Comparative Law News

(Source: Cambridge University Press)
Next month, Cambridge University press will publish a book on the League of Nations’ work regarding tax treaties. The book can be pre-ordered here.
ABOUT
Modern-day tax treaties have their foundations in one of the three Model Tax Treaties developed by the League of Nations in 1928. Using previously unexplored archival material, Sunita Jogarajan provides the first in-depth examination of the development of the League's Models. This new research provides insights into questions such as the importance of double taxation versus tax evasion; the preference for source-taxation versus residence-taxation; the influence of theory and practice on the League's work; the development of bilateral rather than multilateral treaties; the influence of developing countries on the League's work; the role of Commentary in interpreting model tax treaties; and the influential factors and key individuals involved. A better understanding of the development of the original models will inform and help guide interpretation and reform of modern-day tax treaties. Additionally, this book will be of interest to scholars of international relations and the development of law at international organisations.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sunita Jogarajan, University of MelbourneSunita Jogarajan is Associate Professor in the Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne. She has published in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, British Tax Review and World Tax Journal.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PrefaceList of abbreviations1. Introduction2. Background3. Personality, politics and principles: the drafting of the 1925 Resolutions on Double Taxation4. The ICC and the development of the 1928 Models5. Turning resolutions into treaties – the drafting of the first Model Convention on Double Taxation6. The 'great powers' and the development of the 1928 Models7. One beget three – the drafting of the 1928 Model Tax Treaties on Double Income Taxation8. Lessons from history – where to from here?Appendix 1. Timeline/cast of charactersAppendix 2. 1925 Report Final ResolutionsAppendix 3. 1921 ICC ResolutionsAppendix 4. 1922 ICC ResolutionsAppendix 5. 1923 ICC ResolutionsAppendix 6. 1924 ICC ResolutionsAppendix 7. 1925 ICC ResolutionsAppendix 8. 1927 ICC ResolutionsAppendix 9. 1927 Draft Model ConventionAppendix 10. 1925 UK Finance ActAppendix 11. Thompson Art 10 ProposalAppendix 12. USSR Art 5 ProposalAppendix 13. USSR Art 10 and 11 ProposalsAppendix 14. Dorn and Borduge Draft ConventionAppendix 15. Thompson Draft ConventionAppendix 16. Adams Draft ConventionAppendix 17. Draft Convention IAAppendix 18. Draft Convention IBAppendix 19. Draft Convention IB CommentaryAppendix 20. Draft Convention ICAppendix 21. Draft Convention IC CommentaryBibliographyIndex.
More information on the publisher’s website

(Source: Duke Law School)
Through Rechtsgeschiedenis Blog, we learned of a new repository of historical gun laws (from the medieval age to 1776 for England, and from the colonial era to the middle of the 20thcentury for the United States) by Duke Law School. The repository can be found here.
ABOUT
Welcome to the Repository of Historical Gun Laws, a searchable database of gun laws from the medieval age to 1776 in England and from the colonial era to the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. This Repository is intended as a resource for scholars and practitioners interested in historical laws concerning firearms and other similar weapons. Although the Repository seeks to be substantial, it is not comprehensive. Conscientious users of this Repository should supplement their results with further legal and historical research.
Questions or comments about the repository can be sent to the following email: gunlaws@law.duke.edu  
For more information, see Duke Law School’s website

(Source: Cambridge University Press)
Next month, Cambridge University Press will publish a book on great Christian jurists in Spanish history. The book can be pre-ordered here.
ABOUT
The Great Christian Jurists series comprises a library of national volumes of detailed biographies of leading jurists, judges and practitioners, assessing the impact of their Christian faith on the professional output of the individuals studied. Spanish legal culture, developed during the Spanish Golden Age, has had a significant influence on the legal norms and institutions that emerged in Europe and in Latin America. This volume examines the lives of twenty key personalities in Spanish legal history, in particular how their Christian faith was a factor in molding the evolution of law. Each chapter discusses a jurist within his or her intellectual and political context. All chapters have been written by distinguished legal scholars from Spain and around the world. This diversity of international and methodological perspectives gives the volume its unique character; it will appeal to scholars, lawyers, and students interested in the interplay between religion and law.
ABOUT THE EDITORS
Rafael Domingo, Emory University, AtlantaRafael Domingo is the Spruill Family Research Professor at Emory University, and ICS Professor of Law at the University of Navarra in Spain. A specialist in legal history, legal theory, ancient Roman law, and comparative law, he has published more than 20 books, including The New Global Law (Cambridge, 2011) and God and the Secular Legal System (Cambridge, forthcoming).
Javier Martínez-Torrón, Complutense University, MadridJavier Martínez-Torrón is Professor of Law at Complutense University, Madrid. He is vice-president of the section of canon law and church-state relations of the Spanish Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation. His scholarly writings include 22 books and have been published in 23 countries and in 13 languages.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction Rafael Domingo and Javier Martínez-Torrón1. Isidore of Seville Philip Reynolds2. Raymond of Penyafort José Miguel Viejo-Ximénez3. Alfonso X Joseph F. O'Callaghan4. Francisco de Vitoria Andreas Wagner5. Bartolomé de Las Casas Kenneth Pennington6. Martín de Azpilcueta Wim Decok7 Domingo de Soto Benjamin Hill8. Fernando Vázquez de Menchaca Salvador Rus9. Diego de Covarrubias y Leiva Richard Helmholz10 Luis de Molina Kirk R. MacGregor11. Francisco Suárez Henrik Lagerlung12. Tomás Sánchez Rafael Domingo13. Juan Solórzano Pereira Matthew C. Mirow14. Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos Jan-Henrik Witthaus15. Francisco Martínez Marina Aniceto Massferrer16. Juan Donoso Cortés Jose María Beneyto17. Concepción Arenal Paloma Durán y Lalaguna18. Manuel Alonso Martínez Carlos Petit19. Álvaro d'Ors Rafael Domingo20. Pedro Lombardía Alberto de la Hera and Javier Martínez-Torrón.

For more information, see the publisher’s website

(Source: Librairie LGDJ)
Librairie LGDJ has just published a new book, dealing with the legal history of the purging of Nazi collaborators in France after World War II.
ABOUT
« Un pays qui manque son épuration se prépare à manquer sa rénovation. »Albert Camus, 1945. Combat
Dès les années 1940, avant même la libération de Paris et la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, l'épineuse question de l'épuration s'impose : Comment sanctionner ceux qui ont collaboré avec l'Allemagne nazie ? La France se déchire entre les défenseurs du pardon et les partisans d'une justice punitive pour les soutiens de Vichy.
Brossant un tableau de la France de l'après-guerre couvrant tous les milieux - intellectuels, politiques, ecclésiastiques, etc. - Emmanuel Pierrat dépeint ici un pays au bord de la rupture et analyse les tourments d'une société qui cherche à sortir d'une situation d'exception, violente et chaotique.Des femmes tondues aux lois d'amnistie en passant par les exécutions sommaires et les internements administratifs, ce livre nous fait revivre des années décisives à travers les destins de Pétain, Laval, Brasillach ou encore du constructeur automobile Louis Renault. S'appuyant sur de nombreuses sources judiciaires et journaux de l'époque, Emmanuel Pierrat nous plonge au coeur des désillusions, exécutions et reconstructions qui ont bouleversé la France pendant une décennie et qui entretiennent, encore aujourd'hui, de multiples tabous.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Emmanuel Pierrat, avocat et écrivain, est conservateur du musée du Barreau de Paris. Il est l'auteur de plus de soixante-dix ouvrages juridiques, de romans et de livres sur l'art. Bibliophile, il est passionné par l'Histoire. Il a notamment publié Les Francs-maçons sous l'Occupation, entre résistance et collaboration (Albin Michel) et Les Grands Procès de l'Histoire (La Martinière).
For more information, see the publisher’s website

