CFP: Legal History and Mass Migration

[We have the following call for papers.  DRE]

Legal Response to Mass Migration Between the 19th Century and the WWII 

Confronted with mass migration, since the mid-19th century Western legal culture was forced to face migrants not just as a sum of individuals, but as a phenomenon demanding new legal concepts and mechanisms appropriate to govern and regulate groups and collective subjects. European migrants moving towards colonies and the East led to a reconceptualization of traditional international law doctrines on state sovereignty in order to de-territorialize Western citizens who occurred to be in the Eastern countries, freeing them from the imperium of the local authority and entrusting them to their own consular courts. Whereas immigration into Western countries led to the adoption of protective legal strategies and exclusion mechanisms to bar the dangerous others, emigration of European citizens towards colonized regions and Eastern countries prompted the elaboration of exceptional safeguards and privileges for ‘civilizing’ migrants. The new challenges of mobility led jurists and legislators to reshape the peculiarity of ius migrandi through terminological as well as conceptual revisions (e.g. the notions of citizenship, sovereignty, territorial state, undesirable and dangerous alien), the elaboration of new disciplines such as international labor law and international migration law, and the creation of special administrative bodies or jurisdictions (e.g. immigration officers; board of inspectors; consular courts; inspectors of emigration; arbitral commissions for emigration).

The Legal History and Mass Migration project (PRIN 2017) invites proposals for papers relating to the theme of the juridical response to mass migration between the mid-19th century and WWII. Papers can be based on different methodologies and may refer to a broad variety of subjects, including, by way of example:

• application of methodologies such as global legal history, comparative legal history, critical analysis of law to the study of migration issues;

• relationship between local rules and international migration law;

• tensions between human rights’ recognition and border control policies;

• non-Western legal approaches to migration issues;

• construction of legal discourses, theories, justifications to support, contrast, govern, or limit mass migration;
  

• models of citizenship and integration or exclusion of alien immigrants in different countries;

• role of case law and/or resort to special tribunals with jurisdiction in migration issues as means of departing from ordinary rules and constitutional protections;
  

• institutional and informal mechanisms (such as ‘soft law’, role of unions or charitable institutions, nets of assistance of national citizens abroad etc.) adopted to deal with mass migration problems in different countries of both departure and destination;

• impact of mass migration on national and international labour law;

• racial paradigms and immigration laws;
  

• local/global economic impact of migration and its legal regulation;

• exploitation of criminal law concepts, discourses, practices to stir the public conviction about the social danger of mass migration

Proposals for papers are due by 30 March 2021 and should be submitted by e-mail at legalhistoryandmassmigration@gmail.com in Word format, following this order: (a) author(s); (b) affiliation; (c) e-mail address; (d) title of abstract; (e) body of abstract (apx 350 words).  Accepted papers will be presented at an international conference which will be held at the University of Naples in December 2021.  

Support for selected participants: funding for travel expenses and accommodation may be available. Please indicate with your paper proposal if you would like to be considered for a support, and if so, your expected expenses. All funding decisions will be made independently of paper acceptance.
Papers and pre-circulation: Please note that the conference panels will be structured around a short summary of speakers’ pre-circulated papers, followed by more extended discussion. It is our intention that accepted speakers will submit papers of no more than 4,000 words for circulation by Friday 22 October 2021.

For general inquiries, please email: info@legalhistoryandmassmigration.com

Conference Committee: Luigi Nuzzo (University of Salento), Michele Pifferi (University of Ferrara), Giuseppe Speciale (University of Catania), Cristina Vano (University of Naples Federico II).

ASLH Announces New Fellowship

 [We have the following announcement.  DRE]

The American Society for Legal History has established the Herbert A. Johnson Fellowship, made possible by a generous gift from Jane and Harry Scheiber. The fellowship will be awarded to an early career scholar who works on the legal history of North America and is selected to attend the annual Student Research Colloquium. The new fellowship honors the prolific legal and constitutional historian Herbert Johnson, distinguished professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina and past president of the ASLH from 1973 to 1975.

