A new series of lectures on Law and Literature, in Paris!

This semester a series of meetings on law and literature will take place in Paris at the Centre "Yan Thomas" - EHESS (http://cenj.ehess.fr/).

The title of the seminar is:

Droit et littérature. La norme entre commandement et récit

It is organized by Emanuele Coccia and Michele Spanò.

All information about the calendar and a detailed description of the topic here.

Prof. Paolo Napoli on Law and Philosophy - with a focus on Charisma

Dear All!

Here is a short abstract of this week's classes, provided by Prof. Paolo Napoli (don't get confused with names because of the picture here on the left...):

You may wonder why in a seminar about Law and Philosphy we should deal with the subject of "charisma". In fact, we have to understand charisma as a kind of normativity and, according to it, philosophy is just an attitude, a way to place oneself in the condition to reflect upon the relation between law and other kinds of social regulation. Philosophy is not a deposit of concepts and values which structure the theoretical basis of law. It's rather a way of problematising the "between" linking law and comparative normativities. "Charisma" is an ancient notion which was rediscovered by juridical, political and sociological thought at the end of 19th century. Since then, we have conceived "charisma" as a personified set of exceptional and supernatural qualities. How can we get rid of this current representation which seems to forget that charisma is primarily a normative function and not an personal substance?


Prof. Paolo Napoli's CV:

 Prof. Paolo Napoli is currently Directeur d'études at the Ecole des
Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales - EHESS, in Paris (since 2010),
where he directs the Centre d'étude des normes juridiques "Yan Thomas"
- CENJ. In 1987 he graduated at the Faculty of Law of the University
La Sapienza (Rome), with a degree thesis on power and law in Michel
Foucault's works. He afterwards began his research on the notion of
police during the modern era in Italy (CNR), France (EHESS), Germany
(Max Planck Institut für Europäische Rechtsgeschichte Frankfurt am
Main) and USA (Berkley). In 1997 he received his first Ph.D in Legal
philosophy at the University of Bologna and in 2002 he received a
second Ph.D. in Law and Social Sciences at the EHESS (Title of the PhD
thesis: La police en France à l'âge moderne (XVIII-XIX siècle).
Histoire d'un mode de normativité.
He is the author of many articles and two books:
- Naissance de la police moderne. Pouvoir, normes, société, La
Découverte, Paris 2003.
- Le arti del vero. Storia, diritto e politica in Michel Foucault, La
città del sole, Napoli 2002.
See also: http://lodel.ehess.fr/cenj/document.php?id=71

Summum ius, summa iniuria?

Dear students,

with reference to the discussion we have started this morning, I would like to ask you to continue it here. You can write answers to all the following questions or just one.

You can also have a look at this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCFxajzP2E0

1) What could be the "dangers" of equity?
2) Can you give examples of the use of equity (in any historical period and in any place)?
3) What is the purpose of law?
4) What is the aim of a trial today in your country? 

EMANUELE CONTE ON LAW & HISTORY AND STEFANIA GIALDRONI ON LAW & LITERATURE

Dear students,

next week the classes will be held by prof. Conte on Wednesday and by me (Stefania Gialdroni) on Thursday and Friday. The first class will be devoted to the (strict) relationship between Law and History while the other two classes will be dedicated to the analysis of Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice", a very classical topic of the Law in Literature strand. The readings will be provided as soon as possible as we are still writing the definitive version of the mailing list. In the meanwhile, you can find the following article on J-Stor, available online if you are using the RomaTre wifi (http://host.uniroma3.it/biblioteche/page.php?page=banche_da30). 

D.J Kornstein, Fie Upon Your Law! in "Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature", 5.1 (1993): A Symposium Issue on "The Merchant of Venice", 35-56. 

Emanuele Conte: Law & History 

Suggested reading:

J.Q. Whitman, Bring back the Glory!, in "Rechtsgeschichte, 4 (2004), 74-81.  

Prof. Conte's CV

Professor of Legal History a the Università degli Studi di RomaTre and Directuer d'études at the EHESS in Paris. 

He graduated cum laude in 1983 at the University La Sapienza in Rome, and received his Ph.D in Medieval Legal History from the University of Milan. He has done rsearch at the Max-Planck Institut fuer Europaeische Rechtsgeschichte in Frankfurt am Main and the University of California at Berkley.  

He has held visiting professorships at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (Spain), the EHESS in Paris, the University of Toulouse I (France), the University of Paris X Nanterre and the Ecole Normale Superieure Lettres et Sciences Humaines, Lyon (France). He has been visiting fellow at Berkley University (USA) and Cambridge University - UK (Peterhouse). 

He serves as a member of the board of direction of many academic journals and series in Italy, France, Spain and the UK. 

He has given many papers and lectures in Italy, Germany, France, UK, USA, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, Argentina and Spain. His books and other publications focus mainly on medieval and modern legal history, on philology of legal texts and on the relationship between history and law in the 19th and 20th century. See also: http://lodel.ehess.fr/necj/docannexe.php?id=324 

Stefania Gialdroni: Shakespeare in Law

Brief Outline:
The lessons will focus on the following questions:
1) What was the role of Jewes in 16th-17th century Europe? What does it mean to be part of a minority?
2) What is usury? How was it regulated?
3) What was the relationship between law and equity in Shakespeare's England? What does equity mean? 