(Source: Harvard University Press)
Harvard University Press will publish a new book on the history of the right of publicity next month. The book can be pre-ordered with the publisher.
ABOUT
Who controls how one’s identity is used by others? This legal question, centuries old, demands greater scrutiny in the Internet age. Jennifer Rothman uses the right of publicity—a little-known law, often wielded by celebrities—to answer that question, not just for the famous but for everyone. In challenging the conventional story of the right of publicity’s emergence, development, and justifications, Rothman shows how it transformed people into intellectual property, leading to a bizarre world in which you can lose ownership of your own identity. This shift and the right’s subsequent expansion undermine individual liberty and privacy, restrict free speech, and suppress artistic works.
The Right of Publicity traces the right’s origins back to the emergence of the right of privacy in the late 1800s. The central impetus for the adoption of privacy laws was to protect people from “wrongful publicity.” This privacy-based protection was not limited to anonymous private citizens but applied to famous actors, athletes, and politicians. Beginning in the 1950s, the right transformed into a fully transferable intellectual property right, generating a host of legal disputes, from control of dead celebrities like Prince, to the use of student athletes’ images by the NCAA, to lawsuits by users of Facebook and victims of revenge porn.
The right of publicity has lost its way. Rothman proposes returning the right to its origins and in the process reclaiming privacy for a public world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jennifer E. Rothman is Professor of Law and the Joseph Scott Fellow at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
IntroductionI. The Big Bang1. The Original “Right of Publicity”2. From the Ashes of Privacy3. A Star Is Born?II. The Inflationary Era4. A Star Explodes5. A Star ExpandsIII. Dark Matter6. The (In)alienable Right of Publicity7. The Black Hole of the First Amendment8. A Collision Course with CopyrightEpilogue: The Big CrunchNotesAcknowledgmentsIndex
More information on the publisher’s website

We received the following announcement:
À la fin in du Moyen Âge, le droit de pardonner est, pour les monarques avides de souveraineté, aussi important que celui de punir. Parmi les centaines de justiciables à bénéficier chaque année de la grâce royale ou princière, les soldats constituent généralement une catégorie privilégiée d’individus. Du fait de conflits de longue durée tels que la guerre de Cent Ans, l’encadrement et le contrôle des violences des gens de guerre devient un enjeu important pour les pouvoirs publics, comme l’attestent la multiplication des règlements pour les armées, la mise en place de troupes permanentes, le renforcement de la justice militaire… et les nombreux pardons délivrés aux combattants. Cette thèse de doctorat porte sur les lettres de rémission et de pardon accordées aux gens de guerre en Angleterre, en France et dans les Pays‐Bas bourguignons au XV e siècle, et plus particulièrement pendant la période 1460‐1480. Il s’agit de la première étude comparée sur l’exercice du droit de grâce par plusieurs souverains du bas Moyen Âge. En mettant en parallèle l’octroi de pardons à des soldats avec la transformation des structures et de la discipline militaires entamée depuis le milieu du XIV e siècle, cette recherche vise à démontrer comment différents monarques font usage de leur pouvoir de remettre des crimes afin de servir leurs intérêts politiques et militaires. L’étude des demandes de grâce soumises par les gens de guerre permet également de nuancer l’idée que l’on peut se faire des violences militaires, ainsi que des rapports entre combaƩants et non‐combattants. La documentation permet enfin d’observer que la figure du soldat est elle‐même sujette à des transformations et tend de plus en plus à être conçue comme un office public, tandis que l’État s’affirme comme le seul détenteur de l’usage légitime de la force.Jury:
Jean‐Marie YANTE (UCL), Président Xavier ROUSSEAUX (UCL), Co‐promoteur Eric BOUSMAR (USL‐B), Co‐promoteur et secrétaire Hans COOLS (KU Leuven), Lecteur extérieur Anne CURRY (University of Southampton), Lectrice extérieure Bertrand SCHNERB (Université de Lille), Lecteur extérieur Valérie TOUREILLE (Université de Cergy‐Pontoise), Lectrice extérieure

The event takes place at 14:30 in the Salle du Conseil (Collège Erasme). More information here.

(Source: Oxford University Press)
Oxford University Press will publish a new book on the 1919 Paris Peace Conference next month. The book can be pre-ordered with the publisher.
ABOUT
We have known for many decades that the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 "failed", in the sense that it did not prevent the outbreak of World War II. This book investigates not whether the Paris Peace Conference succeeded or failed, but the historically specific international system it created. It explores the rules under which that system operated, and the kinds of states and empires that inhabited it. Deepening the dialogue between history and international relations theory makes it possible to think about sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference in new ways. Sovereignty in 1919 was about not just determining of answers demarcating the international system, but also the questions. Sovereignty in 1919 was about remaking the world.
Most histories of the Paris Peace Conference stop with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on 28 June 1919. Sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 considers all five treaties produced by the conference as well as the Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey in 1923. It is organized not chronologically or geographically, but according to specific problems of sovereignty. A peace based on "justice" produced a criminalized Great Power in Germany, and a template problematically applied in the other treaties. The conference sought to unmix lands and peoples in the defeated multinational empires by drawing boundaries and defining ethnicities. The conference sought not so much to oppose revolution as to instrumentalize it in the new international system. The League of Nations, so often taken as the supreme symbol of the failure of the conference, is better considered as a continuation of the laboratory of sovereignty established in Paris.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: The Riddles of Sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference1. The Agents and Structures of Peacemaking2. The Sovereignty of Justice3. The "Unmixing" of Lands4. The "Unmixing" of Peoples5. Mastering Revolution6. Sovereignty and the League of Nations, 1920-1923Conclusion: History, IR, and the Paris Peace Conference
For more information, see the publisher’s website

(Source: Oxford University Press)
Oxford University Press will publish a new book on Thomas Hobbes next month. The book can be pre-ordered with the publisher.
ABOUT
This book explores how Hobbes's political philosophy has occupied a pertinent place in different contexts, and how his interpreters see their own images reflected in him, or how they define themselves in contrast to him. Appropriating Hobbes argues that there is no Hobbes independent of the interpretations that arise from his appropriation in these various contexts and which serve to present him to the world. There is no one perfect context that enables us to get at what Hobbes 'really meant', despite the numerous claims to the contrary. He is almost indistinguishable from the context in which he is read.
This contention is justified with reference to hermeneutics, and particularly the theories of Gadamer, Koselleck, and Ricoeur, contending that through a process of 'distanciation' Hobbes's writings have been appropriated and commandeered to do service in divergent contexts such as philosophical idealism; debates over the philosophical versus historical understanding of texts; as well as in ideological disputations, and emblematic characterisations of him by various disciplines such as law, politics, and international relations. This volume illustrates the capacity of a text to take on the colouration of its surroundings by exploring and explicating the importance of contexts in reading and understanding how and why particular interpretations of Hobbes have emerged, such as those of Carl Schmitt and Michael Oakeshott, or the international jurists of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: Hobbes in Contexts1. Hobbes Among the Philosophical Idealists: A Will that is Actual, but Not General2. Understanding Hobbes: Philosophy versus Ideology3. Constraining Leviathan: Power versus authority in Hobbes, Schmitt, and Oakeshott.4. Hobbes Among the Classic Jurists: Natural Law versus the Law of Nations5. Hobbes Among Legal Positivists: Sovereign or Society?6. Hobbes Among International Relations thinkers: International Political Theory
For more information, see the publisher’s website

Please find below the updated program and registration information for the ESCLH Conference coming June.

