e a trasformarsi in un deposito di norme al quale attinsero i giuristi codificatori degli altri Stati della Penisola.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sandro Notari è dottore di ricerca in Storia e Teoria del diritto (Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata”). Borsista del CNR, dell’Istituto di studi storici della LUISS, assegnista di ricerca presso il Dipartimento di Storia e Teoria Generale del Diritto dell’Università degli Studi di Roma Tre, insegna Storia del diritto medievale e moderno presso la Facoltà di Giurisprudenza dell’UTI–Uninettuno. Ha condotto ricerche sulle codificazioni moderne, sugli statuti e gli ordinamenti comunali, sulle istituzioni politiche italiane, sugli assetti proprietari collettivi. Tra le sue pubblicazioni recenti: La Commissione Turiozzi e la riforma dell’ordinamento giudiziario civile di papa Leone XII (1823-1824), in Historia et ius (2019); Statuti di Roma tra governo repubblicano e signoria pontificia, in Roma 1347-1527. Linee di un’evoluzione, Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Roma-ISIME, 2017 (2020).

More information with the publisher.

BOOK: Graeme GOODAY & Steven WILF (Eds.), Patent Cultures - Diversity and Harmonization in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: CUP, 2020). ISBN 9781108475761, 95.00 GBP

 

(Source: CUP)

Cambridge University Press has published a book on the history of different patent systems.

ABOUT THE BOOK

This book explores how dissimilar patent systems remain distinctive despite international efforts towards harmonization. The dominant historical account describes harmonization as ever-growing, with familiar milestones such as the Paris Convention (1883), the World Intellectual Property Organization's founding (1967), and the formation of current global institutions of patent governance. Yet throughout the modern period, countries fashioned their own mechanisms for fostering technological invention. Notwithstanding the harmonization project, diversity in patent cultures remains stubbornly persistent. No single comprehensive volume describes the comparative historical development of patent practices. Patent Cultures: Diversity and Harmonization in Historical Perspective seeks to fill this gap. Tracing national patenting from imperial expansion in the early nineteenth century to our time, this work asks fundamental questions about the limits of globalization, innovation's cultural dimension, and how historical context shapes patent policy. It is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the contested role of patents in the modern world.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Graeme Gooday, University of Leeds

Graeme Gooday is Professor of the History of Science and Technology in the University of Leeds' School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science. From 2007–10 he led the AHRC-funded project Owning and Disowning Invention, which produced the prize-winning Patently Contestable (2013) with co-author Stathis Arapostathis. He was also co-leader with Claire L. Jones of the international research network Rethinking Patent Cultures (2014), the first workshop of which generated this volume.

Steven Wilf, University of Connecticut

Steven Wilf is the Anthony J. Smits Professor of Global Commerce at the University of Connecticut Law School where he founded the Intellectual Property program. He has served as Microsoft Fellow at Princeton University and Abraham L. Kaminstein Scholar in Residence at the United States Copyright Office. He is the author of The Law before the Law (2008), Law's Imagined Republic: Popular Politics and Criminal Justice in Revolutionary America (Cambridge, 2010), and numerous articles.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part I. Introductory:

1. Diversity versus harmonization in patent history: an overview Graeme Gooday and Steven Wilf

2. The 1883 Paris Convention and the impossible unification of industrial property Gabriel Galvez-Behar

3. One for all? The American patent system and harmonization of international intellectual property laws Zorina Khan

Part II. Americas: Technical Imaginaries:

4. US patent models as specimen and specification Courtney Fullilove

5. Mexico and the puzzle of partial harmonization: nineteenth-century patent Law reconsidered Edward Beatty

6. An early patent system in Latin America: the Chilean case, 1840s–1900s Bernardita Escobar Andrae

Part III. Southern Europe:

7. The Italian patent system during the long nineteenth century: from privileges to property rights in a latecomer industrializing country Alessandro Nuvolari and Michelangelo Vasta

8. Industrial 'property', law, and the politics of invention in Greece, 1900–1940 Stathis Arapostathis

9. Mediation and harmonization: construction of the Spanish patent system in the twentieth century Ana Romero de Pablos

Part IV. Central and Eastern Europe:

