SEMINARS: Seminari di Storia della cultura giuridica francese (Roma: Università Roma Tre, 29 NOV, 5 DEC 2024)

 

(Source: Storia del diritto)

BOOK: Stefan ESDERS, Sören KASCHKE, Britta MISCHKE, Steffen PATZOLD, Dominik TRUMP, Karl UBL (eds.), Fränkische Herrschererlasse (814–840). Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Leges, Capitularia regum Francorum, Nova series, 4, (Wiesbden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2024). ISBN: 9783447119795

(Image source: Harrassowitz Verlag)

Die fränkischen Herrschererlasse (Kapitularien) gehören zu den wichtigsten Quellen der Geschichte des Frankenreichs. Sie zeigen die Versuche der karolingischen Herrscher, das durch Karl den Großen erweiterte Großreich regierbar zu machen, und sind für nahezu alle Bereiche der fränkischen Geschichte eine unverzichtbare Grundlage historischer Forschung: Sie informieren über Reformen in Kirche, Gesellschaft und Reich, über die Mechanismen der politischen Krisenbewältigung, über Anspruch und Grenzen herrscherlicher Eingriffe in lokale Strukturen, über die wirtschaftlichen Grundlagen politischer Herrschaft und über die Interaktion zwischen den Karolingern und ihren Amtsträgern.

Der erste Band der Neuedition umfasst die Regierungszeit Kaiser Ludwigs des Frommen und enthält die von ihm bzw. von seinem Sohn Lothar erlassenen Kapitularien mit umfassendem Kommentar und deutscher Übersetzung.

More information can be found here.

BOOK: Dirk HEIRBAUT, Redefining Codification. A Comparative History of Civil, Commercial, and Procedural Codes (Oxford: OUP, 2025), 496 p. 9780198947363, 160 GBP

 

(image source: OUP)

Abstract:

More than half of the world's population lives under law codes. Yet, defining the concept of codification remains elusive. Rather than delving into abstract theories, this book provides a rich and contextual comparative legal history of codes in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium from the late eighteenth century to the present. The author starts by examining the evolution of French, German, Dutch, and Belgian codes in their political and comparative context, thus challenging deeply rooted national narratives. He covers the well-studied civil codes and the often-overlooked commercial and procedural codes and drafts that failed to become law. Against this backdrop, the book embarks on a comprehensive analysis of the factors contributing to the success or failure of codification efforts. Employing an innovative method of comparative legal history, Redefining Codification explores the key players and objectives behind codification, revealing that traditional notions of codification are far removed from reality. Following the deconstruction of some 'universal truths' about codifications, this volume offers fresh insights into the behind-the-scenes of the lawmaking machinery and an empirically based definition of codification.

Table of contents:

1:Introduction
2:France
3:Germany
4:The Netherlands
5:Belgium
6:The Lack of an Ideal Code
7:A Comparative Legal History Method for Studying the Success and Failure of Draft Codifications
8:Actors: Drafters, Politicians, and Other Stakeholders
9:Aims: Do Ambitions Survive Contact with Reality?
10:Conclusion: Redefining the Concept of a Code 

On the author:

Dirk Heirbaut is a senior full professor at Ghent University specialized in comparative legal history. His research covers medieval feudal and customary law, the comparative history of private law codifications, and Belgian private law since Napoleon. He is a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts and the Academia Europaea and was a founding vice-president of the European Society for Comparative Legal History. He has been a guest researcher and professor at various universities and received the Eike von Repgow Prize in 2014.

Read more here (available from 30 January 2025). 

LECTURE: Charles Walton: "Between Redistribution and Theories of Abundance: Toward a Deep History of Social Rights" (University of Warwick, 26 NOV 2024, 18:00 CET/17:00 GMT, Teams) (ONLINE)

                                   

                             (image source: University of Warwick)

The EUTopia Connected Learning Community Legal History, which unites staff and students as well as external experts around the theme Collective and Individual Rights in Legal History, is delighted to announce the Opening Keynote Lecture for this year, to be given by dr. Charles Walton (University of Warwick) on Tuesday 26 November.

Biography:

Charles Walton is a historian of France and Director of the Early Modern and Eighteenth Century Centre.  