ESCLH 5th Biennal Conference, Paris, 28-30 June, 2018 : Laws Across Codes and Laws Decoded

Thursday, the 28th of June
1)    PhD presentations:
Ecole normale suéprieure, 48 Boulevard Jourdan, PhD presentations in two rooms (R1 07, R2 02), 9h00-12h30
1)    panel
-Tina Miletić (Split), Concept of testamentum in Medieval Dalmatia- Łukasz Gołaszewski (Warsaw), Meandering way of the change of the civil and canon laws in 16th – 17th century Poland – a case of tithes and significance of legal practice- Kaat Cappelle (Brussels), Married Women as legal agents in sixteenth-century Antwerp and Leuven- Przemysław Gawron (Warsaw) and Jan Jerzy Sowa (Warsaw), Military Law between Codes and Realities of Early Modern Warfare. Codification and Decodification of Military Law in 17th Century England, Poland-Lithuania and Sweden- Juan Manuel Hernandez-Velez (Paris), Emilien Petit (1713-1780) : a comparatist of codification avant la lettre- Rafal Kaczmarczyk (Warsaw), The diverse model of codification, establishment or recognition of criminal law in Muslim countries- Piotr Alexandrowicz (Poznan), The Code as an Instrument: the History of Canon Law and the Codification in the Church- Naveen Kanalu Ramamurthy (Los Angeles), The “Sublime” Jurisprudence of Roman Law: British Jurists and the Codification of Islamic Law in Eighteenth-Century Colonial India- Sebastian L. Spitra (Vienna), Codifying World Cultural Heritage: The Quest for New Narratives of a Global Legal History 
2)    panel- Payam Ahmadi-Rouzbahani (Paris), Between Islamic Law and Civilian Tradition: The Particular Role of Codification in Making Iranian Civil Law through French Transplants
- Adrien Wyssbrod (Neuchâtel), The Supremacy of the Code in Continental Europe
- Omer Aloni (Tel Aviv), Whales, high seas and the codification of international law: the League of Nations and the whaling dilemma, a case study in comparative legal history – 1919-1939
- Evlampia Tsolaki (Thessaloniki), The Paradigm of the Hellenic Civil Code
- Elisabeth Bruyère (Ghent), Civil Code and Nature Law
- Kellen Funk (Princeton), An Empire in itself: the Migration of New York’s Remedial Code
- Julie Rocheton (Paris), The 19th century American Definition of Civil Code
- Matthieu Juneau (Québec), The influence of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on the interpretation of the Civil Code of Lower Canada
- Airton Ribeiro da Silva Junior (Firenze), Brazilian efforts on the codification of international law in the early twentieth century: the trajectory of the Epitácio Pessoa's draft code on public international law

Thursday 28th of June 14:00 – 19:00 PLENARY SESSION

Ecole normale supérieure, 45, rue d’Ulm, 75005 Paris, Dussane Room (Enter the main building, take the corridor to the left. The Dussane room is at the end on the left).

14h- 15h Registration and Greetings by the ESCLH President Aniceto Masferrer
15H 16h 30 Key Notes:
Catharine MacMillan (King’s College, London):Why English law is not codified: the unsuccessful efforts of Victorian jurists
Pedro Barbas Homem (University of Lisbon):Science of legislation and codification. The preparation of codification by legal literature in Portugal and Brazil

16h30 coffee break
17h-18h 30 First panel - Luigi Lacché (Macerata), An impossible codification? Drafting Principles of Administrative Law: the Italian Experience in a Comparative perspective (19th-20thcenturies)- Matt Dyson (Oxford), Legal Change in Tort in the shadow of codification- Dirk Heirbaut (Ghent), Past failures are no guarantee of a future flop: why Belgium's dismal codification record may enable radical change today
18h30- 19h Legal education in Paris, Jean-Louis Halpérin

Friday 29th of June, Beginning at 9h00 am, coffee break 10h30-11h, lunch buffet 12h30-13h30, concert and dinner 19h00)
I)              Amphitheater Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan 75014 Paris                                                              9h-10h30 Panel Criminal CodificationKarl Härter (Darmstadt), Aniceto Masferrer (Valencia), Isabel Ramos-Vázquez (Jaén), Juan B. Cañizares-Navarro (Jaén), Criminal law and the Limits of State Power in the Era of Codification
11h-12h30 Why a Civil Code?Hans Schulte-Nölke (Osnabrück), On the purposes of Civil Law CodificationNir Kedar (Bar-Ilan), The Symbolic Aspect of Civil CodeConstantin Willems (Marburg), Advocating Codes – from Thibaut to European Contract Law
13h30 – 15h00 Panel Legal Practices and Legal Professions in the 19th Century Japan, China, the Ottoman Empire, and EnglandMurat Burak Aydin (Frankfurt), Lena Foljanty (Frankfurt), Yu Wang (Frankfurt), Zeynep Yazici Caglar (Frankfurt)
15h15-16h45 Panel Hungary Codification   Judit Beke-Martos (Bochum), Zsuzsanna Peres (Budapest), Imre Képessy (Budapest), Modernization through Codification? External and Internal Comparison of the Hungarian Codification History            17h00-18h30 Panel The Codification of Unjustified Enrichment in French LawEric Descheemaeker (Melbourne), Jan Hallebeek (Amsterdam), Matthew Campbell (Glasgow) and Pablo Letelier (Universidad de Chile)
                II)            International University City of Paris (Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, Maison des Provinces de France, 59 boulevard Jourdan, salon Abreu)
9h-10h30 Medieval LawValerio Massimo Minale (Milano), Dušan's Zakonik: Codification in Maedieval Serbia and Byzantine HeritageTomislav Karlovic (Zagreb), et en fist assises et usages que l’on deust tenir et maintenir et user el roiaume de Jerusalem « Decoding the Laws of the Kingdom of Jerusalem » Andreja Katančevi (Belgrade), The Mining Code of Despot StefanHelen F. Leslie-Jacobsen (Bergen), How Innovative is Innovative? Adaptations of Norwegian Law in New Law Codes in Iceland and Norway from the Tenth to Thirteenth Centuries
11h-12h30 Criminal Law Stefano Vinci (Bari), Criminal law and Naples Supreme Court case law in the French decadeFrancesco Mastroberti (Bari), The Part II of the Code for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies: an "excellent" criminal code in a despotic state Emmanuel Berger (Paraiba), Le Code des délits et des peines du 3 brumaire an IV. Enquête sur les origines et les principes du code de procédure pénale de la Révolution

