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30 April 2014

CONFERENCE: "La charte de la laïcité au Québec" (30 april 2014, Paris)


What: "La charte de la laïcité au Québec", conférence dans le cadre du programme "Pluralisme, démocratie religions, laïcités. "
En partenariat avec Norma

Where: Salle de conférences du Site Pouchet.UMR 8582 GSRL CNRS-EPHE Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités, 59-61 rue Pouchet - 75849 Paris Cedex 17

When: 30 april 2014, 9:30 am


Speakers:
 
Martin Meunier,
Professeur à l'Université d'Ottawa

Jean-François Laniel,
Doctorant à l’Université du Québec à  Montréal
 
All information here




29 April 2014

BOOK: Olivier Chaline (ed.), Parliaments and Enlightenment, Pessac, Maison des Sciences de l'homme, 2012

  

A book review on the edited volume Les parlements et les Lumières (Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Pessac), under the direction of Olivier Chaline (Université Paris-Sorbonne), is available on recensio.net (Klaus Deinet, Francia:Recensio 2014:1).

As the title indicates, the work focuses on the attitudes of the judges and lawyers in the French parliaments, or regional supreme courts of the King. Enlightenment thinkers as Montesquieu or Malesherbes were members of this elite, as well as inveterately conservative counterparts. This volume parts from the idea that political or ideological opinions should be seen in their proper context, and not be read in teleological perspective, with the outcome in Revolutionary France in mind.

Abstract (Maison des Sciences de l'homme website):
Parlements et Lumières : l’association des deux notions peut sembler contre-nature, tant l’historiographie a longtemps vu dans les magistrats une catégorie hostile par principe aux Lumières, les bourreaux de Calas et de quelques autres comme les adversaires égoïstes d’une monarchie éclairée et réformatrice qu’ils finissent par perdre en descendant eux-mêmes à sa suite au tombeau. Seuls quelques avocats apparaissent sous un jour plus favorable, défendant l’innocence accablée par l’injustice des nantis ou prenant part à la Révolution.
Pourtant les progrès de la recherche nous conduisent à des vues beaucoup plus nuancées aussi bien sur les cours et les parlementaires que sur les Lumières elles-mêmes qui ne se limitent pas au seul combat philosophique. Dans ce volume collectif, il est question des gens de justice face aux idées nouvelles, des formes de leur adhésion à celles-ci et de la définition qu’ils ont essayé de donner d’un ordre du monde rénové. Réintroduire les parlementaires en tant que tels dans l’étude de la France des Lumières permettra de comprendre celle-ci plus exactement.

CONFERENCE: Inagural Conference of the International Society for Public Law (Florence, 26-28 June 2014)

  
 (image source: lets2014.eu)

The newly established International Society for Public Law (ICON•S) holds its first conference in Florence (Italy), from 26 to 28 June 2014. Since the conference will address issues of comparative law and links with political as well, it might be of interest to comparative legal historians.

