CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS : International Databasa on Customary Law Project

 

(Source: Université Rennes 1)

We received a message from Professor Sylvain Soleil (Univ Rennes 1) regarding the International Databasa on Customary Law Project.

Dear colleagues, Dear friends,

Today we are officially launching the International Database on Customary Law project, which is funded by the French Institute for Studies and Research on Law and Justice. This IDDLR project consists of :

1/ to provide the public with free online access to the maximum number of customary sets published in the world to date

2/ to accompany this online access with a vast epistemological, international and interdisciplinary reflection on the phenomena that are at work when customs, which are by nature evolving and oral, are put in writing, and therefore fixed, controllable and partly distorted

3/ to bring together researchers from all over the world around this dual documentary and scientific challenge

Summary :

Anthropologists and legal historians agree on the fact that all the civilisations of the world have, yesterday, the day before yesterday, or today, adopted a traditional legal system that has been classified as "customs". Several tens of thousands of customary systems have thus developed on earth, some of which continue to be applied on the fringes of or in addition to the modern legal system: in Asia, Oceania, Africa, North America and Latin America. By their very nature, these systems should only be known experimentally, since they have most often developed orally, thanks on the one hand to precepts shared by communities and their leaders, and on the other hand to imitations of foreign norms and judicial precedents which, in settling disputes, modify, if not the rule, at least its interpretation. However, the development of writing has captured the traditional, oral and customary phenomenon for various political, legal or sociological reasons. This, on the one hand, makes it possible not only to know the content of ancient and current customs, to exploit them, to study them and to compare them. On the other hand, it has profoundly modified the very concept of customs: they are now fixed and formalised by written signs.

For more info on the project as well as expressions of interest, kindly reach out to Professor Soleil.