CALL FOR BLOGPOSTS: Cross-Jurisdictional Dialogues in the Interwar Period (British Association of Comparative Law)

(image source: BACL)

Call:

The British Association of Comparative Law (BACL) is pleased to announce a call for the 2023-2024 cycle of its “Cross-jurisdictional dialogues in the Interwar period” series, which shines a light on less-known legal transfers in the Interwar period which have played an important role in the advancement of the law.

BACL ran the first season of the series during the 2022-2023 academic year – the pieces, which belong to it, can either be accessed by clicking on the hashtag “#Series_Interwar_Dialogue” or by selecting the “Interwar Dialogue” category on the BACL Blog.

BACL is interested to consider for publication stories of legal transfers from all over the world. The call is not limited to a single legal discipline either. During the first season of the series, BACL published contributions concerning the laws of Australia, Austria, China, Greece, Ibero-America, Italy, Poland, and Yugoslavia. Moreover, these blog pieces encompass Interwar dialogues in private law, administrative law, constitutional law, criminal law, and human rights law.

The inspiration behind the series and the requirements for submission can be found below.

The period between World War I and World War II was characterised by vigorous debates and legal innovation in response to extreme social and economic challenges. This was a time of disillusionment with well-established paradigms and legislative models, but also a time of hope in which comparative dialogue and exchange of ideas between jurisdictions thrived. Some of these exchanges have had a long-lasting impact both on doctrinal and legislative development, but not all stories are well-known. For more details about the background of our series, please read R. Vassileva’s piece on “Interwar Dialogues and the Patterns of Legal Change”. 

Some of the questions we are interested to hear about in the 2023-2024 season of the series include:

• Do you know of intellectual giants of their time who have served as bridges between different legal cultures, ultimately becoming key agents of legal change, and whose legacy deserves more attention?
• Are there intellectual hubs that have channeled pivotal comparative dialogue, but whose significance has been underestimated?
• What factors gather scholars together? To what extent do academic friendships play a role in law development? Do formal or informal networks have a decisive impact on comparative dialogues?
• For legal ideas to travel during the Interwar period, jurists needed to physically travel, too. However, jurists may have different motivations to cross borders – these personal choices make all the difference and may provide insights on the conditions that trigger legal change. What do such episodes tell us about the mobility, relatability, and translatability of legal ideas? Is the notion of “travel”, which encompasses both time and space, rather than “transfer” more helpful in understanding the complexity of the exchanges between jurisdictions?
• What factors shape legal identity and, respectively, determine the type of legal transfers that a given legal system embraces and/or rejects?
• Many of the pieces, which BACL published in the 2022-2023 cycle of the series, seem to indicate that legal transfers are facilitated by windows of opportunity conditioned by the unique concurrence of diverse factors. The concomitance of the (geo)political context, the socio-economic challenges, the backgrounds and aspirations of the individuals involved who could make a difference, etc. create fleeting opportunities for lasting legal change to take place. If that is indeed the case, what do unique windows of opportunity that facilitated legal transfers tell us about the bigger picture of law development? Can they inform the important theoretical work on legal development which has already been carried out?
• Overall, do you know of fascinating stories of how cross-jurisdictional dialogues between World War I and World War II that have impacted law development? You can focus on one legal principle, the work of a scholar or a group of scholars, or provide a general overview of how cross-jurisdictional dialogue has impacted a legal system that you research.   

Please note that BACL is interested in receiving submissions discussing legal transfers in different fields – private law, public law, constitutional law, criminal law, etc.

 Submission requirements

• Deadline for the 2023-2024 season: BACL will accept pieces for consideration until 10 November 2023.   
• BACL encourages early submissions.
• Please send blog piece to Dr Vassileva r.vassileva[at]mdx.ac.uk, copying Prof Marique ymarique[at]essex.ac.uk (co-editors of the series).
• The blog piece should be ca 2,000 words and in excellent English. By exception, longer pieces may be accepted.
• Please provide a title and focus for your blog piece, and your affiliation.  
• Please use hyperlinks instead of footnotes or include references in the text itself.
• Please use headings for the different parts of your blogpost.
• Pictures to illustrate the text are welcome. Please provide their credits.  
• BACL encourages prospective authors to take a look at the pieces which have already been published in this series by clicking on the hashtag “#Series_Interwar_Dialogue” or by selecting the “Interwar Dialogue” category on the BACL Blog in order to gain a better idea of what is expected.
• Please feel free to contact the editors informally to test your ideas prior to submission.
• BACL reserves the right to demand corrections and to reject submissions which do not address the call or which do not meet its publication standards.

Further information here.