In noting the significance of the fellowship, ASLH President Lauren Benton explained, “The Student Research Colloquium has been a wonderful addition to our annual meeting, bringing eight early career scholars each year for a full day of scholarly interchange and collegial engagement. The fellowship helps to lay a permanent foundation for this vital resource for the newest members of our field.”

Benton went on to praise Jane and Harry Scheiber for their vision in establishing the fellowship. “The Scheibers’ generous support of early career scholars and their choice to honor Herb Johnson beautifully advance the ASLH mission of promoting the future of legal history while celebrating the contributions of our most distinguished scholars.”

The Herbert A. Johnson Fellowship will be awarded for the first time in 2021. The ASLH continues to work to create other named fellowships in order to fully endow the Student Research Colloquium, adding to a similar effort to endow named fellowships for the Hurst Summer Institute.

The Life & Legacy of John Jay

[We have the following announcement.  DRE]

John Jay (NYPL)

The John Jay Papers Project, Columbia University Libraries, and Columbia University's Office of the Provost are proud to present In Service to the New Nation: The Life & Legacy of John Jay, a  two-day virtual conference (January 22-23, 2021) celebrating the near completion of the Project's seven-volume series The Selected Papers of John Jay.

The conference events are free and open to the public. To attend the events, attendees will need to register beforehand.  For registration information and the full conference program visit In Service to the New Nation: The Life & Legacy of John Jay

Joanne Freeman, Class of 1954 Professor of American History and American Studies at Yale University, will deliver the keynote address "Life in an Age of Conflicts and Extremes." The keynote address will be held via Zoom Webinar on Friday, January 22, 6:00-7:30 PM EST.

There will then be four panel sessions to be held via Zoom Webinar on Saturday, January 23, 10:30 am-5:30 PM EST.

Panel 1: Diplomacy and Politics (10:40 am – 12:00 pm)
Chair, Mary A. Y. Gallagher (John Jay Papers)

Kings College and the Foundations of John Jay’s Diplomacy
Benjamin C. Lyons (Columbia University)

John Jay’s 1788 “Address to the People of the State of New York” and the Dynamics of the Ratification Debate: A New Look
Todd Estes (Oakland University)

Two Treaties, Two Diplomats, and Two Scholarly Editions: John Jay, Thomas Pinckney, and the Art and Practice of Scholarly Editorial Collaboration
Constance B. Schulz (Pinckney Papers, University of South Carolina)

Panel 2: Family, Slavery, and Abolition (1:00 – 2:20 pm)
Chair, Elizabeth M. Nuxoll, (John Jay Papers)

Mastering Paradox: John Jay, Slavery, and Nation Building
David N. Gellman (DePauw University)

John Jay and the Intimate Politics of Slavery and Antislavery
Sarah Gronningsater (University of Pennsylvania)

“One of them married Colonel Stuyvesandt, another of them married my grandfather”: John Jay, Genealogy, and the Shape of a New Nation
Karin Wulf (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, College of William & Mary)

Panel 3: Navigating Networks and Publics (2:30 – 4:05 pm)
Chair, Herbert Sloan (Barnard College)

John Jay and the Press
Sara Georgini (Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society)

Investing in Social Networking in Sarah Livingston Jay’s New York
Alisa Wade (California State University, Chico)

John Jay in Voluntary America
Jonathan Den Hartog (Samford University)

Did the Man Make the Robe? John Jay Dressed for the Court
Claire Jerry (Smithsonian National Museum of American History)
Bethanee Bemis (Smithsonian National Museum of American History)

Panel 4: Roundtable on The Future of Documentary Editing & the Founding Era (4:15 – 5:20 pm)
Chair, R. Darrell Meadows (National Historical Publications and Records Commission)

Sara Martin (Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society)

Holly C. Shulman (Dolley Madison Digital Edition)

Jennifer E. Steenshorne (John Jay Papers)

Jennifer Stertzer (Washington Papers, Center for Digital Editing)

