Clio@Themis: The Relaunch

We are grateful to David Sugarman for word that Clio @ Themis, the on-line review of legal history, has a new website, which makes current and previously published articles more accessible. From the website:

Founded in 2009 at the initiative of several researchers from the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, joined by a number of University lecturers, Clio@Themis contributes to the development of debates and scientific exchanges with regard to the history of law. Its creation in France is based on enlargement and enrichment of the traditional perspectives of the legal history. Indeed, the history of law, through more and more varied types of research, concerns now all periods, from Antiquity to the beginning of the 21th century. This broadening of perspectives is not only in a chronological context, but also a geographical one: today, the subject of the history of law is necessarily European, comparative, and reacts to the phenomena of legal globalisation.

As a consequence, far from keeping legal history locked in a complacent study of the past, this journal aims to be an instrument for the critical understanding of the present. It does not intend to separate legal phenomena from social phenomena. In addition to questions about socio-economic factors in the production and reception of the law, it is increasingly important to consider reflections on judicial culture, the formation and circulation of ideas and judicial concepts, practices and representation.

History, Law, Society: these three ideas express, without any doctrinal constraint, our usage of historical method, our focus on legal subjects and our embrace of social science in the broadest sense.

–Dan Ernst

CFP: Asian Legal History

 [We have the following announcement and CFP.  DRE]

 The Transnational Legal History Group of the Centre for Comparative and Transnational Law (CCTL) and the University of Law - Hue University will be jointly organizing a conference on the theme of Asian Legal History at the University of Law - Hue University, Hue, Vietnam, on 24-25 July 2021. Convened by Bui Ngoc Son and Christopher Roberts, Assistant Professors at CUHK LAW, the conference aims to bring together a diverse and interdisciplinary group of scholars, researchers, and graduate students to share their research findings on topics relating to legal history in Asia.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

Andrew Harding, Visiting Research Professor, National University of Singapore, Faculty of Law
Pip Nicholson, Dean, William Hearn Professor of Law, Melbourne Law School
Radhika Singha, Professor of Modern Indian History, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Lutz-Christian Wolff, Dean, Wei Lun Professor of Law, CUHK LAW

Call for Papers:

The organizers invite proposals for individual papers and panels. Submissions on any subject, providing it pertains to legal history in Asia, will be considered. General topics may include:

The historical evolution of common law, civil law, and socialist law traditions in Asia;
Legal pluralism and jurisdictional clashes;
Dynastic law;
Colonial law;
Customary law and village law;
Buddhist Law, Confucian Law, Hindu Law, and Islamic Law;
The history of a particular area of law (constitutional law, property law, criminal law, etc);
Theoretical and methodological issues involved in studying Asian legal history.

The conference organizers are particularly interested in papers addressing the following subjects:

Asian approaches to and impacts upon the historical development of international law;
Transnational legal history;
The relationship between metropolitan and colonial approaches to law;
The history of law, gender and sexuality;
The evolution of, and contestations around, legal positivism;
The history of law schools and of the formation of the judiciary and of members of the legal profession;
The history of public order law;
The history of law and violence.

Individual paper proposals should include a 300-word abstract and the author’s contact information.  Panel proposals should include a 300-word description of the panel, 300-word abstracts of three to four individual papers, contact information for each person on the panel, and contact information for the chairs of the panel.

Registration Fee: HK$ 200 per participant.  Conference organizers will provide two lunches, one dinner, and refreshments. Participants are responsible for their own travel and accommodation costs.

Important dates:

5 October 2020: Online abstract submission opens
15 December 2020: Abstract submission deadline
15 February 2021: Notification of acceptance
15 March 2021: Registration opens
30 April 2021: Early registration and payment closes
25 June 2021: Regular registration and payment closes
24-25 July 2021: The conference takes place

Please submit the abstracts via online form by 15 December 2020. For enquiries, please contact the CCTL at cctl.law@cuhk.edu.hk.

Comparative Constitutiional History: Collected Essays

Published this summer by Brill: Comparative Constitutional History: Volume One: Principles, Developments, Challenges, edited by Francesco Biagi, Justin O. Frosini, and Jason Mazzone:

While comparative constitutional law is a well-established field, less attention has been paid so far to the comparative dimension of constitutional history. The present volume, edited by Francesco Biagi, Justin O. Frosini and Jason Mazzone, aims to address this shortcoming by bringing focus to comparative constitutional history, which holds considerable promise for engaging and innovative work along several key avenues of inquiry. The essays contained in this volume focus on the origins and design of constitutional governments and the sources that have impacted the ways in which constitutional systems began and developed, the evolution of the principle of separation of powers among branches of government, as well as the origins, role and function of constitutional and supreme courts.

TOC after the jump

--Dan Ernst

Constitutional Origins

George Bancroft in Göttingen: an American Reception of German Legal Thought
Mark Somos

Uniformity and Diversity: a Confrontation between French and Dutch Thought on Citizenship
Gohar Karapetian

The Historical and Legal Significance of Constitutional Preambles: a Case Study on the Ukrainian Constitution of 1996
Justin O. Frosini and Viktoriia Lapa

Why the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong Should Re-Assert Its Power to Review Acts of the Standing Committee
Miguel Manero de Lemos

Challenges of Executive and Legislative Power

The Separation of Powers and Forms of Government in the MENA Region Following the ‘Arab Spring’: a Break with the Past?
Francesco Biagi

‘The Constitution Will Be Our Last Hope in the Momentary Storm.’ Institutions of Constitutional Protection and Oversight in Mexico and Their Contribution to Atlantic Constitutional Thought (1821–1841)
Catherine Andrews

Judicial Authority and Its Limits

Judicial Review of Legislation in Portugal: Genealogy and Critique
Gonçalo de Almeida Ribeiro

Defending the Judiciary? Judicial Review of Constitutional Amendments on the Judiciary in Colombia
Mario Alberto Cajas-Sarria

Direct Individual Access to Constitutional Justice in South Korea and Taiwan
Fabian Duessel

Geiringer on Representation-Reenforcement and the NZ Bill of Rights

Claudia Geiringer, Victoria University of Wellington School of Law, has posted When Constitutional Theories Migrate: A Case Study, which is forthcoming in the American Journal of Comparative Law:

The last decade or so has witnessed a burgeoning of literature on the role of cross-jurisdictional influences in the design (as well as subsequent interpretation) of national constitutions. The consensus emerging from that literature is that transnational borrowing in the course of constitutional making is both inevitable and impossible. In a globalized world, those involved in the design of a new constitution naturally look beyond their borders for inspiration. Borrowing is thus endemic. But borrowing, in any true sense, is also impossible because in the process of migration, constitutional ideas must be de- and then re-contextualized in order to fit them for the new legal system.

What, though, if the object of transnational influence is not a constitutional text or an institutional mechanism but, rather, a scholarly theory? That is the question addressed by this article. Specifically, the article examines the intriguing (and little known) story of how John Hart Ely’s representation-reinforcing theory of (American) constitutional interpretation was transformed into a blueprint for the design of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. It suggests that Ely’s journey to the South Pacific has the potential to illuminate both the study of constitutional migration generally and, more specifically, the linkages between comparative law and constitutional theory.

–Dan Ernst.  H/t: Legal Theory Blog