BOOK: Lorren ELDRIDGE, Emily IRELAND & Caroline DERRY (eds.), Celebrating Women in Legal History. Making and Shaping a Discipline (London: Bloomsbury, 2026), 232 p. ISBN 9781509983919

 

(image source: Bloomsbury)

Abstract:

This book champions the work of women in legal history, and their contributions to both the discipline and feminist activism over nearly two centuries. It considers women in academia, which was, in theory, open to women before they could become lawyers in most European countries. And it considers women working beyond the academy: many studied legal history in other ways; in local history societies, through archival work, and via activism. Women legal historians have been under-recognised or forgotten altogether, even where they made substantial scholarly contributions. In focusing on the work of women in legal history, this book lays the foundations for a transformational reassessment of the discipline. It asks searching questions about what counts as legal history. It demonstrates that work by and about women should appear in our legal history courses, be discussed in our seminars, and be cited in our academic work. If the field of legal history is lively, innovative, and wide-ranging, everyone working in it benefits. By shining a light on undervalued scholarship, and areas which have received insufficient attention, we challenge assumptions in our discipline and advance its methods. Whilst some women were pioneers and worked to change gendered aspects of the law, others led more ordinary lives, disappearing from the gaze of legal history even as they contributed to it. This book tells some of their stories.

Table of contents:

Foreword, Erika Rackley (University of Birmingham, UK)
1. Selden's Sister and Women in Legal History, Lorren Eldridge (University of Cambridge, UK), Emma Ireland (University of Liverpool, UK) and Caroline Derry (The Open University, UK)

Part I: Methodology and Studying Women in Legal History
2. Unwritten Stories: Recovering and Writing Women's Legal History, Jennifer Aston (Northumbria University UK)
3. Missing Mildred Miles, Christine George (New York University Law Library, USA)

Part II: Women Legal Historians in the Academy
4. Rights and Duties of Englishwomen: The Life and Work of Erna Reiss (1888-1974), Feminist Legal Historian, Anne Logan (University of Kent, UK)
5. Aere Perennius: The Life and Legacy of Professor Olivia Robinson, Lisa Cowan (University of Edinburgh, UK)
6. The First Women Scholars in Serbian and Yugoslav Legal History at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law, Nina Kršljanin (University of Belgrade, Serbia)
7. Jelena Danilovic: The First Woman to Teach Roman Law in Serbia, Valentina Cvetkovic-Ðordevic (University of Belgrade, Serbia)

Part III: Women Legal Historians on the Periphery
8. Madge Easton Anderson: Making and Shaping Legal History from Scotland, Maria Fletcher, Charlie Peevers and Seonaid Stevenson-McCabe (University of Glasgow, UK)
9. Scotland's Representative: Chrystal Macmillan and Suffragist Legal Historical Practice, Charlie Peevers (University of Glasgow, UK)

10. The Marriages of Captain John Campbell of Carrick: How a Wronged Wife Changed English Marriage Law, Deborah Siddoway (Durham University, UK)

 

 On the editors:

Lorren Eldridge is Assistant Professor at the University of Cambridge, UK; Emily Ireland is a Lecturer in Law at the University of Liverpool, UK.; Caroline Derry is Lecturer in Law at The Open University, UK.

More information here. 

BOOK REVIEW: Ignazio CASTELLUCCI on Law and diversity: European and Latin American Experiences from a legal historical perspective, vol. 1: fundamental questions, edited Peter Collin and Agustín Casagrande (Comparative Legal History, XIII (2025), nr. 2 (December), pp. 373-381)

(Image source: Taylor&Francis)

The book reviewed here is the first of four volumes derived from two conferences held in 2019 at the Max-Planck-Institut für Rechtsgeschichte und Rechtstheorie within the framework of a research project also titled Law and Diversity: European and Latin American Experiences from a Legal Historical Perspective. This volume, edited by Peter Collin and Agustín Casagrande, deals, according to its sub-title, with ‘Fundamental Questions’ of ‘Law and Diversity’ in historic and societal terms: the idea behind it is to assess how the different laws and legal environments researched deal(t) with the notion of ‘diversity’ and associated concepts – eg, those of ‘difference’, ‘discrimination’, ‘equality’ and ‘inequality’ – and which societal elements have been the focus of legally relevant ‘diversities’ in the various historic experiences analysed alongside the related express or implied diversified legal disciplines. Three further volumes are expected as part of the project’s research output, dealing in more detail with private, public and criminal law issues associated with the research project’s main theme.

