Call for Papers: New Perspectives on locatio conductio in Roman law, 6-8 June 2012, Edinburgh Centre for Legal History

CALL FOR PAPERS
New Perspectives on locatio conductio in Roman law
6 – 8 June 2012, Edinburgh

In the nearly 100 years since the publication of Emilio Costa’s La locazione di cose nel diritto romano (1915), the first monograph of the twentieth-century on letting and hiring in Roman law, modern understanding of this contract has changed significantly. The reasons for this are mainly twofold. First, scholars of Roman law, while still largely engaged in purely dogmatic investigations of the origins and development of legal rules and of the contributions of individual Roman jurists to this process, are slowly becoming more aware of the contexts in which these rules operated and their relation to Roman society such as, for example, in the work of Bruce Frier (Landlords and Tenants in Imperial Rome (1980)) and Dennis Kehoe (Investment, Profit and Tenancy: the Jurists and the Roman Agrarian Economy (1998)), to name but a few. In second place, the publication in 1999 of Roberto Fiori’s La definizione della ‘locatio conductio’ (1999) comprehensively transformed modern understanding of the conceptual structure of this contract and finally laid to rest the much debated issue of the 'trichotomy'. The aim of this conference is to bring together scholars with an interest in locatio conductio in Roman law (whether in Roman private or public law) to explore new insights (dogmatic, social, economic) into the origin and growth of this contract.

Deadline for submission of proposals: Friday 30 March 2012

For more information or to submit an abstract, please email Dr. Paul J. du Plessis

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Neue Sichtweisen auf die locatio conductio im römischen Recht

6. – 8. Juni 2012, Edinburgh

Seit Emilio Costa vor rund hundert Jahren mit La locazione di cose nel diritto romano (1915) die erste Monographie des 20. Jahrhunderts über die locatio conductio im römischen Recht veröffentlichte, hat das moderne Verständnis dieses Vertragstyps grundlegende Änderungen erfahren. Zwei Gründe haben diese Entwicklung maßgeblich beeinflusst: Obgleich sich die römischrechtliche Wissenschaft nach wie vor hauptsächlich mit der rein dogmatischen Untersuchung von Ursprüngen und Entwicklungen römischer Rechtsregeln und den Beiträgen einzelner römischer Juristen hierzu befasst, wird sie sich mehr und mehr des Wirkkontexts dieser Regeln und ihres Verhältnisses zum römischen Gesellschaftsleben bewusst; die Schriften von Bruce Frier (Landlords and Tenants in Imperial Rome (1980)) und Dennis Kehoe (Investment, Profit and Tenancy: the Jurists and the Roman Agrarian Economy (1998)) seien beispielhaft genannt. Zum anderen hat die Veröffentlichung von Roberto Fioris La definizione della ‘locatio conductio’ im Jahr 1999 das moderne Verständnis des Strukturkonzepts der locatio conductio umfassend geändert und letztlich das vieldiskutierte Bild ihrer 'Trichotomie' zu Grabe getragen.

Die Konferenz möchte Wissenschaftler mit einem Interesse an der locatio conductio im römischen Privatrecht wie auch Öffentlichen Recht zusammenführen, und dabei neue dogmatische, soziale und ökonomische Sichtweisen auf Ursprung und Entwicklung dieses Vertragstyps untersuchen.

Vorschläge für Beiträge sind, mit kurzem Exposé, bis Freitag, 30. März 2012, erbeten.

Für weitere Informationen sowie die Einreichung der Beiträge steht Dr. Paul J. du Plessis zur Verfügung.

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Nuove prospettive in ordine alla locatio conductio in diritto Romano

Edimburgo, 6 – 8 Giugno 2012


A quasi cent’anni dalla pubblicazione della prima monografia del diciannovesimo secolo sul tema della locazione in diritto romano “La locazione di cose nel diritto romano” (1915) di Emilio Costa, la moderna concezione di questa tipologia di contratto è considerevolmente cambiata.

Le ragioni di questo fenomeno possono essere fondamentalmente ricondotte a due fattori: in primo luogo, i giusromanisti, ancorché in molti casi ancora impegnati in ricerche di pura dogmatica su origini e sviluppi delle regole di diritto ed in ordine al contributo dei singoli giuristi in questo processo, pian piano si stanno interessando al contesto in cui queste norme operavano e vanno acquisendo consapevolezza circa la loro relazione con la società romana.

Sono espressivi di questo diverso approccio opere come “Landlords and Tenants in Imperial Rome” (1980) di Bruce Frier e “Investment, Profit and Tenancy: the Jurists and the Roman Agrarian Economy” (1998) di Dennis Kehoe, giusto per menzionarne un paio.
Successivamente, la pubblicazione nel 1999 da parte di Roberto Fiori del suo “La definizione della ‘locatio conductio’” ha consentito che la moderna concezione della struttura concettuale di questo contratto mutasse definitivamente, conducendola al controverso tema della “tricotomia”.