Call (source: EJIL:Talk!)
On 26-28 June 2014, in Florence, the European University Institute and NYU-La Pietra will host the Inaugural Conference of the newly established International Society of Public Law (ICON•S).
We invite all our readers to submit proposals for either individual papers, or even more ambitiously, proposals for panels which, if selected, will be presented at the Inaugural Conference. Full details, modules for submitting proposals and for registering for the conference may be found at the society’s website. Registration for the Inaugural Conference includes the first annual membership fee in ICON•S and a free one-year online subscription to ICON, the International Journal of Constitutional Law.
  • Why create a new international learned society – are there not enough already?
  • Why public law – if we typically teach Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, or International Law (and now the much à la mode Global Law)?
  • And why does the word “comparative” not feature in the title of the new Society? Surely if we bring together constitutionalists from, say, Japan and Canada or administrative lawyers from Italy and Turkey – their common language will be Comparative Law?
The initiative to create an International Society of Public Law emerged from the Editorial Board of I•CON – the International Journal of Constitutional Law. For several years now I•CON has been, both by choice and pursuant to the cartographic reality of the field, much more than a journal of comparative constitutional Law. I•CON has expanded its interests, range of authors, readers, Editorial Board members and, above all, issues covered, to include not only discrete articles in fields such as Administrative Law, Global Constitutional Law, Global Administrative Law and the like, but also – and increasingly so – scholarship that reflects both legal reality and academic perception; scholarship which, in dealing with the challenges of public life and governance, combines elements from all of the above with a good dose of political theory and social science. That kind of remapping of the field is apparent also in EJIL. Its focus remains of course international law, but the meaning of international law today will often include many elements of the above.
True, in our classrooms we still teach ‘con. law’, ‘ad. law’ and ‘int’l law’ separately – with some justification: they retain their reality and heuristically, one has to start somewhere. But in litigation and jurisprudence, lawmaking, and academic reflection, the boundaries between these disciplines and the borders between the national and the transnational – and even global – have become porous, indeed so porous that at times one is actually dealing with an AltNeuland of public law.
I would say that about 20 per cent of the articles submitted to either EJIL and I•CON could be published in both. The boundaries between EJIL and I•CON are, unsurprisingly, equally porous.
We are certainly not announcing the death of, say, Constitutional Law or Administrative Law and the comparative variants of such. But, at a minimum, a full explication and understanding of today’s ‘constitutional’ cannot take place in isolation from other branches of public law or in a context that is exclusively national. The same is true for these other branches too, not least international law. Public law, as a field of knowledge that transcends these dichotomies, thus deserves our renewed intellectual attention. Our German colleagues, who have always had a more holistic approach to public law, may smile with some self-satisfaction.
In the same vein, the divide between law and political science has become porous too. Some of the finest insights on public law come from social scientists deeply cognizant of law; also, is there any legal scholarship that does not make at least some use of the theoretical and empirical understandings and methodologies external to the legal discipline, stricto sensu?
What then of ‘Comparative Law’? Are we announcing the death of the field? Perhaps not of the field, but of the word. The field is flourishing. It is possible to think of the field of Public Law in Chomskyan terms: there is a surface language, which differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but there is also a deeper structure that is common to the phenomenon of public law. It is difficult to find a public law scholar whose work is not ‘comparative’ in some respects: informed by the theoretical discussion of X or Y in another jurisdiction; referring – often by way of contrast, sometimes by way of similarity – to a foreign leading case somewhere else, as in ‘this is the Marbury v. Madison of our legal system’; addressing universal themes of constitutional theory or design; or simply searching for a constitutional ‘best practice’ overseas. Like Monsieur Jourdain who discovered to his astonishment that he was speaking prose, we in the field of public law should not be surprised to discover that in one way or another, we are all comparativists. To limit our new Society to those scholars whose work is explicitly ‘comparative’ would be hugely constricting and would limit many valuable conversations that go well beyond the formally comparative.
The best example of this new cartography may be found in this very issue in our Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of Van Gend en Loos, some articles of which are published in EJIL and others in I•CON .
Learned societies have often been founded to validate the emergence, autonomy, or breakaway of an intellectual endeavour. By contrast, international learned societies are often driven by the realization of intellectual cross-fertilization that can stem from disciplinary ecumenism. ICON·S is both! We believe that there is a compelling case for the establishment of an International Society of Public Law predicated on these sensibilities – a new breakaway field, the content of which respects traditional categories yet rejects an excessive division of intellectual labour that no longer mirrors reality.
As mentioned, the Society will be officially launched at an Inaugural Conference which will take place in Florence, Italy, in June 2014. The European University Institute and NYU School of Law will sponsor this important event – so that we can spread our wings for the first time in the historic Villa Salviati, Villa La Pietra, Villa Schifanoia, the Badia Fiesolana, and the like.
An organizing Committee of both the Society and Conference, presided by Sabino Cassese, is in charge of the Programme and of the Society’s first steps, as is the usual practice with such ‘births’. Once it has taken off, the general membership will elect the officers of the Society who will take charge of its future direction.
The Conference will combine the best practices of the genre. There will be several plenary sessions with invited speakers, commentators and floor discussions on themes that define and reflect the scope of the new Society. But the heart of the event, we sincerely hope, will be the response to this ‘Call for Panels and Papers’. We are expecting a plethora of proposals for individual papers, panels and workshops. Please do not delay in submitting your own proposals.



