CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: Imperial Legal Spaces and Transitions: Law, Statehood and Administration in Ukraine between Empire, War and State Formation (~1900-1922) (Regensburg: University of Regensburg/Institute for East European Law, 18-19 MAR 2027); DEADLINE 31 JUL 2026

 

Application Deadline: 31 July 2026
Location: University of Regensburg / Institute for East European Law, Germany

Description:

The early 20th century marked a period of profound political, social and legal upheaval for the region
that is now Ukraine. Within a few decades, the region witnessed the collapse of empires, the First World
War, successive occupations and military administrations, competing attempts to establish states, and
the transition to Soviet structures of governance. These developments were accompanied not only by
political and social transformations, but also by a fundamental reorganisation of legal institutions, norms and practices.
While the political history and history of violence of this transitional period have already been researched to some extent, there is still a lack of legal and administrative historical analysis that focuses not only on breaches of the law or the breakdown of legal systems, but also on how the law and institutions function in transitional situations.
The conference therefore focuses on the question: How do legal spaces function when political orders
collapse but institutions (must) continue to operate?
The conference aims to examine the region of present-day Ukraine between approximately 1900 and
1922 as an imperial, or, respectively, post-imperial legal space in which different normative orders, ad-
ministrative traditions and institutional practices did not disappear abruptly, but continued to operate,
overlap, adapt or hybridise.
The conference does not view law merely as a codified norm, but, above all, as a social practice, an
instrument of power and legitimacy, and a resource for stabilising everyday life and administration.

Potential Topics Include:

• Legal transfer and legal pluralism between Habsburg Galicia and the territories oft he Russian
Empire
• Military law and extraordinary justice in the First World War
• Competing legal systems in the years 1917–1921
• Administrative and judicial practice in local borderland spaces
 

The conference adopts a practice- and actor-oriented approach that views law not merely as a normative
system, but as a framework for action. Particular attention is paid to institutional continuities, informal
practices and the role of local decision-makers. At the same time, the conference adopts a transnational
and comparative perspective. The region of present-day Ukraine is not considered in isolation but within its interconnections with Central European, Russian, and later Soviet legal systems. This approach allows for the analysis of regional and local transitions not merely as national anomalies but as part of broader European transformation processes.
The conference seeks to foster an international exchange of perspectives on the region’s history. We
therefore warmly encourage not only scholars from Ukraine but also scholars from other countries, in-
cluding Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, to participate.
We welcome contributions from legal history, history, political science, and related disciplines. Applica-
tions from researchers at all career stages are strongly encouraged.

The conference languages are Ukrainian, German and English.

An application for external funding is currently being prepared. Subject to approval, travel and accom-
modation costs may be covered.

As an outcome of the conference, an edited volume with an internationally renowned publisher is
planned. In addition, selected contributions will be published in an open working paper series.

Application Guidelines:

To participate in the conference, please submit the following application documents by July 31, 2026:

1. Detailed academic CV
2. Topic proposal for the presentation and short abstract (max. 2,000 characters including spaces)
3. List of publications, highlighting the five most relevant to the conference

Please send your application (as a single PDF file) and any inquiries to:
office@ostrecht.de

The results of the selection process will be announced by early September 2026.

We look forward to receiving your submissions and to welcoming you in Regensburg in March
2027!

Find more here. 

BOOK: Luigi NUZZO, Simulacri di sovranità. Una storia del diritto internazionale a Tianjin [Per la storia del pensiero giuridico moderno, ed. Giovanni CAZZETTA; vol. 147] (Milano: Lefebvre Giuffrè, 2026). ISBN: 978828884312, pp. 394, € 57,00

(Source: Lefebvre Giuffrè)

ABOUT THE BOOK

Collana: Per la storia pensiero giuridico moderno.

Attraverso l'analisi delle costruzioni giuridiche, delle strategie diplomatiche e delle pratiche di governo mediante le quali, tra Otto e Novecento, Gran Bretagna, Francia, Stati Uniti, Germania e Italia ottennero e amministrarono le rispettive concessioni nei pressi della città di Tianjin, il volume ricostruisce una delle possibili storie del diritto internazionale. È una storia 'fangosa', come i territori occupati dalle potenze occidentali. Una storia che prende forma nella trama dei rapporti tra consolati, legazioni e ministeri, nelle negoziazioni con il governo e i funzionari cinesi, negli atti di espropriazione, nelle speculazioni degli imprenditori commerciali, nei progetti militari di governance internazionale e nei tentativi di riforma del sistema giurisdizionale. Oggetto di una molteplicità di discorsi giuridici e di pratiche sociali, le concessioni di Tianjin costituirono un vero e proprio laboratorio per sperimentazione di nuove forme giuridiche. Esse spinsero i giuristi a interrogarsi sui limiti del diritto internazionale e a immaginare nuove categorie interpretative per comprendere spazialità inedite, non riconducibili alle forme tradizionali di Stato, nazione o città. Lo studio dei lease agreements che ne costituirono il fondamento consente, pertanto, di cogliere come pratiche di governo e ardite costruzioni giuridiche abbiano spezzato il nesso tra potere governamentale, territorio e sudditi, modificando profondamente il concetto di sovranità e dando origine a nuovi spazi sociali. Al tempo stesso, gli atti appropriativi all'origine di quegli accordi consentono di guardare in modo più consapevole alla storia del diritto internazionale e al rapporto tra diritto e violenza, e permettono, ancora una volta, di identificare nell'occupazione l'atto fondativo di un nuovo ordine giuridico.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Luigi Nuzzo è professore ordinario di Storia del diritto medievale e moderno e Storia del diritto internazionale presso l'Università del Salento.