10. The struggle over 'the social function of intellectual work in the economy of nations': engineers, patent law, and enterprise inventions in Germany and their European significance Karl Hall

11. Multiple loyalties: hybrid patent regimes in the Habsburg empire and its successor states Karl Hall

12. Patent debates on invention from Tsarist Russia to the Soviet Union Karl Hall

Part V. Asia:

13. Patent policy in India under the British Raj: a bittersweet story of empire and innovation Rajesh Sagar

14. The India twist to patent culture: investigating its history Tania Sebastian

15. The life and times of patent no. 2,670: industrial property and public knowledge in early twentieth-century Japan Kjell Ericson

Part VI. Epilogue:

16. Postscript Graeme Gooday and Steven Wilf.

 

More info here

ONLINE EVENT: Paper Chains or Lilliputian Cords? Towards an Intellectual History of Treaties with David Armitage and Piers Ludlow (LSE, 18 MAR 2021)

  

(image source: LSE)

Lecture abstract:

There are currently over 55,000 treaties in force around the world, covering almost every aspect of life on earth as well as the ocean floor and outer space. Yet just how we became global Gullivers, enmeshed in worldwide webs of treaties, is a problem surprisingly little studied by historians, political scientists or scholars of International Relations. This lecture tackles this question with the tools of intellectual history and examines how treaties have been thought about and argued over, what cultural traces they have left, and how the corpus of treaties might become a resource for intellectual historians.

 On the speaker:

David Armitage is the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard University and an Affiliated Faculty Member at Harvard Law School. A prize-winning writer and teacher, he is the author or editor of eighteen books, among them Civil Wars: A History in Ideas (Knopf, 2017); The History Manifesto (Cambridge UP, 2014), one of the Chronicle of Higher Education’s most influential books of the past twenty years; The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (Harvard UP, 2007), a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year; and The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge UP, 2000), which won the Longman/History Today Book of the Year Award. He has held visiting positions in the US and the UK, Australia, China, France, Germany, and South Korea and is currently an Honorary Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge University, and an Honorary Professor of History at both Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Sydney.

On the commenter:

Piers Ludlow is Professor of International History and Head of Department of International History at LSE.

(source: LSE - ESILHIL) 

BOOK: Benoît GRÉVIN, La Première Loi du royaume L’acte de fixation de la majorité des rois de France (1374) (Paris: Garnier, 2021). ISBN: 978-2-406-09900-0, pp. 615, € 29,00

  

(Source: Garnier)

ABOUT THE BOOK

Collection: Histoire du droit, n° 9

La Première Loi du royaume analyse la loi de fixation de la majorité des rois de France à quatorze ans (1374). Elle en dévoile les sources juridiques, théologiques, historiques et philosophiques inconnues et les mécanismes conceptuels extraordinairement complexes qui présidèrent à sa création.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Benoît Grévin est directeur de recherche CNRS.  Ses recherches concernent généralement, dans une approche historique incluant des aspects littéraires, philologiques, comparatifs, l’histoire de l’inscription des langages et des styles dans les sociétés du long Moyen Âge occidental et méditerranéen

TABLE OF CONTENTS

It is available here.

More information with the publisher.

CALL FOR PAPERS: “The State of the Church and the Patrimony of Saint Peter in Tuscia: A territory and a history to be rediscovered” (Tarquinia, 16-17 October 2021) (DEADLINE: 30 April 2021)

 

We received a call for papers for the 3rd Scientific Meeting of the Tarquinia Society of Art and History.

 

Theme of the Conference

 

The goal of the 3^rd Scientific Meeting of the Tarquinia Society of Art and History is to build a forum for interdisciplinary reflection aimed at enriching the knowledge available on the territory of Tuscia, not only with regard to its extremely rich and glorious history, but also to its conspicuous and valuable artistic and cultural heritage.