Link opens in a new window

Before joining the History Department at Warwick, he taught at Yale University, the University of Oklahoma (Norman) and Sciences Po (Paris). His research focuses on Ancien Régime, Enlightenment and Revolutionary France, with emphases on rights, political economy and socio-economic justice.

His prize-winning book, Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution: the Culture of Calumny and the Problem of Free Speech (2009, paperback 2011, French translation 2014), explores the themes of honour, speech, public opinion and political violence. It shows how debates over limits to free expression contributed to political radicalisation before and during the Revolution. He has edited a collection of essays in honour of Robert Darnton on print culture and the Enlightenment, Into Print: Limits and Legacies of the Enlightenment (2011).

More recently, his research has centred on the history of social rights. He is co-editor (with Steven L. B. Jensen) of Social Rights and the Politics of Obligation in History (Cambridge, 2022) and editor of a special issue of French History on social rights (2019).

This lecture will be public, on Microsoft Teams. The event starts at 18:00 Brussels Time (17:00 GMT) and will last until 19:30 (18:30 GMT).

RSVP with: frederik.Dhondt@vub.be to confirm your online attendance.  

REMINDER CFP:CALL FOR PAPERS: Workshop 'Freedom of the seas and freedom of the individual: a historical appraisal' (London: School of Oriental and African Studies University of London, 7 FEB 2025) [DEADLINE 20 NOV 2024]

Call for papers

Freedom of the seas is a time-honoured principle of international law and the dogma of old and new maritime powers. Traditionally associated with Western-dominated legal doctrine and imperialist mindset, freedom of the seas allowed European states to expand and engage in direct trade with East and West, eventually leading to imperialism and colonisation. Conceptually, its genesis is generally attributed to the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius and his advocacy in favour of Dutch trade interests in the Indian Ocean in the early XVII century. However, this narrative entirely overlooks forms of State practice and customs developed in other regions of the world, let alone other contemporary or pre-existing scholars.

Generally portrayed in a positive light and recognised as an inherent right of states, freedom of the seas has also benefitted peoples and individuals. Many people oppressed on land have turned to the sea in an effort to leave war and discrimination and to seek refuge and a better future. Starting with Aeneas escaping by ship from the burning Troy, down to the pilgrims of the Mayflower and the thousands of people who have used maritime routes for migration, the free seas have always been the means for trying to reach safety and protection and a way to be able to freely pursue one’s opinions and beliefs, ultimately furthering societal change and visions of a fairer world. 

However, freedom of the seas has also its dark side. The principle has underpinned colonial domination and allowed the slave trade in the Atlantic Ocean and other seas. These lesser known aspects have remained unresearched for many decades. Only recently did they start coming to the forefront, with scholars drawing parallels between old and new state practices to limit free use of the seas by individuals, while allowing slavery and forced labour.

Starting from these premises, the research project on freedom of the seas and protection of human rights, funded by the British Academy and led by Professor Irini Papanicolopulu at SOAS, organises a Workshop, bringing together leading experts and emerging young scholars to debate the relationship between freedom of the seas and individual freedom in a historical perspective. The workshop will take place at SOAS, University of London (UK) on 7 February 2025.

This call for papers invites young scholars to explore various aspects of the relationship between freedom of the seas and individual freedom in a historical perspective, focusing on the XV-XIX centuries. Thematically, we invite participants to deal with aspects relating but not limited to the following topics:

- Historically, who could benefit from the freedom of the seas? And to what purpose? 

- What consequences did this produce upon the determination of the rights (and the duties) that states and individuals had at sea and over the sea? 

- How does the freedom of the seas reflect the deeply entrenched patterns of domination that characterise much of early international law? 

- To what extent (if any) could it be considered to embody also different values? 

- What legal tools were developed to allow some actors to freely use the seas while limiting the freedom of others? 

- Which actors were most relevant at sea, and how does the private/public divide factor into this?

- Why were some empires/State powers particularly proactive in attempting to legally defend their arguments?

Papers may focus on a specific jurist, geographic area, school of thought, historical period, or may address more transversal aspects across the identified timeframe and regions, and may do so from a variety of approaches. We particularly encourage papers from young scholars based in the Global South.