13h30-15h00 16th /17th centuriesAdam Moniuszko (Warsaw), ‘Codification’ of Polish and Lithuanian law in the 16th-17th centuries: successes, failures and impact on legal systems.Marek Stary (Prague), The Role of the Monarch on the Codifications of Land Law in the Estates’ StateAdolfo Giuliani (Helsinki), Codes without natural law. The case of Jacopo Menochio's De praesumptionibus (1587)
15h15-16h45 Asia Naoki Kanayama (Tokyo), Japan's "Success" in Codification in the Late 19th Century: By Code, with Code and beyond CodeKhohchahar E. Chuluu (Tokyo), Laws of Different Levels:Central and Regional Codification in Early Modern Mongolia and JapanHiromi Sasamoto-Collins (Edinburgh), The Japanese Criminal Code of 1880: Convergence and Resistance in Cultural ExchangeGuliyev Emin (Baku), Jar-Tala Code of law (decree of the Agdam Majlis) as an act of systematization of the Islamic law and adats
17h00-18h30 Panel Criminal Codification Italy Emilia Musumeci (Teramo), Monica Stronati (Macerata), Paolo Marchetti (Teramo), Riccardo Cavallo (Firenze), A colourful mosaic: doctrinal influences on Italianpenal codification in the long Nineteenth Century


III)          International University City of Paris, Maison de étudiants de l’Asie du Sud-Est (59 boulevard Jourdan), Salon Asie du Sud-Est
9h-10h30 RightsIvan Kosnica (Zagreb), Yugoslav Citizenship Law (1918 – 1941): Between Diversity and UnificationMarju Luts-Sootak, Hesi Siimets-Gross, Marelle Leppik (Tartu), Codification of basic rights in Estonian Constitution (1920) compared with imperial Russian and German republican modelsThomas Mohr (Dublin), Codes of Rights in the British Empire, 1865-1939                                         
11h-12h30 19th/20th centuriesFilippo Rossi (Milan), Dismissal across codes and laws decodes. Italian and European legal science dealing with the termination of the employment relationship (latter half of the 19 century-first years of the 20 century)Frederik Dhondt (Brussel), Permanent Neutrality, Stepping-Stone for a Code of NationsMichal Galedek (Gdansk), Comparative analysis as the method of building the Polish civil law from scratch in the interwar period Dolores Freda (Napoli), The Italian “emigration code” of 1919

13h30-15h00 20th centuryMartin Sunnqvist (Lund), The “Rule of Life”. The Functions of Legislation and Adjudication according to Wilhelm Sjögren in a Comparative Historical Context Fernando Gil González (London), The theory of Cappelletti in the review of comparative legal history systems in EuropeHesi Siimets-Gross and Katrin Kiirend-Pruuli (Tartu), Changes of Estonian and Latvian Divorce Law after WWI: in Draft, in Civil Code and outside of themValdis Blūzma (Turiba), History of the Codification of Civil Law in Latvia (19th-20th centuries): Overcoming the Territorial and Estate Particularism of Law
15h15-16h45   America Agustin Parise (Maastricht), Stepping Stones for Law and Society: An Exploration of the Generations of Civil Codes in Latin America (19-21 Centuries)Joshua Tate (Dallas), Codification of Texas Trust Law, 1943-2017Diego Nunes (Santa Catarina), Codification, Recodification and Decodification of Law:a History of Legal Dimensions of Justice in the Imperial Brazil by the “Codigo de Processo Criminal” of 1832
17h00-18h30   Civil Law Piotr Pomianowski (Warsaw), The national codification of civil law in Poland at the beginning of the 19thcentury. Sources and inspirationsManuel Gutan (Sibiu), Codification as a Tool of Social Engineering in Modern Romania (!?) The Case of Civil Code Alexandru IoanEmőd Veress (Cluj-Napoca), Abrogation of the 1887 Romanian commercial code and the survival of its institutions and concepts, in the context of the new civil Code

19h00 Piano Concert and Buffet in salon Abreu, Maison des Provinces de France


Saturday the 30th of June, light buffet 12:30 to 13:30
I)              Amphitheater Jourdan, 48 boulevard Jourdan 75014 Paris
9h-10h30 Codification Movement
Mingzhe Zhu (Pekin), Notions of Law in the Era of CodificationDmitry Poldnikov (Moscow), Codifying the Laws of the Late Russian Empire: Legal Unification through Contested Western Legal Tradition?Ditlev Tamm (Copenhagen), To codify or not to codify – the Nordic discussion11h00-12h30 Legal Periodicals Panel Marju Luts-Sootak, Merike Ristikivi (Tartu), Sebastiaan Vandenbogaerde (Ghent), Legal Periodicals as Alternative to Codes?                     13h30-15h00 Commercial Law Dave de Ruysscher (Tilburg), Pre-Insolvency Proceedings (France, Belgium and the Netherlands, 1807-c 1910)Annamaria Monti (Milano), Commercial Codes: the Italian Example in a comparative perspectiveEfe Antalyali (Istanbul), Ottoman Jurisprudential Shift: Recpetion of French Commercial Law (1807)    

        15h 15-16h45 Final Plenary (for all participants)

II)            International University City of Paris (Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, Maison des Provinces de France, 59 boulevard Jourdan, salon Abreu)

9h-10h30 20th century Raffaella Bianchi Riva (Milano), Legal Ethics in the 19thand 20th centuries: A code of conduct for Italian and European lawyers?Dalibor Cepulo (Zagreb), Local court in Croatia: transplant and challenges of modernityMarcin Lysko (Bialystok), Main problems of the codification works on substantive misdemeanour law in People’s Poland
11h00-12h30 Overseas  Anna Taitslin and Murray Raf (Canberra), Codification or Transplantation? The Case of Absolute OwnershipRicardo Sontag (Minais Gerais), Models, examples and antimodels: representations of foreign penal codes within the Brazilian codification process (1928-1940)Paul Swanepoel (KwaZulu-Natal), Codifying Criminal Law in East Africa, 1920-1945
13h30-15h 00 20th century  Coding Authoritarianism: Law, State, Ideology and World War 2 Cosmin Sebastian Cercel (Nottingham), Discontinued Dictatorships: (Re)Coding Authoritarianism in Antonescu's Romania; David Fraser (Nottingham), Decoding the Jew: Vichy's National Legal Revolution;  Simon Lavis (Open University), Codes, Codification and Encoding Nazism in the Legal System of the Third Reich; Stephen Skinner (Exeter), Central Authority in Codified and Non-Codified Legal Systems: Law in the Shadow of the State, or the State in the Shadow of the Law?