JOURNALS: Legal History Review LXXXI (2013), Nos. 3-4; American Journal of Legal History LIV (2014), No 2

Two leading legal history journals recently published a new issue:


Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis-Revue d'Histoire du Droit-The Legal History Review
Volume LXXXI (2013), Nos. 3-4.
  • "Philippe Godding †" (Editorial Committee)
  • "Jacobus Thomas (Tom) de Smidt †" (Editorial Comittee)
  • "In memoriam Robert Feenstra (1920–2013)" (Editorial Committee)
  • "Liste des travaux de Robert Feenstra" (Margreet Duynstee)
  • "Portrait d’un « romaniste » hors du commun : Jean Acher (1880–1915)" (Anne Lefèbvre-Teillard)
  • "Furtum and manus / potestas" (A.B. Sirks)
  • "The problem of the content of the lex Iulia iudiciorum publicorum" (J. Giltaij)
  • "D. 41,2,3,21: Titulierte Besitzarten, Erwerbsgründeund das unum genus possidendi" (Eric H. Pool)
  • "Byzantine and the Medieval West Roman tradition" (Hylkje De Jong)
  • "Adrian of Utrecht (1459–1523) at the crossroads of law and morality: conscience, equity, and the legal nature of Early Modern practical theology" (Wim Decock)
  • "La représentation du droit dans la communauté des diplomates européens des « Trente Heureuses » (1713–1740)" (Frederik Dhondt)
  • "The case for the lost captain" (Zillem Zwalve)
  • "Außerjuristische Wertungen in der Argumentation Papinians" (J.G. Wolf)
  • Book Reviews
See Brill Books and Journals Online.

American Journal of Legal History LXIV (2014), No. 2 (April):
  • "Virginia Law Reports" (W.H. Bryson)
  • "Leon A. Berezniak: The Theatrical Counselor" (Edward J. Larson)
  • "The Law of Colonial Maryland: Virginia Without Its Grandeur" (William E. Nelson)
  • "Habeas Corpus Proceedings in the High Court of Parliament in the Reign of James I, 1603-1625" (Donald E. Wilkes, jr.)
See the journal's website (Temple University).

CONFERENCE: "Men of Justice: exercise and representation of power" (French Association of Young Legal Historians/Centre Roland Mousnier), Paris II Panthéon-Assas, 22 May 2014


 (image: Wikimedia Commons)

The French Association of Young Legal Historians and the Centre Roland Mousnier (Université Paris-Sorbonne/CNRS) organize a joint conference on "Les gens de justice : Exercice et mise en scène du pouvoir." 

Program (in French):



Les gens de justice
Exercice et mise en scène du pouvoir

*
Deuxièmes journées 
de l'Association française 
des jeunes historiens du droit


*
 Organisées en collaboration avec le Centre Roland Mousnier et l’École doctoral II (Université Paris-Sorbonne)
*

Jeudi 22 mai 2014
Appartement décanal
Université Panthéon-Assas, 12, place du Panthéon, 75005

9h30 – 12h30

Contestation de l'autorité royale et affirmation des idées parlementaires: l'usage des remontrances au xviiie siècle par le parlement de Paris 
David Feutry, École nationale des chartes, centre Jean Mabillon
Louise de Savoie et la justice du roi
Florence Nguyen, Aix-Marseille Université
La figure du procureur général : l’activité de Ladislas de Baralle au parlement de Flandre au cours de l’année 1691
Clotilde Fontaine, Université Lille II
Des magistrats sous le regard de Dieu et des Parisiens : la messe rouge du Parlement au xviiie siècle
Adrien Pitor, Université Paris-Sorbonne

14h – 17h00

La mise en scène artistique des magistrats au siècle des Lumières (1715-1799)
Samuel Devisme, Université de Picardie-Jules Verne
Cicéron et le discours des gens de justice italiens (xiiie-xive s.)
Carole Mabboux, Université de Savoie
L'exécution de Laurent Augustin Hanžburský z Kopečka, prêtre, (Prague, 7 avril 1631) – Remarques autour de la mise en scène de la justice ecclésiastique à l’époque de la réforme catholique
Nicolas Richard, Univerzita Karlova (Prague) – Université Paris-Sorbonne
Le bourreau, un agent symbolique au service du spectacle pénal (xive-xviiie siècle)
  Cyrielle Chamot, Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II)