Abstracts of 800-1000 words, addressing the theme and methodology of the proposed paper, and accompanied by an academic CV are to be submitted to al77@soas.ac.uk and ip14@soas.ac.uk by Wednesday 20 November 2024. Selected candidates will be informed by Wednesday 27 November 2024 and must submitted a 7000-8000 words paper by 6 January 2025. The draft papers will be then distributed to the discussants and will be presented and discussed in the course of the Workshop of 7 February 2025. 

Selected participants may be offered a scholarship to cover their travel and accommodation expenses for participating in the workshop. Scholars from the Global South, at early career stage, or belonging to underrepresented groups in Higher Education will be prioritised for the scholarship.

Key Dates 

20 November 2024: deadline for the submission of abstracts

27 November 2024: communication of selection outcome

6 January 2025: deadline for the submission of draft papers

7 February 2025: workshop

For further information please contact Dr Andrea Longo at al77@soas.ac.uk 

CONFERENCE: Les institutions romaines dans la culture antiquaire et historiographique des XVe et XVIe siècles : représentations et interprétations (Paris: Université Paris-Est Créteil, 21-22 NOV 2024)

(Image source: Université Paris-Est Créteil)

Si le Moyen Âge a été généreux dans sa profusion d’écrits juridiques, les modalités de transmission et d’appropriation des sources antiques relatives aux structures institutionnelles de la Rome antique restent à établir. Dès le début du Quattrocento, la réapparition des textes historiques, lexicographiques, épigraphiques, en même temps que des sources archéologiques, et bien entendu juridiques, favorisent la production de textes antiquaires traitant en profondeur du fonctionnement institutionnel de la Rome antique. Par institutions, nous entendons à la fois les structures politiques (magistratures, corpus de lois, pouvoirs et régimes imperium ou res publica) et les institutions publiques qui fixent les cadres de la vie romaine. Ce colloque a pour objet l’étude de la réappropriation des structures politiques et publiques romaines par les humanistes des XVe et XVIe s.

Further information and the full program can be found here

BOOK: Roman BAREAU & Sylvain SOLEIL (dir.), Que faire du droit privé étranger dans un territoire libéré ? Approches historiques et comparatives [L'Univers des normes] (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2022), 456 p. ISBN 9782753586215

 

Abstract:

Lorsque, dans une langue ou une autre, le doux mot de libération a retenti pour marquer la fin d’une occupation, d’une colonisation, d’une sujétion à l’égard d’un État considéré (à tort ou à raison) comme étranger, la question de l’avenir du droit introduit par l’occupant s’est toujours posée, spécialement dans le champ du droit des personnes, de la famille, de la propriété, du commerce. Faut-il le préserver au motif qu’il est appliqué de longue date, que son maintien permet de sécuriser les rapports juridiques et qu’on ne dispose pas d’un droit de substitution ? Faut-il l’abroger au motif politique qu’il appartient à l’étranger (un étranger réel ou fabriqué) et que le moment est propice pour une réforme d’ampleur ? Faut-il effectuer un tri en cherchant l’équilibre entre les avantages et les inconvénients de ce droit imposé ?

Ce problème éternel fait l’objet, dans cet ouvrage, d’une exploration historique et comparative inédite. Il réunit vingt historiens et juristes de huit nationalités qui examinent l’Amérique des indépendances, l’Europe post-napoléonienne, l’Europe des exaltations nationales, le monde de la décolonisation.

Table of contents:

