JOURNAL: American Journal of Legal History (vol. LXIV)

(image source: OUP)

This blog has not reported anymore on the American Journal of Legal History since June 2024. Here is an overview of the material published since:

Advance articles

Jury riders as jury power in twentieth-century England (Kay Crosby) [OPEN ACCESS]
DOI 10.1093/ajlh/njaf009
Abstract:

This article argues that the relatively obscure practice of jury riders and recommendations reveals a historic political role for juries which has hitherto gone unnoticed. In short, riders mattered as a community intervention into the work of both judges and of local government. This article draws on over 1000 verdicts, both in criminal courts and in coroners’ courts, from England and Wales, 1900 to 1999. In recent work unearthing the existence of jury riders, Coen and Howlin principally sought to reveal what was said by juries in addition to their formal verdicts; this article focuses on what these observations were for. This shift in focus reveals that the type of jury had significance not only for what the jury said, but also for how it was received. Where a coroner’s jury offered a rider, it was a means for informal rebuke, with no definite, automatic outcome (although local authorities often felt compelled to respond). There was power in this sort of pronouncement, but it was often quite diffuse. Riders from trial juries were very different. Here, the statement added to the verdict was much more likely to be a formal recommendation for mercy. Trial juries were probably less free to set out their views in detail, but their words had more formal power, feeding directly (albeit only normally as part of a wider picture) into the sentencing decisions of judges. But while the precise power of a jury’s words changed from one context to another, it was a consistently powerful, often political intervention.

(1) LXIV/4 (December 2024)

Mr Locke’s enclosure: the uncommon law of property in the Second Treatise (Hannah Carrese)
DOI 10.1093/ajlh/njaf008
Abstract:

John Locke, famously, told a property origin story. This article tells a property theory origin story, asking how Locke’s property theory, which omits common rights, emerged from a common law of property that centred them—and showing how this omission influenced the colonial American law that Locke drafted. Locke was silent on or rejected the common law of property, which recognized common rights and defences against privatization of commons through enclosure. Instead, Locke adopted law reform arguments lauding enclosure because it improved waste land. Locke’s property theory therefore attempts to improve the common law of property by orienting it around private rather than common property. He asks a question about the origin of property absent from common law: how do we create private rights to common land? He takes ‘waste’ to have purely negative connotations, avoiding the neutral meanings of that word at common law. And he stipulates that enclosure of English commons requires only tacit consent of commoners, excluding common law defences against enclosure. Locke’s is an equal opportunity enclosure. His spoilage principle and plan to reform Virginia’s land laws sought to benefit the poor by preventing vast enclosures and rural depopulation. However, he theorized a clean chain of title, absent in common law, which could prevent messy disputes over wealthy estates. This article shows the common law background from which Locke departed, thus deepening understanding of both our private property regime, often justified by Locke’s property theory, and a sometimes-overlooked alternative to it, the common law of property.

The laws of ‘an old and settled society’? The law of contract in New South Wales 1815–1850 (Warren Swain) [OPEN ACCESS]
DOI 10.1093/ajlh/njaf007
Abstract:

The history of contract law in New South Wales in the decades after the closure of the Court of Civil Jurisdiction in 1814 has not received much attention from legal historians. This is an important omission. At the heart of this story is a simple but critical inquiry: the way in which the law of contract in the colony mirrored or diverged from the law of contract that applied back in London. This was rarely a matter that judges addressed explicitly. Piecing together the relationship is an exercise in reconstruction. This can only be done by examining the body of case law. The creation of the Australasian Colonial Legal History Library, combined with readily searchable newspaper reports, has made this easier. The evidence in the mid-nineteenth century is still sometimes sketchy. Context is relevant. The colony moved from a quasi-military penal colony to a significant hub of commercial activity. The period also saw a shift in the legal system as the old informal systems evolved into a much more legalistic one. For the most part, New South Wales contract law was aligned with that in England. Some issues, like the desertion of sailors demanded local solutions. There are other examples in which well-established English contract doctrine did not necessarily fit very well with the conditions of the colony.

Who is a central bank for? The founding and legal design of the Bank of Canada (Dan Rohde)[OPEN ACCESS]
DOI 10.1093/ajlh/njaf004 
Abstract:

The Bank of Canada is an independent Crown corporation that sees its primary responsibility to be promoting Canada’s economic welfare by maintaining low and stable inflation. When it was first created in 1934, however, the Bank was a radically different institution—a privately owned corporation primarily meant to anchor Canada’s economy globally and manage foreign exchange. Not only was the Bank not tasked with managing inflation, but key policymakers behind its founding thought doing so would be a severe mistake. This article offers the first legal history of the Bank’s founding. It maps the enormous public debate that accompanied the creation of the Bank and the various, often contradictory visions expressed for it. The article labels these five visions: a Bankers’ Bank, a Government Bank, an Imperial Bank, an Economists’ Bank, and a Bank of the People. The article then looks at the original legal design of the Bank and argues that it largely fit the Imperial Bank model. Charting this history helps us better understand this vital organ of Canadian government, and has the potential to upset many of our accepted, contemporary notions of central banking.

 (2) LXIV/3 (September 2024)

Early American versions of a homosexual-advances defence (William B. Meyer)
DOI  10.1093/ajlh/njaf002
Abstract:

Homicide suspects in the United States have sometimes maintained, and prosecutors and juries have sometimes agreed, that their crimes were less serious or were justified entirely if they were responding to homosexual advances by their victims. Studies of such a defence’s use have, with a single exception from 1868, been confined to the period after 1920. A newspaper search, modelled on one used to explore another supposed ‘unwritten law’, identifies nine additional instances between the Civil War and 1914. In the most notable of them, the murder of Joseph Frye in Boston in 1879, such advances were all but explicitly recognized as constituting legal provocation that mitigated the crime. In this and other cases, a credible invocation of the defence seems to have lightened the killer’s punishment when any was imposed.

Litigating longshoremen in the Lone Star State: black dock workers and the struggle to maintain autonomy after the 1964 Civil Rights Act (D. Caleb Smith)
DOI 10.1093/ajlh/njaf003
Abstract:

On 20 January 1969, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed suit against 37 International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) locals in 10 Texas cities. The DOJ charged that the ILA was in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In United States v International Longshoremen’s Association, the government attacked the segregated union structure found throughout the state’s waterfronts and condemned a long history of racial bias. In Texas, black dock workers made up two-thirds of ILA membership, but got fewer than half of the total work assignments. Black longshoremen both leaned on the law and defied it. For almost two decades, they refused to merge with white locals, but filed federal complaints to gain fair employment. This article argues that the struggle to maintain separatism while advocating for equality at ILA waterfronts was an effort to gain an unattainable workplace freedom by insisting on upholding a century-long tradition of biracial cooperation that was at the root of economic injustice, but at the cornerstone of an indispensable moral value and black sustainability.