The lands subject to the pontifical domain, spread over the old Tuscan possessions located north from Rome, which correspond, more or less, to the province of Viterbo and the Civitavecchia territory, were included, at the end of the 12^th century, in one of the administrative areas instituted by pope Innocent III (1198-1216) as a subdivision of the Ecclesiastical States. This district was called ‘Patrimony of Saint Peter in Tuscia’, precisely to specify its specific geographical connotation. In comparison with the other provinces of the Papal States, however, the one of the ‘Patrimony’ is the least studied and the aim of this conference is precisely to encourage studies in this field.

 

Proposals submission

 

The conference is open to the reflection of qualified scholars in the following macro-areas:

1. The State of the Church and the Patrimony of Saint Peter in Tuscia: Medieval and modern history.

2. The State of the Church and the Patrimony of Saint Peter in Tuscia: Legal, economic and institutional history.

3. The State of the Church and the Patrimony of Saint Peter in Tuscia: Archaeology and history of art.

 

Submission of Proposals: 1) Title of the paper; 2) Academic affiliation; 3) 200 word abstract; by 30 April 2021 to the following e-mail address: sanpietrointuscia@gmail.com.

 

Publication of the Proceedings: December 2022.

 

Scientific Committee

 

Bernard Ardura (Presidente Pontificio Comitato di Scienze storiche); Javier Belda Iniesta (Universidad Católica de Murcia); Richard Hodges (American University of Rome); Mario Ascheri (Università di Roma Tre); Laura Moscati (Università di Roma ‘La Sapienza’); Giovanni Minnucci (Università di Siena); Paolo Alvazzi del Frate (Università di Roma Tre); Alfio Cortonesi (Università della Tuscia); Cristina Carbonetti Vendittelli (Università di Roma ‘Tor Vergata’); Alessandro Dani (Università di Roma ‘Tor Vergata’); Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri (Università degli studi di Urbino Carlo Bo); Anna Modigliani (Università della Tuscia); Marco Vendittelli (Università di Roma ‘Tor Vergata’ e Presidente del Centro studi internazionali G. Ermini); Tiziana Ferreri (Università di Siena); Eleonora Rava (Università St. Andrews - Centro studi S. Rosa); Angela Lanconelli (Archivio di Stato di Roma); Francesca Ceci (Musei Capitolini-Ispettore Onorario MiBAC Sopr. Etruria meridionale); Maurizio Ficari (Sovrintendenza capitolina ai beni culturali); Irene Berlingò (MIBACT); Daniele Federico Maras (soprintendenza beni archeologici Etruria meridionale - pontificia Accademia romana di Archeologia); Giuseppe Romagnoli (Università degli studi della Tuscia).

SEMINAR: Methods of Legal History (Online, 5 March 2021)

 

(Source: MPI for Legal History and Legal Theory)

Prof. Dr. Thomas Duve at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory is organizing a seminar on methods of legal history (in German). Registration is possible until 25.02

Research in legal history requires continuous reflection on its methods and goals. This takes place in various forums at the Institute. The seminar 'Methods of Legal History' aims at discussing methodological issues that are especially important for the work in the department 'Historical Normativity'. In principle, the seminar will be held in German.

 

More info here

BOOK: Claire BILLEN, Bruno BLONDÉ, Marc BOONE & Anne-Laure VAN BRUAENE (Eds.), Faire société au Moyen Âge: Histoire urbaine des anciens Pays-Bas (1100-1600) (Paris: Garnier, 2021). ISBN: 2406107922, pp. 360, € 29,00

 

(Source: Garnier)

ABOUT THE BOOK

Collection: Bibliothèque d'histoire médiévale, n° 25

Favorisés par leur localisation côtière, les anciens Pays-Bas sont un pays de villes en réseaux. Celles-ci présentent une histoire sociale spécifique, marquée par la puissance d’une classe moyenne à la forte identité corporative, qui s’efforça d’y imposer ses intérêts, son idéologie et ses valeurs.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Directeurs d'ouvrage: Claire Billen, Bruno Blondé, Marc Boone, Anne-Laure Van Bruaene 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

It is available here.