Que faire du droit privé lors des indépendances américaines ? (Sylvain Soleil) La liberté sous les chaînes ? Le tri du droit privé civiliste entre les mains de la common law – Québec (1760-1866) (David Gilles) Maintenir ou rejeter le common law d’origine anglaise ? Les controverses nord-américaines des années 1760-1835 (Sylvain Soleil) Le Code civil en Amérique espagnole au XIXe siècle. Le droit privé et les nouvelles républiques (Javier Berrientos Grandon) Maintenir ou rejeter le droit privé portugais au Brésil ? (Mariane Tenorio Alves Nunes) Que faire du droit privé français après la chute de Napoléon ? L’Espagne à l’épreuve de la codification civile française après la restauration de Fernando VII (1814-1833) (Eduardo Cebreiros Álvarez & Miguel Ángel Camocho Cantudo) Entre rejet et séduction. Le droit privé étranger dans le royaume de Piémont-Sardaigne sous la Restauration (Marc Ortolani) Une transposition inachevée. L’exemple du Code de procédure civile français dans le duché de Varsovie et le royaume de Pologne (Anna Klimaszewska) Abroger, conserver ou trier. Le droit privé « à l’épreuve du feu » dans l’Italie du Nord après la chute de Napoléon (Maria Gigliola di Renzo Villata) Que faire du droit privé étranger dans l’Europe des exaltations nationales ? La Belgique au regard du droit français : un pays libéré en 1815 ou en 2020 ? (Dirk Heirbaut & Elisabeth Bruyère) Comment se libérer d’un Code civil imposé sans conquérant ? L’expérience de la Roumanie (Manuel Gutan) Maintenir le droit privé applicable en Alsace-Lorraine recouvrée. Un enjeu juridique et politique (Elodie Coutant) La persistance territoriale partielle du Code Napoléon en Lituanie (1808-2008) (Thierry Hamon) Que faire du droit privé étranger lors de la disparition des empires coloniaux ? « Saving Roman-Dutch Law ». Sir John Wessels et l’avenir du common law anglais en Afrique du Sud (1928) (Gwenaël Guyon) L’évolution du droit privé dans l’ancienne Indochine française (Alexandre Deroche) Conflits de droits au Proche-Orient, de l’Empire ottoman aux indépendances (Olivier Hanne) Quelques réflexions sur le sort du droit privé français dans l’Afrique subsaharienne francophone (Éric Gasparini) Abroger, conserver ou trier. Le droit colonial tamisé en Afrique de l’Ouest postcoloniale (Séraphin Nene Bi) L’apport de la doctrine L’argument romain. Quand la doctrine de l’Europe libérée déguise le Code Napoléon (Catherine Touche) La doctrine de droit international privé et le sort du droit privé étranger face aux changements de souveraineté (XIXe-XXe siècles) (Baudouin Ancel) La doctrine internationale publiciste. Un pays peut-il imposer sa législation à un autre, une fois vaincu ? (Dominique Gaurier)

On the editors:

Romain Bareau et Sylvain Soleil sont membres de l’unité mixte de recherche Institut de l’Ouest : Droit et Europe (IODE, UMR / CNRS).

Read the volume on cairn: DOI 10.3917/pur.solei.2022.01.

JOURNAL: Law and History Review XLII (2024), No. 2 (May)

 

(image source: CUP)

Legal Pluralism as a Category of Analysis (Jessica Marglin, Mark Letteney) [OPEN ACCESS]
DOI 10.1017/S0738248023000196 
Abstract:

A debate has raged for decades over legal pluralism and its value for the study of law. Much of this back and forth has resolved to a fight over what law “is” and push-and-pull between legal centrists and pluralists. This introductory essay proposes a new framework for thinking about legal pluralism. Turning away from the centrist/pluralist binary, we instead ask what work legal pluralism as a category of analysis can do. The debate, we suggest, is a fundamental methodological disagreement about the normative work that categories of analysis do and the costs that historians should be willing to pay to reap the benefits of theoretically sophisticated frameworks of analysis which are interoperable between times and places. The debate about legal pluralism, we argue, can be productively reframed as a question about the benefits and drawbacks of the legal pluralist framework.

Legal Pluralism's Other: Mythologizing Modern Law (Caroline Humfress)  [OPEN ACCESS]
DOI 10.1017/S0738248023000172 
Abstract:

This article interrogates the concept of legal pluralism, as it currently tends to function within contemporary legal and historical scholarship. It argues that the concept of legal pluralism cannot ‘liberate’ positivist analytical legal theory from monist (municipal, state-centric, etc.) straightjackets, but rather itself presumes the primacy of centralized state-issued law—at the same time as masking that primacy within a pluralist discourse. The concept of legal pluralism should be properly understood—and analyzed—as part of the mythology of modern law, not as an alternative to it. The first two sections develop this argument via a critical tour of legal-pluralist historiography, focusing on 1986 to the present day. The final section then moves on to explore what is at stake for the pre-modern historian when they apply (modern) concept(s) of legal pluralism to try to explain the multiplicity of legal orders that they invariably encounter in their own source material.