The progressive secularization of credit in New Granada and the antecedents of commercial banking in Colombia (1835–1863) (Marcela Castro-Ruiz)
DOI 10.1093/ajlh/njaf005
Abstract:

In the initial years of the republican era, New Granada (now Colombia) underwent a profound transformation in its sources and mechanisms of credit, transitioning from the predominance of a spiritual economy during the colonial period to a secular system that gradually evolved into a banking framework by the late nineteenth century. Starting in the mid-1830s, influenced by liberal ideology, a combination of factors catalysed this evolution, including the liberalization of interest rates, the establishment of savings institutions, and intellectual discourse surrounding the need to organize a formal banking system. Despite several attempts to establish an institutionalized financial framework, only in the 1860s and 1870s did the federal government ultimately foster the formation of regional banks. This article serves as an introduction to comprehend the origins and progression of the Colombian banking system.

The State of Florida v Fortune Ferguson, Jr: the death penalty and legal change in Florida, 1924–1927 (Brandon J. Tett) 
DOI 10.1093/ajlh/njaf006
Abstract:

This article uses the case of Fortune Ferguson, Jr to explore the creation and effects of the creation of a centralized justice system in Florida in the 1920s. This involved a 16-year-old Black teenager accused, convicted, and executed for rape in Florida in the mid-1920s. This represented the first person sentenced to die in the newly created electric chair in Florida’s state prison. The shift to the electric chair and state-run executions reflected a larger move by the legislature to remove criminal justice processes from the decentralized system that existed prior to 1923. This system vested significant authority in the community, local officials, and private contractors. But that system came under significant strain by the 1910s and 1920s. The shift to the electric chair and state executions emerged out of the larger critiques of the decentralized justice system. As such, this case reflects an effort to establish the authority of the new centralized system, as it was one of the first cases to be tried in it. The transition to state-run private executions was not as disadvantageous to local officials as scholars have suggested. Instead of framing the centralization of criminal justice processes as a competition between state and local criminal justice actors, the case of Fortune Ferguson provides insight into the collaborative efforts that occurred between state and local officials that augmented the authority of formal agents of criminal justice at both the state and local levels.

Book review: Hendrik Hartog, Nobody’s Boy and His Pals: The Story of Jack Robbins and the Boys’ Brotherhood Republic (Kathryn Schumaker)

(3) LXIV/2 (June 2024)

Comparative legal teaching in eighteenth-century Oxford: an analysis of Thomas Bever’s Appendix to his lectures (Łukasz Jan Korporowicz) [OPEN ACCESS]
DOI 10.1093/ajlh/njae013 
Abstract:

In the 1760s and 1770s, Thomas Bever, a once-eminent but today nearly-forgotten English civilian, was delivering a course of lectures devoted to civil law at Oxford. The final part of those lectures, known as the Appendix, was of a different character from the earlier parts. In the Appendix Bever discussed the development of the law and constitution of 15 European countries. His description was an attempt to compare different systems and to abstract general legal concepts common to different countries. Along with other issues, Bever was specifically interested in abstracting the common roots of medieval feudalism. The analysis offered in this article is the result of archival investigation comparing two different versions of Bever’s lecture notes. The main objective of the article is to reconstruct Bever’s narrative, together with analysing his methodology and the intellectual framework of his work. This investigation reveals the intricacies of the legal education offered at Oxford in the second half of the eighteenth century.

Medical dominance and the law: European medical exiles in Tasmania, 1933–1951 (Gabrielle Wolf)
DOI 10.1093/ajlh/njae012
Abstract:

Doctors who escaped Nazi-occupied Europe and immigrated to Australia were greeted mostly with hostility by representatives of the local medical profession. Australian doctors agitated for amendment of legislation that governed registration of medical practitioners in each state, so that it removed any legal entitlement of the European medical exiles to practise medicine. Tasmania’s Parliament was the first Australian legislature to accede to these medical practitioners’ pressure, and did so before the Second World War began. This article explores reasons for both the particular eagerness of the Tasmanian medical profession to prevent the émigrés from practising medicine and its capacity to achieve its objective so quickly. This analysis provides a case study of how doctors attempted to use licensing laws to entrench the dominance of the medical profession.

Étienne Parent, the Demise of the Mixed Constitution, and the Rise of Liberalism of Government in French Canada (Jean-Christophe Bédard-Rubin) [OPEN ACCESS]
DOI 10.1093/ajlh/njae009
Abstract:

Between the adoption of the Act of Union in 1840 and the British North America Act in 1867, French-Canadian elites had to reconceptualize the nature and virtues of the British constitutional system. Étienne Parent, an early defender of the ‘mixed constitution’ and one of the most influential thinkers among French-Canadian reformists, turned to the civil service to give the new constitutional regime a stable foundation. His theory of the ‘sovereignty of intelligence’ borrowed French liberal ideas to build a distinct model of constitutionalism out of British constitutional institutions. Parent’s thought also exemplifies how the idea that the constitution is the principal integrative force of the polity continued to shape French-Canadian constitutional imaginary in the mid-nineteenth century. Recovering this dynamic and historical approach to constitutionalism sheds light on this distinct constitutional model, obscured by the later influence of AV Dicey and his retrospective interpretation of nineteenth-century constitutionalism. Putting the emphasis on the administration, Parent’s theory of the ‘sovereignty of intelligence’ offered a form of government liberalism which differed from the liberalism associated with parliamentary sovereignty, and republicanism and popular sovereignty. In many respects, Parent participated directly in the consolidation of the constitutional model he defended, and his thought allows us to recapture the synergy and generative tension between the cabinet and the civil service that endures in the contemporary constitutional practices of Westminster parliamentary systems.