More information with the publisher.

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.

CONFERENCE: Si rex periit, regnum remansit (‚Ist der König tot, so bleibt doch das Reich bestehen‘). Die Pfalzen, das Reich und der Wechsel der Herrschaft/Dynastie (Halle: Hallischer Saal / Burse zur Tulpe, 8-9 NOV 2024)

(Image source: Wikimedia Commons) 

Unter dem Titel Si rex periit, regnum remansit (‚Ist der König tot, so bleibt doch das Reich bestehen‘) versammelt sich der am Lehrstuhl für Mittelalterliche Geschichte der Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg angesiedelte Pfalzenarbeitskreis Sachsen-Anhalt zum nunmehr elften Mal. Die Tagung geht der Frage nach, ob und falls ja wie sich der Dynastiewechsel des Jahres 1024, als das Königtum nach dem kinderlosen Tod Heinrichs II. († 13. Juli 1024) auf die Salier überging, auf die Pfalzen und das Reich auswirkte. Aus unterschiedlichen Fachgebieten und zu unterschiedlichen Regionen des mittelalterlichen Reiches sowie zu unterschiedlichen Aspekten der Thematik werden vielfältige Forschungsergebnisse präsentiert. Im Fokus stehen Brüche und Kontinuitäten im Herrschaftsverständnis und in der Herrschaftspraxis, aber auch die Auswirkungen des Dynastiewechsels auf die Eliten des Reiches. Darüber hinaus werden – in bewährter Tradition – Einblicke in die Archäologie des Tagungsortes selbst sowie zu anderen Pfalzstandorten geboten.

Alle Interessierten sind zur Teilnahme herzlich eingeladen. Eine Tagungsgebühr wird nicht erhoben. Aus organisatorischen Gründen wird um eine Anmeldung gebeten: pfak.sachsen-anhalt@ovgu.de

PROGRAM

Freitag, 8. November

• 14.00 - Grußworte und Einführung
• 14.15 - Simon Groth (Magdeburg): Karolinger‘ – ‚Ottonen‘ – ‚Salier‘ – ‚Staufer‘. Oder: Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Dynastie für die Darstellung
• 15.00 - Stephan Freund (Magdeburg): Heinrich II., Konrad II. und die Königspfalzen. Neue Herrscher, neue Gewohnheiten?
• 16.15 - Luise Margarete Jansen (Bonn): Die Herrscherin und der Herrscherwechsel. Kaiserin Kunigunde und Königin Konstanze im Vergleich
• 17.00 - Carolin Triebler (Aachen): Der sächsische Adel und der Herrscherwechsel 1024
• 17.45 - Alena Reeb (Magdeburg): Neuer König, neue Verhältnisse? Sächsische Geistliche in Phasen von Herrschaftswechseln
• 19.00 - Ludger Körntgen (Mainz): Abendvortrag. Brüche und neue Kontinuitäten. Die Dynastiewechsel im hochmittelalterlichen Reich (1002 – 1024 – 1152)

Samstag, 9. November

• 9.00 - Caspar Ehlers (Frankfurt/Main): Aachen, Frankfurt, Memleben, Goslar: Transdynastische Zentralorte im Reich
• 9.45 - Étienne Doublier (Köln): Talia fluctuante Italia. Die Herrscherwechsel von 1002 und 1024 aus italienischer Perspektive
• 11.00 - Markus C. Blaich (Hannover): Neues von altbekannten Plätzen: Goslar und Pöhlde
• 11.45 - Matthias Becker (Halle/Saale): Merseburg vor 1000 Jahren
• 12.30 - Caroline Schulz (Halle/Saale): Sachgeschichten: Halle im Lichte archäologischer Quellen
• 13.15 - Zusammenfassung und Tagungsende

More information can be found here.