Legal Pluralism from History to Theory and Back: Otto von Gierke, Santi Romano, and Francesco Calasso on Medieval Institutions (Emanuele Conte) [OPEN ACCESS]

DOI 10.1017/S0738248023000159 
Abstract:

This paper considers the historical contexts in which theories of legal pluralism grew and developed between the final third of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. Theories of the state as a pluralistic system, as opposed to the absolute supremacy of state-made law, were the focus of German legal historical scholarship in the late nineteenth century, represented by the towering figure of Otto von Gierke. Gierke's image of a pluralist German Middle Ages largely influenced legal scholarship in Europe, even affecting the Italian scholar Santi Romano, whose book on the “legal order” has been considered a milestone in the construction of pluralist legal theories. Once passed from a legal historian like Gierke to a theorist like Romano, the model of a pluralist legal order returned to legal historiography, inspiring the innovative historical interpretation of medieval law proposed by Francesco Calasso. Gierke was a conservative, right-wing socialist, and Romano was a fascist and counselor of the fascist Italian government. Calasso, on the contrary, was a liberal opponent of the fascist regime. The three versions of legal pluralism, then, decline the same basic vision in three different ways, being influenced by the political contexts in which the three authors operated.

The Rise of the Indigenous Jurists (Clifford Ando) [OPEN ACCESS]
DOI 10.1017/S0738248023000135 
Abstract:

Numerous Roman grants to local communities of the right to use local law survive in contemporaneous copies starting in the second century BCE. Contemporaneous with these grants of autonomy, Rome urged institutional changes that reconstituted local elites as aristocracies of office. By contrast, evidence that individuals identified themselves as experts in local law survives in bulk only starting in the second century CE. The paper urges that the superimposition of Roman courts as courts of the second instance created a role in local polities for expertise in local law in mediation with these Roman courts, and that local elites sought to monopolize this role and the technocratic prestige that it brought.

Jurisdictional Politics and Institutional Change (Lauren Benton, Adam Clulow) [OPEN ACCESS]
DOI 10.1017/S0738248023000147 
Abstract:

Challenging the common assumption that legal misunderstanding was pervasive, this article analyzes jurisdictional politics as an element of “interpolity law”—a broad framework for legal interactions across polities and regions in the early modern world. It draws on recent research on jurisdictional politics to show how such an approach allows historians to avoid some of the familiar pitfalls associated with studies of legal pluralism. This approach provides clear methodological advantages over the study of global legal history as a function of multi-normativity. Political communities across the globe centered on internal and external conflicts on the nature and reach of legal authority. By focusing on jurisdiction as a touchstone of legal action and tracing how legal authority was produced through conflict, our approach treats legal pluralism as a valuable descriptive term rather than an analytical framework. The study of jurisdictional politics portrays state authority as potentially one among many forms of legal authority, and it brings into sharp focus continuities within and across pluri-political regions. By tracking broad institutional shifts that occurred when empires and states moved to assert power over multi-jurisdictional orders, the perspective informs new narratives about trajectories of regional and global legal order.

The Uses and Abuses of Legal Pluralism: A View from the Sideline (Tamar Herzog)
DOI 10.1017/S0738248023000160 
Abstract:

This text takes issue with how present day debates regarding legal pluralism affect our vision of the past, as well as limit the horizons of possibilities in the future. It suggests that the genealogy of these debates determined what would be seen, and what ignored, and that, as a result, it has privileged some aspects, while forgetting the importance of others.

Rethinking the Rethinking of Legal Pluralism: Toward a Manifesto for a Pluri-Legal Perspective (Ido Shahar & Karin Carmit Yefet) [OPEN ACCESS]
DOI 10.1017/S0738248023000184 
Abstract:

The paper addresses the perpetual discontent evoked by the concept of legal pluralism, one which, in turn, brings about incessant efforts to “rethink” it. We suggest that one of the sources of this discontent is the erroneous view that legal pluralism is a theory, and the consequent misguided expectations that it should provide scholars of law and society with causal hypotheses and explanations. We argue that legal pluralism is not a theory but a research perspective, and, as such, is not meant to provide us with explanatory propositions, but rather to increase our awareness of the plurality and inter-relationality of socio-legal spheres and of the implications thereof. We further identify—and briefly discuss—the four core principles of a pluri-legal perspective: plurality, relationality, power, and agency. Taken together, these four premises constitute a manifesto of sorts for a pluri-legal perspective.