More information with the publisher.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Slavery Past, Present & Future (7-9 July 2021, ONLINE) (DEADLINE: 15 March 2021)

 

(Source: McKinneylaw)

We learned of a Call for Papers for the 5^th global meeting of “Slavery Past, Present & Future”. Here the Call:

Slavery (the treatment of humans as chattel) and enslavement through conquest, birth, gender, race, ethnicity, kinship, and exploitation of indebtedness have been an intrinsic part of human societies.

Slavery and a variety of other forms of exploitation existed in ancient societies across the world, and in many other states and territories.  The Transatlantic Slave Trade furnished at least 10 million Africans for slavery throughout the Americas. 

Controversial and contested estimates indicate that up to 40 million people worldwide are enslaved today.  This modern re-emergence of slavery into public view, following legal abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade over two hundred years ago, is said to be linked to the deepening interconnectedness of countries in the global economy, overpopulation, and the economic and other vulnerabilities of individual victims and communities.

But should we think of these people as enslaved? And if so, is slavery an inevitable part of the human condition? Like ‘consumers’ of past eras, such as early industrialization, are we dependent on the exploitation of others? What does the persistence and mutations of different forms of exploitation mean in the context of abolition and recognition of universal individual and collective human rights? 

The varieties of contemporary forms of exploitation appear to be endless. This interdisciplinary conference will facilitate a multidisciplinary exploration of slavery in all its dimensions. 

In keeping with previous meetings, the format of the Slavery Past, Present and Future Conference this year will be plenary. We intend to hold the meetings for part of the day only [EST] to avoid Zoom fatigue and expect those who register to attend all the sessions in order to facilitate a genuine cross-fertilization of ideas across identities, disciplines, and subject areas.

Submissions are sought from people from all walks of life and identities, including:

• Academics: from all disciplines, such as art, film, anthropology, sociology, history, ethnic studies, politics, social work, economics, and any field that touches the study of exploitation
• Civil society members: human rights activists, leaders in non-governmental organizations, and others in the NGO or social advocacy fields
• Professionals: social workers, corporate social responsibility and business ethics professionals, business leaders, and health care professionals
• Government actors: representatives, policymakers, lobbyists, and analysts
• Global citizens with personal connections to slavery or exploitation: former enslaved persons or indentured laborers, members of at-risk populations, migrant or guest workers, non-regularized immigrants, and refugees

We particularly encourage submissions from the Global South.

Potential themes and sub-themes include but are not limited to:

1. Defining Slavery
2. Slaveries of the Past
3. Human Trafficking and other Forms of Contemporary Exploitation
4. Systems and Structures of Enslavement and Subordination (historic and contemporary)
5. Voices of the Enslaved
6. Legacies of Slavery
7. Anti-slavery Initiatives and Movements
8. Covid-19 and slavery

 

More information can be found here

BOOK: Carole DORNIER, La Monarchie éclairée de l'abbé de Saint-Pierre - Une science politique des Modernes (Oxford : OUP, 2020). ISBN 9781789622225, 99.99 USD

 

(Source: OUP)

Oxford University Press has published a new book on the writings of the abbé de Saint-Pierre.

ABOUT THE BOOK

L'abbé de Saint-Pierre, connu pour son Projet de paix perpétuelle, a laissé un ensemble bien plus vaste et cohérent d’écrits politiques et moraux, jusqu'alors dispersés et partiellement étudiés. Le présent ouvrage, exploitant systématiquement la totalité de l'oeuvre, en propose la complète réévaluation. Dès les premières décennies du XVIIIe siècle, Saint-Pierre promeut une harmonisation artificielle des intérêts, assurée par l'intervention politique et s'affirme, avant Bentham, comme l'un des premiers utilitaristes. Il imagine de substituer à la patrimonialisation, aux recommandations et clientèles qui structuraient la société de son temps et déterminaient l'exercice du pouvoir, une organisation rationnelle, méritocratique et dynamique. ll remplace les valeurs charismatiques fondant la perfection chrétienne ou la grandeur aristocratique par les objectifs de l'utilité et du bien public. Pour ce déiste conciliant moralité et religion, la recherche du salut par une piété active doit favoriser la justice et la bienfaisance. Selon lui, seul le pouvoir indivisible d'un monarque informé par des élites compétentes peut réaliser des réformes nécessaires au bonheur du plus grand nombre. Promoteur d'un État de bien-être imposé autoritairement, il représente, avant le plein essor de l'économie politique, des sciences camérales et de la doctrine des physiocrates, une dimension méconnue des Lumières politiques que cette étude entend souligner.