To read the full review, please click here. Online access is free for members of the European Society for Comparative Legal History. For further information about the volume on our blog, please visit here

DOI: 10.1080/2049677X.2025.2580118

VACANCY: PhD scholarship (VUB): PhD Collective negotiations in sovereign default and corporate insolvency (DEADLINE: 15 April 2026)

(image source: VUB - CORE)

The Faculty of Law and Criminology, Department Interdisciplinary Studies of Law, is looking for a PhD-student with a doctoral grant. 

More concretely your work package, for the preparation of a doctorate, contains:

Our team is looking for a doctoral student (bursary position) for the project ‘Collective negotiations in sovereign default and corporate insolvency (1890-1920)’.

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, crises caused by defaulting states were discussed in committees of bondholders. These committees coordinated the negotiations and defended the interests of individual bondholders.

The candidate will conduct research in archives. Based on an analysis of source material, the strategies developed to reconcile the interests of multiple bondholders will be examined. Specific attention will be paid to the dynamics caused by voting rules and the autonomy of representatives; in addition, the influence of developing ideas about creditor meetings in bankruptcy law will be examined.

The project takes the Belgian Association of Foreign Bondholders (1898) as a case study. This association was part of the Antwerp Stock Exchange. Its members had ties to the Antwerp business community, where merchant insolvencies were a regular occurrence.

Insolvencies of private bondholders and companies could influence decisions of the bond committee; deficient bonds could be discussed in debt assessments of insolvent traders. The project studies the organisational characteristics of the bondholders' committee and the structure of negotiations and meetings, in comparison to corporate insolvency.

This research offers points of reference for contemporary law and can form a basis for developing expertise in insolvency law and/or international financial and economic law.
 
For this function, our Brussels Humanities, Sciences & Engineering Campus (Elsene) will serve as your home base.
 
Profile

What do we expect from you?

• You have a master's degree in law or history (in which case, with an interest in political, institutional or economic history)
• Good command of English.
• Knowledge of French
• Ability to conduct research both independently and as part of a team.
• You have not performed any works in the execution of a mandate as an assistant, paid from operating resources, over a total (cumulated) period of more than 12 months.

The VUB wants to be a reflection of the society where everyone's talent is valued, regardless of gender, age, religion, skin color, migration background, disability and neurodiversity.
 
Offer

Are you going to be our new colleague?

You’ll be offered a full-time PhD-scholarship, for 12 months (extendable up to max. 48 months, on condition of the positive evaluation of the PhD activities), with planned starting date 01/05/2026.

You’ll receive a grant linked to one of the scales set by the government.

Apply, at the latest on 15/04/2026, via dave.de.ruysscher@vub.be, and attach the following documents:

• your CV;
• your motivation letter;
•  your diploma (not applicable for VUB alumni).

Do you have questions about the job content? Contact Dave De ruysscher at dave.de.ruysscher@vub.be.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Issue 8 (2027) of LawArt. Journal of Law, Art and History [DEADLINE 31 MAY 2026]

(Source: LawArt)

Call for papers for Issue 8 (2027) of LawArt. Journal of Law, Art and History

LawArt. Journal of Law, Art and History is issuing a call for papers for the section Itineraries of issue 8 (2027), which will be dedicated to the following theme: Icons in Art and Turning Points in Law: A Twentieth-Century Intertwining?

The Twentieth Century shows experiences of an interesting interaction between the processes of iconization of art – i.e., the propensity of personalities, figures or even individual works to stand out as emblematic of an era and its changes –and the emergence of certain legal institutions destined to become, in the second half of the Century, the pillars of the new legal order in Europe at the national and international levels.

This is the case of fundamental and human rights (and even more so of war crimes or crimes against humanity) or the very idea of democracy; and, in relation to these, the emblematisation of a work of art, such as a novel, a play, a musical composition or an art magazine, may have played a role, or at least been intertwined in the discursive dimension that accompanied its emergence. The phenomenon may have been expressed in works of transnational and intergenerational significance (think of Picasso’s Guernica, Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, Bertolt Brecht’s theatre, Bob Dylan’s and Nina Simone’s music, Sebastião Salgado’s photography, Frida Kahlo’s art, to name some examples) but it may also have been generated at national or interregional level, through experiences that had less resonance on a global scale, but were no less effective in promoting the convergence of the discursive fields of art and law.

It is on the meaning and features of this combination that we intend to reflect. How can the notion of artistic ‘icon’ and the process of iconization be conceptualized in connection to law and its developments? What type of normative connotations does it reflect (are icons always ‘positive’)? To what extent has the dynamics of the iconization of art been fostered by the commitment to rights, social justice, and democracy? Or was it the disruptive anticipatory power of art to reveal and narrate emerging values that fostered those developments in law?