III)          Ecole normale supérieure, 48 boulevard Jourdan, R 3-46.                                                              9h-10h30, 19th and 20th centuries Arthur Barrêtto de Almeido Costa and Ricardo Sontag (Minais Gerais), Change Through Mercy. Royal Pardon and Criminal Law Reforms in Late 19th Century in Brazil and FranceAnna Klimaszewska (Gdansk), Code de commerce of 1807 as an instrument of transforming legal reality - the Polish point of view Sara Pilloni (Trieste), “Roman Legal Heritage and Codification Processes: the Role of Italian Roman Law Scholars in the Codification of Civil Law”
11h00-12h30 Civil Law Asya Ostroukh (West Indies), An Unlimited Number of Limited Real Rights: A Story of an Adaptation of French Property Law in Francophone Switzerland, Quebec, and Louisiana in the Nineteenth Century Katharina Kaesling (Bonn), Codified Conditions vs. Judicial Discretion in Family Law: What codification means for the adaptation of maintenance law to social change Maria Lewandowicz (Gdansk), How to make impossible possible? On the unification of inheritance law in Switzerland in the 19th century                                  13h30-15h00 Comparisons Marianna Muravyeva (Tampere), Gendering the Law or Codifying Gender: Family Law in Early Modern EuropeRaphaël Cahen (Brussels), Joseph Marie Portalis (1778-1858): from comparatism to the idea of a European code of CitizenshipPim Oosterhuis (Maastricht), Is there something like the ‘Great Litigation Increase’?


VENUES AND HOTELS
Ecole Normale SupérieureCampus « Quartier latin », 45 rue d’Ulm, 75000 Paris (on the 28th of June, afternoon)Campus Jourdan 48 boulevard Jourdan 75014 ParisOn the other side of Boulevard Jourdan (number 59), Cité Internationale Universitaire de ParisThe two campus are linked through Underground RER B (stations Luxembourg and Cité Universitaire)Arrival from Paris airports: Stations Charles de Gaulle Etoile (RER A), Montparnasse (Underground)Plan of Paris Underground : https://www.ratp.fr/plan-metro École normale supérieure45, rue d’Ulm / 29 rue d’Ulm / 24 rue LhomondF-75230 Paris cedex 05Tél. +33 (0)1 44 32 30 00 (standard)Campus Jourdan48, boulevard Jourdan75014 ParisTél. +33 (0)1 43 13 61 00 (standard)Campus Montrouge (with some possible rooms for PhD candidates)1, rue Maurice Arnoux92120 MontrougeTél. +33 (0)1 58 07 65 00 (standard)






Recommended hotels near the venues of the Conference (approximate price for a night):
Ibis Paris Porte d’OrléansAdresse : 33 Rue Barbès, 92120 Montrouge, FranceTéléphone : +33 1 42 31 67 00Around 75 €
Hôtel Cujas-PanthéonAdresse : 18 Rue Cujas, 75005 Paris, FranceTéléphone : +33 1 43 54 58 10Around 150 €
Hôtel de SenlisAdresse : 9 Rue Malebranche, 75005 Paris, FranceTéléphone : +33 1 43 29 93 10Around 100 €
Hôtel Observatoire LuxembourgAdresse : 107 Boulevard Saint-Michel, 75005 Paris, FranceTéléphone : +33 1 46 34 10 12Around 230 €
Hotel Novotel Paris 14 Porte d’OrléansAdresse : 15, 17, 21 boulevard Romain, Rolland, 75014 Paris, FranceTéléphone : +33 1 41 17 26 00Around 125 €
Hotel Mercure Paris AlesiaAdresse : 185 Boulevard Brune, 75014 Paris, FranceTéléphone : +33 1 45 39 68 50Around 140 €
Hôtel du MidiAdresse : 4 Avenue René Coty, 75014 Paris, FranceTéléphone : +33 1 43 27 23 25Around 120 €
Hotel MaxAdresse : 34 Rue d'Alésia, 75014 Paris, FranceTéléphone : +33 1 43 27 60 80Around 170 €
Hôtel Terminus OrléansAdresse : 197 Boulevard Brune, 75014 Paris, FranceTéléphone : +33 1 45 39 71 44Around 80 €
Hôtel Best Western Nouvel Orléans MontparnasseAdresse : 25 Avenue du Général Leclerc, 75014 Paris, FranceTéléphone : +33 1 43 27 80 20Around 160 €
Hôtel Les Jardins du LuxembourgAdresse : 5 Impasse Royer-Collard, 75005 Paris, FranceTéléphone : +33 1 40 46 08 88Around 170 €
Hôtel Elysa-LuxembourgAdresse : 6 Rue Gay-Lussac, 75005 Paris, FranceTéléphone : +33 1 43 25 31 74Around 180 €
Hôtel Claude Bernard Saint GermainAdresse : 43 Rue des Écoles, 75005 ParisTéléphone : 01 43 26 32 52Around 150 €
Hotel Best Western Bretagne MontparnasseAdresse : 33 Rue Raymond Losserand, 75014 ParisTéléphone : 01 45 38 52 59Around 130 €
Hotel Montparnasse DaguerreAdresse : 94 Rue Daguerre, 75014 ParisTéléphone : 01 43 22 43 54Around 130€

The attendance to the Conference is free for every member of the ESCLH. It needs the payment of a fee for non-members. Please inform jean-louis.halperin@ens in case of attendance to the Conference.

                         

THE LAW OF THE SOMALIS: A Stable Foundation for Economic Development in the Horn of Africa by Michael van Notten, Edited by Spencer Heath MacCallum

Written by a trained and sympathetic observer, this book shows how Somali customary law differs fundamentally from most statutory law. Lawbreakers, instead of being punished, are simply required to compensate their victim. Because every Somali is insured by near kin against his or her liabilities under the law, a victim seldom fails to receive compensation. Somali law, being based on custom, has no need of legislation or legislators. It is therefore happily free of political influences. The author notes some specific areas that stand in need of change, but finds such change already implicit in further economic development.

Somali politics is based on consensus. The author explains how it works and shows why any attempt to establish democracy, which would divide the population into two classes-those who rule and those who are ruled-must inevitably produce chaos.

Viewed in global perspective, Somali law stands with the Latin and Medieval laws and the English common law against the statutory law that became prominent in Europe with the modern nation-state. This book explains many seeming anomalies about present-day Somalia and describes its prospects as well as the dangers facing it.
(Subjects: Somalia; customary law; legislation; criminal law; torts; delicts)

(Source: Evenium.net)
Sorbonne Université, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, Centre d’histoire du XIXe siècle and LabEx EHNE are organising a colloquium on the Revolutions of 1848 coming May, several panels include legal historians.
ABOUT
Colloque international du cent soixante-dixième anniversaire31 mai – 2 juin, Sorbonne Université, Amphi Guizot (17 rue de la Sorbonne, 75005 Paris)
Organisateurs : Sorbonne Université, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, Centre d’histoire du XIXe siècle, LabEx EHNE
Après le colloque du cent cinquantième anniversaire de 1848 organisé par la Société de 1848 et des révolutions du XIXe siècle qui a marqué un important jalon historiographique, il a paru important, exactement vingt ans plus tard, de porter un nouveau regard sur cet événement majeur du XIXe s., et cela en répondant d’abord au souhait maintes fois formulé par Maurice Agulhon d’en mieux connaître les acteurs, au moment précis où le Dictionnaire des dirigeants français de 1848 du Centre d’histoire du XIXe s. de Sorbonne Université et de Panthéon-Sorbonne, publié sous son patronage, constitue une nouvelle étape qui permet d’aller plus loin ; mais il s’agit aussi d’élargir la focale pour s’intéresser cette fois à l’ensemble du printemps des peuples. La question centrale de ces journées est ainsi : Qu’est-ce qu’être un acteur du printemps des peuples 1848 ? On s’appuie notamment ici sur la notion de protagoniste telle que définie par Haïm Burstin à propos de la Révolution française de 1789, tout en étant extrêmement attentif aux effets de positions dans l’espace géographique, social et culturel. Le programme, établi, après un appel international, propose une quarantaine d’interventions portant sur toute l’Europe. La table ronde conclusive doit permettre de dresser les profils-types d’acteurs européens du printemps des peuples et de répondre à la question centrale du colloque.
Inscription obligatoire pour accéder au bâtiment : http://printempsdespeuples.evenium.net
Contact et informations : labex.ehne2@gmail.com
The programme can be found here
For more information, please visit the conference’s webpage  