25 April 2014

SEMINAR: "The Use of the Glossators and Commentators by Jacques Cujas (1522-1590): A Humanist Criticism of the Medieval Jurisprudence” (Edinburgh, 2 May 2014)


What: "The Use of the Glossators and Commentators by Jacques Cujas (1522-1590): A Humanist Criticism of the Medieval Jurisprudence", Alan Watson Seminar in Legal History

Where: Lorimer Room, Old College, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh

When: 2 May 2014, 5:30 p.m.


Speakers:

Dr. Xavier PrévostSorbonne Law School (Université Paris I) - Ecole nationale des Chartes, Paris

22 April 2014

ARTICLE: Daniel M. Klerman, "Economic Analysis of Legal History"

(source: Legal History Blog)

Daniel M. Klerman (USC Law School) published "Economic Analysis of Legal History" on SSRN, to be published in a forthcoming work on Methodologies of Law and Economics

Abstract:
This essay surveys economic analyses of legal history. In order to make sense of the field and to provide examples that might guide and inspire future research, it identifies and discusses five genres of scholarship.

Law as the dependent variable. This genre tries to explain why societies have the laws they do and why laws change over time. Early economic analysis tended to assume that law was efficient, while later scholars have usually adopted more realistic models of judicial and legislative behavior that take into account interest groups, institutions, and transactions costs.

Law as an independent variable. Studies of this kind look at the effect of law and legal change on human behavior. Examples include analyses of the Glorious Revolution, legal origin, and nineteenth-century women’s rights legislation.

Bidirectional histories. Studies in the first two genres analyze law as either cause or effect. In contrast, bidirectional histories view law and society as interacting in dynamic ways over time. Laws change society, but change in society in turn leads to pressure to change the law, which starts the cycle over again. So, for example, the medieval communal responsibility system fostered international trade by holding traders from the same city or region collectively responsible. Nevertheless, the increase in commerce fostered by the system undermined the effectiveness of collective responsibility and put pressure on cities and nations to develop alternative enforcement institutions.

Private ordering. A significant body of historical work investigates the ability of groups to develop norms and practices partly or wholly independently of the state. Such norms include rules relating whaling, the governance of pirate ships, and, more controversially, medieval commercial law (the “law merchant”).

Litigation and Contracts. Law and economics has developed an impressive body of theories relating to litigation and the structure of contracts. These theories often shed light on legal behavior in former times, including contracts between slave ship owners and captains, and the suit and settlement decisions of medieval private prosecutors.

BOOK: Jean Salmon, Droit international et argumentation (Bruxelles: Bruylant, 2014)



(source: International Law Reporter)

Prof. em. Jean Salmon (Université libre de Bruxelles) published a collection of 20 articles on argumentation and international law. Althought this seems to concern prima facie legal theory in the strict sense, Salmon positions his book in the tradition of Chaïm Perelman. Reflections on legal order, judicial motivation and interpretation can be useful to comparative legal historians as well.

Abstract (in French):
L’ouvrage rassemble une vingtaine d’articles que Jean Salmon a écrits au cours des années et qui se consacrent à la place et au rôle de l’argumentation en droit international.
Ces réflexions se situent à la croisée des enseignements du philosophe Chaïm Perelman sur la rhétorique et ceux de l’internationaliste Charles Chaumont sur les contradictions en droit international.
Le droit entend conformer les faits d’existence à du devoir être ; il le fait par un langage, exprimé dans le cadre d’un système et d’institutions, qui, elles-mêmes sont dominées par les contradictions entre les valeurs et les aspirations des États, créateurs par leurs volonté commune ou antagonistes des règles qui les gouvernent.
L’ordre juridique qui en résulte n’est ni clos, ni complet ; il est lacunaire, permet l’esquive. Il est fondé fréquemment sur un langage ambigu, faisant une place importante aux notions confuses La solution des antinomies n’est pas aisée en raison de l’absence d’hiérarchie entre les règles ou entre les organes chargés de les résoudre.
La qualification unilatérale reste majoritaire, l’idéologie affichée ou occultée dominante. Dans un tel contexte, l’argumentation, quoique soumise à ces contraintes et aux rapports de force, est présente à chaque moment de la vie du droit : sa création, son interprétation, son application au cas concret ou son évolution. L’identification de l’auditoire que l’on désire convaincre, le choix des arguments susceptibles d’y parvenir sont essentiels. Néanmoins, la prétention que le raisonnement juridique est présidé par le syllogisme judiciaire est largement illusoire. La motivation du juge international, essentielle pour régler les conflits, étant elle-même une argumentation qui doit convaincre, est un exercice d’autant plus délicat.