The Abbé de Saint-Pierre, best known for his Project for Perpetual Peace, in fact left a much larger and more coherent body of political and moral writing, but it has been only partially studied. This book, the first systematic exploration of his entire corpus, offers a complete re-evaluation of this important author's contributions to the Enlightenment. From the first decades of the 18th century, Saint-Pierre set forth a pioneering vision of politics as the harmonization of interests, anticipating Bentham as a utilitarian. He imagines replacing the system of inherited power and clientele networks which structured Old Regime society and determined the exercise of power under absolutism, with a rationalized, meritocratic and dynamic organization. He argued for the political values of social utility and public good to take the place of the Christian ideals of perfection and the aristocratic ideals of personal charisma. As a deist seeking to reconcile morality and religion, Saint-Pierre argued that the search for salvation through active piety must also promote social justice and beneficence -- and that only the indivisible power of a rationalized monarch, informed by competent elites, could carry out the reforms necessary to yield a government which would produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Saint-Pierre, thus, provided among the first arguments for an imposed welfare state, well before the sources more frequently associated with that idea -- political economists, cameralists and the physiocrats.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Professeur émérite de littérature et culture françaises du XVIIIe siècle à l'Université de Caen, Carole Dornier a publié des travaux et des éditions scientifiques de textes concernant les idées morales et politiques des Lumières (Crébillon, Duclos, Montesquieu, Le Maître de Claville, Vauvenargues, Rousseau, Castel de Saint-Pierre). Elle dirige actuellement une édition électronique des écrits de l'abbé de Saint-Pierre.

 

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BOOK: Consuelo MARTÍNEZ-SICLUNA Y SEPÚLVEDA (dir.), Autoridad, poder y jurisdicción en la monarquía hispánica (Madrid: Dykinson, 2020), 266 p. ISBN 9788413247427, € 19

 

(image source: Dykinson)

Book abstract:

El libro Autoridad, poder y jurisdicción en la Monarquía Hispánica aborda esos diferentes aspectos en el ámbito de la Monarquía que rigió los destinos de España y de sus dominios a lo largo de dos siglos. El imponente legado que aglutinó en su herencia el nieto de Maximiliano de Austria y de los Reyes Católicos, tuvo que enfrentarse en tanto que “monarquía compuesta”, en la expresión de Koenigsberger, o monarquía polisinodial, a los diversos retos que vino a plantear la modernidad. Entre otras cosas, el de optar como las restantes monarquías, por la acción de gobierno, en un sentido, netamente político, o bien por admitir un sentido misional. Ante tal dilema, la Casa de Austria tuvo que jugar sus bazas en el gran escenario de la política, en que se convirtió Europa. Para ello, contó además con el armazón jurídico y político de la doble herencia que recibe Carlos y con un pensamiento y una administración que serán piezas eficaces al servicio de la Monarquía, y al tiempo, de la nación. Tanto la finalidad como los instrumentos de los que se sirvió la Monarquía Hispánica son objeto de estudio en este libro: desde el elemento netamente intelectual, donde se analiza el concepto de Imperio y su transformación; también el problema de configurar un poder limitado, a la hora de afrontar la expansión de los dominios sobre los que rige y en el interior de los mismos, y por otro lado la diferente forma de contribuir, por parte de los pensadores más representativos y de la propia maquinaria administrativa y jurisdiccional de la Monarquía, al mantenimiento de la misma. El elenco de autores que forman parte de este libro constituye un nutrido grupo de especialistas e investigadores en cada uno de los temas que afrontan. Los trabajos se desarrollan además en el seno de la Cátedra de Estudios “Casa de Austria”, que hace ya más de dos años un equipo de profesores de diferentes universidades pusimos en pie, con la finalidad de profundizar, desde una óptica multidisciplinar, en la Monarquía Hispánica y su legado.