CFP: Congress & History

[Word has reached us of a call for the 2021 Congress & History Conference in the guise of the following open letter, dated December 8, from Burdett Loomis, University of Kansas.  The organizers tell us that the legal historian Maggie Blackhawk is among the organizers.  DRE.  H/t: JC]

West Front of Capitol, July 1861 (LC)

I'm delighted to say that Steven Smith (Washington University at St. Louis) and I will be host, via Zoom, 2021 Congress & History Conference. The conference will be held June 10-11. We welcome submissions – either individual papers or full panels -- on both contemporary and historical topics from all methodological perspectives. These topics could include legislative representation (including those focused on race or gender), legislative procedure, impeachment, congressional committees, parties, etc. Moreover, we enthusiastically encourage scholars whose work touches on Congress, legislatures, and legislation to consider applying, even if you do not consider yourself a “congressional scholar.” Likewise, we hope that historians and constitutional law scholars whose work relates to Congress and legislation will apply. We especially want to encourage junior scholars (faculty and graduate students) and first-time attendees. This small (~50 person) conference is a wonderful way to receive constructive feedback on your work and get to know the broad community of scholars working on legislative politics. We particularly seek scholars from and working on historically under-represented groups to make paper or panel proposals. In addition, the conference will have a poster session for graduate students to present their work, with an award for the best poster. The application deadline for all proposals and offers to serve as a discussant is January 20, 2021.

Here's a link to the application form.  Please submit the form and send a backup copy to me (bloomis@ku.edu), to be shared with Steve. Getting the word out about this excellent, small conference is important, especially beyond the traditional group of legislative scholars. Please circulate this to colleagues and graduate students who may not have received it and post this on list-serves that you may be a part of. Please don't hesitate to contact me (bloomis@ku.edu) or Steven (smith@wustl) if you have any questions. 

Although I’d love to host you all at KU’s Dole Institute of Politics in June, I’m afraid, for this year, we’ll have to keep our distance. Still, last year’s conference was a success via Zoom, and I’m sure this one will be as well. If you’d like to see the kinds of papers that have been presented at recent conferences, you can go to https://congressandhistory.mit.edu/past-conferences These programs are illustrative, and we certainly hope to broaden the scope of work in 2021.

ANZLS Program Now Available

Courtoom Scene, Sydney, 1817 (wiki)

The program for the 39th Annual Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society, “an intensive 1 day world-wide gathering devoted to law in history” on December 9, is now available here.  The keynote plenary sessions are Joshua Getzler, Oxford University, on “Six Nations of the Grand River, military feudalism, and the roots of ‘honour of the Crown’”; Miranda Johnson, Otago University, on “Reckoning with a Pacific empire state: Race, nation, citizenship and the idea of New Zealand”; and a closing address by Dame Sian Elias, former Chief Justice of New Zealand.

--Dan Ernst

ASLH 2020

[We're moving this up, because ASLH 2020 has begun!  DRE.]

REGISTER FOR OUR ANNUAL CONFERENCE

Dear ASLH members,

We invite you to register here for the 2020 ASLH annual conference, to be held November 13-14.  The online program features a carefully curated selection of exciting panels on the legal history of colonialism, slavery and abolition, immigration, and other topics. On Friday afternoon a group of editors and other experts will discuss book publishing in the Covid era. To wrap things up on Saturday afternoon, President Lauren Benton will deliver her Presidential Address and announce ASLH prize winners. You can find the full program here.

Registration is free for all ASLH members, and you must be a member to attend. The ASLH warmly welcomes students, who can become members for as little as $10.

Join or renew your ASLH membership here.

We hope you will join us for what promises to be a fantastic – if unusual – gathering of the ASLH!