Questa conferenza ha lo scopo di riunire gli studiosi che si interessino al tema della locatio conductio nel diritto romano – tanto privato, quanto pubblico – per indagare nuove prospettive – dogmatiche, sociali, economiche – sull’origine e lo sviluppo di questo contratto.

Il termine di presentazione delle proposte scade venerdì 30 marzo 2012.

Per maggiori informazioni o per inviare contributi od abstract, si prega di contattare il Dr. Paul J. du Plessis.

/centreforlegalhistory/

Legal History Book Prizes: John Philip Reid Book Award and the Cromwell Book Prize

Nominations are sought for the John Phillip Reid Book Award of the American Society for Legal History and for the Cromwell Book Prize of the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation. The Reid Award and the Cromwell Book Prize are mutually exclusive. The Reid Award is for a book by a mid-career or senior scholar, and the Cromwell Book Prize is for a 'first book' by a junior scholar. For advice where the distinction is doubtful, please consult Philip Girard, chair of the ASLH Committee on the John Phillip Reid Book Award, and Daniel Ernst, Chair of the Cromwell Book Prize Advisory Subcommittee.

John Phillip Reid Book Award

Named for John Phillip Reid, the prolific legal historian and founding member of the Society, and made possible by the generous contributions of his friends and colleagues, the John Phillip Reid Book Award is an annual award for the best monograph by a mid-career or senior scholar, published in English in any of the fields defined broadly as Anglo-American legal history. The award is given on the recommendation of the Society's John Phillip Reid Prize Committee.

For the 2012 prize, the Reid Award Committee will accept nominations from authors, presses, or anyone else, of any book that bears a copyright date in 2011. Nominations for the Reid Award should be submitted by 25 May 2012, by sending a curriculum vitae of the author and one copy of the book to each member of the committee:

Philip Girard, Chair
James Lewtas Visiting Professor
Osgoode Hall Law School
York University
4700 Keele Street
Toronto, ON
Canada
M3J 1P3

Catharine Macmillan
Reader in Legal History
Department of Law
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road
London E1 4NS
United Kingdom

Sophia Z. Lee
Assistant Professor
University of Pennsylvania Law School
3400 Chestnut St.
Philadelphia, PA 19104

Steven Wilf
Joel Barlow Professor of Law
Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development
Law School
University of Connecticut
65 Elizabeth Street
Hartford, Connecticut 06105

Laura Weinrib
Assistant Professor
University of Chicago Law School
1111 E. 60th St., Room 410
Chicago, IL 60637

Cromwell Book Prize

The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation awards annually a $5000 book prize for excellence in scholarship in the field of American Legal History by a junior scholar. The prize is designed to recognize and promote new work in the field by graduate students, law students, post-doctoral fellows and faculty not yet tenured. The work may be in any area of American legal history, including constitutional and comparative studies, but scholarship in the colonial and early national periods will receive some preference. The prize is limited to 'first books', i.e., works by a junior scholar that constitute his or her first major undertaking.

The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation awards the prize on the recommendation of the Cromwell Prize Advisory Committee of the American Society for Legal History. The Committee will consider books published in 2011. The Society will announce the award after the annual meeting of the Cromwell Foundation, which normally takes place early in November.

To nominate a book, please send copies of it and the curriculum vitae of its author to John D, Gordan, III, Chair of the Cromwell Prize Advisory Committee, and to each member of the Cromwell Book Prize Advisory Subcommittee with a postmark no later than 31 May 2012.

John D. Gordan, III
Chair, Cromwell Prize Advisory Committee
1133 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10128

Daniel R. Ernst
Chair, Cromwell Book Prize Advisory Subcommittee
Visiting Professor of Law (2011-12)
411B Vanderbilt Hall
New York University School of Law
40 Washington Sq. South
New York, NY 10012
ernst@law.georgetown.edu

Laura F. Edwards
Professor of History
History Department
Box 90719
Duke University
Durham, NC 27708

Robert W. Gordon
Stanford Law School
559 Nathan Abbott Way
Stanford CA 94305

Professor Laura Kalman
Department of History
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9410

From H-Net Humanities and Social Sciences

Legal History Ph.D.: opportunities in Exeter

Our colleagues, at Exeter, Anthony Musson and Chantal Stebbings, inform us that Exeter is prioritising legal history for the award of internal Ph.D. Scholarships this year. This is an excellent opportunity for those wishing to pursue doctoral studies in the field to gain funding and have the benefit of supervision from an excellent team of distinguished scholars. Exeter has hosted the British Legal History Conference twice, and is an agreeable city in a part of Britain with an agreeable climate, with many strong associations for English legal historians. In 2009, as this Blog reported (http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/elhblog/blogentry.aspx?blogentryref=8244), the University instituted the Bracton Centre for Legal History, demonstrating a commitment to the discipline see http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/law/research/clhr/

Musson and Steebings have just published an important collection with CUP on Making Legal History: Approaches and Methodologies, deriving from the recent BLHC they hosted.