The Edicts of the Praetors: Law, Time, and Revolution in Ancient Rome (Lisa Pilar Eberle) [OPEN ACCESS]
DOI  10.1017/S0738248023000500 
Abstract:

This paper revises current understandings of judicial edicts in ancient Rome—the annually published texts in which Roman magistrates set out the formulae according to which they would institute trials during their year in office. While standard accounts see these edicts as the work of legal specialists, heretofore neglected sources for how contemporaries talked about these texts suggest that they were indeed the work of the magistrates that issued them. At times these magistrates formulated new provisions; for the most part they selectively drew on past edicts, not least to accommodate the demands of their friends and clients. These patterns in compositional practice can only be understood within the framework of Roman political culture. More importantly, in their annually changing published form judicial edicts emerge as crucial objects in the construction of time in ancient Rome. Arguably, they constituted a legal practice that could encompass revolution—at least for a year.

The Carried-Off and the Constitution: How British Harboring of Fugitives from American Slavery Led to the Constitution of 1787 (Timothy Messer-Kruse)
DOI 10.1017/S0738248024000038
Abstract:

Accounts of the factors that led to the drafting of the U.S. Constitutional Convention have focused on Congress' failures to levy taxes, regulate commerce, and provide security against internal unrest and foreign encroachments. Left out from history are the attempts of the founders to force Britain to return thousands of escapees from slavery they sheltered. Patriot state leaders tried to coerce the return of all fugitives from slavery evacuated with the British army by blocking payment of debts to England in violation of the Treaty of Paris. Such actions ultimately caused the breakdown of the agreement and exposed the structural inability of the Congress to enforce the terms of a duly ratified treaty over intransigent states. Ultimately, the issue of the “carried off” and with it the nation's ability to conduct foreign policy, was the paramount issue that could only be resolved by a fundamental restructuring of the federal structure of government.

Free Black Witnesses in the Antebellum Upper South (Eric Eisner) [OPEN ACCESS]
DOI 10.1017/S0738248023000408 
Abstract:

While every slave state except Louisiana limited free Black testimony in cases involving whites, and most barred it completely, several jurisdictions with slavery, including three in the Upper South—Delaware, Maryland, and D.C.—allowed at least some free Black testimony in cases involving whites at least some of the time. Historians and legal scholars have largely overlooked the phenomenon of free Black testimony in the South, outside of Louisiana. In this article, I argue that courts in the Upper South allowed some free Black testimony in cases involving whites in part because allowing (limited) Black testimony enabled courts to access the truth (slightly) more freely, thereby increasing the law's legitimacy. The exceptions to the general bar against Black testimony in cases involving whites also demonstrate the diversity of legal trends in the antebellum Upper South. In Maryland, the space for free Black testimony shrank. In D.C. and Delaware, it grew. But Southerners long contested the relationship between race and law. Competing pressures to administer a well-functioning legal system and to maintain racial hierarchy exerted force on the white elite. Southern elites, even before the great convulsion of the Civil War, sometimes divided on how best to administer a white supremacist legal regime.

Disobedient Children, Hybrid Filiality: Negotiating Parent–Child Relations in Local Legal System in Republican China, 1911–1949 (Shumeng Han & Xiangyi Ren)
DOI 10.1017/S0738248023000512 
Abstract:

The principle of filial piety underpinned both parent–child relations and, more broadly, Qing legal and social order. Entering the turbulent years of the Qing–Republic transition, filial piety went through substantial changes. Drawn from the local legal archives in Jiangjin county, Sichuan, this research traces the transformation of filial piety in legal practice during the first half of the twentieth century. It argues that two overlapping processes—legal reforms and nation-state building—synergized to restructure the meaning of filial piety from a largely integrated principle in Qing, which bridged the gaps between filiality and loyalty to the emperor and between personalized morality and imperial state legitimacy, to divergent new interpretations of filial piety, including the individualist filial piety, nationalist filial piety, legal filial piety, and sentimental filial piety. Each new interpretation inherits only part of its original meaning and incorporates newly introduced legal knowledge of legal equality and property ownership. The article concludes that various, sometimes contradictory interpretations of filial piety indicate the Republican legal reforms as an in-between, dynamic spectrum of legal change with vigorous negotiations among different legal actors and knowledge regimes.