Link to the publisher's website.

15 April 2014

NOTICE: SIHDA 2014 website


The website of the Société Internationale Fernand De Visscher pour l'Histoire des Droits de l'Antiquité-SIHDA 2014 is now active and operational for the registration and the first practical information at the following web address.


14 April 2014

WORKSHOP: Recent Research in the History of Public International Law (Ghent, 23 May 2014)


On 23 May 2014, the Ghent Legal History Institute organizes a workshop on recent research in the history of public international law

Whereas legal history has traditionally mostly been that of private law, recent decades saw the emergence of separate journals and book series devoted to the study of other branches, such as the history of the law nations. The meeting has been set up at the crossroads between legal history, public international law and diplomatic history. Researchers from Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Germany will present their activities to qualified peers. Starting in the Early Modern Period and running up to the First World War, a representative array of sub-fields within public international law will be considered: the law of treaties, maritime law, legal theory, the laws of war or neutrality. Prof. Randall Lesaffer, an international authority in the field, will comment and conclude the day. 

Participation is free of charge, but registration is mandatory. Please contact Mrs. Karin Pensaert (Karin.Pensaert@UGent.be).

The program, platform text and bio-bibliographical information on the speakers can be found here.

05 April 2014

SEMINAR: "La clôture de l'espace public et les biens communs matériels et immatériels: étude de cas internationaux" (Paris, 8 April 2014)


What: La clôture de l'espace public et les biens communs matériels et immatériels: étude de cas internationaux, 6th meeting of the séminaire de casuistique Le Bien commun, les biens communs, les choses communes, la collectivisation des intérêts organized by Emanuele Coccia, Emanuele Conte, Marie-Angèle Hermitte and Paolo Napoli 

Where:  École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Centre d'études des norme juridiques Yan Thomas (CENJ), Salle D & M Lombard, 96 boulevard Raspail, 75006, Paris

When: 8 April 2014, 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Speakers:

Daniela Festa, Université de Pérouse
Maria Rosaria Marella, Université de Pérouse
Giorgio Resta, Université de Bari

All information here

ARTICLE: Kahn on "Does it Matter How One Opposes Hate Speech Bans? A Critical Commentary on Liberté Pour L’Histoire's Opposition to French Memory Laws"




Robert A. Kahn, University of St. Thomas School of Law (Minnesota)

Abstract

This paper examines Liberté pour l'Histoire, a group of French historians who led the charge against that nation’s memory laws, in the process raising unique arguments not found elsewhere in the debate over hate speech law. Some of these arguments – such as a focus on how the constitutional structure of the Fifth Republic encouraged memory laws – advance our understanding of the connection between hate speech bans and political institutions. Other arguments, however, are more problematic. In particular, Liberté historians struggle to distinguish the Holocaust (which is illegal to deny) from the Armenian Genocide (which is not). The Liberté historians also quite hostile toward multiculturalism. While this reflects the French culture in which the historians operate, it is normatively quite unappealing. This is especially true given the existence of other, more inclusive European arguments against hate speech regulation, such as those of Danish cartoon publisher Flemming Rose and Maltese Judge Giovanni Bonello. There has to be a better, more inclusive way to oppose French memory laws.

full article here

CFP: " Property Rights, Land and Territory in the European Overseas Empires", (Lisbon, 26-27 June 2014)