Sincerely,

Lauren Benton, ASLH President
Anne Twitty, ASLH Secretary
Kristin Collins, ASLH Program Co-chair
Ari Bryen, ASLH Program Co-chair

ANZLHS 2020

 [We have the following announcement.  DRE]

39th Annual Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society

Join us for an intensive 1 day world-wide gathering devoted to law in history on 9 December 2020, hosted by Event Services at the University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand

Keynote plenary sessions will feature:

Joshua Getzler, Oxford University, on "Six Nations of the Grand River, military feudalism, and the roots of 'honour of the Crown'"

Miranda Johnson, Otago University, on "Reckoning with a Pacific empire state: Race, nation, citizenship and the idea of New Zealand"

A Closing Address by Dame Sian Elias, former Chief Justice of New Zealand

The organisers have accepted 39 individual papers and 7 panel presentations. They will be run in four concurrent parallel sessions throughout the day. The programme will be uploaded to the ANZLHS website page shortly.

The timings will be specified according to the NZDT time zone - which is UTC+13. We have attempted to time presentations so that are as reasonable as possible for the presenters (but will be difficult for some). The conference will begin at 9.00am and conclude at 7.00pm NZDT.

To cover Event Services charges, and to ensure a high quality of digital platform delivery utilising Zoom, Vimeo and Twilio, we are asking all attendees to pay a modest registration fee. In addition, the rules of the ANZLHS require all presenters to pay the Society's 2020 annual subscription. So 'full member registration' applies to presenters who have paid the 2020 Society subscription in advance; 'full non-member registration' applies to presenters (some of whom will have been members in the past) who have not yet paid the 2020 Society subscription. We are waiving registration fees for postgraduate student presenters. The portal for registrations will be launched shortly through the website page. The cost for registration is as follows in $NZ:

Full member registration: $130; Full non-member registration: $ 215; Full-time post graduate presenters: Fee waiver; Attendance only registration: $130

Graduate students are invited to apply for Kercher Scholarships. Five scholarship awards will be made that may adorn your cv even though there is no monetary element to the scholarship this year. Please apply to Katherine Sanders: k.sanders@auckland.ac.nz by 20 November if you have not already applied. Graduate attendees may also wish to enter their paper for the Forbes Society Prize. The Society's peer-reviewed journal law&history will consider submissions from those who present papers at the conference. In the meantime further information about the conference may be gleaned from David Williams: dv.williams@auckland.ac.nz

CFP: Michigan Law Junior Scholars Conference

 [We have the following announcement.  DRE]

Michigan Law School 2021 Junior Scholars Conference, April 16-17, 2021.  Call for Papers.  Deadline for Submission: January 4, 2021

The University of Michigan Law School is pleased to invite junior scholars to attend the 7th Annual Junior Scholars Conference which will take place virtually on April 16-17, 2021.

The conference provides junior scholars with a platform to present and discuss their work with peers and receive feedback from prominent members of the Michigan Law faculty. The Conference aims to promote fruitful collaboration between participants and to encourage their integration into a community of legal scholars. The Junior Scholars Conference is intended for academics in both law and related disciplines. Applications from graduate students, SJD/PhD candidates, postdoctoral researchers, lecturers, teaching fellows, and assistant professors (pre-tenure) who have not held an academic position for more than four years, are welcomed.

Cooperation with Michigan Law Journals: We are excited that this year the Conference will collaborate with several Michigan Law journals, all of which are among the highest ranked in their respective fields. The Michigan Law Review, Michigan Journal of International Law, Michigan Journal of Law Reform, Michigan Journal of Gender and Law, Michigan Journal of Race and Law, Michigan Journal of Environmental and Administrative Law, and the Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review will give serious consideration to publish papers selected for the Conference that are within each journal’s research agenda and meet its requirements. Additional details on the publication process will be provided after selection for participation in the Conference itself has been completed. In any event, there will be no obligation to accept any offer of publication that you may receive.

Submission: To apply to the conference, please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words reflecting the unpublished work that you wish to present and a copy of your CV through the online submission form by January 4, 2021. Please save all files as word documents in the following format: LAST NAME – FIRST NAME – ABSTRACT/CV. Selection will be based on the quality and originality of the abstract as well as its capacity to engage with other proposals and to foster a collaborative dialogue. Decisions will be communicated no later than February 1, 2021. Selected participants will be required to submit final papers by March 16, 2021, so that they may be sent to your faculty commentator and circulated among participants in advance.