Human Rights at the Edges of Late Imperial Britain: The Tyrer Case and Judicial Corporal Punishment from the Isle of Man to Montserrat, 1972–1990 (Christopher Hilliard & Marco Duranti) [OPEN ACCESS]
DOI 10.1017/S0738248023000494 
Abstract:

In Tyrer v. United Kingdom (1978), the European Court of Human of Human Rights ruled that judicial corporal punishment contravened Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which proscribed “degrading treatment or punishment.” The case unfolded at a formative moment in British legal activism, as left-wing civil-liberties lawyers who had been wary of human rights discourse began taking cases to Strasbourg. The case also involved tactical challenges for British politicians and government lawyers. The case originated on the Isle of Man, which is close to the British mainland but constitutionally not part of the United Kingdom: it is a “crown dependency” with its own executive, legislature, and judiciary, and it persisted with judicial corporal punishment long after the practice had been abolished in Great Britain. By convention, the British government respected the island's laws and criminal-justice policies, but Britain was responsible for the island's compliance with international agreements—including the European Convention on Human Rights. How the British government dealt with the Isle of Man during and after the litigation had direct implications for a host of other small territories in what remained of the British empire—in particular, Britain's remaining Caribbean territories. The Tyrer case's protracted endgame was an object lesson in how much Britain's “unwritten” constitution depends on negotiation, manipulation, and avoiding the overt exercise of powers that might crumble upon use.

An Instrument of Military Power: The Development and Evolution of Japanese Martial Law in Occupied Territories, 1894–1945 (Kelly Maddox) [OPEN ACCESS]
DOI 10.1017/S0738248023000524 
Abstract:

The Imperial Japanese Army imposed martial law (gunritsu) in areas occupied during each of the full-scale conflicts it fought between 1894 and 1945. This article traces changes and continuities in the purpose, function, and content of martial law during the First Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, and the Asia-Pacific War to advance our historical knowledge of a much-understudied aspect of Japanese warfare. In so doing, it details the development and evolution of martial law as an instrument of military power showing how regulations were also influenced by and, therefore, tended to reflect the different wartime priorities and macro-level policies of the (military) leadership. It also highlights that the character of martial law remained largely unchanged and reveals that many of the legal practices utilized during the Asia-Pacific War were rooted in earlier conflicts. It ultimately argues, however, that wartime context and immediate military objectives took precedence over any longer-term political ambitions in Asia and, more crucially, over the welfare of civilians under occupation.

“Above the Written Law”: Iran-Contra and the Mirage of the Rule of Law (Alan McPherson)
DOI 10.1017/S0738248024000063
Abstract:

Why have scandalous sprees of lawbreaking by U.S. government officials proven so seductive yet so difficult to prosecute? This article takes the Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan–Bush era as an instructive case study and red flag in the attitudinal erosion of the belief in the rule of law among American conservatives. Before the scandal broke, officials and legal counsels willfully mis-interpreted a clear prohibition to fund counter-revolutionaries and fabricated a post-facto presidential permission in order to sell weapons to Iran without congressional oversight. Congress's assumption that government officials would obey its statutes resulted in neither wrongdoing being punishable by criminal sanctions. Conservatives therefore argued that ends justified neglecting certain laws while also denying they had broken any laws. Prosecutors found themselves compelled to prosecute Iran-Contra's defendants over more prosaic crimes such as lying and stealing rather than more abstract and damaging ones. President George H. W. Bush's pardon of Iran-Contra defendants contributed to an impunity that further eroded the American rule of law to this day.

Read the full issue here.

WORKSHOP: Online Workshop on Environment, Law, and History convened by Susian BARTIE & David SCHORR (Zoom, 15 NOV 2024)

(image source: Wikimedia Commons)
 

While environmental history and legal history are well-developed fields with dedicated forums for discussion new scholarship, those of us interested in the intersection of these two fields have to date had a harder time meeting up with scholars with similar interests. After successful sessions at last year's conference of the European Society for Environmental History and this past summer's meeting of the World Congress of Environmental History, we will finally be kicking off an ongoing online workshop, in which we will discuss pre-circulated drafts with the authors from around the world. We plan to meet on Zoom a few times a year, for about an hour each time.