Sect and Superstition: The Protestant Framework of American Codification (Kellen R. Funk) [OPEN ACCESS]
DOI 10.1093/ajlh/njae008
Abstract:

Elite lawyers who debated codification in the nineteenth-century United States treated codification as inseparable from a liberal Protestant textualism that had taken hold in the early national era. Legislators declared codification to be the necessary final step of the Protestant Reformation and frequently characterized common law lawyers as beholden to ‘superstition’ and ‘priestcraft’. Their opponents denounced the codifiers’ idea that texts alone could adequately convey common meanings and delighted to point out the endlessly fracturing glosses on supposedly ‘clear’ texts that divided the positivists into an ever-increasing number of sects. Many works have addressed the relationship between populism and positivism over the course of the codification debates in the United States. What these works have missed is the Protestantism. Understanding how lawyers of another generation approached these questions can help us to appreciate the varieties of American textualism, and the fact that today’s textualism may be as foreign to textualisms of the past as to other methods entirely. Rather than the forerunners of a modern, rationalist ‘Republic of Statutes’, the codifiers were the literal and figurative sons of a post-Calvinist generation that was unquenchably optimistic about the clarity of texts and the common sense of individuals reading them. This lens also helps us better understand the defenders of the common law, who were not so much the retrograde servants of property rights and judicial supremacy as they are often presented, but were more often practically minded lawyers who understood the limits to which legislative texts could change the complex practices of law on the ground.

Book reviews:

•  Omar Valerio-Jiménez, Remembering Conquest: Mexican Americans, Memory, and Citizenship (Scott D. Wagner)
• Christian G Fritz, Monitoring American Federalism: The History of State Legislative Resistance (Jane Manners)
• On Constitutional Romance and Federalisms Long Forgotten: A Review Essay (Aaron Hall)
• Dylan C. Penningroth, Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights (Andrew J Lanham)
• Anthony Gregory, New Deal Law and Order: How the War on Crime Built the Modern Liberal State (Matthew Denney)

Read more with OUP.

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Jean Monnet Intensive Summer School (Rome: Unitelma Sapienza, 20-24 JUL 2026) [DEADLINE 10 MAY 2026]

 

Abstract:

The University of Rome Unitelma Sapienza (the e-learning University owned by Sapienza University of Rome) is now accepting applications for the Jean Monnet Intensive Summer School on Participation, Lobbying and Transparency in the EU Institutions [PLAT-EU] – 3rd edition (2026). This program is part of the Jean Monnet Actions in the field of Higher Education Teaching and Research, funded by the European Union. The PLAT-EU Summer School will be held in person in Rome (Italy), and will include special lectures, simulations and role-plays, some of which will exceptionally take place in the headquarters of Italian Institutions. All selected participants will receive a scholarship to cover the Summer School participation fees.

Dates and location:

The Summer School will take place from 20 to 24 July 2026, between the main campus of Sapienza University of Rome and University of Rome Unitelma Sapienza, the e-university of Sapienza. The classes will be held in English and will include lectures, simulations, and role-plays, some of which will exceptionally take place at the Italian Parliament.

Target audience:

We are looking for talented, passionate and committed participants that feel strongly about democracy, institutions and open society. In particular, the call is open to: a. graduate and undergraduate students under the age of 30. b. lobbying professionals under the age of 35. c. civil servants, lobbying experts and research fellows of any age. The maximum number of participants selected will be 25. Candidates from all over the world are welcome to apply, regardless of nationality, provided they have a very good command of English, the language in which the Summer School will be conducted.

Program description:

The third edition of the PLAT-EU Summer School will focus mainly on lobbying legislation in Europe and South America. The lessons (40 hours in total) will be highly interactive. Students will be involved in discussions, simulations and exercises based on how decision-making processes work. The course will cover a variety of topics, such as the decision-making process, transparency participation, techniques of lobbying, comparative lobbying law, ethics and anti-corruption mechanisms. To familiarize themselves with broader themes of the course, all selected participants will attend online preparatory seminars (16 hours). The recorded lessons will be available for download on the PLAT-EU website starting in April.

Objectives and methodology:

The main objective of the Summer School is to provide participants with the necessary skills to develop practical and specialized competencies in lobbying, transparency and participation. These competencies will be transferable to their future professions, including working with institutions, non-governmental organizations, associations, committees, and civil groups. To achieve this goal, participants will be methodologically stimulated through a diachronic, interdisciplinary and comparative approach. This will enable them to understand the legal and political system in which they operate as researchers, professionals and, ultimately, as citizens. 

Faculty:

The Jean Monnet Module project is coordinated by Pier Luigi Petrillo, Full Professor of Comparative Public Law at Unitelma Sapienza University of Rome and Professor of “Lobbying Theory and Technics” at Luiss Guido Carli University of Rome. Professor Petrillo was the first in Italy to set up a university course in legal sciences dedicated to the phenomenon of lobbying. The multidisciplinary faculty of the Summer School will include lobbyists, lawyers, economists, sociologists and, as keynote speakers, members of Parliament and high-level officials. The JMM Summer School Academic coordinator is Andrea Fiorentino, Fellow Researcher in Comparative Public Law at Unitelma Sapienza University of Rome. 

 Qualifications:

The Summer School on “Participation, Lobbying and Transparency in the EU Institutions” is a university-recognized higher education course. Those who attend 80 percent of the classes and pass the final exam will be issued a certificate of intensive course attendance with the issuance of an equivalent number of ECTS credits (or CEU stands for Continuing Education Unit).

 Fees and Facilitation:

All selected participants will receive a scholarship to cover the Summer School participation fees. Participants are responsible for their own travel, visa, meals, and accommodation fees. Upon request, the University can provide accommodation suggestions.

How to apply:

Applications must be submitted no later than the 10 May 2026 to the following email address: jeanmonnet@unitelmasapienza.it, with the subject line: "Jean Monnet Intensive Summer School on Lobbying 2026". The application should include: a. a detailed curriculum vitae (in English) b. a copy of a valid identification document c. a letter of motivation of no more than two pages (in English). Candidates will be evaluated based on their motivation statement, academic record, research or professional progress in the lobbying or public sector. A commission chaired by the Jean Monnet Project Manager, will review the applications. Decisions regarding the recruitment process will be made by the 15 May 2026. All candidates will be informed of the outcome of the procedure

Roadmap:

Application deadline

Notification of selection results

Preparatory Lessons (online)

Summer School (on campus)

 

10 May 2026

 

15 May 2026

Available for download

Jun-July, 2026

 

20 to 24 July 2026

 Disclaimer:

 The Summer School is funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the granting authority, i.e. the European Education and Culture Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the grating authority can be held responsible for them.

Contacts

If you have any questions, please write to Andrea Fiorentino to the following address: jeanmonnet@unitelmasapienza.it For more information on the general project: https://www.unitelmasapienza.it/jeanmonnet/

 

 

 

 

CALL FOR PAPERS: Iustoria 2026: In the Shadow of Empires (Belgrade: University of Belgrade, 11-13 MAY 2026) [DEADLINE 15 APR 2026]

 

Iustoria 2026: In the Shadow of Empires

The University of Belgrade Faculty of Law is now receiving paper proposals for the Sixth student conference on legal history – the Iustoria 2026, to be held on May 11^th-13^th, 2026, its topic being “In the Shadow of Empires”.