Suggested readings: 

D.J Kornstein, Fie Upon Your Law! in "Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature", 5.1 (1993): A Symposium Issue on "The Merchant of Venice", 35-56.

[Not compulsory!]: S. Gialdroni, La clausola penale tra finzione e realtà. Il caso limite di Shylock alla prova del diritto veneziano, del diritto comune e del common law, in "La pena convenzionale nella prospettiva storico comparatistica", Napoli: Jovene, 2013, 19-49. 

Dr. Gialdronis' CV:
Stefania Gialdroni is a temporary instructor in Legal History at the University of RomaTre, Law Department. She received her PhD in 2009 from the University of Milano-Bicocca and the EHESS in Paris ("co-tutelle"). In 2006 she entered the Marie Curie Program "Doctorate in European Legal Cultures". In the framework of this PhD, she spent one year at the London School of Economics and two years at the EHESS in Paris. She was awarded several scholarships from the MPIER in Frankfurt am Main where she also attended the International Max-Planck Research School for Comparative Legal History for one year. 
She has been teaching the course "Human Rights in Historical Perspective" at Arcadia University - Rome Center since 2011 and worked as a tutor in Legal Histor at the online University UniNettuno (2011-2012).
She published articles, essays and a book (East India Company. Una storia giuridica (1600-1708), Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011) on the history of commercial law and on Law and Literature. 
She has been assisting prof. Conte in the organization of the "Law and the Humanities" course at the RomaTre University since it was first created in 2008. 

2014 Law and the Humanities Calendar

Aristotle on the nature/convention dichotomy: let's start with the debate

Dear All, as a follow-up to our discussion:

in the Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle claimed that: “there are two forms of justice, the natural and the conventional. It is natural when it has the same validity everywhere and is unaffected by any view we may take of the justice of it. It is conventional when there is no original reason why it should take one form rather than another and the rule it imposes is reached by agreement, after which it holds good. It is not obvious what rules of justice are natural and what are legal and conventional, in cases where variation is possible. Yet it remains true that there is such a thing as natural, as well as conventional, justice” (Book V, Chapter II)

What do WE think? 

Law and the Visual Conference in Canberra, Australia

This workshop will take place on July 7-8 2014 (Convenor: Prof. D. Manderson). It will bring together leading scholars on issues like:

•     What are the implications of the assertion that “the representation of power reveals the power of representation”?
•     Is law iconophilic or iconoclastic or both?
•     In what way do visual representations of law throughout the pre-modern, modern and contemporary periods both illuminate and challenge our understanding of the changing relationship between law, aesthetics, and power?
•     How does the aesthetics and technology of the digital screen transform the representation of legal concepts such as the rule of law, sovereignty, security, or human rights?

Please check the following link for more information

DAVID SKEEL ON LAW AND LITERATURE: AN INTRODUCTION

Dear students,

Prof. David Skeel (University of Pennsylvania Law School) will be the first guest speaker of the Law and the Humanities Course 2014. He is a good friend of this course, an expert in the field of Law and the Humanities and a wonderful teacher. He will begin his week of lessons on March 5th 2014, describing  the most important strand of the Law and the Humanities movement: Law and Literature. The readings will be provided during the course if they are not available on the RomaTre online databases.

The Law and the Humanities classes will take place as follows:
Wed.: 2:15 pm - 4:00 pm - Aula 3
Thur. and Fri.: 10:15 am - 12:00 - Aula 4
See you soon!

Brief Outline: 
In this class, we will briefly explore the history of law and literature scholarship in the United States, and consider the prospects of this movement for the future. We will focus in particular on three recent strands of law and literature scholarship, which are often referred to as 1) law as language (associated with James Boyd White); 2) literature as empathy (associated with Robin West and Martha Nussbaum) and 3) law and narrative (associated with Patricia Williams).

Suggested Readings:
- D.A. Skeel, Lawrence Joseph and Law and Literature, in "University of Cincinnati Law Review", 77.3 (2009), pp. 921-939.

Prof. David Skeel's CV:
David A. Skeel is currently the S. Samuel Arsht Professor of Corporate Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School (2004-), after having been Associate Professor of Law at the Temple University School of Law (1993- 1998) and Professor of Law at University of Pennsylvania Law School (1999- 2003) .
He is a graduate of the University of North Carolina (B.A. 1983) and the University of Virginia (J.D. 1987). His poems have appeared in Boulevard, Kansas Quarterly and elsewhere. He has written on law and literature or related issues for Columbia Law Review, Michigan Law Review, Legal Affairs, Wallace Stevens Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, and other publications; and he served as an advisory editor of Boulevard in the 1990s.
He also is the author of two books:
- Icarus in the Boardroom: The Fundamental Flaws in Corporate America and Where They Came From (Oxford U. Press, 2005)
- Debt’s Dominion: A History of Bankruptcy Law in America (Princeton University Press, 2001) .
In 1999 & 2002 he received the Harvey Levin Award for Excellence in Teaching and in 2004 the Lindback Award (university-wide “Great Teacher” award).

For a complete overview on Prof. Skeel’s CV and his extensive list of publications see:

http://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/dskeel/