Questions can be directed to the Organizing Committee Chair through the email address below.

Hannah Van Dijcke, Chair; Mohanad Salaimi, Co-Chair 200 Hutchins Hall
Junior Scholars Conference Organizing Committee 625 South State Street
Center for International and Comparative Law Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1215
University of Michigan Law School U.S.A.

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.

The 19th Amendment @ 100 @ St. Johns Law

 [We have the following announcement.   DRE]

The St. John’s Law Review invites you to explore the past, present, and future of women’s rights in the United States during our 2020 symposium Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment. Registration here.

Women have always played a vital role in shaping the cultural landscape of America by persistently demanding equality and opportunity. In 1920, the first women exercised their newly secured constitutional right to participate in our democracy, 244 years after this country’s founding. For most non-white women, however, the fight for voting rights continued for decades. For some, the fight is ongoing.

Now, 100 years later, immense progress has been made. The current landscape would be unrecognizable to the suffragettes of the early 20th century. Gender equality, however, is still far from a reality. This symposium will explore the state of gender equality in America, what we can learn from the past 100 years, and what the next 100 years should look like.

Keynote Address:
Taunya Banks, University of Maryland School of Law

Panelists:
Alissa Gomez, University of Houston Law Center
Kit Johnson, The University of Oklahoma College of Law
Cassandra Jones Havard, University of Baltimore School of Law
Nora Demleitner, Washington and Lee University School of Law
Mikah K. Thompson, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law
Nicole Ligon, Duke Law School

Moderators:
Cheryl L. Wade, St. John's University School of Law
Rosemary Salomone, St. John’s University School of Law
Catherine Duryea, St. John’s University School of Law

A Lost World? Jewish International Lawyers and New World Orders

[We have the following announcement.  The full--and footnoted--call is here.  DRE]

 Call for proposals: A Lost World?: Jewish International Lawyers and New World Orders (1917-1951)

The International Law Forum of the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem together with the Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture –Simon Dubnow, at Leipzig and the Jacob Robinson Institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem are inviting proposals for papers to be presented at an international conference to be held mostly or partly online on 24-25 May 2021 (depending on the prevailing public health conditions). The conference will include invited speakers and other participants.

Theme.  The first half of the 20th century featured two dramatic attempts to construct New World Orders following the two World Wars. These attempts included the establishment of ambitious international governance frameworks in the form of the League of Nations, the Permanent Court of International Justice and the International Labor Organization after the First World War and the United Nations Organization, the International Court of Justice and the Bretton Woods System after the Second World War. In parallel with these developments, landmark agreements were reached resulting in a radical transformation of the Westphalian state system, and, in particular, with regard to the relationship between states, individuals and groups. These agreements included other major instruments such as the post-World War One minority treaties, the Slavery Convention (1926), the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1928), the Geneva Conventions of 1929 and 1949, the London Charter (1945), the Genocide Convention (1948), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the Refugees Convention (1951). It can be argued that the norms and institutions established in this dramatic period revolutionized international law in diverse fields, ranging from international human rights law, through international criminal law and international humanitarian law, to international economic law.

Recent years have seen a sharp increase in historical research describing the unique contribution of prominent Jewish international lawyers to the development of modern international law. Among the prominent publications belonging to this genre one can mention Philippe Sands’ East West Street, focusing on the life and work of Raphael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht (2017), Gilad Ben-Nun’s book on the Fourth Geneva Convention which highlights the contribution of Georg Cohn, Georges Cahen-Salvador and Nissim Mevorah (2020), James Leoffler and Moria Paz’s edited volume on the Law of Strangers (2019), James Loeffler’s Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century (2018), Nathan Kurz’s, Jewish Internationalism and Human Rights after the Holocaust (2020) and Rotem Giladi’s publications on Israel and the Refugees and Genocide Convention (2015). A number of earlier works also touched upon multiple dimensions of the topic, including the contributions of prominent Jewish international lawyers, such as Hans Kelsen and Jacob Robinson, and on the relationship between the experience of being uprooted and interest in international law.