With this thematic approach, the section ‘itineraries’ of issue 8 of LawArt will attempt to understand, on the one hand, some of the ‘iconic’ paths that law has followed to stand out and take shape and, on the other, the dynamics that have led art to acquire emblematic value.

The ambition is also to reflect on the relevance of the issue today, namely whether this intertwining of iconicization of art and law is a phenomenon unique to the 20th century or whether it also has potential today. The present day, in fact, seems to be moving further away from the legal ‘achievements’ of the Twentieth Century (some of which have become basic values of social cohesion and the cornerstone of civil coexistence). As these cornerstones decline, has art given up on producing new icons?

The theme calls for a highly interdisciplinary approach; therefore, proposals for articles with co-authors from different disciplines are welcome and encouraged. Articles can be submitted in Italian, English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.

·     Proposals for publication (an abstract of no more than 500 words together with a CV of the author or, where applicable, authors) should be sent by email to lawartjournal@gmail.com by 30 April 2026.

·     The selection of articles will be made by the journal’s Board of editors by 31 May 2026.

·     Final articles (which may be up to 10,000 words in length) must be submitted by 31 May 2027.

·     The final articles will be accepted for publication following a positive evaluation by the Board of editors and a double peer review.

·     Issue 8 (2027) is scheduled for publication in November 2027.

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: IV. Tagung des Jungen Netzwerks Rechtsgeschichte, Ungleichzeiten - Recht und Ungleichheiten in gegenwärtigen Vergangenheiten (Berlin: Humbolt University, 18-20 JUN 2026) [DEADLINE 30 April 2026]

 

Die Geschichte des Rechts lässt sich auch als eine Geschichte von Ungleichheiten erzählen. Zugang zu und Verteilung von Ressourcen wie Vermögen, Arbeit oder Gesundheit wurden und werden verrechtlicht. Dabei kann Recht an Ideologien wie etwa Antisemitismus, Rassismus oder Sexismus anknüpfen, die sozialen Ungleichheiten oftmals vorausgehen. So bringt es neue Formen sozialer Differenzierung und Benachteiligung hervor, erhält diese oder verstärkt sie. Gleichzeitig können diese im und mit dem Recht aber auch bekämpft werden. Diesen und vergleichbaren Verschränkungen von Ungleichheiten, Recht und Temporalität widmet sich die IV. Tagung des Jungen Netzwerks Rechtsgeschichte, die vom 18. bis 20. Juni 2026 an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin stattfindet.

Anmeldungen zur Tagung sind per Mail unter Beifügung des ausgefüllten Anmeldungsbogens bis spätestens 30. April 2026 an ungleichzeiten.rewi@hu-berlin.de zu richten. Die Teilnahmekapazitäten sind begrenzt. Die Anmeldebestätigungen werden Anfang Mai versandt. 

CHAPTER: Vanessa DAZA CASTILLO, María Daniela DÍAZ-VILLAMIL & Luis ESLAVA, "Colombia: A Material Legal Consciousness History of International Law", in: Liliana OBREGÓN-TARAZONA, Laura BETANCUR-RESTREPO, Juan Manuel AMAYA CASTRO & Daniel Ricardo QUIROGA-VILLAMARÍN (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of International Law and the Americas (Oxford: OUP, online)

(image: Universidad de Antioquia (izquierda), Medellín, Colombia. Plazuela San Ignacio. Detalle realizado antes de la gran reforma arquitectónica, dibujo hecho por los estudiantes de la Escuela de Minas en el siglo XIX; source: Wikimedia Commons)
 

Abstract:

This chapter traces the long-standing relationship between the international legal order and socio-legal, economic, and political arrangements in Colombia, from the colonial to the Republican period, to the present day. Grounded on Legal Consciousness Theory (LCT) and a material approach to history, the chapter demonstrates that international law—or more specifically, the international legal project—has never been foreign or alien to the country’s everyday life. International normative ideas on civility, diplomatic relations, borders, or rights have been mutually constituted with local developments and imaginaries in Colombia, across issues ranging from competing paradigms of state-building to access to contraception and legal abortion. The vibrancy of present international legal scholarship in Colombia reflects this dynamic and complex relationship between the international and the domestic, which the 1991 Constitution further brought to the surface.