(Source: Oxford University Press)
Oxford University Press will publish a new book on Nazi Law and the legal origins of dictatorship next month. The book can be pre-ordered with the publisher.
ABOUT
This book is an intellectual history of Ernst Fraenkel's The Dual State (1941, reissued 2017), one of the most erudite books on the theory of dictatorship ever written. Fraenkel's was the first comprehensive analysis of the rise and nature of Nazism, and the only such analysis written from within Hitler's Germany. His sophisticated-not to mention courageous-analysis amounted to an ethnography of Nazi law. As a result of its clandestine origins, The Dual State has been hailed as the ultimate piece of intellectual resistance to the Nazi regime.

In this book, Jens Meierhenrich revives Fraenkel's innovative concept of "the dual state," restoring it to its rightful place in the annals of public law scholarship. Blending insights from legal theory and legal history, he tells in an accessible manner the remarkable gestation of Fraenkel's ethnography of law from inside the belly of the behemoth. In addition to questioning the conventional wisdom about the law of the Third Reich, Meierhenrich explores the legal origins of dictatorship elsewhere, then and now. The book sets the parameters for a theory of the "authoritarian rule of law," a cutting edge topic in law and society scholarship with immediate policy implications.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jens Meierhenrich, Associate Professor of International Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science

Jens Meierhenrich is Associate Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and previously taught for a decade at Harvard University. His books include The Legacies of Law, which won the American Political Science Association's 2009 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for the best book in politics, government, or international affairs; and, as co-editor, The Oxford Handbook of Carl Schmitt.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: The Remnants of the Rechtsstaat
1. Behemoth and Beyond: Theories of the Nazi State
2. The Making of a Cause Lawyer
3. The Debate about the Rechtsstaat in Nazi Germany, 1933-1936
4. An Ethnography of Nazi Law: The Gestation of The Dual State, 1936-1941
5. "A Rational Core within an Irrational Shell": An Institutional Theory of Dictatorship
6. The Decline of a Classic: Explaining the Reception of The Dual State
Conclusion: Authoritarian Rule of Law
For more information, see the publisher’s website

(Source: Canadian Legal History Blog)
Via the Canadian Legal History blog, we have the following call for papers:
Family and Justice in the Archives will bring together historians, legal scholars, and others for a discussion about the challenges and opportunities offered by the use of legal records for exploring the intimate worlds of family life. The intimacies that interest us were located initially in the private spaces of lineage, estate, family, household, and bedroom; they are both dramatic and quotidian, material and emotional, and invariably tied up in gendered and generational hierarchies of power and privilege. At the same time, they are made accessible – years, generations, or centuries later – through the written traces left by public proceedings that occurred in legally sanctioned spaces of social regulation, from the notary’s office to the criminal or civil courtroom to the legislative arena. We are especially interested in the ways in which historians and other scholars have been unpacking the stories of intimacy revealed in processes of legal regulation to develop rich new insights about family, gender, sex, power, culture, identity, and daily life throughout history and across the planet.
Through this two-day symposium, we seek to encourage transnational conversations about families, the law, and the archives. The conveners have been exploring Quebec’s rich judicial archives with the following questions in mind: How did the judicial system transmit and reinforce hegemonic notions of class, race, ethnicity, and gender? How, when, and why did family disputes over property, honour, rights, or reputation cross the judicial threshold to become the object of court proceedings? What levels of intra-familal violence were tolerated and at what point were state authorities called upon to intervene? How did a particular blend of legal codes and cultures reflect the society’s wider assumptions about acceptable and respectable conduct for women and men, especially in the area of sexuality, courtship, family formation, and sexual identity? How and when did judicial rulings and court proceedings diverge from legal code or custom in response to local circumstances? Did some litigants manage to manoeuvre, manipulate, challenge, or even change the law through their encounters with the judicial apparatus? And what happened when individuals crossed the boundaries of the acceptable and respectable into transgressive, deviant, or criminalized behaviour?
Family and Justice in the Archives seeks to broaden those discussions radically outwards towards a wide range of times, places, cultures, and legal systems. Participants are invited to present work on how stories of intimacy – sexual, emotional, domestic, or otherwise – are revealed in and shaped by the legal archives they use. We hope to foster discussion of these questions across as broad a range of historical and geographical contexts as possible, pre-modern and modern, settler-colonial and Indigenous, with special attention to situations (like Quebec) where some form of legal pluralism prevailed. We welcome proposals for papers that engage with these questions and on a wide range topics that may include adoption, bigamy, child custody, divorce and separation, domestic violence, family honour, filial duty, inheritance, juvenile justice, marital obligations, parental authority, reproductive rights, sexual diversity, sexual violence, and sibling relationships, to name just these few.
Family and Justice in the Archives will inaugurate a new, biennial series and is presented in partnership with the Centre interuniversitaire d’études québécoises (Université Laval/Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières) and the Centre d’histoire des régulations sociales (Université du Québec à Montréal). The program committee is co-chaired by Professors Eric Reiter and Peter Gossage in the Department of History at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Those interested in participating are invited to please send a 250-word abstract and a one-page curriculum vitae (or brief author biography) to LAWS.Symposium@Concordia.ca by 31 May 2018.
(Source: Canadian Legal History Blog)

(Source: Yale Law School)
The Yale Law School has recently made a data set which records all known war manifestos issued by sovereigns between 1492 and 1945 freely available. The data set can be consulted at https://documents.law.yale.edu/manifestos. Please find the communication below:

This data set records all known war manifestos issued by sovereigns between 1492 and 1945. These manifestos were collected, analyzed, and coded by a research team at Yale Law School studying the various categories of claims used to justify resort to war throughout history.
Citation
We ask users of the data set to cite it as follows:Oona A. Hathaway, William Holste, Scott J. Shapiro, Jacqueline Van De Velde, Lisa Wang, War Manifestos Database (2017), http://documents.law.yale.edu/manifestos. Users may also wish to reference the following article, which describes war manifestos in detail: Oona A. Hathaway, William Holste, Scott J. Shapiro, Jacqueline Van De Velde, Lisa Wang, War Manifestos (unpublished manuscript, 2017).
Overview
This data set contains the list of war manifestos collected and analyzed by the War Manifestos Project. The data set identifies the year the manifesto was issued; name of the manifesto; issuing sovereign; receiving sovereign; and related conflict or war. It also identifies whether the manifesto is a manifesto, counter-manifesto, or quasi-manifesto, as defined below.
The War Manifestos project includes a war manifesto issued between 1492 and 1945 if it meets the following criteria: a manifesto is a (1) public document (2) issued by a sovereign (3) against another sovereign (4) containing the reasons for going to war. A counter-manifesto is a manifesto that meets these criteria and is issued in direct response to an earlier manifesto. A quasi-manifesto is a manifesto that meets all but one of the criteria.
Coders noted whether each manifesto contained the following twelve categories of common just war claims: (1) enforcement of inheritance laws, succession rules and other hereditary rights; (2) self-defense or repelling aggression; (3) balance of power concerns; (4) declaration of independence; (5) tortious wrongs; (6) collection of debts; (7) protection of trade interests; (8) protection of diplomatic relations; (9) humanitarian considerations; (10) religious claims; (11) violation of a treaty obligation; and (12) other reasons. Coders also noted the manifesto’s primary justification and whether the manifesto made any reference to the law of war or the law of nations.
Data Set
The files associated with the war manifestos data set can be obtained via permalink by clicking on the title of the manifesto. Files are intended for educational and non-commercial use only. Every effort has been made to give copyright credit where available. Please contact us with any questions or concerns. We also invite users of the database to notify us if they locate any manifestos that are not already included in the database. We will update the data set whenever we receive new materials.
Questions and Feedback
This data set is hosted by the Yale Law School Library. Questions about the data set may be emailed to Professor Oona Hathaway at oona.hathaway at yale.edu.

Please find the following notice regarding the 5th Biennal Conference of the ESCLH (Paris, 28-30 June 2018) below: The European Society for Comparative Legal History (ESCHL) is pleased to announce the Second ESCLH Poster Competition, for a second year generously sponsored bySpringer International Publishing AG. The ESCLH invites PhD-students to present their research in the field of comparative legal history in form of a poster. The idea is to communicate the core of your research visually through a DIN A1-poster. The competition will be part of the ESCLH 5th Biennal Conference in Paris from 28 June to 30 June 2018.Participants must submit their poster together with a CV and an abstract of their research before 3pm, Thursday 28 June 2018, when registering for the conference. Each participant will  present his or her poster on Friday 29 June 2018. The best poster will be selected by a prize committee. The prize will be awarded in the plenary session on Saturday 30 June 2018.The winner will receive a prize money of 200 Euro from Springer.If there are any remaining questions concerning the prize, please contact:phillip.hellwege@jura.uni-augsburg.de

(Source: Brill)
Brill has just announced that its new database “Basilica Online: Justinian's Corpus Iuris in the Byzantine World” is now available for trials. All information can be found on Brill’s website.
Basilica Online is a fully-searchable online edition of the 17 volumes of the Basilica text and its scholia, as edited between 1945 and 1988 by H.J. Scheltema, D. Holwerda, and N. van der Wal. TheBasilica is the single-most important source for Byzantine law throughout the period of the Byzantine empire, and is a major source for Byzantine studies more broadly. 
Added Features and Benefits 
- Most recent and accurate edition of the Basilica text and its scholia.
- Fully searchable in both Latin and Greek.
- All critical apparatus of the edition included.
- Browsing and navigation functionalities at volume (volumen), book (liber) or chapter (titulus) level.
- Full academic introduction written specifically for the online edition by Professor Dr B. H. Stolte.
- Comprehensive and up-to-date bibliography compiled by Dr T. E. van Bochove.
- Collective index to the text and scholia.

Readership:
Researchers with interests in Byzantine law, Byzantine society, medieval legal history, Roman law and its afterlives, and medieval Greek language.

(Source: Bloomsbury)
Bloomsbury has recently published a new book on the modern history of marriage in a global perspective. Several articles deal with legal historical aspects of marriage law.
ABOUT
Marriage, Law and Modernity offers a global perspective on the modern history of marriage. Widespread recent debate has focused on the changing nature of families, characterized by both the rise of unmarried cohabitation and the legalization of same-sex marriage. However, historical understanding of these developments remains limited. How has marriage come to be the target of national legislation? Are recent policies on same-sex marriage part of a broader transformation? And, has marriage come to be similar across the globe despite claims about national, cultural and religious difference?

This collection brings together scholars from across the world in order to offer a global perspective on the history of marriage. It unites legal, political and social history, and seeks to draw out commonalities and differences by exploring connections through empire, international law and international migration.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: Making Marriage 'Modern', Julia Moses (University of Sheffield, UK)
Part I: Marriage and Forms of the Family
1. From Liberalism to Human Dignity: The Transformation of Marriage and Family Rights in Brazil, 1822-2013, Sueann Caulfield (University of Michigan, USA)
2. From Toleration to Prosecution: Concubinage and the Law in Modern China, Lisa Tran (California State University at Fullerton, USA)
3. The Birth of Mistresses and Bastards: A History of Marriage in Siam (Thailand), Tamara Loos (Cornell University, USA)
4. Royal Marriage in Europe: An Inherently Conservative System, Helen Watanabe-O'Kelly (University of Oxford, UK)
Part II: Marriage, Religion and the State
5. 'Til death do you part': Catholicism, Marriage and Culture War in Austria(-Hungary), Ulrike Harmat (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria)
6. Modernizing Marriage in Egypt, Kenneth M. Cuno (University of Illinois, USA)
7. 'A Babel of Law': Hindu Marriage, Global Spaces and Intimate Subjects in Late Nineteenth-Century India, Leigh Denault (University of Cambridge, UK)
8. English Exports: Invoking the Common Law of Marriage across the Empire in the Nineteenth Century, Rebecca Probert (University of Warwick, UK)
Part III: Marriage, Kinship and Community
9. Finding the Ordinary in the Extraordinary: Marriage Norms and Bigamy in Canada, Mélanie Méthot (University of Alberta, Augustana Campus, Canada)
10. Equality before the Law? The Intermarriage Debate in Post-Nazi Germany, Julia Woesthoff (DePaul University, USA)
11. Customary and Civil Marriage Law and the Question of Gender Equality in Twentieth and Twenty-First-Century Gabon and Africa, Rachel Jean-Baptiste (University of California at Davis, USA)
Postscript: How History Matters in Same-Sex Marriage Rights, Nancy F. Cott (Harvard University, USA)
More information on the publisher’s website