The conference seeks to invite lawyers, historian and academics from other relevant disciplines to take stock of this growing literature, that analyzes the contribution of Jewish international lawyers to the major developments in international law noted above, and to address the following questions: Can one truly speak of a “Jewish school” in international law? Or can one allude to a number of “Jewish schools” speaking in different voices? Can the contributions of Jewish international lawyers be distinguished from other contemporary trends shaped by migration and/or attachment to cosmopolitan ideals? If so, what are the main contours of this Jewish school(s)? How is it related to Jewish thought and experience generally or to the collective interests of the Jewish people in the relevant period? Does anything remain of this tradition in the 21st century? Has this tradition affected the approach to international law of Israel and international Jewish institutions? To what extent does the categorization of certain authors as “Jewish” do injustice to their own self identification as individuals or as nationals of specific countries? To what extent has the Jewish stance(s) toward international law changed since the creation of the State of Israel (and to what extent is there a Jewish-Israeli School (or schools) that are distinct from the Jewish school(s))? In particular, how may these questions be related to what some have seen as Israel’s skeptical stance towards many of the universal or cosmopolitan values articulated in the post-World War eras. Finally, can any contemporary lessons be drawn from this phenomenon and, if so, what are they?

Understanding the historic experience represented by the contribution of Jewish international lawyers in the period in question may also help researchers better understand contemporary attitudes towards international law as well as the feasibility of changing them.

The Call.  Researchers interested in addressing issues related to the themes of the conference are invited to respond to this call for papers with a 1-2-page proposal for an article and presentation, along with a brief CV. Proposals should be submitted by email to Mr. Tal Mimran, the coordinator of the International Law Forum (tal.mimran@mail.huji.ac.il) no later than 15 November 2020. Applicants should be notified of the committee's decision by 15 December 2020. Written contributions (of approx. 10-25 pages) based on the selected proposals should be submitted by 1  May 2021. The Israel Law Review (a Cambridge University Press publication) has expressed interest in publishing selected full length papers based on conference presentations, subject to its standard review and editing procedures.

Conference Academic Committee:
Eyal Benvenisti, Cambridge University/Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Tomer Broude, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Dan Diner, Jabob Robinson Institute, Hebrew University
Elisabeth Gallas, Dubnow Institute
Rotem Giladi, Dubnow Institute
Philipp Graf, Dubnow Institute
Guy Harpaz, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Moshe Hirsch, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Yaël Ronen, Israel Law Review, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Yuval Shany, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Malcolm Shaw, Essex Court Chambers/Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Yfaat Weiss, Dubnow Institute

ASLH Virtual Mini-Conference

 [We are only just getting around to posting here the following information, which has been up on the website of the American Society for Legal History for some time.  DRE]

The ASLH program committee has organized an exciting short program of online panels to be held on November 13-14, 2020. You can find the schedule below.  The mini-conference will be free to attend. Information about registration and virtual attendance will be posted here soon.  All times are U.S. Eastern Standard Time.

American Society for Legal History, Virtual Mini-Conference November 13-14, 2020

Friday, November 13, 2020

10:30-12:00: Panel 1 – The Everyday Materials of Colonial Legal Spaces

Introduction
Kalyani Ramnath, Harvard University

“Half Real: Space, Imagination and the Juzgado de Indios in Spanish America”
Bianca Premo, Florida International University

“Paper, People, Cloth: Mixed Courtrooms and Materiality in Colonial Indonesia”
Sanne Ravensbergen, Leiden University

“Out of Bounds in the Circum-Caribbean”
Laurie Wood, Florida State University

“Policing the Countryside in Colonial Mexico: Native Law, Custom, and Jurisdiction”
Yanna Yannakakis, Emory University

1:00-2:30: Panel 2 – Documenting Identity in the Atlantic World, 1600–1800: A Conversation

Introduction
Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, University of Southern California
Hannah Muller, Brandeis University

“Licenses in Servitude, Military Service, and Slavery: Views from the Lower Courts”
Sonia Tycko, Oxford University

