Category: News and Events

This blogger remembers well the meeting in Edinburgh from 29th October – 2nd November 1987 of the Edinburgh Roman Law Group along with the Philips van Leiden Society and the Forum Romanum of Amsterdam. It was organised by the late and indefatigable Professor Peter Birks along with the excellent and efficient Secretary of the regretted Department of Civil Law, Mrs Lisa White. The theme was the Roman Law of Property, and many of the papers were subsequently published in New Perspectives in the Roman Law of Property, offered as a Festschrift to the late Barry Nicholas. As well as a scholarly programme there was an excellent social programme, including a notably successful visit to the Glenturret Distillery. One may note that, as well as Peter Birks, the only speaker we have since lost is Lord Rodger, who also gave a paper;  all other speakers are happily still with us. It was a memorable event at which your blogger met many eminent Dutch legal historians for the very first time. He is still proud of his Philips van Leiden tie.

The Philips van Leiden Society is now celebrating its 50th anniversary with a conference on Law and Equity: Approaches in Roman Law and Common law: see: http://law.leidenuniv.nl/org/metajuridica/nieuws-metajuridica/concgres-law-and-equity.html The leaflet promoting the conference has a wonderful Pompeian wall painting of citizens studying the edict of the praetor: http://www.phvl.nl/Law_and_Equity/Programme_files/folder.pdf.

It is a good theme, recalling an interesting essay of the late Professor Pringsheim. Both the Dutch and the English are represented by a number of eminent scholars. It promises to be a worthwhile event.

Source: Mailing list of the European Society for Comparative Legal History 

The Second ESCLH Conference will be held in Amsterdam from 9-10 July 2012. The theme is:

 

 COMPARATIVE LEGAL HISTORY – Definitions and Challenges

 

Under the heading “Definitions and Challenges” the confernce will try to delineate the landmarks which fruitful legal historical comparison requires and to trace the specific problems that a comparative-historical approach of the various branches of law may encounter. The keynote address will be delivered by David Ibbetson, Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Cambridge.

The deadline for proposals is 1 January 2012. For additional information, see the original conference notice and the conference website. 

The 2012 meeting of the American Society for Legal History will take place in St. Louis, Missouri, 8-11 November 2012. The ASLH invites proposals on any facet or period of legal history, anywhere in the world. In selecting presenters, the Program Committee will give preference to those who did not present at last year’s meeting. Among the people selected to present, limited financial assistance will be available for those in need—with special priority given to graduate students and post-docs, as well as scholars traveling from abroad.

The Program Committee welcomes proposals for both full panels and individual papers, though please note that individual papers are less likely to be accepted. As concerns panels, the Program Committee encourages the submission of a variety of different types of proposals, including:

• classical 3-paper panels (with a separate commentator and chair)
• incomplete 2-paper panels (with a separate commentator and chair), which the
Committee will try to complete with at least 1 more paper
• panels of 4 or more papers (with a separate commentator and chair)
• thematic panels that range across traditional chronological or geographical fields
• author-meets-reader panels
• roundtable discussions

All panel proposals should include the following:
• A 300-word description of the panel
• A c.v. for each presenter (including complete contact info)
• In the case of paper-based panels only, a 300-word abstract of each paper

Individual paper proposals should include:
• A c.v. for each presenter (including complete contact info)
• A 300-word abstract of each paper

The deadline for submitting proposals is 29 February 2012. Proposals should be sent as email attachments to Kaitlin Burroughs.
Substantive questions should be directed to Michael Willrich or Adriaan Lanni.
Those unable to send proposals as email attachments may mail hard copies to:
2012 ASLH Program Committee
c/o Adriaan Lanni
Harvard Law School
1525 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
USA

Found at HNetOnline.

The annual meeting of the ASLH took place in Atlanta from 10 – 13 November 2011.

The provisional programme is available here: http://www.aslh.net/conferences/2011conference/ProgramProvisional.pdf

Two sessions which may be of interest to our readers are:

 

 1.) Religious Law and Secular Law in Early Medieval Europe – Salon H (Friday – session A)

Chair/Commentator- Adam Kosto, Columbia University,

Abigail Firey, University of Kentucky, “Appropriation, Obliteration,
Adaptation?: Ecclesiastical Responses to Secular Law in the Early Middle Ages”

Michael W. Heil, Columbia University, “Canon Law and the
Courts in Early Medieval Italy”

Greta Austin, University of Puget Sound, “Roman Law in
the Eleventh-Century Catholic Legal Collections”

Aniceto Masferrer, University of Valencia, "The Pursuit of
Peace and Security in the Iberian Peninsula (10th – 11th Centuries): A Contribution to the Interaction between Religious Law and Secular Law in the European Early Middle Ages"

 

 2.) Regulating (Extra-) Marital Relations in Romano-Canon Law – Candler/Inman (Friday session C)

Chair/Commentator- Bruce W. Frier, University of Michigan Law School,

Matthew Perry, John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY), “The Criminalization of Adultery in Roman Law”

Sara McDougall, John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY), “Regulating the Sex Lives of Married Persons in Medieval Europe”

Rev. Dr. Patrick Viscuso, Independent Scholar, “Late
Byzantine Views on Marital Relations and Ordination”

Nicolas Laurent-Bonne, Paris II Panthéon Assas,“Why
Prohibit Donations Between Husband and Wife in Medieval Europe?”