 Table of contents:

Presentación. Consuelo Martínez-Sicluna y Sepúlveda

 

PONENCIAS

La idea de Imperio en España. Dalmacio Negro Pavón

Las elites ciudadanas y su proyección en el servicio de la monarquía hispánica. Rafael Sánchez Saus

La idea de monarquía universal y los primeros Habsburgo. Manuel Alejandro Rodríguez de la Peña

La Escuela de Salamanca ante la transformación del concepto de naturaleza: recepción aristotélica y naturalismo político. Javier López de Goicoechea Zabala

Las virtudes del Príncipe: de Erasmo a Pedro de Ribadeneyra. Consuelo Martínez-Sicluna y Sepúlveda

¿Con qué autoridad? El poder y la ley en la teología política de Francisco Suárez. Costantino Esposito

Una panorámica de la construcción del estatus jurídico del indio durante el reinado de Carlos V. Agustín Bermúdez Aznar

La prefiguración de la ciudadanía política en Francisco de Vitoria. Juan Carlos Utrera García

El Rey, el Señor y el Obispo. La idea de decadencia de España en la historiografía republicana del siglo XIX. Jorge Vilches García

 

COMUNICACIONES

Tradición jurídica y política castellana: monarquía y «res publica» hispana. Rafael Martín Rivera

La revuelta de las comunidades, efecto indeseado de la sucesión de Isabel La Católica. Jacobo Camacho Rivas

La renovación de la escolástica. Francisco Javier Ayora Fernández

El origen de la comunidad política en Diego de Saavedra Fajardo: la confluencia entre pactismo medieval y la universalidad del poder. Ramón de Meer Cañón

Aristocracia y diplomacia en la monarquía hispánica. La embajada de obediencia del III Duque de Alcalá. Álvaro Bueno Blanco

La apoteosis de la voluntad: el cerramiento inmanente de lo político. Francisco de Borja Gallego Pérez de Sevilla

Después de la derrota: la pervivencia del modelo Habsburgo en el exilio austracista (1713-1740). Jorge Álvarez Palomino

(source: Dykinson)

BOOK: Lothar BROCK and Hendrik SIMON (Eds.), The Justification of War and International Order - From Past to Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). ISBN 9780198865308, 125.00 USD

 

(Source: OUP)

OUP is publishing a new edited collection on the history of justifications for war.

ABOUT THE BOOK

The history of war is also a history of its justification. The contributions to this book argue that the justification of war rarely happens as empty propaganda. While it is directed at mobilizing support and reducing resistance, it is not purely instrumental. Rather, the justification of force is part of an incessant struggle over what is to count as justifiable behaviour in a given historical constellation of power, interests, and norms. This way, the justification of specific wars interacts with international order as a normative frame of reference for dealing with conflict. The justification of war shapes this order, and is being shaped by it.

As the justification of specific wars entails a critique of war in general, the use of force in international relations has always been accompanied by political and scholarly discourses on its appropriateness. In much of the pertinent literature the dominating focus is on theoretical or conceptual debates as a mirror of how international normative orders evolve. In contrast, the focus of the present volume is on theory and political practice as sources for the re- and de-construction of the way in which the justification of war and international order interact.

With contributions from international law, history, and international relations, and from Western and non-Western perspectives, this book offers a unique collection of papers exploring the continuities and changes in war discourses as they respond to and shape normative orders from early modern times to the present.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Lothar Brock is Senior Professor of Political Science at Goethe University Frankfurt and at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. He is co-author of Fragile States: Violence and the Failure of Intervention (Polity, 2012) and co-editor of Democratic Wars: Looking at the Dark Side of Democratic Peace (Palgrave, 2006).

