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

 

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

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

Read more here.

CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: Law and Culture Conference (London, 10-11 Sep 2015); DEADLINE 30 JUN 2015

(image source: ukuniversitysearch.com)

We received a call for abstracts for the upcoming "Law and Culture" conference at St Mary's University (London).

Law and Culture Conference 2015: Change
10-11 September 2015, St Mary’s University, Twickenham, London

Law and culture are two significant forces in human life, both shaping and influencing the conduct of individuals, communities and societies, and the values they develop. The emergence of values and norms, of traditions and beliefs—of laws—is a chronological phenomenon, taking place through the evolution of history and the influential forces of the present. But these laws are not static: change is an on-going process: a restless development and dynamic interaction of legal, cultural, social, and human reality.

Beyond the multifaceted avenues of change that traverse the history of law and its relationship(s) with culture (changing laws, values and practices; the changing presence and visibility of law in mainstream society and culture; the changing presence of women and others in law; changes in the philosophical grounding of justice), there are also widespread changes afoot in the present of 2015. In Europe, for example, there is the possibility of enormous political change with general elections, with the ebb and flow of the corporate giant, and with the EU facing challenges that may result in its reconfiguration. Beyond politics, present life is also bringing fresh challenges for law and culture globally, such as: the increased use of technology in law and human life (including amongst other challenges the darknet, and the integration of our online and physical selves); the shifting authority of law’s cultural presence and its increasingly complex relationships with science, religion, and society; the challenges of globalisation and transnational crime; the blurring of the first, second and third world; the fluidity of values as our relationship with modernity becomes ever more strained.

The Law and Culture Conference 2015 will engage with this question of change: of how law and value have developed and changed in the cultures of the past; of how it might develop in the future; of the forces and changes acting and taking place in the cultures and societies around law today (locally, globally; nationally, transnationally); of how representations of law and justice in culture (television, film, literature, comics, newsmedia) might be evolving today, yesterday, tomorrow; of how law might respond to or encounter change or changing cultures, or challenges to its authority from other sources of value and justice; of how change might be effected within law, intentionally or otherwise, for good or for bad; of how law and culture could change one another, for better, for worse, or for something else…

These are but indicative examples of the on-going process of change, all of which require fresh perspectives to decipher and understand its significance for law, and for law’s place in contemporary culture. Such questioning also provides new opportunities to visualise and explore the frontiers and changing dynamics of law and culture. Submissions are thus sought from all areas of law and cultural legal studies, engaging in some way with this broad and open question of ‘change’.

Please submit (abstract 300 words plus 3 keywords) by email, no later than 30 June 2015

The organisers are happy to discuss potential ideas in advance of submission.

Organisers’ contact details:
•         judith.bourne@stmarys.ac.uk
•         thomas.giddens@stmarys.ac.uk
•         mark.mackarel@stmarys.ac.uk

CFP: "All True, All Fiction: Conspiracy Theories at the Contours of Legality" (Washington D.C., 6-7 March 2015)

WHAT: All True, All Fiction: Conspiracy Theories at the Contours of Legality, 18th Annual Meeting of the ASLCH, Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities, Call for papers

WHERE: Washington, D.C.

WHEN: 6-7 March 2015

Deadline 5 october 2014

All information here

This panel aims to analyze conspiracy theories in their connection to law and their effect on people’s relationship to legality. At first glance, law and conspiracy theories seem to share similar qualities. Both are initially suspicious of the knowledge they are provided with; both employ methods of elimination; and, ultimately, both establish a certain ‘truth’ about their cases. Yet they are situated on a conflicting ground ontologically, ultimately aiming to achieve very different purposes. Furthermore, the law’s verdict is supposed to be final, but conspiracy theories change, differ, become amended, and get replaced by others as agendas shift. Unlike legal proceedings with a conclusive endpoint, the act of conspiratorial thinking thus needs to be constantly fed with new information. In this sense, with its claim on the finality of its verdict and authority to establish facts, the law is in a position to contain conspiracy theories while at the same time, inevitably, holding the potential to produce them by its very insistence on the certainty of the truth it engenders. This panel aims to reflect on this tension by analyzing the murkiness and (un)certainty that conspiracy theories generate at once as they confront the rituals of law, captured in such realms as courtrooms, legal documents, and government declarations. Yet, rather than approaching conspiracy theories as the final contenders on a hierarchical ladder of informed knowledge, a product of a “crippled epistemology” (Sunstein and Vermeule 2009), or a potential threat or risk to society, it analyzes them as a narrative genre that helps establish people’s relationship to the state and the legal field around them. It takes as its starting point anthropological analyses that have sought to interrogate the intersections of conspiratorial thinking with rumor, gossip, secrets, witchcraft, and magic as they vacillate between the contours of legality and the purported transparency of the state. Ultimately, the panel aims to reflect on conspiracy theories as a form of legal fiction.

If you are interested in presenting on this panel, please submit an abstract of no more than 350 words to skaptan@rutgers.edu by October 5, 2014.