Read the chapter here: DOI  10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197661062.013.39

LECTURE: Xavier PRÉVOST, « Un idéal pédagogique ? L’intégration du droit à l’encyclopédisme de la Renaissance ». (Paris: Institut de France/Academie des Inscriptions et des Belles-Lettres, 9 JAN 2026)

VACANCY: 30 month Postdoctoral researcher in Legal History (ERC Consolidator Grant IsThisFrench) (Bordeaux: Université de Bordeaux) [DEADLINE 16 APR 2026]

 

(image source: Université de Bordeaux)

Abstract:

The aim of this research project, led by Professor Xavier Prévost, is to place Renaissance Legal humanism in its European context in order to understand the construction of legal nationalisms hidden behind the expression “French method of teaching law” (mos gallicus jura docendi). The recruited researcher will work in close collaboration with the principal investigator and the engineer in digital humanities. The initial task will be to populate a historiographical database, followed by the drafting of two articles on the links between Legal humanism and French legal nationalism.

Read more here. 

SEMINAR: 2026 ESIL Research Forum “Sustainable International Law Reconciling Stability and Change”, Krakow Online Pre-Conference Workshop (ONLINE: 7 APR 2026, 14:00-17:00 CET)

2026 ESIL Research Forum “Sustainable International Law Reconciling Stability and Change”, Krakow

Online Pre-Conference Workshop

https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/38544179317123?p=WOUmsuKlTeiHGdNUiT

Meeting ID: 385 441 793 171 23 

Passcode: Bd2bE3LL

Tuesday 7 April 2026, from 14:00 to 17:00 CET.

What could be the Future of a Sustainable International law? Lessons from History

The Interest Group on the History of International Law is organizing an online workshop for early-career scholars on the histories of sustainable international law in the context of the 2026 ESIL Research Forum, ‘Sustainable International Law. Reconciling Stability and Change’, set to take place on 9–10 April 2026 in Kraków and hosted by the Centre for Advanced Sustainability Studies and the Jagiellonian University.

Theme of the workshop 

The sustainability of international law — and the international law of sustainability — are often framed as distinctly contemporary concerns. Yet the underlying ideas are far older. Although the vocabulary of “sustainability” is recent, earlier centuries produced comparable reflections on how to protect nature and human communities, and how to craft an international legal order capable of lasting across generations. 

Across different contexts, jurists, administrators, activists, and thinkers proposed solutions aimed at preserving nature, restraining extractive practices, and stabilising international order. Some ideas persisted; others were discarded; still others reappear today under new names. This call has invited international lawyers and historians to examine how earlier generations conceived of what we now call “sustainability”.

Programme

14:00 – 14:05  Introduction and words of welcome (Monica Garcia-Salmones. ESIL IG History IL Committee)

14:05 – 15:30 Panel 1: Imagining History and Critique

Xuan W Tay (New York/ Adelaide University), ‘Narrating National History, Reimagining International Law 

E. Prema (Vellore Institute of Technology), ‘The Technician and the Dead Ball Reclaiming the Science of International Law from the Grotian Legacy of Extraction’

Antiqua Zaki (New Delhi University), ‘Colonial Conservation and the Unequal Foundations of Sustainable International Law: A Comparative TWAIL Perspective’

Moderator: Andre Nunes Chaib (University of Maastricht)

15:30-15:45 Break

15:45-16:45 Panel 2: Sustainability, Economy and History

Carolina Fabara (University of Otavalo / China University of Political Science and Law) ‘Historical Pathways to Sustainability: How International Law’s Concepts and Debates Inform ESG Contracts and Contemporary Investment Law’

Anaïs Mattez (Asia Center, Harvard University) ‘Rare Earths, Borders, and the Sustainability of International Law’

Moderator: Monica Garcia-Salmones 

16.45-16:50 Final remarks (Monica Garcia-Salmones)

Conveners

Anastasia Hammerschmied – Florenz Volkaert – Sze Hong Lam – Monica Garcia-Salmones

More information is avalaible on ESIL webpage.

LECTURE: Alain CHATRIOT & Yves STRUILLOU, "Regards sur l'histoire du droit du travail en France de 1789 à nos jours" (Paris: Conseil d'État, 6 FEB 2026) [YOUTUBE]

 

Abstract:

Le Comité d’histoire du Conseil d’État et de la juridiction administrative – qui promeut les travaux de recherche sur l’histoire de la juridiction – accueillera le 2 février 2026, Alain Chatriot (professeur des universités, Centre d'histoire de Sciences Po) et Yves Struillou, conseiller d’État honoraire, pour une conférence consacrée à l’ouvrage Histoire du droit du travail par les textes qu’ils ont codirigé en 2025.

Source: Youtube. 

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.