 

Our first workshop session will take place 15 November 2024 at 8 am GMT. We will discuss with David Wilson of the Department of Humanities at the University of Strathclyde his paper, "Towards an Optimum Yield: Science, Technology, and Fisheries Development in Lake Malawi, 1930-1964". The following session, in January 2025, will feature Rebecca McLennan of the UC Berkeley History Department. 

 

To receive a copy of David's paper and a Zoom link, or to ask to be put on the list for messages about future workshop sessions, please email one of us. 

 

Best wishes,

 

Susan Bartie (susan.bartie[at]anu.edu.au)

David Schorr (dschorr[at]tauex.tau.ac.il)

WORKSHOP: 'International Humanitarian Law: Expanding its History(ies), Prospects and Challenges' (Zurich: University of Zurich, 28-29 NOV 2024) [HYBRID]

 

With the generous support of UZH GRC Grants

International Humanitarian Law:

Expanding its History (ies), Prospects and Challenges

 

November 28-29

University of Zurich, KO2-F-152 EV, Karl Schmid-Strasse 4

 

The Workshop Program:

Thursday November 28:

10.00-10.15	Welcome & Registration
10.15-10.30   10.30-11.00	Welcome by Prof. Elisabetta Fiocchi Malaspina   Opening Note by Bruno Demeyere Chief Editor of the International Review of the Red Cross
11.00- 12.30	Panel 1: From the Origins to Reinterpretations of International Humanitarian Law   Raphael Schäfer, Max-Planck-Institut, Heidelberg "Humanity as a Vehicle - A New History for the Laws of War"   Alexa Stiller, Zürich University “Between Decolonization and the End of the Cold War: Reinterpretations and Applications of International Humanitarian Law, 1970s to 1990s”   Moderator: Prof. Benjamin Straumann, Zurich University
12.45-14.00	Lunch UZH Mensa
14.00- 15.00	Panel 2: The archives, and the case of the ICRC in Northern Ireland   Hellen Kinsella, University of Minnesota Giovanni Mantilla, Cambridge University "Politics, Law, and Power in Detention Visits: the Case of the ICRC in Northern Ireland’s 'Troubles'”   Moderator: Prof. Elisabetta Fioochi Malaspina
Thursday November 28:
15.00-16.15	Panel 3: Art & Emotions in the History of International Humanitarian Law
	Giacomo Pace Gravina, University of Messina “Colonialist Emotions. The 'Nobility of Defeat' in Late 19th-Century Paintings”   Tania Atilano, Zurich University, “The exchange of Belgian prisoners” in the painting of Francisco de Paula Mendoza Escobedo, Mexico, 1881   Moderator: Prof. Bardo Fassbender University of St. Gallen
18.00-19.30	Guided Walking Tour: Colonial Legacy in Zurich
20.00	Dinner Restaurant Zum Grünen Glas
Friday November 29:
09.00-10.30	Panel 4: Latin American Engagements with the Laws of War   Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg, LSE, London “Recentering Quechua and Aymara Revolution in the History of Latin American International Law” Liliana Obregón “Racial Hierarchies in Early Latin American Military Codes” Universidad de Los Andes, Colombia   Moderator: Tania Ixchel Atilano
10.30-10.45	Coffee Break
Friday November 29:
10.45- 12.15	Panel 5: New Insights on Non-State Actors   Samuel White, Adelaide University, Australia “War Without Limits - A Historical Critique of Sharp War Theory through Forgotten Histories”   Roberta Arnold, Zurich University, “Terrorism and War: A New «Partnership»?”   Moderator: Prof. Daniel Marc Segesser University of Bern
12.30- 14.00	Lunch at the ETH Dozentenfoyer
14.00 - 15.30	Roundtable How to expand the history (ies) of IHL? Challenges and Future Perspectives Next steps and publication of special issue in the IRRC
15.30	Farewell

 

 

Location:

University of Zurich, KO2-F-152 EV, Karl Schmid-Strasse 4

Streaming

https://uzh.zoom.us/j/8751685913?pwd=V25DZUlVL1E4MTlBZ2s5SEF3UHhVZz09

ID meeting: 875 168 5913

Password: 359670

Contact details

Elisabetta Fiocchi:  Elisabetta.fiocchi@ius.uzh.ch

Tania Atilano: tania.atilanocamacho@uzh.ch