What: Property Rights, Land and Territory in the European Overseas Empires, Call for papers

Where: ISCTE-IUL University Institute of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

When: 26-27 June 2014

All information here
Deadline for proposals submission: 20 April 2014

The occupation of territories, the rule over land and the definition of property rights, either de jure or de facto, were major concerns in the making and long-term development of almost every European overseas empire. They were also deeply interrelated with other key aspects of the empire-building process, including sovereignty claims, territorial expansion, settlement, taxation, power relations, social mobility, economic development, and the relationship with indigenous peoples. Therefore, those issues were of interest to all parts involved in the colonial venture - imperial governments, colonial authorities, first and later generations of settlers, native peoples and their elites - who dealt with them through complex and dynamic processes of negotiation and conflict.

The solutions adopted to regulate property rights and other territorial and land-related issues had their roots in legal norms, political concepts, institutions, ideologies and social practices transposed from each European metropole, then reframed and accommodated to each colonial context. Developing from different backgrounds in Europe, these theories and practices combined in a variety of ways with different conditions in the colonies, producing both contrasting and similar outcomes across time and space. 

The research on these topics has already achieved a huge body of results, but, for the most part, it has been pursued in a piecemeal fashion, either by disciplinary fields, empires or regions of the world, thus overlooking their interconnections. How can we compare the way issues of land, territory and property rights were dealt with across a variety of empires (e.g. Portuguese, Spanish, British, Dutch, French) and their different geographies? What can different branches of scholarship (from legal, economic, political, social and cultural history) offer each other? This conference aims to provide answers to these questions, by bringing these previously separate studies together into a common forum and setting them in comparative perspective.

CONFERENCE: 33rd Annual ANZLHS Conference, "Law's Empire or Empire's Law?: Legal Discourses of Colonies and Commonwealths", (Coffs Harbour, Australia, 10-13 December 2014)



What: Law's Empire or Empire's Law?: Legal Discourses of Colonies and Commonwealths33rd Annual Conference of the Australia and New Zealand Law and History Society, Call for papers

Where:  BreakFree Aanuka Beach Resort, Coffs Harbour, Australia

When: 10th-13th December 2014

All information here

Conference 10th – 13th December 2014
The University of New England (Australia) is proud to announce the 33rd Annual ANZLHS Conference, 10-13 December 2014. The Conference provides wide scope to discuss law and history in a variety of settings. Although an important context for the conference is the interrelation between imported laws of a parent jurisdiction and their application to other domains, both jurisdictional and geographical, we encourage potential presenters to interpret the conference theme broadly.
Call for Papers On behalf of the School of Law of the University of New England, Australia, the organising committee of the 33rd annual conference of the Australia and New Zealand Law and History Society takes pleasure in issuing a call for papers. The conference will be held at the BreakFree Aanuka Beach Resort, Coffs Harbour, on the magnificent mid-north coast of New South Wales, between December 10-13, 2014. Further information will be made available as the conference date approaches.
The conference theme is "Law's Empire or Empire's Law?: Legal Discourses of Colonies and Commonwealths". The conference theme provides wide scope to discuss law and history in a variety of settings. Although an important context for the conference is the interrelation between imported laws of a parent jurisdiction and their application to other domains, both jurisdictional and geographical, we encourage potential presenters to interpret the conference theme broadly.
The keynote speakers for the conference are Professor Paul Mitchell, of the Faculty of Laws, University College London, and Professor Mike Grossberg, Sally M Reahard Professor of History & Professor of Law, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA.  Professor Mitchell and Professor Grossberg have long standing research interests in the conference theme and we are delighted they are able to present keynote addresses.
The organising committee would welcome interest from lawyers and historians from any jurisdiction. The call for papers will be open until late June. Inquiries or paper proposals - including a title, brief abstract and brief biography - should be sent to mlunney@une.edu.au.

