In connection with the upcoming annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools [open to law school faculty] we have the following call for papers:
AALS Section on Scholarship - Call For Papers, January 2025 AALS Annual Meeting
"Interdisciplinarity"
There was a time when law was thought to be a self-contained system. Conceptual analysis, it was believed, sufficed for legal progress. Generations of experience have taught us that this can no longer be the case. At many junctures, the law intersects with disciplines external to the law. Thus, for example, the United States Supreme Court has embarked upon an historical turn that implicates the work of trained historians. Similarly, textualism, whether concerned with the interpretation of constitutional documents, or contracts, or other legal instruments, benefits from insights drawn from literary criticism, or linguistics. Criminal law, with its emphasis on mens rea and capacity, raises questions that are often best answered by the field of neuroscience. We see as well increasing reliance on the tools of psychology in evaluating jurors, and in the conduct of litigation, whether in criminal or civil cases. The fields of torts, insurance law, and other legal specialties place ever greater reliance on economics. Legislative drafting, meanwhile, increasingly depends upon a whole array of disciplines, from statistics, to sociology, to the hard sciences. Data science, furthermore, promises to modify legal analysis in ways as yet only dimly appreciated. And finally, of course, philosophy provides a meta-critique of this rapidly evolving, complex thing we call "The Law."
This Call for Papers seeks contributions by scholars who wish to take a critical view of The Law, not as a self-contained body of rules, but as a complicated, immanent social reality that implicates the findings of a vast array of disciplines. How, in other words, can we synthesize these new interdisciplinary developments into a renewed description of what "The Law" is.
If you are interested, please submit a proposal, including a 200-300 word abstract by September 6, 2024. Please submit the proposal to Charles J. Reid, Jr., Professor of Law, University of St. Thomas (MN), cjreid@stthomas.edu. Thanks!
"Interdisciplinarity"
There was a time when law was thought to be a self-contained system. Conceptual analysis, it was believed, sufficed for legal progress. Generations of experience have taught us that this can no longer be the case. At many junctures, the law intersects with disciplines external to the law. Thus, for example, the United States Supreme Court has embarked upon an historical turn that implicates the work of trained historians. Similarly, textualism, whether concerned with the interpretation of constitutional documents, or contracts, or other legal instruments, benefits from insights drawn from literary criticism, or linguistics. Criminal law, with its emphasis on mens rea and capacity, raises questions that are often best answered by the field of neuroscience. We see as well increasing reliance on the tools of psychology in evaluating jurors, and in the conduct of litigation, whether in criminal or civil cases. The fields of torts, insurance law, and other legal specialties place ever greater reliance on economics. Legislative drafting, meanwhile, increasingly depends upon a whole array of disciplines, from statistics, to sociology, to the hard sciences. Data science, furthermore, promises to modify legal analysis in ways as yet only dimly appreciated. And finally, of course, philosophy provides a meta-critique of this rapidly evolving, complex thing we call "The Law."
This Call for Papers seeks contributions by scholars who wish to take a critical view of The Law, not as a self-contained body of rules, but as a complicated, immanent social reality that implicates the findings of a vast array of disciplines. How, in other words, can we synthesize these new interdisciplinary developments into a renewed description of what "The Law" is.
If you are interested, please submit a proposal, including a 200-300 word abstract by September 6, 2024. Please submit the proposal to Charles J. Reid, Jr., Professor of Law, University of St. Thomas (MN), cjreid@stthomas.edu. Thanks!
-- Karen Tani