In 2026, we mark the 1,550th anniversary of the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 – an event that reshaped the map and destiny of Europe at the time. Nevertheless, this political collapse could not erase a thousand years of the development of Roman law, which later returned to Western Europe through the rediscovery of the Digest and the work of numerous schools that studied and applied Roman law, from the glossators to the pandectists. By contrast, in the Eastern Roman – Rhomaian – Byzantine Empire, Roman law, increasingly enriched with Greek and Christian components, continued to develop for another thousand years, exerting a significant influence on many neighbouring lands, above all the Slavic countries. In order to commemorate this important anniversary, we seek to invite discussion on the emergence, development, dissemination, and influence of the legal systems of empires and imperial polities – from the Roman Empire and other great empires of antiquity, through their successors in the medieval and modern periods, up to today’s informal empires that extend their influence through an order that formally proclaims the equality of peoples and democracy.

Research may focus on the legal organization of empires themselves from various perspectives – or on their relations with other states (including numerous issues of international law and the use of force), as well as on transplants from their laws into other legal systems, whether imposed or voluntarily adopted. It is also legitimate to pose the question – either at a theoretical level or through concrete case studies – which characteristics distinguish the law of an empire from the law of a small nation-state. Across different empires throughout history, we can find examples of both cosmopolitanism and discrimination, making it particularly interesting to consider whether an empire tends to view its inhabitants primarily as citizens endowed with rights or as subjects who chiefly owe it obligations, what is required to acquire citizenship, and how its legal system treats those who do not possess it. Whatever constitutes the principal basis of power of a given empire – whether military conquest, slavery, or “soft power” – will inevitably be reflected in its legal system, allowing us to trace the emergence and development of many specific legal institutions.

All students of undergraduate and post-graduate studies pertaining to law or other humanities are eligible to apply for the conference. The applications should contain basic personal information (name and surname, faculty, department, level and year of study), along with an extended abstract containing between 500 and 1000 words. Applications are accepted in either Serbian or English.

The applications should be e-mailed to iustoria@ius.bg.ac.rs before April 15^th, 2026. The students will be informed by April 20^th whether or not their application has been accepted. For any additional information you may enquire at the same e-mail address, and important news will also be published at the official Facebook page of the conference – https://www.facebook.com/iustoria

Just like on our previous conferences, apart from the presentations given by their colleagues, the students at the conference will have an opportunity to attend several lectures given by renowned experts – more details on this will be available in the final version of the programme.

The conference will be held in a hybrid format: both in-person and online participation will be possible. We'll do our best to secure accommodations either in student dormitories or with student host families for participants who don’t reside in Belgrade and who wish to participate in person. These arrangements will depend on the number of available spots. 

The final versions of the papers presented at the conference, with final changes and corrections submitted within a reasonable time after the conference, will be submitted for publication in the journal „Vesnik pravne istorije / Herald of Legal History“ (http://epub.ius.bg.ac.rs/index.php/Vesnik/index). The deadline for the submission of papers is July 15th 2026.

REMINDER: CALL FOR BLOGGERS [m/f/x] [DEADLINE 31 MAR 2026]

 This blog's call for bloggers ends tomorrow at 23:59.

More information here.

CONFERENCE: ISECS Conference ‘Reframing the Enlightenment’ [ISECS/SIEDS] (Paris: DHI/Collège de France/Maison de la Recherche, 10-12 June 2026)

 

(image source: ISECS-SIEDS)

Abstract:

Both ISECS and most of its member societies were founded when the Enlightenment movement of the 18th century enjoyed the highest reputation among scholars and perhaps even more so in society: as fighters for freedom of thought and self-determination, as advocates of progress and as pioneers of a democratic society. This of course was a view that experts always knew to be idealising, but it suited the mood of the democratisation push in Western societies and beyond in the last third of the 20th century. Since around the turn of the millennium, the winds of scholars’s and society’s favour towards the Enlightenment have changed. Today, it seems that the society that the Enlightenment thinkers envisioned has not been realized. We are still facing fundamental inequalities: namely a power imbalance between the sexes, between elites and the people, between Europeans and the ‘rest’ of the world. Some exponents of the post-colonial agenda see the Enlightenment, not only in its racial doctrines but also in its standards of rationality, primarily as a justification of European colonial domination and exploitation. On the other side of the political spectrum, the Enlightenment is also criticised by those who see it as an arbitrary destruction of traditions or the self-serving empowerment of a small group of the intellectual elite. The current situation can be summarised in a variation of Jonathan Israel’s well-known book title: “Enlightenment contested again”. Anyone studying the 18th century is doubly challenged by this development. Firstly, the research in the 18th century is not unaffected by the respective social conditions. Secondly, the experts of the 18th century are able to substantially contribute to current debates on the role of the Enlightenment in the history of humanity. Organizing a conference, titled “Reframing the Enlightenment / Le défi des Lumières”, ISECS is consciously taking on these challenges. This conference reflects the contemporary context in which we conduct our research and takes a well-founded position on the assessment of the Enlightenment in today’s debates based on our research. The focus of the contributions should therefore be both on the historical subjects and on the assessment of the Enlightenment in our present day. The aim of the conference is to overcome the too simple positioning oneself either for or against the Enlightenment and to emphasise the complexity of both the Enlightenment as a historical phenomenon and its legacy for the present and the future.

Discover the program here. 

(source: Werkgroep de 18de eeuw)

CONFERENCE WEBSITE: Droit de l'art, du patrimoine et des biens culturels: histoires, normes, circulations [Journées internationales de la Société d'Histoire du Droit] (Torino: Università di Torino, 4-7 JUN 2026) [DEADLINE 10 APR 2026]

 

The organisation of the conference Droit de l'art, du patrimoine et des biens culturels: histoires, normes, circulations [Journées internationales of the French Société d'HIstoire du Droit] at the University of Turin have opened a conference website.

The conference will take place in Turin from 4 to 7 June. Registration is possible until 10 April, as indicated earlier on this blog.

Read more here.