(Source: Stanford University Press)
Stanford University Press has recently published a book on the history of the UNESCO Human Rights Survey of 1947-1948 and its subsequent influence on human rights.
ABOUT
Since its adoption in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) has served as the foundation for the protection of human rights around the world. Historians and human rights scholars have claimed that the UDHR was influenced by UNESCO's 1947–48 global survey of intellectuals, theologians, and cultural and political leaders, a survey that supposedly revealed a truly universal consensus on human rights. This book provides a curated history of the UNESCO human rights survey and demonstrates its relevance to contemporary debates over the origins, legitimacy, and universality of human rights.
Based on meticulous archival research, Letters to the Contrary revises and enlarges the conventional understanding of UNESCO's human rights survey. Mark Goodale's extensive archival research uncovers a historical record filled with letters and responses that were omitted, polite refusals to respond, and outright rejections of the universal human rights ideal. This volume collects these neglected survey responses, including letters by T. S. Eliot, Mahatma Gandhi, W. H. Auden, and other important artists and thinkers.
In collecting, annotating, and analyzing these responses, Goodale reveals an alternative history that is deeply connected to the ongoing life of human rights in the twenty-first century. This history demonstrates that the UNESCO human rights survey was much less than supposed, but also much more. In many ways, the intellectual struggles, moral questions, and ideological doubts among the different participants who both organized and responded to the survey reveal a strikingly critical and contemporary orientation, raising similar questions at the center of current debates surrounding human rights scholarship and practice.
This volume contains letters and survey responses from Jacques Havet, Jacques Maritain, Arnold J. Lien, Richard P. Mckeon, Quincy Wright, Levi Carneiro, Arthur H. Compton, Charles E. Merriam, Lewis Mumford, E. H. Carr, John Lewis, Harold J. Laski, Serge Hessen, John Somerville, Boris Tchechko, Luc Somerhausen, Hyman Levy, Ture Nerman, R. Palme Dutt, Maurice Dobb, Pierre Teilhard De Chardin, Marcel De Corte, Pedro Troncoso Sánchez, Mahatma Gandhi, Chung-Shu Lo, Kurt Riezler, Inocenc Arnošt Bláha, Hubert Frère, M. Nicolay, W. Albert Noyes, Jr., Aldous Huxley, Ralph W. Gerard, Johannes M. Burgers, Humayun Kabir, A. P. Elkin, S. V. Puntambekar, Leonard Barnes, Benedetto Croce, Jean Haesart, F. S. C. Northrop, Peter Skov, Emmanuel Mounier, Maurice Webb, John Macmurray, Julius Moór, L. Horváth, Alfred Weber, Don Salvador De Madariaga, Frank R. Scott, Jawaharlal Nehru, Margery Fry, Isaac Leon Kandel, René Maheu, Albert Szent-Györgyi, Morris L. Ernst, Arnold Schoenberg, W. H. Auden, Melville Herskovits, Theodore Johannes Haarhoff, Ernest Henry Burgmann, Herbert Read, and T. S. Eliot.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Mark Goodale is Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Lausanne and Series Editor of Stanford Studies in Human Rights. The author or editor of 12 other volumes, his most recent book is Anthropology and Law: A Critical Introduction (2017).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
History: UNESCO in the Paradigmatic TransitionInterpretations: From a "Hollow Sham" to a "Plurality of Cultural Values"Memorandum and Questionnaire Circulated by UNESCO on the Theoretical Bases of the Rights of ManThe Grounds of an International Declaration of Human RightsForeword and Introduction to Human Rights, Comments and Interpretations, UNESCO 1949Liberalism from the AshesBeyond Egotistic Man: Communist, Socialist, and Social Democratic ChallengesRights in a Sacred UniverseThe Universal Declaration of Human DutiesThe Technological Society of the FutureUniversal Human Rights in a Colonial WorldHuman Rights as History and PracticeSpecific FreedomsFrom Repudiation to the Play of Fancy
For more information, see the publisher’s website

(Source: Oxford University Press)
Oxford University Press has recently published a book on the military trials of Japanese war criminals in the Dutch East Indies post-World War II.
ABOUT
From 1946 to 1949, the Dutch prosecuted more than 1000 Japanese soldiers and civilians for war crimes committed during the occupation of the Netherlands East Indies during World War II. They also prosecuted a small number of Dutch citizens for collaborating with their Japanese occupiers. The war crimes committed by the Japanese against military personnel and civilians in the East Indies were horrific, and included mass murder, murder, torture, mistreatment of prisoners of war, and enforced prostitution. Beginning in 1946, the Dutch convened military tribunals in various locations in the East Indies to hear the evidence of these atrocities and imposed sentences ranging from months and years to death; some 25 percent of those convicted were executed for their crimes. The difficulty arising out of gathering evidence and conducting the trials was exacerbated by the on-going guerrilla war between Dutch authorities and Indonesian revolutionaries and in fact the trials ended abruptly in 1949 when 300 years of Dutch colonial rule ended and Indonesia gained its independence.

Until the author began examining and analysing the records of trial from these cases, no English language scholar had published a comprehensive study of these war crimes trials. While the author looks at the war crimes prosecutions of the Japanese in detail this book also breaks new ground in exploring the prosecutions of Dutch citizens alleged to have collaborated with their Japanese occupiers. Anyone with a general interest in World War II and the war in the Pacific, or a specific interest in war crimes and international law, will be interested in this book.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fred L. Borch, Regimental Historian & Archivist, The Judge Advocate General's Corps, U.S. Army, 

Fred L. Borch is the Regimental Historian and Archivist for the Army's Judge Advocate General's Corps. He served 25 years as an Army lawyer before retiring from active duty and assuming his current position as a military legal historian. Having served as the first Chief Prosecutor for the Guantanamo Bay military commissions (from 2003-2004), he has special interest in the history of war crimes. Mr. Borch is the author of a number of books and hundreds of articles on legal and non-legal topics.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Setting the Stage
II. III. Prosecuting the Japanese: The Role of International and Domestic Law in the Establishment of War Crimes Tribunals in the East Indies
IV. Preparing for Trial: Gathering Evidence and Selecting Cases for Prosecution
V. Trials of Prisoner of War and Internee Camp Personnel, and Trials for the Mistreatment of Prisoners of War
VI. Trials for Mass Murder and Unlawful Executions
VII. Trials for Enforced Prostitution
VIII. 'Collective Responsibility:' Prosecuting the Kempeitai, Tokkeitai, and 25th Army
IX. Trials for Violations of the Terms of the Armistice
X. 'Command Responsibility': Prosecutor v. Shoji, Prosecutor v. Maruyama, and Prosecutor v. Imamura & Okazaki
XI. An Unfortunate Sideshow: The Prosecution of Collaborators
XII. Aftermath: Impact of the Trials on the Netherlands and the Netherlands East Indies
More information on the publisher’s website

(Source: Manchester University Press)
Manchester University Press recently published a book dealing with several landmark cases in 18th century British Imperial legal history concerning the presence of “outsiders” in London.
ABOUT
The rule of law, an ideology of equality and universality that justified Britain's eighteenth-century imperial claims, was the product not of abstract principles but imperial contact. As the Empire expanded, encompassing greater religious, ethnic and racial diversity, the law paradoxically contained and maintained these very differences. 
This book revisits six notorious incidents that occasioned vigorous debate in London's courtrooms, streets and presses: the Jewish Naturalization Act and the Elizabeth Canning case (1753-54); the Somerset Case (1771-72); the Gordon Riots (1780); the mutinies of 1797; and Union with Ireland (1800). Each of these cases adjudicated the presence of outsiders in London - from Jews and Gypsies to Africans and Catholics. The demands of these internal others to equality before the law drew them into the legal system, challenging longstanding notions of English identity and exposing contradictions in the rule of law.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dana Y. Rabin is Associate Professor of History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: Empire and law, 'Firmly united by the circle of the British diadem'
1 Internal others: Jews, Gypsies, and Jacobites
2 'In a country of liberty?': slavery, villeinage and the making of whiteness in the Somerset case (1772)
3 Imperial disruptions: City, nation, and empire in the Gordon Riots
4 'This fleet is not yet republican': Conceptions of law in the mutinies of 1797
5 Wedding and Bedding: making the Union with Ireland, 1800
Conclusion
Select bibliography
Index
More information on the publisher’s website