JOURNAL: Law and History Review XLI (2023), No. 2

 

(image source: CUP)

Law, Courts, and Constitutions in Twentieth-Century South Asia (Saumya Saxena & Alastair McClure)
DOI 10.1017/S0738248023000093 (OPEN ACCESS)
Abstract:

This special issue brings together scholars from multiple disciplines and with varied research and geographic expertise to study the historical role played by the law in governing the political, social, and cultural life of twentieth-century South Asia. These articles have not emerged in a vacuum, but rather build on an exciting turn in South Asian history that is placing new focus on the legal and constitutional work that accompanied the post-colonial moment. This introduction examines some of the important historiographical and methodological interventions made by scholars working in this field, before outlining the specific themes connecting the articles in this issue.

The Drafting of the Constitution of the Union of Burma in 1947: Dominion Status, Indo–Burmese Relations, and the Irish Example (Donal K. Coffey)
DOI 10.1017/S0738248022000487 (OPEN ACCESS)
Abstract:

This paper aims to consider four elements of Burmese constitutional history between 1946 and 1948. The first section considers the negotiations between Burma and the United Kingdom and argues that the debate about whether Burma wanted Dominion status has overlooked the crucial transitional government period. The second section gives a brief overview of the drafting process, paying particular attention to the links between the Indian Constituent Assembly in Delhi and Rangoon. The third section outlines the comparative influences on the Burmese Constitution using the digital humanities and illustrates that the biggest foreign influence was the Irish Constitution of 1937. The final section looks at the Burmese political leadership after World War II along two dimensions—at a nationalist level and at an elite level—and traces some of the links between Burma and Ireland.

Nepal's Constitutional Foundations between Revolution and Cold War (1950–60) (Mara Malagodi)
DOI 10.1017/S0738248022000724 (OPEN ACCESS)
Abstract:

The 1950s represent a foundational decade in Nepal's constitutional history. In the wake of decolonization in British India, the “year 7 revolution” (1950–51) grew out of the alliance between King Tribhuvan Shah and Nepal's democratic political parties created in India against the Rana autocratic regime in Kathmandu. Eventually the pro-democracy forces prevailed, and a crucial political transition began. Two constitutions were promulgated, the 1951 Interim Constitution and the 1959 Constitution. Both short lived and only partially implemented, these documents, however, laid the foundations of Nepal's constitutional edifice for years to come. Constitution building became a marker of sovereignty understood in terms of independence and an assertion of popular sovereignty. However, in the fraught Cold War context, the preoccupation with securing political stability by constitutional means that centered around the Shah monarchy prevailed, even at the expense of democracy. As such, the shift from a traditional notion of sovereignty from above to a modern concept of sovereignty from below remained incomplete. These aspirations, however, were not extinguished even by 30 years of royal autocracy under the Panchayat regime (1960–90) and lived on to this day to inform demands for constitutional reform, democratization, and inclusion. The present analysis is based on Nepali primary legal sources, archival material from the United Kingdom and United States National Archives, and the Ivor Jennings Private Papers. 

Constitutions and Modernity in Post-Colonial Afghanistan: Ethnolinguistic Nationalism and the Making of an Afghan Nation-State (Elisabeth Leake) 
DOI 10.1017/S0738248022000530 (OPEN ACCESS)
Abstract:

In recent decades, the rule of law has not been commonly associated with Afghanistan. Instead, its politics have been more likely to be framed in terms of lawlessness and ungovernability. But this trope does not do justice to Afghanistan's longer history of statehood or experiences of constitution-making. Over the course of the twentieth century, Afghan leaders drafted seven constitutions (in 1923, 1931, 1964, 1976, 1980, 1987, and 1990). These constitutions represented leaders’ attempts to assert their legitimacy and enforce their vision of an Afghan nation-state. This article sheds fresh light on Afghan elites’ top-down framing of Afghan national identity through ethnolinguism, exploring the legalization of Pashto as both an official and national language in Afghanistan's constitutions. Reformers intended Pashto to transgress community, kinship, and regional boundaries and act as a source of unity (though one in which ethnolinguistic minorities had little say). Tracing Afghanistan's constitutional history from 1923–90, this article reveals language as a constitutional arena for debating Afghan modernity and identity. As such, this article integrates Afghanistan into legal histories of South Asia while emphasizing how Afghan constitutionalists engaged in the process of law-making as a means of expressing Afghanistan's own independence and ideas of modernity.

Negotiating Nationhood: Constitutional Warfare, International Law, and the Birth of Bangladesh (Cynthia Farid) (OPEN ACCESS)
DOI 10.1017/S073824802300007X
Abstract:

This paper argues the Government in Exile (GIE), the first government of independent Bangladesh, played an important role in framing the founding moment in legal terms. The GIE's constitutional warfare through its adherence to legalism, and subsequent internationalization of the conflict significantly shaped the independence movement of 1971. The GIE was composed of leaders who were lawyers, economists and other intellectuals who sought refuge in neighboring India. The agency of the founders and their allegiance to constitutional principles catalyzed the founding moment, oversaw the transition to an independent state and ultimately led to a swift adoption of a constitution that endures despite much instability. This national struggle of 1971 also played out in the international arena. In the process, lawyers from the so-called Third World articulated, reshaped, and generated new debates about international legal principles such as sovereignty, territoriality, and self-determination (and criterion for legitimacy of exiled governments)—most of which were considered to be well-settled at the time.

