Rare Book School: Seats Still Available

We hear that there are still a few open seats for the Rare Book School course, "Law Books: History & Connoisseurship," which will be offered June 9-14 in the Yale Law School Library, New Haven, CT.  As we said in an earlier post, the instructors are Mike Widener (rare book advisor, retired curator), who has taught the class since 2010, and Kathryn James (rare book librarian, Yale Law Library), who has been the co-instructor since 2023. The class features extensive hands-on experience with the Yale Law Library's outstanding rare book collection. Details on the class, including comments from past students and links to registration information, are available here.

--Dan Ernst

Rights without Borders? Subjects, Precarity, Agency

 [We have the following announcement.  DRE.  H/t: H-Law.]

"Rights without Borders? Subjects, Precarity, Agency," the 9th International Osnabrück Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of the Law (OSI) will be held from July 6 to 14, 2024 at Osnabrück University, Germany. It aims to encourage and further promote the interdisciplinary study and research of the interrelations between law and culture, based on the idea that the extended cultural study of the law will foster productive scholarly exchange and dialogue between legal studies and the humanities.

The 2024 OSI will concentrate on key issues and debates within contemporary cultural legal studies, exploring questions related to, for instance, rights in general, legal personhood and citizenship, human rights, and the rights of migrants. We are interested specifically in the following:

• The historical evolution of predominant (legal) concepts of rights, human rights, and legal personhood, regarding current debates on culture as an abiding discourse that enables legal subjectivity and rights claims, as much as it offers a resource for legal critique.
  

• The cultural presence and portrayal of the law and the influence of culture in depicting and disseminating concepts of rights, human rights, ownership, appropriation, dispossession, etc. (e.g., in fields such as law and literature, critical humanities, life writing and human rights, philosophy of human rights, migration and rights).
  

• How the (cultural and historical) semantics of rights, human rights, and legal personhood manifest in critical theory and discourse, exploring the application of rights theory in the humanities and critical cultural studies.
  

• How a precarious legal status or a flexible approach to legal personhood, both historically and in current debates, facilitates critical discussion on (human) rights and our understanding of their nature and scope (how or whether they might be claimed by people on the move, enslaved people, indigenous peoples, stateless people, women, LGBTQ+ individuals etc.).

The OSI brings together leading scholars in the field of cultural legal studies with international graduate students from the humanities, legal studies, the social and political sciences, art, and history to create a rare opportunity for the comparative study of law and culture and their complex interrelation. The Institute will offer a combination of thematic workshop sessions, small group seminars and a concluding conference which will focus on key issues and debates in current cultural legal studies. lt will offer placements for up to 20 international participants (doctoral, post-doctoral and advanced M.A.).

Confirmed faculty for the 2024 OSI include:
Jeannine DeLombard (English and History / UC Santa Barbara)
Leila Neti (English and Postcolonial Literature / Occidental College, LA)
Leti Volpp (Law / UC Berkeley)
Bryan Wagner (English / UC Berkeley)
Marco Wan (Law / U of Hongkong)

Eligibility.  The Summer Institute invites doctoral and postdoctoral students from various academic fields whose research interests and projects are situated at the interface between law and the humanities and who are concerned with a better understanding of the interdependence of law and culture.

Doctoral candidates in literature, the law, the arts, the humanities, and the related social sciences are encouraged to apply, as are advanced students pursuing a J.D. or its equivalent (such as the L.L.B). Young scholars or junior faculty members who have received a Ph.D. or corresponding degree in the last five years are also eligible. While applications by doctoral/post-doctoral students are prioritized, the Summer Institute will also consider strong applications from advanced Master students about to conclude their studies and with a strong interest in interdisciplinary research.

Application Process.  Students interested in taking part in the Summer Institute should submit their applications no later than April 1st, 2024. Detailed and updated information about the Institute, the sessions, international faculty, admission and fees can be found [here].

Questions.  Please direct all inquiries and questions to the OSI coordinator.

Max Planck Summer Academy for Legal History

[We have the following announcement.  H/t: KIS.  DRE]

Max Planck Summer Academy for Legal History 2024, 1 July – 12 July 2024

The Max Planck Summer Academy for Legal History provides a selected group of highly motivated early-stage research students, usually PhD candidates, with an in-depth introduction to traditional and contemporary approaches and methods in legal history.

The Summer Academy consists of three parts. The first part introduces the international group of PhD students to sources, methodological approaches and theoretical models as well as to controversial research debates on fundamental issues of legal history. The introductory courses are led by members of the Institute and external guest speakers. In the second part, the invited participants present their own projects within the context of the respective year’s special topic. The third part of the Academy offers the opportunity to all participants to further develop their own research by making use of the library and by discussing their projects with the Institute’s experts in the different fields of legal history.