Both sessions look fascinating and contain papers by noted scholars in the field.

The first volume in this series (of which Dr. Paul J. du Plessis is one of the two editors) has won a prestigious international award. Saskia Roselaar's book entitled Public land in the Roman Republic – a Social and Economic History of Ager Publicus in Italy, 396 – 89 BC has been awarded the James Henry Breasted Prize by the American Historical Association.

The award will be conferred in 2012:

http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2011/1111/1111ann4.cfm

COMPARATIVE LEGAL HISTORY
Definitions and Challenges
Second ESCLH Conference
Amsterdam, 9-10 July 2012

Call for papers

Comparative Legal History is a relatively young discipline. It focuses explicitly on the comparison of legal ideas and legal institutions in divergent legal traditions. The European Society for Comparative Legal History (ESCLH) was founded in 2009 in order to promote such comparison. Its Inaugural Conference (Valencia, 5-6 July 2010) showed that it is not always easy to find material which is suitable for serious comparison and to establish the criteria which have to be met in order to come to grips with this material.

The Second ESCLH Conference, which will take place on 9-10 July 2012 at Amsterdam and will be hosted by the VU University, aims at addressing this fundamental problem. Under the heading “Definitions and Challenges” it will try to delineate the landmarks which fruitful legal historical comparison requires and to trace the specific problems that a comparative-historical approach of the various branches of law may encounter. The keynote address will be delivered by David Ibbetson, Regius Professor of Civil Law at the University of Cambridge.

As regards the papers for the parallel sessions, the Conference first of all hopes to provide a venue for legal historians and comparatists to present their investigations in order to discuss their work, exchange ideas and broaden their views. For this reason you are invited to propose papers on any subject within the field of comparative legal history.

However, following the methodological problems dealt with under the heading “Definitions and Challenges”, this Conference also aims at presenting investigations into specific areas of law, where legal historical comparison has proven to be fruitful. These investigations have in common that they do not depart from normative legal concepts (which sometimes only seemingly appear to be comparable) but from functional problems of a more factual, meta-juridical nature.

The first is ‘Fascist Criminal Law’ (co-ordinator: Stephen Skinner, University of Exeter). This theme is important in both historical and contemporary terms. A recurrent theme in recent and ongoing work on law and democracy in Europe has been the challenge of dealing with ‘darker’ aspects of law’s ideological, substantive and methodological roots in anti-democratic legal orders. In terms of legal history, grappling with the meanings of ‘fascism’ and the ideological, rhetorical and substantive dimensions of criminal law under fascist regimes requires a comparative approach in order to identify the distinguishing characteristics of such regimes. Arguably, the area of criminal law brings into sharp relief the power-relationship between State and citizen, and as such, it is a key area of law to be studied in order to understand the nature of fascist systems.

The second area, ‘Corporate law’ (co-ordinator: Tammo Wallinga, University of Antwerp), is a field of law which can be analyzed from various legal perspectives, without focussing on the comparison of a specific dogmatic concept. Just as the theme ‘Fascist Criminal law’ touches upon fundamental issues, such as the relationship between State and citizen, corporate law has its own characteristic issues: various types of enterprise – market-related or not – establishment and organization of a company, the relationship with consumers, civil authorities, debtors and creditors, workers’ rights, etc. Here, comparison aims at understanding the changing nature of corporate law within a changing economic context, from medieval society, through the ages of early capitalism and industrialisation to present day issues.

Factual information:
– Those interested in presenting a paper at the ESCLH Conference 2012 are requested to submit the title of their paper and a short abstract (approximately 250 words) before January 1st to the organizing committee c/o Jan Hallebeek, VU University Amsterdam (j.hallebeek@vu.nl).
– Papers should deal with a topic within the field of comparative legal history. Presentations should not exceed 15 minutes and should be in English.
– Please indicate whether your paper is related to the general theme (Comparative Legal History, Definitions and Challenges), one of the specific fields of law (Fascist Criminal Law, Corporate Law) or another subject.
– In January 2012 it will be announced which papers are accepted. The abstracts of these papers will shortly thereafter be made available on the Conference-website.
– For further information see: www.rechten.vu.nl/comparativelegalhistory

 

 

The author of this blog attended an excellent seminar over the weekend in the splendour of All Souls College, Oxford. The seminar was co-organised by our colleague, Dr. Eric Descheemaeker together with Professor Helen Scott of the University of Cape Town. 