Policing Sati: Law, Order, and Spectacle in Postcolonial India (Saumya Saxena)
DOI  10.1017/S0738248022000591 (OPEN ACCESS)
Abstract:

This article explores the response of the postcolonial state to the question of widow immolation – sati. It demonstrates that the conversation on the practice of sati at the high point of Hindu law reform in the 1950s reflected the simultaneous pressures on the new democracy to establish rule of law while also accommodating the renewed reverence for tradition and religious custom in an independent nation state. Distinct from the colonial response to sati that treated women as either “helpless and pathetic” or “brave and valiant,” post-independence police records describe women committing sati mostly as “insane” or “not in their senses,” and yet chiefly responsible for their actions. The article contrasts administrative and parliamentary narratives of the crime. Local belief in miracles surrounding the performance of sati not only obscured the experience of the woman's suffering but also made collection of evidence in such a case particularly difficult. This rendered convictions of the abettors of such “painless suicide by insane women” weaker. Legal interventions in sati eventually prompted administrative responses to shift from emphasizing the “uncontrollability” of the spectacle to deeming the spectacle a necessary precondition in distinguishing a sati from suicide.

Killing in the Name Of? Capital Punishment in Colonial and Postcolonial India (Alastair McClure)
DOI 10.1017/S0738248022000335 (OPEN ACCESS)
Abstract:

Unlike whipping, which was quickly abolished following independence, India has continued to hold tightly to the noose’s rope and remains a retentionist country to our present day. Notably, though the number of executions would fall dramatically in the first decades of India’s postcolonial history, the list of crimes made punishable by death has grown ever longer in recent years. Rather than positing the continued presence of the death penalty as an anachronism ill-suited for a modern democracy, this article takes seriously the legal and discursive developments that allowed the most infamous of penal institutions to travel safely across India’s twentieth century. From something that begun as a distilled expression of racialised colonial state power, like many other state institutions during this period, the death penalty would undergo a series of changes to remain relevant amidst new organizing political principles of representative democracy and popular will. Moving from the first formal efforts at abolition in the 1920s, through constitutional assembly debates in the 1940s, and Supreme Court judgements between 1967-83, the article positions capital punishment as a product of both deep colonial inheritances, and a particular process of postcolonial translation. Becoming fully couched in the language of popular sentiment by the culmination of this legal transformation, this violence would become well-positioned to grow within a national political culture increasingly organised around majoritarian expressions of national belonging.

Mergers and Legal Fictions: Coverture and Intermarried Women in India (Leilah Vevaina)
DOI 10.1017/S0738248023000068 (OPEN ACCESS)
Abstract:

Within India's system of plural personal laws, the rights of women in matters of marriage, divorce, and inheritance are solely based on their natal communal identity. While we see many examples of women appealing to courts to secure or improve their rights vis-à-vis personal laws, marriage outside the community has often occluded these rights completely. Marital property, inheritance, and even access to sacred space are in a gray zone of differentiated rights between natal and marital community customs. One intermarried woman, Goolrukh Gupta, sued the trust that managed the town's sacred space in the High Court to confirm her rights to enter sacred space. The Court ruled that she was removed from her natal community even though she had married under the Special Marriage Act of 1954, as she had “merged personality with her husband.” While British women's property was held under coverture through the nineteenth century, these laws were never transferred over to the Indian colony. Through the legal appeals of intermarried women, this article explores the shifting and unstable rights of intermarried women in India.

Courts and Constitutions in South Asia and the Global South: A View from the Middle East (Faiz Ahmed)
DOI 10.1017/S073824802200058X 
Abstract:

Not long ago, the study of comparative law in U.S. law schools was dominated by North American and European constitutional systems. Thanks to the contributions of a new generation of legal historians, including those canvassed in this special issue, the landscape is changing. In this special issue, scholars of courts and constitutions in twentieth century Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, India, and Nepal have come together to share novel sources, perspectives, and analyses of significant constitutional experiments in the Global South, specifically twentieth century South Asia. This afterword reflects on these important scholarly contributions by highlighting common threads and divergences in the case studies presented in this volume—from the perspective of a legal historian of the late Ottoman Empire and modern Middle East. Ultimately, the author concludes that the articles in this special issue persuasively stamp modern South Asian legal history “on the map” not only for specialists of this large and populous region, but for students and scholars of comparative constitutionalism and global legal history more broadly.

Read the whole issue here.