The course will take place at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory in Frankfurt am Main, Germany (mpilhlt).

This year’s theme: The mediality and materiality of law.  ‘Mediality’ and ‘materiality’ are important keywords in historical and cultural studies debates. Legal scholarship has also been devoting a great deal of thought to the material and medial conditions of the production and enforcement of law. Legal history has been pursuing this avenue of research for quite some time, noteworthy examples of which include legal archaeology and the long-standing discussions on orality and writing, for example, in medieval legal history.

As of late, more theoretically grounded considerations have entered this discussion, which ask, for instance, about the interplay between the form and content of legal texts through the advent of new technologies such as printing or digitisation. There is a fair amount of interest in the legal significance of of rituals and how they are performed, the connections between architecture, furnishings, and attire as well as the normative power of images. Some even question whether the history of law would look very different if it had not been written solely based on written sources but, for example, on images and artefacts. The question of the ‘mediality’ and the ‘materiality’ of law thus also touches on fundamental aspects of legalhistorical research such as the concepts of the ‘source’, the ‘archive’ and ultimately even that of law.

Such issues will be the focus of the 2024 Summer Academy.

Eligibility Requirements.  Early-stage research students, usually PhD candidates. Working knowledge of English is required, German is not a prerequisite.

Application.  All applications must be supported by a CV, a project summary (approx. 10 pages) and a letter of motivation. Please send your applications via e-mail to: summeracademy@lhlt.mpg.de.  Submission deadline for applications is 31 January 2024.

Fees.  The Academy is generously funded by mpilhlt. There is no participation fee. Accommodation will be provided by the organisers for free. Participants, however, will be responsible for covering their travel expenses (in cases of hardship these can be covered by a limited number of scholarships).

Kontakt.  Stefanie Rüther, Forschungskoordinatorin +49 (69) 789 78 - 190 ruether@...
summeracademy@lhlt.mpg.de

Law Books: History and Connoisseurship

[We have the following announcement.  DRE]

Kathryn James and Mike Widener will be co-teaching the Rare Book School course, “Law Books: History and Connoisseurship,” at the Yale Law School next summer, June 9-14. Drawing on the Yale Law Library’s outstanding rare book collection,  the course offers an intensive week-long introduction to the history of law materials in print and manuscript, and to developing and using historical collections for teaching and research. Kathryn James became the Yale Law Library’s rare book librarian in 2021 upon Mike Widener’s retirement. If you’ve waited and wondered about the course, know that this will be the last opportunity to take the class with Mike Widener [emphasis supplied], who will be hanging up his Rare Book School boots on June 15 after fourteen years.

Details on registration are available on the Rare Book School website.

American Political Economy: The Summer School

[ We have the following announcement.  DRE]

Call for Applications: First Annual Summer School on the American Political Economy
Organizers: Jacob Hacker, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Paul Pierson, and Kathleen Thelen

We invite advanced graduate students (ABD), post-docs, and junior faculty members to apply to
participate in the first annual summer school on the American Political Economy, to be held
virtually from August 10 to 13. The workshop will involve about 2-3 hours of virtual discussions
each day (with breaks) in the early afternoon Eastern Time.

The summer school represents an effort to build a research community around the study of
markets and governments in the United States in comparative perspective. This involves research
questions about the political and economic power of private-sector firms, the structure of labor
markets and worker organizations, social welfare programs, finance and corporate governance,
education and training, and racial capitalism, among many, many others. Crucially, many of
these questions can only be tackled by understanding how the United States compares to other
countries, especially other rich democracies.

We believe this area of research holds extraordinary promise—both for understanding the
dramatic transformation of America’s distinctive political economy over recent decades and for
reorienting political science in productive directions. Yet we also believe there is a very large
gap between what we know and what we need to know.

Building on ongoing research by the summer school conveners and others, participants in this
workshop will have the opportunity to…
(1) Learn the foundations of an American Political Economy approach to political science;
(2) Participate in in-depth discussions around several key issues in American Political Economy,
including federalism, social welfare policy, racial capitalism, corporate governance, and labor
markets;
(3) Share research-in-progress and research designs for feedback; and
(4) Join a community of other scholars interested in pursuing research on the American Political
Economy.

To apply, please submit a C.V. and a cover letter (no more than two pages) describing your
relevant research interests in APE and how this workshop will advance those interests. Please
also submit a relevant research paper (either work in progress or already published work). For
graduate students, the C.V. should include classes taken.