BOOK: Boudewijn SIRKS (ed.), contr. Christian BROM, Egbert KOOPS & Tim VAN POLANEN, The Observationes tumultuariae of Johan van Bleiswijk (1684–1748) [Legal History Library, eds. Dirk HEIRBAUT, Michelle McKINLEY, Matthew C. MIROW & C.H. VAN RHEE, 81] (Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff/Brill, 2026), ISBN 9789004750630, € 157,94

 

(image source: Brill)

Abstract:

In the Dutch Republic, courts made decisions by voting and judgments were not given reasoned motivations. Although some judges kept a record of the preceding deliberations, the only extensive collections we have had until recently from the eighteenth century are those of van Bijnkershoek and Pauw. Fortunately, we are also in possession of the Observationes of Johan van Bleiswijk (in 1723–1748 a colleague of van Bijnkershoek). Van Bleiswijk provides an overview of the various opinions relating to cases at the time, but also expounds on his own views. In this way, he sheds light on his own perspective and legal views. Hence, van Bleiswijk’s Observationes are a most welcome addition to our knowledge of judicial decision-making in the Dutch Republic.

On the editor:

Boudewijn Sirks is Emeritus Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford and Fellow of All Souls College. He has published articles on the Hoge Raad (Supreme Court) of Holland and Zeeland in the Dutch Republic and edited C. van Bijnkershoek, W. Pauw, Index in observationes tumultuarias (2005). 

Read more here: DOI  10.1163/9789004750616.

AWARD: Max Planck-ASLH Dissertation Prize for European Legal History in Global Perspective (DEADLINE 1 JUN 2026)

(image source: architekturstartbilder)

Description: 

The Max Planck-ASLH Dissertation Prize for European Legal History in Global Perspective will honor exceptional dissertations on topics in European legal history in global perspective and presented for PhD or JSD degrees awarded in the previous calendar year. Topics may include European legal interactions with people or places outside Europe, legal processes spanning Europe and other world regions, and developments in legal theory closely related to imperial, transnational, or trans-regional trends. Dissertations must be written in English. The prize recipient will receive a three-month residential fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in Frankfurt. The fellowship includes a monthly stipend, in accordance with the regulations of the Institute’s visitor program, round-trip airfare to Frankfurt (up to €1,500), and accommodation in an institute apartment (valued at €700 per month). Currently, the monthly stipend is €2,700 for scholars with a PhD or JSD. The stipend will be offset against other sources of income. The timing of the period in residence at the Max Planck Institute is flexible and will be arranged in consultation with the Institute directors. Typically, the three-month period will take place in the fall or spring within a year or two of the date of the award.

Elements of submission:

Elements of Submission (1) Curriculum Vitae (including date of degree); (2) Plan for Use of Fellowship Time at the Max Planck Institute (up to 500 words); and (3) Dissertation (including abstract). Please submit items 1-3 in a single pdf. All application materials should be sent to mpdissertation@aslh.net Only complete submissions will be considered. Questions? Write to Lauren Benton (lauren.benton@yale.edu).

Committee members: 

Lauren Benton (Yale/Chair) - Thomas Duve (MPILHLT) - Falah Bishara (Virginia) - Matthew Mirow (Florida International University) 

Read more here. 

JOURNAL: Law and History Review XLIV (2026), No. 1 [OPEN ACCESS]

 

(image source: CUP)

Articles

Bringing the Law and the Local Back In to the Revolution (Sarah Barringer Gordon)
DOI 10.1017/S0738248026101540
Abstract:

The study of legal change at local levels in this forum opens new windows onto the legal landscape, especially because they explore ground-level legal change that reveals far more innovative and incremental shifts in law and legal understanding than is visible at higher altitudes.

The Tension between Religious Liberty and Religious Establishment in Revolutionary New England (Mark Valeri)
DOI 10.1017/S0738248025101466
Abstract:

Revolutionary-era state constitutions reflected an unsettling tension in the history of American liberty. This article captures how revolutionary-era Americans accommodated moral liberty with religious establishment. Their notions of liberty were paradoxical, but it is possible to track their moral reasoning.

“They Are Their Citizens and Must Submit to Their Government”: Citizenship and the Creation of the Federal Government, 1776–1787 (Jessica Choppin Roney)
DOI: 10.1017/S0738248025101314
Abstract:

The American War for Independence scrambled the concept of political allegiance and belonging. In James H. Kettner’s apt phrase, “subjects became citizens.” Where British law denied the possibility that a subject could renounce the obedience owed to their sovereign, Americans asserted through force of arms “the right to choose their allegiance.”1 Influenced by a contractual notion of political compact and by the mayhem of a violent civil war, people shuffled and sometimes reshuffled into camps of revolutionaries, loyalists, and neutrals

Popular Government and the Limits of the Law at the Outset of the American Revolution (Donald F. Johnson)
DOI: 10.1017/S0738248025101351
Abstract:

The outbreak of the American Revolution thrust would-be revolutionaries into a paradoxical relationship with the law. As they overthrew colonial governments from New Hampshire to Georgia during the summer and fall of 1775, leaders of the resistance to Great Britain found themselves in the awkward position of having to justify rebellion against British authority while still professing to be law-abiding Britons. The revolutionaries’ mandate to govern rested on protecting rights to property and representation that many colonists believed had been violated by agents of the Empire, but the practicalities of war demanded extra-legal measures. The popular governments that replaced colonial administrations had to find a way to balance upholding many of the laws of the old regime while simultaneously organizing an armed insurrection against it. Much of this burden fell on revolutionary committees at the town and local level. As the Continental Congress and provincial elites vacillated between rebellion and reconciliation and struggled to assert control over the fast-growing revolutionary coalition, ad hoc governments comprised of ordinary citizens took on the tasks of governing their regions and organizing for armed struggle. For much of 1775 and early 1776, these popular regimes precariously balanced the need for extra-legal expediencies with the need to maintain at least a semblance of law to maintain their legitimacy.

Legislation, Regulation, and Administration in the American Revolution (William J. Novak)
DOI 10.1017/S0738248025101235
Abstract:

This article continues a long-term investigation into the nature of legislation, regulation, and administration across United States history. In contrast to persistent myths about an original American legal and political inheritance dedicated primarily to private rights, limited government, and laissez-faire economics, this article explores the earliest roots of American public rights, popular lawmaking, and regulatory policymaking. In the very first activities of revolutionary Provincial Congresses and Committees of Safety, this article locates a surprisingly robust template for the future development of American state police power, public provisioning, general-welfare legislation, and socio-economic regulation.

Review essay

Something Else: History, Legal Imagination, and the American Revolution (Matthew Crow)
DOI 10.1017/S0738248026101503

Read the whole issue in open access here.