01 April 2014

CONFERENCE: Words and Law (Maison Française d'Oxford, 28-29 April 2014)



Nomôdos signals a most interesting conference at the Maison Française d'Oxford, on the theme "Words and Law". Presentation:

Law is of course a language. Legal terms do have a specific meaning and we know that lawyers are very proud of that, but the frame of this legal terminology is also helpful in revealing a part of the legal mind. First, the legal terminology builds a sort of wall which shapes the identity of the law. But there is much to say about the different steps of the building of that wall. How did the lawyers choose the words among all the vocabulary; why did they prefer certain words? Why do some of them belong to the very ancient past and have others been invented? Whereas certain terms seem to be classic, a new definition can have transformed their significance. All these choices must be explored and the balance of the underlying forces be evaluated.

Different questions can be asked and different periods be investigated, as the legal terminology was first shaped by the Roman jurists, then by the glossators, then by the intellectuals of the Enlightenment. But specific attention will be given on the second part of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, as then at least in France legal language acts as a controversial topic and a determining criterion of legal science. But specific attention should be paid to the issue of the language. Which language for which law? How can we understand that law can have its own language – Law French, Latin -, and how do vernacular languages manage with it? Finally, the ambition of the study-day is to get a comparative view of the growth of legal terminology. It is usual to point out the differences between civil law and common law. But if legal words are different, can the ways of constructing the legal terminology be compared?

Programme
Monday 28 april
Wharton Room, All Souls College
  • 9h-9h30. - Welcome Boudewijn Sirks (All Souls college, Oxford) and Introduction, Nader Hakim (Bordeaux).
Chair: Philippe Roussin (Maison Française d’Oxford).
  • 9h30-10h. - Jean-Christophe Gaven (Toulouse I), Discours juridique et primauté politique en 1789.
  • 10h-10h30. - Anne Simonin (Maison Française d’Oxford), Justine (1791) or the Romance of the Law of the Old Regime.
10h30-10h45. - Coffee break.
Chair: Fernanda Pirié (St Cross college, Oxford).
  • 10h45-11h15 - Paul Brand (All Souls college, Oxford), The technical vocabulary of English thirteenth century law.
  • 11h15-11h45 - Paul Hyams (Cornell University), Conversation and the Common Law in the French of 12th-Century England.
  • 11h45-12h15 - Matt Dyson (Trinity College, Cambridge), Terms of art: conditioning of lawyer, Latinist and layman in the last two centuries.
12h15-14h. – Lunch.
Chair: Mike Macnair (St Hugh’s college, Oxford)
  • 14h-14h30. - Guillaume Tusseau (Science-Po Paris), Bentham v. Judges and Co.: towards a linguistic criticism of legal hegemony.
  • 14h30-15h. - Philip Schofield (University college London): Bentham’s ‘Nomography’ manuscripts.
15h-15h30. - Tea.
Chair: Paul Brand (All Souls college, Oxford).
  • 15h30-16h. - Soazick Kerneis (Maison Française d’Oxford), Law and Language in the legal popular sources (second to fourth century).
  • 16h-16h30. - Thomas Charles-Edwards (Jesus college, Oxford), The Languages of law in early-medieval Ireland: Irish and Latin?
  • 16h30-17h. - Boudewijn Sirks (All Souls college, Oxford), The effect of philosophy on legal language: different experience of identity or just a different expression?
19h-19h30. - Drinks at St Hugh’s College.
19h30. - Dining.
Tuesday 29 April
Chair: Nader Hakim (Bordeaux).
  • 8h45-9h15. - Matthieu Soula (Bordeaux), Définitions et redefinitions de l’auteur à la lumière des principes civilistes XIXe-XXe siècles.
  • 9h15-9h45. - Pierre-Nicolas BarénotComparative views of French and English legal lexicography in the XIX century.
9h45-10h15 Coffee.

Chair: Boudewijn Sirks.
  • 10h15-10h45. - Mike MacnairThe anglisation of the Law French and Latin ordered by the Act of 1731.
  • 10h45-11h15. - Yann-Arzel Marc-Durelle (Paris 13), Lingua nova? Legislator’s words for a new Order, 1789-1794.
  • 11h15-11h45. - Olivier Jouanjan (Strasbourg), La texture du droit ou le droit comme travail de textes.
  • 11h45-12h15. - ClosureBoudewijn Sirks
12h15-13h30. - Lunch.


More information here.