Please email these materials and any questions to apesummerschool@gmail.com no later than
midnight on June 19. We anticipate informing selected applicants within two weeks. We
anticipate selecting about 10-15 participants.

The summer school is generously supported by the Hewlett Foundation.

Law Books: History & Connoisseurship

A printing press at Yale (Mitra Sharafi)

[We share the following announcement from Mike Widener, Rare Book Librarian at the Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School. Applications are due Feb.17, 2020. Here are some highlights from the 2018 course.]

Rare Book School is now accepting applications for admission to “Law Books: History & Connoisseurship,” which Ryan Greenwood and Mike Widener will teach in the Yale Law Library June 7-12, 2020. Enrollment is limited to 12 students. The course description, advance reading list, evaluations from previous students, and a link to the application site are here:

https://rarebookschool.org/courses/collections/c85/

Information on the application process, program costs, etc., is available here:

https://rarebookschool.org/admissions-awards/application/

This intensive, week-long course is about building focused, interesting, and useful collections of historical materials in Anglo-American, European, and Latin American law. It is aimed at individuals and librarians who collect historical legal materials, and the book dealers who supply them, as well as librarians developing collections from existing holdings. Lively discussion and extensive hands-on activities are hallmarks of the course.

Mike writes: This will be my seventh time teaching the course. It will the second time for my co-instructor Ryan Greenwood, Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections at the University of Minnesota Law Library. Due to my retirement from Yale in April 2021, future offerings of this course are uncertain. If you have wanted to take the course, and haven't yet attended, now is the time. I can answer questions about the content of the course. All questions about applications, registration, tuition, and housing should be directed to the Rare Book School staff, at rbsprograms@virginia.edu.

MIKE WIDENER

Rare Book Librarian

Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale Law School

127 Wall Street, New Haven CT 06511-8918

Phone: (203) 432-4494

Email: mike.widener@yale.edu

Website: https://library.law.yale.edu/rarebooks

--Mitra Sharafi

Boston College Legal History Roundtable: Spring 2019

We are very pleased to announce the Spring 2019 line up at the Boston College Legal History Roundtable.  As an announcement explains: For “over 17 years, the Roundtable has drawn on BC Law's strength and interest in legal history. It offers an opportunity for Boston College faculty and faculty from other area institutions, students, and members of the Boston College community to meet and discuss a pre-circulated paper in legal history, and seeks to promote an informal, collegial atmosphere of informed discussion.

Thursday, February 7 (4:30 pm)

“The Law/Fact Distinction and the State: Pisa, 1150–1200”
William Sullivan, Raoul Berger-Mark DeWolfe Howe Legal History Fellow, Harvard Law School

William P. Sullivan is the Raoul Berger-Mark DeWolfe Howe Legal History Fellow for 2018-2019. A graduate of Princeton and Yale Law School, he is a PhD candidate in the departments of classics and history at the University of Chicago, where his dissertation is entitled, “Relevance in the Civil Law Tradition: The Emergence of the Roman-Canon Law of Positions.” He was a Legal History Fellow at Yale Law School in 2016-2017 and a law clerk for Judge José A. Cabranes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 2017-2018. His interests are in European legal history, Roman law, and comparative law.

Thursday, March 14 (4:30 pm)

“Executive Power, Officer Indemnity, and A Government of Laws, Not of Men: A Re-Reading of The Charming Betsy and Little v. Barreme”

Jane Manners, Bernard and Irene Schwartz Fellow, New-York Historical Society
Jane Manners studies US legal history, with a focus on American legal institutions, legislation, federalism, and local government law. During the 2018-19 academic year she is a Bernard and Irene Schwartz Fellow at the New-York Historical Society. She received her PhD in history from Princeton in 2018 and her JD and BA from Harvard. Her work has been supported by the American Council on Learned Societies, the American Society for Legal History, the American Historical Association, and the Hurst Institute at the University of Wisconsin Law School. In 2010, Jane was a law clerk for Chief Judge Mark L. Wolf of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Thursday, April 11 (4:30 pm)

“Historiographical Origins of Originalism”
Logan Sawyer, Professor of Law, University of Georgia

Logan Sawyer is an Associate Professor of Law and Adjunct Professor of History at the University of Georgia. He earned his JD and PhD from the University of Virginia and is visiting at Harvard Law School this Spring semester. Before he began teaching, Sawyer served at the White House as associate counsel for the Homeland Security Council and as a trial attorney at the Department of Justice Office of Consumer Litigation. His academic interests focus on the relationship between law and political institutions in American history. He is currently at work on a history of originalism and party politics from the 1950s to the 1990s.