BOOK: Umut ÖZSU, Completing Humanity. The International Law of Decolonization, 1960-1982 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024), ISBN 9781108566230, € 35

 

(image source: CUP)

Abstract:

After the Second World War, the dissolution of European empires and emergence of 'new states' in Asia, Africa, Oceania, and elsewhere necessitated large-scale structural changes in international legal order. In Completing Humanity, Umut Özsu recounts the history of the struggle to transform international law during the twentieth century's last major wave of decolonization. Commencing in 1960, with the General Assembly's landmark decolonization resolution, and concluding in 1982, with the close of the third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea and the onset of the Latin American debt crisis, the book examines the work of elite international lawyers from newly independent states alongside that of international law specialists from 'First World' and socialist states. A study in modifications to legal theory and doctrine over time, it documents and reassesses post-1945 decolonization from the standpoint of the 'Third World' and the jurists who elaborated and defended its interests.

On the author:

Umut Özsu, Carleton University, Ottawa 

Read more here: DOI 10.1017/9781108566230. 

BOOK REVIEW: Assaf LIKHOVSKI on Sovereignty and religious freedom: a Jewish history, by Simon Rabinovitch (Comparative Legal History, XIII (2025), nr. 2 (December), pp. 351-356)

(Image source: Taylor&Francis)

Simon Rabinovitch’s book is an ambitious, wide-ranging, and erudite discussion of the past and present status of Jewish collective rights. Using a comparative method, Rabinovitch explores a variety of interactions between Jewish communities and modern states in the last two centuries in various countries around the world. The topic of this book is highly relevant to contemporary political debates, not only regarding the place of Jewish communities in modern Western states but also concerning other minority religious groups such as Muslims and Sikhs. While legal historians and other scholars have long been interested in the relationship between ethnic and religious minorities and modern states, Rabinovitch’s book is unique because of the broad and detailed way he explores this topic. On a more abstract level, the author’s analysis is an essay on the nature of liberalism, discussing the dilemma that modern liberal states face when they try to reconcile the individualist nature of liberal ideology with the fact that in every society, there are collective groups, often of a religious nature, whose beliefs and practices sometimes conflict with those of the majority.

To read the full review, please click here. Online access is free for members of the European Society for Comparative Legal History.

DOI: 10.1080/2049677X.2025.2580113

REMINDER: CALL FOR PAPERS: Dirigeants et dirigés [Journées de la Société d’histoire du droit et institutions des pays flamands, picards et wallons] (Versailles, 15-16 MAY 2026) [DEADLINE 15 APR 2026]

  

Les journées de la Société d’histoire du droit et des institutions des pays flamands, picards et wallons se tiendront cette année à Versailles les 15 et 16 mai 2026, à l’invitation de Madame Catherine Lecomte, professeur émérite à l’université de Versailles-Saint Quentin et présidente honoraire de la société, sur le thème « Dirigeants et dirigés ».

Si la notion de gouvernance a été, ces dernières années, souvent questionnée dans ses structures, ses moyens et ses fins, celle de gouvernant et plus largement de dirigeant mérite à nouveau une particulière attention. L’actualité contemporaine montre en effet qu’en matière de gouvernance publique, les structures institutionnelles ne suffisent pas à déterminer à elles seules les politiques qui demeurent influencées par la personnalité des dirigeants. Renouant avec une problématique classique de l’Histoire des idées politiques, un tel sujet propose une réflexion sur les gouvernements à travers la personne de ses dirigeants, ses qualités attendues, ses modes de désignation, ses réseaux, ses limites personnelles et les garde-fous institutionnels. 

Le thème des « Journées » de la Société n’est pas en outre limité à une réflexion sur les seuls dirigeants politiques mais s’étend à l’étude des dirigeants d’autres organisations juridiquement constituées et productrices elles-mêmes d’une réglementation, comme les dirigeants militaires, municipaux, provinciaux, mais aussi les dirigeants spirituels (la direction de l’Eglise) ou économiques (les directions de sociétés). Enfin, le thème de la rencontre comprend aussi l’étude des dirigés, de leur adhésion à leurs dirigeants ou à l’inverse la manière dont ils s’expriment et s’organisent pour limiter leurs dérives. S’il n’est pas fixé de limite temporelle au thème proposé, les communications se concentreront sur le plan géographique sur les régions linguistiques des Pays, flamands, picards et wallons.

Les propositions de communications sont à envoyer à Monsieur Tanguy Le Marc’hadour tanguylemar@yahoo.fr, président de la Société et à Madame Catherine Lecomte catherine.lecomte@uvsq.fr, présidente honoraire, avant le 15 avril 2026. Celles-ci seront accompagnées d’une brève présentation en français. 

Les communications pourront être présentées dans une des langues de la Société, le français, le néerlandais ou l’anglais, avec, compte tenu du lieu des « « Journées », une préférence pour le français.

 Pour le bureau,

Tanguy Le Marc’hadour, président de la Société.

BOOK: Lars REGULA & Jörg ULBERT (eds.), Consular Jurisdiction. On the History of the Judicial Functions of Consulates (12th–20th Century) [Legal History Library, eds. Dirk HEIRBAUT, Matthew C. MIROW, Michelle McKINLEY & C.H VAN REE, 83; Studies in the History of International Law, ed. Randall LESAFFER, 30] (Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff/Brill, 2026), ISBN 978-90-04-75519-2

(image source: Brill)

Abstract:

For today’s practitioners, the history of the judicial functions of consulates is far more colourful and obscure than modern consular law might suggest. Take, for instance, Consul Annibale de Rossetti in Egypt, who had to arbitrate a lawsuit between two German merchants and was completely overwhelmed. De Rossetti neither knew German nor was he familiar with the law he was expected to apply. Modern consuls often react with disbelief at the fact that their predecessors acted not only as judges, but also as regulatory authorities and bailiffs. This volume brings together contributions on the history of the legal roles and functions of consulates, spanning from America to China and from their origins in the Middle Ages to the modern consulate.

Résumé:

L’histoire des fonctions judiciaires des consulats est bien plus riche et obscure pour les praticiens d’aujourd’hui que ne le laisse penser le droit consulaire moderne. Par exemple, lorsque le consul Annibale de Rossetti, en Égypte, dut trancher un litige entre deux commerçants allemands, il fut dépassé par la situation. De Rossetti ne connaissait ni l’allemand, ni le droit qu’il était censé appliquer. Les consuls modernes réagissent souvent avec incrédulité en apprenant que leurs prédécesseurs exerçaient à la fois les fonctions de juges, d’autorités réglementaires et d’huissiers de justice. De volume réunit des contributions portant sur l’histoire des rôles et fonctions juridiques des consulats, de l’Amérique à la Chine, depuis leurs origins au Moyen Âge jusqu’au consulat moderne. 