 

Hendrik Simon is Lecturer at Goethe University Frankfurt and Research Associate at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. He was Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Advanced International Theory/University of Sussex (2017), at the University of Vienna (2018, 2016), at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History Frankfurt (2015-16) and at the Cluster of Excellence 'Normative Orders' (2011-12).

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

1. The Justification of War and International Order. From Past to Present, Hendrik Simon and Lothar Brock

Part I Basic Theoretical Considerations: On War and Order(s)

2. Politics, Ethics and History in Just War, Anthony Lang, Jr.

3. Imperialism, International Law and War: Enduring Legacies and Curious Entanglements, Siddharth Mallavarapu

Part II The Early Modern War Discourse: A Process of Transformation?

4. Princes' Justifications of War in Early Modern Europe: the Constitution of an International Community by Communication, Anuschka Tischer

5. The Legal Mechanics of Spanish Conquest: War and Peace in Early Colonial Peru, Arnulf Becker Lorca

6. Capitalism, British Grand Strategy and the Peace Treaty of Utrecht: Towards A Historical Sociology of War- and Peacemaking in the Construction of International Order, Benno Teschke

7. Kant's Rejection of Just War: International Order between Democratic Constitutionalism and Revolutionary Violence, Oliver Eberl

Part III The 19th Century as the Birth Era of the Modern War Discourse

8. Anarchy over Law? Towards a Genealogy of Modern War Justifications (1789-1918), Hendrik Simon

9. Protection Emergencies: Justifying Measures Short of War in the British Empire, Lauren Benton

10. The Great War and International Law: German Justifications of Prevention and Pre-emptive Self-Defence, Isabel V. Hull

11. Salvation through War? The Ottoman Search for Sovereignty in 1914, Aimee Genell and Mustafa Aksakal

12. Juridification, Politicisation, and Circumvention of Law: (De-)Legitimising Chemical Warfare before and after Ypres, 1899-1925, Miloš Vec

Part IV From the League to the UN: The Universe of Western International Legal Order Revealing its Self-Contradictions

13. Peace through Law: Lessons from 1914, B.S. Chimni

14. Re-Ordering the World from the Skies? The Emergence and Justification of Aerial Warfare, Thomas Hippler

15. The Justificatory Potential of International Law. National Socialists' Dreams of African Colonies, Felix Lange

Part V 'Democratic Wars' and the Post-Cold War International Order: Rise and Decline of the 'Liberal Peace'

16. 'What We Are Fighting For': Democracies' Justifications of Using Armed Force since the End of the Cold War, Anna Geis and Wolfgang Wagner

17. The War on Terror and the Law of War: Shaping International Order in the Context of Irregular Violence, Michael Stohl

18. 'We Are Going to War.' Narratives of Self-Defence & Responsibility in Afghanistan War Documentaries, Axel Heck and Gabi Schlag

19. Justifying Interventions - The Case of ECOWAS in Liberia, Nina Wilén

20. Humanitarian Intervention: Justifying War for a New International Order, Beate Jahn

Part VI Alternative Paths: Non-Western Perspectives on the Justification of War and International Order from Past to Present

21. The Islamic Law of War and Peace and the International Legal Order: Convergence or Dissonance?, Sohail H. Hashmi

22. In the Name of State Sovereignty? The Justification of War in Russian History and the Present, Paul Robinson and Mikhail Antonov

23. China's Approach to the Use of Force: A Short Review of China's Changing Attitudes towards the Justification of Humanitarian Intervention, Manjiao Chi

Paty VII International Rule of Law: Justifying, Contesting and Perpetuating the Use of Force

24. Justified: Just War and the Ethics of Violence and World Order, Chris Brown

25. How Many Deaths Can Art 2 (4) UN Charter Die?, Thilo Marauhn

26. Justification and Critique: Humanitarianism and Imperialism over Time, B.S. Chimni

27. The Justification and Critique of Coercion as World Order Politics, Christopher Daase and Nicole Deitelhoff

An Attempt at a Synthesis

28. Justifications of the Use of Force as Constitutive Elements of World Order - Points of Departure, Arrivals and Moving Destinations, Lothar Brock and Hendrik Simon

 

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ZOOM SEMINAR: Legal Histories of Empire with Lisa Ford and Jessica Hinchy (Sydney, 5 MAR 2021)

 

(image source: Wikimedia Commons)

The following announcement circulated on the Legal History Blog and the ANZLHS blog:

Join us for the second of several symposia planned for 2020 and 2021 for Legal Histories of Empire.