Weekend Roundup

• From the Washington Post's "Made by History" section: Nathan Wuertenberg draws on history to argue that "gun rights are about keeping white men on top"; William D. Bryan and Christopher J. Manganiello provide historical context for the water conflict that is before the Supreme Court in Florida v. Georgia; and Judith Giesberg (Villanova) on the right historical analogy for sanctuary-city advocates.

• Junior scholars working on aspects of legal history and technology should consider applying for the 2018 Technology, Law & Society Summer Institute at UC Irvine (June 22-24, 2018). The deadline is March 15, 2018. Here is the Call.

• Yale Law Library's exhibit, Law Books Bright and Beautiful is on display Feb. 26-June 1, 2018 at the Rare Book Exhibit Gallery of the Yale Law School. Check out some highlights here.

Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.

Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of Law

[We have the following announcement. The deadline is April 30, 2017.]

7th International Osnabrueck Summer Institute (OSI) on the Cultural Study of the Law

The seventh International Osnabrueck Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of the Law will be held from August 6 to 13, 2017 at the University of Osnabrueck, Germany. It aims to encourage and further promote the interdisciplinary study and research of the interrelations between law and culture, based on the idea that the extended cultural study of the law will foster profitable scholarly exchange and dialogue between legal studies and the humanities.

The Institute will offer a combination of thematic workshop sessions, small group seminars and a final symposium for 15-20 international participants (doctoral, post-doctoral and advanced M.A. – see below for eligibility). The introductory workshop will address the range and potential of interdisciplinary studies and approaches in the field of law and the humanities. The remaining thematic sessions and small group seminars will focus on key issues and debates in current cultural legal studies, for example:

* The historical emergence of dominant (legal) concepts of property as well as current struggles about culture as heritage, property and resource for creativity (including concepts such as copyright, intellectual property and authorship);

* The cultural presence and representation of the law and the role of culture in the representation and dissemination of the concept of property (e.g. law and literature, life writing and human rights, visual culture and rights rhetoric);

The main objective of the OSI is to encourage scholarly exchange across disciplines and the critical debate of current research projects as well as work in progress. Participants will have the opportunity to present and discuss their own work both within the larger group and in individual sessions with members of the OSI faculty.

Confirmed faculty for the 2017 OSI include:

Marianne Constable (Rhetoric , UC Berkeley)
Danilo Mandic (Law, U of Westminster)
Cristina S. Martinez (Art History, U of Ottawa)
Sabine N. Meyer (American Studies, Osnabrück U)
Richard Perry (Law, UC Berkeley)
Beth Piatote (Native American Studies, UC Berkeley)
Leti Volpp (Law, UC Berkeley)

In addition, the OSI will feature a professional workshop presenting and discussing EU and GAES (German Academic Exchange Service) scholarship and grant opportunities for young international researchers.

Participant Eligibility

The Summer Institute invites doctoral and postdoctoral students from various academic fields whose research interests and projects are situated at the interface between law and the humanities and who are concerned with a better understanding of the interdependence of law and culture.

Doctoral candidates in the humanities, law, the arts, literature, and related social sciences are encouraged to apply, as are advanced students pursuing a J.D. or its equivalent (such as an L.L.B).

Young scholars or junior faculty members who have received a Ph.D. or corresponding degree in the last five years are also eligible. While applications by doctoral/post-doctoral students are prioritized, the Summer Institute will also consider strong applications from advanced Master students about to conclude their studies and with a strong interest in interdisciplinary research. There are openings for up to 24 students to participate in the Summer Institute.

Due to its international audience, the Summer Institute will be entirely conducted in English. Please note: The OSI neither offers German nor English language instruction classes.

Application Process

Students interested in taking part in the Summer Institute should submit their applications on our website no later than April 30, 2017. Detailed and updated information about the Institute, the sessions, international faculty, admission and fees can be found at: http://www.osi.uni-osnabrueck.de/

Applicants should complete:

* The application form on our website (see below);
* An up-to-date curriculum vitae;
* A statement of purpose no more than two pages long, describing current scholarly interests, previous research, and how the Summer Institute would specifically further their interests and plans. Applicants are also encouraged to comment on their specific interest in interdisciplinary approaches and how these affect their own work.

*Questions*
Please direct all inquiries and questions to the OSI coordinator at lawandculture@uos.de

Peter Schneck
Director

Chair of American Studies