Contributors:

Marcella Aglietti, Eleonora Angella, Arnaud Bartolomei, Thibault Bechini, Giorgio Ennas, Ana Belem Fernández Castro, Juliette Françoise, Laura Galoppini, Sacha Gauthier Olssy, Thomas Gidney, Berna Kamay-Ulusay, Jessica Marglin, Cédric Quertier, Lars Regula, Victor Simon, Jörg Ulbert, and Dominique Valérian.

On the editors:

Lars Regula, University of Hamburg, is a Ph.D. student at the Chair for Legal History. His research deals with German consular jurisdiction in the Ottoman Empire. Jörg Ulbert, Ph.D. (2001), Université de Bretagne-Sud, is maître de conférences at the same university. He has published monographs and many articles on diplomatic and consular history, including Consul et services consulaires au XIXe siècle (2010) with Lukian Prijac. 

Read more here: DOI: 10.1163/9789004755192.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Comparative Legal History (Mission Statement and new Editorial Board)

 

The journal Comparative Legal History is pleased to announce that its website has been updated with the new composition of its Editorial Board.

 

Comparative Legal History is the scholarly journal of the European Society for Comparative Legal History, publishing innovative research in comparative, transnational, and global legal history. The journal welcomes contributions that examine and compare historical interactions between diverse forms of normativity, including legal, religious, customary, and social norms, as well as the agents, institutions, and jurisdictions through which they have operated.  Engaging with legal traditions from across the globe, the journal welcomes interdisciplinary approaches and publishes research articles, invited contributions, review essays, book reviews, and special issues.

 

The journal is committed to fast turn-around times for its evaluations and editing, and thanks to our publisher, Taylor & Francis, we will now be publishing contributions online as soon as they are ready for production, thus giving authors the ability to publish and disseminate their research without delay.

 

We would also like to note that the journal encourages authors to make use of visual material in their articles.

 

To discuss ideas for articles or special issues, please contact Articles Editors Paolo Astorri (paa@teol.ku.dk) and Emanuel van Dongen (E.G.D.vanDongen@uu.nl). To recommend a book (published in the last two years) for review, please contact Reviews Editors Gianmarco Palmieri (gianmarcopalmieri1@gmail.com) and Geetanjali Srikantan (gasrikantan@gmail.com). For any and all enquiries, please feel free to contact the Editor, David Schorr (dschorr@tau.ac.il).

 

CONFERENCE: 12e Congrès de l’Association des Cercles francophones d’histoire et d’archéologie de Belgique/59e Congrès de la Fédération des Cercles d’archéologie et d’histoire de Belgique (Brussels: Académie Royale de Belgique, 20-23 AUG 2026) [DEADLINE 15 APR]

 

12^e Congrès de l’Association des Cercles francophones d’histoire et d’archéologie de Belgique

59^e Congrès de la Fédération des Cercles d’archéologie et d’histoire de Belgique

Programme

Le Congrès de Bruxelles 2026 se déroulera du jeudi 20 au dimanche 23 août 2026, à l’Académie royale de Belgique. La séance inaugurale aura lieu dans la grande salle Albert II du palais des Académies.
Les journées d’étude se tiendront dans le bâtiment des anciennes écuries. Les salles des conférences sont disposées autour d’un patio où seront installés l’accueil aux participants, la pause café et la vente des publications patrimoniales. Les journées d’étude sont réparties en quatre tranches horaires : 9h00 – 10h30 et 11h00 – 12h30 / 14h00 – 15h30 et 16h00 – 17h30. Trois communications par tranche horaire totaliseront six communications par demi-journée, avec des pauses-cafés de trente minutes entre elles. Après chaque communication d’une durée de vingt minutes, les participants pourront échanger pendant dix minutes. Le programme des communications sera établi vers la mi-mai.
Des activités culturelles gratuites et/ou payantes seront proposées en parallèle des séances d’études, l’après-midi du vendredi 21 et du samedi 22 août. D’autres animeront la soirée du jeudi et du vendredi ainsi que le dimanche 23 août. Le programme et les modalités d’inscription seront précisés ultérieurement.

Sections

1. Archéologie
2. Histoire politique, militaire et relations internationales
3. Histoire économique et sociale (+ numismatique, démographie, vie quotidienne)
4. Histoire des institutions et du droit (+ sigillographie)
5. Histoire des religions et des mouvements philosophiques
6. Histoire des sciences, des techniques et des savoirs anciens
7. Histoire de l’environnement et de l’aménagement du territoire
8. Généalogie et histoire des familles (+ héraldique)
9. Histoire des arts
10. Patrimoine oral et immatériel, folklore
11. Archives et bibliothèques
12. Patrimoine mobilier et musées

Modalités d'Inscription

Les personnes qui souhaitent assister ou participer comme orateurs au Congrès sont invitées à se faire connaitre dès à présent, en remplissant le formulaire dans la langue de leur choix (FR, NL, D) : soit en ligne, soit en le renvoyant par courriel à srab@acfhab.be ou par courrier postal à

c/o Société Royale d’Archéologie de Bruxelles (SRAB)

Congrès de Bruxelles 2026
Université libre de Bruxelles – C.P. 133/01
Avenue Franklin Roosevelt 50
B-1050 Bruxelles

Chaque congressiste recevra, à l’ouverture du Congrès, le tome 1 des Actes contenant les textes de présentation générale et les résumés de l’ensemble des communications. Une documentation culturelle et touristique relative aux différentes manifestations du Congrès y sera jointe.
Les congressistes auront la possibilité de souscrire aux volumes des Actes qui contiendront les textes des communications présentées. Le montant de la souscription aux Actes ainsi que celui du banquet de clôture du samedi 22 août seront fixés ultérieurement.
Les congressistes désireux de présenter une ou plusieurs communications sont invités à en aviser l’organisateur en renvoyant le formulaire accompagné d’un résumé de leur intervention en Word (de 15 à 20 lignes) avant le 15 avril 2026.
Tout engagement non confirmé à cette date par l’envoi d’un résumé, ne sera pas pris en compte. Les travaux de chaque section sont organisés par un bureau composé d’un président, d’un ou deux vice-président(s) et d’un secrétaire. Toute précision d’ordre scientifique pourra être obtenue auprès des responsables des sections.
Les candidatures seront étudiées par le comité scientifique qui fera connaître sa décision au plus tard le vendredi 15 mai.
Les résumés des communications retenues seront publiés dans le tome I des Actes, offert à tous les congressistes. Si le conférencier désire accompagner son résumé d’une illustration, il veillera à le faire savoir et à fournir une image de qualité suffisante, avec les références de l’œuvre respectant les mentions obligatoires et les droits d’édition éventuels.
Les communications auront une durée maximum de 20 minutes et seront suivies de dix minutes de discussion. Le choix de la langue est libre (français, néerlandais, allemand). Cependant, nous souhaitons souligner que tout (ou presque) se déroulera en français, la langue officielle du Congrès, et que le public sera, dans sa grande majorité, francophone.