“‘That no such Alien shall depart…without previously obtaining a Passport’: identification and documentation under the Aliens Acts, 1793-1794”
Hannah Muller, Brandeis University

“Between Land and Sea: Maritime Identification Documents and Terrestrial Legal Regimes”
Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, University of Southern California

Comment
Susan Pearson, Northwestern University

2:45-4:15: Panel 3 – The Preyer Prize Panel

“‘Los Hijos Son La Riqueza Del Pobre:’ Postwar Mexican Child Migration and the Making of Domestic (Im)migrant Exclusion, 1940-1965”
Ivón Padilla-Rodriguez, Columbia University

Comment
Barbara Welke, University of Minnesota

“Policing the ‘Police State’: Detention, Supervision, and Deportation During the Cold War”
Smita Ghosh, University of Pennsylvania

Comment
Lucy Salyer, University of New Hampshire

2:45-3:15: Panel 4 – Roundtable: Publishing Legal History Books in the Coronavirus Era

Wendy Strothman, The Strothman Agency
Reuel Schiller, Hastings College of the Law/Cambridge University Press
Michael Lobban, London School of Economics/Cambridge University Press
Tim Bent, Oxford University Press
Debbie Gershenowitz, University of North Carolina Press

Saturday, November 14, 2020

10:30-12:00: Panel 1 – Jefferson, Madison, and the Challenge of Abolition in the Era of the Haitian Revolution

“Slavery in the Era of the Founders”
Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard University
Peter Onuf, University of Virginia

“Caribbean Migrants and the Non-enforcement of the 1807 Ban on the Slave Trade”
Rebecca Scott, University of Michigan
Andrew Walker, Kenyon College

Comment
Malick Ghachem, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

1:00-2:30: Panel 2 – Presidential Address & Prize Announcements

Lauren Benton, Yale University

CFP: Unauthorized European Migrations to the United States

 We have the following Call for Papers:

Unauthorized European Migrations to the United States

        We solicit proposals for papers that explore unauthorized European migrations to the United States. We anticipate a university press will publish the papers as a volume edited by Danielle Battisti, Associate Professor of History at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and S. Deborah Kang, Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at Dallas. Prior to the publication of the volume, the editors and organizers will convene at the University of Nebraska for workshops and a conference pertaining to the volume.        

         The conference and volume will afford scholars from the United States and the world to explore the origins, nature, and significance of irregular European migration flows to the United States from the nineteenth century to the present. In so doing, we aim to expand our current understanding of the history of illegality in the United States. The volume intends to examine how and why thousands of European migrants adopted illicit migration strategies to circumvent restrictionist immigration laws; excavate the roles of race and racism in the production and representation of European illegality; explore the impacts of illegality on the shaping of migrant politics, social worlds, and domestic lives; illuminate the development of US laws, policies, and institutions pertaining to the policing of undocumented immigration; and describe the impacts of these migrations on European sending states, among other topics.

         We welcome scholarly papers based on archival research as well as conceptual pieces that think critically about theory and terminology. Papers might focus on a specific European migrant group or examine unauthorized European migrations to the United States in a comparative context.  Those comparisons might consider European migrants in relation to other migrant groups; or may situate unauthorized European migration in a transnational or international context.  Interdisciplinary perspectives are welcomed.

         We seek submissions from scholars in the United States and abroad and of any rank or affiliation. By November 15, 2020, please send project proposals of 500-800 words and a one-page CV to Danielle Battisti (dbattisti@unomaha.edu) and S. Deborah Kang (sdkang2020@utdallas.edu). The proposal ought to describe the research project and its connection to the themes of the volume and the conference. If selected, authors should be prepared to submit full papers (approximately 8000 words with notations) for review by September 1, 2021.    

Please circulate to your networks and colleagues. 