Our speakers:

Lisa Ford: ‘The King’s Colonial Peace: Variable subjecthood and the transformation of empire’

This paper is drawn from my forthcoming book, The King’s Peace: Empire and Order in the British Empire. The book uses colonial peacekeeping as a lens through which to examine the shifting parameters of crown prerogative in Empire in the Age of Revolutions. This paper will argue that the legal vulnerability of (and often threats to order posed by) a diverse array of subjects – formerly French Catholics in Quebec, Caribbean slaves and NSW convicts – both prompted and justified the unravelling of the very idea of the freeborn Englishman that had been mobilised by protestant Britons in pre-revolutionary America.

Lisa Ford is Professor of History at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Her major publications include Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia, 1788-1836 (2010) which won the Littleton-Griswold Prize (American Historical Association); the Thomas J. Wilson Prize (Harvard University Press); and the Premiers History Award (NSW). She is also co-author of Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800-1850 (co-authored with Lauren Benton, 2016) and author of The King’s Peace, which will be published by Harvard later this year. Ford is currently leading a collaborative project funded by the Australian Research Council exploring the role of commissions of inquiry sent throughout the British Empire in the 1820s on which subject she hopes to lead author a book manuscript this year. She also holds a four-year ARC Future Fellowship, during which she will explore the changing use of martial law in the British Empire from the late eighteenth century until 1865.

Jessica Hinchy: ‘Child Removal and the Colonial Governance of the Family: Hijra and “Criminal Tribe” Households in North India, c. 1865-1900’

Historians have primarily examined colonial child removal projects in settler colonial contexts. Yet from 1865, the colonial government in north India forcibly removed children from criminalised communities. Child separation began in the households of gender non-conforming people labelled ‘eunuchs,’ particularly Hijras, and eventually extended to socially marginalised people designated as ‘criminal tribes,’ especially Sansiyas. First, what does a comparison of these child removal schemes tell us about the colonial governance of the family? Patrilineal, conjugal and reproductive household models marginalised Hijras and Sansiyas in differing ways, while the category of ‘child’ was contingently defined. Child separation was attempted to varying ends, including both elimination and assimilation. Yet often, the colonial state could not sustain such intensified forms of intimate governance in the face of resistance from households. Nor could officials simply determine removed children’s futures. Second, what does child removal suggest about the making of colonial law? When children were initially removed from Hijra and Sansiya households, officials admitted that ‘the law may have been somewhat strained,’ since existing laws did not provide police or magistrates with legal powers to separate these children. The Sansiya child removal project, for instance, prompted debates about colonial legal exceptions and the ‘legality’ of the colonial state’s practices among colonial officials and Indian and European non-officials.

Jessica Hinchy is an Assistant Professor of History at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. She researches the history of gender, sexuality, households and family in colonial north India. In 2019, Cambridge University Press published her first monograph, Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India: The Hijra, c. 1850-1900. Her research has also appeared in Modern Asian Studies, Gender & History and Asian Studies Review, among other journals.

The event will take place by zoom on Friday 5 March (or Thursday 4 March, depending on your timezone – see below). Please register here (via Eventbrite) to attend.

Timezones:

Sydney @ 12.30 pm on 5 March

Singapore @ 9.30 am on 5 March

Auckland @ 2.30 pm on 5 March

New Delhi @ 7.00 am on 5 March

London/Dublin @ 1.30 am on 5 March

Nairobi @ 4.30 am on 5 March

Vancouver @ 5.30 pm on 4 March

New Haven/Toronto @ 8.30 pm on 4 March

(source: Legal History Blog - ANZLHS - ESILHIL)