You find more information here.

CONFERENCE: Le Code pénal belge. Regards historiques et comparatifs (XVIe-XXIe siècles) /The Belgian Penal Code. Historical and Comparative Perspectives (XVIth-XXIth centuries) (Brussels: Academy Palace, 18 MAY 2026)

 

To mark the entry into force of the new Belgian Penal Code, originally scheduled for 8 April but ultimately postponed until 1 September 2026, Jérôme de Brouwer, Professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles, François Pierrard, F.R.S.-FNRS Postdoctoral Researcher at UCLouvain, and Édouard Delrée, PhD student at the ULB, are organising a conference on 18 May entitled ‘Le Code pénal belge. Regards historiques et comparatifs (XVIe-XXIe siècles)’ / ‘The Belgian Penal Code. Historical and Comparative Perspectives (16th–21st centuries)’. The aim of this conference is to offer a historical and comparative perspective on Belgian criminal codification. It will seek to situate the gradual development of the concept of the Penal Code within the European and then colonial context, from the Spanish Netherlands to contemporary Belgium. The conference will take place on 18 May 2026, from 9am to 6pm, at the Palace of Academies, Rue Ducale 1, 1000 Brussels. Admission is free, but registration is compulsory (contact: pierrard.francois@uclouvain.be).

À l'occasion de l'entrée en vigueur du nouveau Code pénal belge initialement prévue le 8 avril mais finalement reportée au 1er septembre 2026, François Pierrard, chargé de recherches F.R.S.-FNRS à l'UCLouvain sous la direction de Wim Decock, organise avec Jérôme de Brouwer, professeur à l'Université libre de Bruxelles, un colloque intitulé "Le Code pénal belge. Regards historiques et comparatifs (XVIe-XXIe siècles)" / "The Belgian Penal Code. Historical and Comparative Perspectives (XVIth-XXIth centuries)". Ce colloque a pour but d'offrir une perspective historique et comparative à la codification pénale belge. Il s'agira de replacer l'élaboration progressive du concept de code pénal dans le contexte européen et puis colonial des Pays-Bas espagnols à la Belgique contemporaine. Le colloque se tiendra le 18 mai 2026, de 9h à 18h, au Palais des Académies, Rue Ducale 1, 1000 Bruxelles. L'entrée est libre, mais l'inscription est obligatoire (contact : pierrard.francois@uclouvain.be).

Le Code pénal belge. Regards historiques et comparatifs           (XVI^e-XXI^e siècles)

The Belgian Penal Code. Historical and Comparative Perspectives (XVI^th-XXI^th centuries)

 

Palais des Académies,

Rue Ducale 1, Bruxelles

18.05.2026

A)       L’élaboration du concept de code pénal                                                            The development of the concept of a criminal code

I)                    De l’uniformisation à la codification                                                                                          From standardisation to codification

Président de séance / Chairperson : Jean-Marc Hausman (UCLouvain, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)

9:00 : Introduction

Jérôme de Brouwer (ULB), François Pierrard (FNRS, UCLouvain) et Édouard Delrée (ULB)

9:30 : Le plus difficile : définir le concept

Dirk Heirbaut (Universiteit Gent) 

10:00 : The myths of criminal law codes

Aniceto Masferrer (Universitat de València) 

 

Pause-café / Coffee break

 

II)                  La séparation du droit pénal substantiel et procédural                                                The separation of substantive and procedural criminal law

Président de séance / Chairperson : Wim Decock (UCLouvain, Université de Liège)

 

11:00 : Les premières tentatives de codification. Des Ordonnances criminelles de Philippe II au Règlement provisionnel pour la procédure criminelle de Joseph II (1570-1787)

François Pierrard (FNRS, UCLouvain) 

11:30 : From the old to the new criminal law. Innovative aspects of the codification of criminal law of Joseph II (1787) compared with the Constitutio Criminalis Theresiana                         Thomas Simon (Universität Wien) 

12:00 : L’expérience française de la codification pénale (1791-1810)

Liêm Tuttle (Université Panthéon-Sorbonne)

Buffet froid / Cold buffet

B)       Le changement de paradigme de la codification pénale                 The paradigm shift in criminal codification

I)                    Les aléas de l’élaboration d’un code national                                                                                                 The challenges of developing a national code  

Président de séance / Chairperson : Nicolas Simon (Académie royale de Belgique)

 

14:00 : à la recherche d’un code pénal pour le royaume des Pays-Bas (1815-1830). Une divergence entre le nord et le sud ?

Fred Stevens (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)

14:30 : Observation, expérimentation : les sciences au service de la codification pénale en Belgique au 19^e siècle

Jérôme de Brouwer (ULB) 

15:00 : Le Code pénal belge de 1867 lu par la doctrine française

Tanguy Le Marc’hadour (Université d’Artois) 

Pause-café / Coffee break

 

II)                  L’influence et le devenir du premier Code pénal belge                                 The The influence and future of the first Belgian Penal Code    

Présidente de séance / Chairperson : Marie-Aude Beernaert (UCLouvain)

16:00 : Du Code pénal de 1867 aux lois de défense sociale en Belgique. Deux logiques antagonistes et complémentaires pour lutter contre le crime                                                                Yves Cartuyvels (UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles) 

16:30 (sur Teams) :  L’influence du droit belge sur le Code pénal congolais de 1940 à nos jours                                                                                                                                                                           Pacifique Magadju (Université Catholique de Bukavu)

17:00 : Des codifications jumelles aux destins opposés : trajectoires croisées des codes pénaux et du Code d’instruction criminelle en Belgique de 1831 à nos jours                                            Édouard Delrée (ULB)

Conclusion

 

17:30 : D’un code à l’autre                                                                                                                                         Jérôme de Brouwer (ULB), François Pierrard (FNRS, UCLouvain) et Édouard Delrée (ULB)

 

 

Contact : pierrard.francois@uclouvain.be