-- Karen Tani

Anne Fleming: A Canadian Business Law Tribute

Anne Fleming was to present a paper based on her research on Birmingham, Alabama’s innovative bankruptcy court at 100 Years of Canadian Bankruptcy and Insolvency Law, a conference that was to be held last May and now is to be held next May.  The conference papers are to be published in a special volume of the Canadian Business Law Journal, edited by the two conference organizers, Thomas G.W. Telfer and Alfonso Nocilla.  The two have announced that they have decided to dedicate the volume to Anne Fleming and have added the following to its foreword.

We would like to acknowledge that one of our conference panelists, Professor Anne Fleming of Georgetown University Law Center, passed away earlier this year. Anne was scheduled to present "The Origins of the American Consumer Bankruptcy System" during our first panel on Historical Perspectives on Insolvency Law. At the time of her passing Anne was engaged in a new book project: Household Borrowing and Bankruptcy in Jim Crow America, 1920-1960. Her preliminary findings can be found on her website: The Bankruptcy Capital of the World: Debt Relief in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1930s.  We dedicate this special volume of the Canadian Business Law Journal to Anne Fleming.

--Dan Ernst

How the Law Treats Hate

We have word of a Zoom conference,  How the Law Treats Hate: Antisemitism and Anti-Discrimination Reconsidered, sponsored by the University of Virginia’s Religion, Race and Democracy Lab, in partnership with UVA’s Jewish Studies Program and Karsh Center for Law and Democracy.  It takes place on September 10, 12:15 pm - 5:30 pm.

The global upsurge in antisemitism has triggered intense public debates about the role of law in combatting religious and racial hatred. This conference brings together leading scholars of law, history, and Jewish Studies to rethink pressing contemporary questions about antisemitism’s relationship to other forms of discrimination, the proper boundaries between hate speech and free speech, and the Jewish relationship to American civil rights and international law

--Dan Ernst

CFP: African Penal Histories in Global Perspective

[We have the following CFP.  DRE.]

Call for Papers - Special Issue of Punishment & Society: African Penal Histories in Global Perspective

In the twenty years since the publication of Florence Bernault’s edited volume A History of Prison and Confinement in Africa, the study of Africa’s penal systems has expanded tremendously. This scholarship has not only provided a clearer picture of penal ideas and institutions on the African continent across multiple time periods and locations, it has also offered insights into wider questions about the relationship between punishment, colonialism, and decolonization as well as the global circulation of penal techniques. This special issue aims to analyze African developments on their own terms and in relation to imperial and global narratives of punishment and penological networks as well as to integrate the fields of history, sociology, and criminology more closely, highlighting how theoretical insights of sociology and criminology can inform historical research.  By presenting multiple works together in a special issue, we seek to emphasize the value of Africanist historical approaches and methods for interdisciplinary or multi-disciplinary research, and to highlight the contribution that studies of African penal systems can make to advancing understanding of global trends in punishment, showing how research on punishment in Africa not only engages with theories from the Global North, but also generates theories that reshape wider approaches to the study of punishment.

Topics for consideration could include (but are not restricted to): indigenous forms of punishment; colonial and postcolonial prisons; capital and corporal punishment; political imprisonment; forced labour; and detention camps.

We are interested in articles undertaking detailed case-study analysis of key historical trends, showcasing different methodological and disciplinary approaches. We invite submissions on all regions of Africa, and its relations with broader global or international developments in punishment and penology.

We particularly welcome submissions from scholars based in Africa and early career scholars.



Author Information:

Interested applicants should send a 1 page, single-spaced outline of the proposed article to s.hynd@exeter.ac.uk. The outline should include: title; argument; temporal and geographical focus; contribution to the literature; research methodology and evidence base. The deadline for abstract submissions is September 30th, 2020. 

Submissions are received on a competitive basis and will be reviewed by the guest editors. 4-5 articles will be accepted. Accepted papers will be subject to editorial and peer review, and prior to submission authors will be invited to participate in an online writing workshop to develop their papers with peer feedback. The anticipate deadline for submission of final articles to Punishment & Society is August 2021.

Guest Editors: For more details, please contact the guest editors - Erin Braatz (Suffolk University Law School), Katherine Bruce-Lockhart (University of Waterloo), Stacey Hynd (University of Exeter).