A group of speakers (most of whom are pictured above) assembled to discuss iniuria in its historic and contemporary contexts. From left to right: Prof. Kenneth Norrie (University of Strathclyde); Prof. Robert Stevens (University College London); Prof. Francois Du Bois (University of Nottingham); Prof. John Blackie (University of Strathclyde); Prof. Reinhard Zimmermann (Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Hamburg); Prof. Helen Scott (University of Cape Town); Prof. Jonathan Burchell (University of Cape Town); Prof. Tony Honoré (University of Oxford); Prof. David Ibbetson (University of Cambridge); Prof. Anton Fagan (University of Cape Town); Dr Paul Du Plessis (University of Edinburgh); Dr Simon Douglas (University of Oxford); Dr Eric Descheemaeker (University of Edinburgh); Dr Joshua Getzler (University of Oxford); Prof. Paul Mitchell (University College London); Prof. Yasunori Kasai (Otsuma University, Tokyo); Mr James Lee (University of Birmingham); Prof. Geoffrey Samuel (University of Kent). Not on the photo: Prof. Boudewijn Sirks (University of Oxford); Prof. Stefan Vogenauer (University of Oxford)

The blurb of the seminar reads as follows:

"An international seminar on the modern analysis of the ancient Roman delict of iniuria, co-organised by Dr. Eric Descheemaeker (University of Edinburgh) and Prof. Helen Scott (University of Cape Town), under the auspices of the Institute of European and Comparative Law, University of Oxford.

The delict of iniuria is one of the most sophisticated aspects of the Roman legal tradition, distinguished in particular by the high level of abstraction and generalisation achieved by the classical jurists. The original, Republican focus of the delict was assault, although the literal meaning of iniuria – simply a ‘wrong’ or ‘unlawful act’ – indicated perhaps a very wide potential scope. However, it quickly grew to include sexual harassment and defamation, and by the classical period (i.e. from the first century AD) it had been entirely re-oriented around the concept of contumelia, insult. Under the influence of this productive generalisation, the delict was extended to cover a range of new wrongs, including the invasion of privacy. In truth, its scope now comprised all attacks on dignity.

It is the Roman delict of iniuria which forms the foundation of both the South African and – more controversially – Scots laws of injuries to personality. It has also exerted considerable influence on English law. Nevertheless, the history of the modern law is not the proposed focus of our seminar. Nor is our primary intention to invite comparison between these three jurisdictions. Rather, our purpose is to stimulate doctrinal scholarship around the Roman delict. In our view contemporary doctrinal questions surrounding assault, defamation and breach of privacy come into much sharper focus when the modern regime is lined up with its ancient counterpart. Thus we have invited participants to consider in what respects the delict of iniuria overlaps with, fall short of or exceeds its modern counterparts in England, Scotland and South Africa; the differences and similarities between the analytical frameworks employed in the ancient and modern law; and, finally, the degree to which the Roman proto-delict points the way to future development or rationalisation in each of these three legal systems."

The seminar was expertly organised and turned into an excellent occasion which produced many fine papers and lively discussion about iniuria both in its ancient and modern contexts. Our congratulations to Dr. Descheemaeker and Professor Scott.

 

On 29th July the Civil Law Centre of the University of Aberdeen hosted an excellent and informative conference, organised by Adelyn Wilson, primarily on Scottish legal history. Papers were given by (1) Dr Andrew Simpson of Aberdeen on "History of the Presumption of Ownership in Moveable Property" exploring the early cases and practicks that formed the basis of Stair's influential view; (2) John MacLeod of Glasgow on the reception of the actio Pauliana in Scots law, discussing the Roman law, the ius commune and the Scottish legislation and cases; (3) Karen Baston of Edinburgh on Charles Areskine of Tinwald's law books; (4) Dr Paul du Plessis of Edinburgh on the background to Stair's view of contract in the ius commune, particularly focusing on Wesembecius and the issue of why Stair cited the sources he did; (5) Craig Newberry-Jones of Exter on the public image of barristers in 19th-century England, viewed through the lens provided by periodicals and newspapers; and (6) Dr John Finlay of Glasgow on notaries public in 18th-century Scotland.

The contributions were all of the highest order and stimuated important, far-ranging and enlightening discussion among an audience of legal historians, young and old, from all over Scotland.

Forthcoming at the Civil Law Centre are the following events: Dr Ivan Milotic, Zagreb, "Extrajudicial Mechanisms of Dispute Resolution in Roman Law" (26 October, 2011); Professor Jan Hallebeek (VU Amsterdam) Title TBC (27th April, 2012); "Law and Governance, 1400-1600" (18th-19th May, 2012) (With the Research Institute for Irish and Scottish Studies and the Society and Culture in the North Sea World Research project).

For further details and activities, please contact adelyn.wilson@abdn.ac.uk

Early Medieval Law in Context

15 September 2011 – 16 September 2011

The Société de l'Histoire des Droits de l'Antiquité (SIHDA) will hold its 65th session in Liège from 19-24 September. The general theme will be:

'The Obligation in the Laws of Antiquity, from its Source to its Fulfillment'.

Papers are welcome on any subject, even if not directly related to the general theme. Presentations must not exceed 20 minutes.

The official language of the congress is French, but presentations can also be made in German, Italian, English, or Spanish.

The registration fee is 200€ before 30 June 2011; 250€ between 1 July and 18 September; and 300€ if you pay on arrival. Please register for the session and for your accommodation early to avoid disappointment. The organising committee has negotiated special rates at some hotels. You can find a list of hotels at the session homepage, http://www.sihda.org/, where you can also register and find a provisional programme.