For further information, see  http://socialsciences.exeter.ac.uk/postgraduate/research/funding/

Memorial Service Oxford, 11 February: Alan Rodger

After the moving memorial service in Edinburgh at St Giles for the Lord Rodger of Earlsferry (see http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/sln/blogentry.aspx?blogentryref=8798), readers of this Blog may be interested to know that another one will be held in the University Church in Oxford on 11 February at 2p.m. The card is copied in below:

ALAN FERGUSON RODGER

The Right Honourable the Lord Rodger of Earlsferry
PC, FBA, FRSE

1944 – 2011

Doctoral Student, New College, 1967-1969
Dyke Junior Research Fellow, Balliol College 1969-1970
Fellow, New College 1970-1972
Honorary Fellow, Balliol College 1999-2011
Honorary Fellow, New College 2005-2011
Visitor, St Hugh’s College 2003-2011
Visitor, Linacre College 2008-2011
Visitor, Balliol College 2010-2011
High Steward, University of Oxford 2008-2011

A MEMORIAL SERVICE WILL BE HELD IN THE
UNIVERSITY CHURCH OF ST MARY THE VIRGIN ON
SATURDAY 11 FEBRUARY 2012 AT 2 PM

Refreshments will be served in the Divinity School following the service.

George Dargo: Prominent Historian of Louisiana Law dies

I first met George Dargo only in November 2008. It was in New Orleans at a conference at Tulane organised by Vernon Palmer to mark the Bicentenary of the enactment of the Digest of the Civil Laws now in Force in the Territory of Orleans. In a sense, however, I had known Professor Dargo since I was a graduate student. This was because, a couple of years before I started work on my PhD in Edinburgh, he had published a major monograph, Jefferson’s Louisiana: Politics and the Clash of Legal Traditions (Cambridge Ma, 1975), based on his own Columbia PhD thesis. It is undoubtedly one of the most important studies ever of the Louisiana Purchase and its impact on the politics and legal culture of Louisiana. It was a major influence on my own work.

The importance of this book led to a revised edition by the Lawbook Exchange (2010), updated with a new introduction. To mark its publication, along with Georgia Chadwick, Director of the Law Library of Louisiana, who had encouraged the enterprise, the Lawbook Exchange organised a lunch at Antoine’s in New Orleans during the American Association of Law School’s Conference in January 2010.

 

width=320(At Antoine’s: Professor Dargo is on the left, with Olivier Moreteau, Vernon Palmer, and Claire Germaine. Photo courtesy of Valerie Horowitz, Lawbook Exchange.)

In the intervening years, Professor Dargo had studied law and moved from being a Professor of History to one of Law. He was to have a distinguished career at the New England Law School, where he maintained a notable interest in legal history, while also teaching Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, Freedom of Expression, and Law and Literature. It is worth noting that his collected essays, Colony to Empire: Episodes in American Legal History, will be published in the Spring, again by the Lawbook Exchange.

At the Tulane Conference Professor Dargo gave a lively historical paper on the context of the Digest. I spoke on the same panel. On the evening of that day, at a reception in the house of a benefactor of the Tulane Law School, I had my first long chat with him. He was interesting and witty with a wry attitude (he waswidth=240 keen on Seinfeld), and entirely charming. I took to him immediately.
 

(Professor Dargo signing copies of Jefferson’s Louisiana in New Orleans. Photo courtesy of Valerie Horowitz, Lawbook Exchange.)

 

In May, 2010 I organised in Edinburgh a Workshop on the history of the law of Louisiana. As one of the most noted scholars of the early territorial period in Lousiana, George was of course invited. He planned to come with his wife. Unfortunately, this ultimately proved impossible.

Despite illness, Professor Dargo taught through the last semester (a mark of the man), dying at home on the evening of 5 January. He will be much missed and our thoughts go to his wife, children and grandchildren. Further obituaries may be found at http://obits.dignitymemorial.com/dignity-memorial/obituary.aspx?n=George-Dargo&lc=7323&pid=155351886&mid=4947592&locale=en-US
and http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bostonglobe/obituary.aspx?n=george-dargo&pid=155355785&fhid=8784

 

Legal History Fellowship: Harvard

For young legal historians a period to turn their doctoral or other work into a book or other publications can be invaluable. It is therefore important to bring to the attention of readers of this Blog the advertisement for the Raoul Berger-Mark DeWolfe Howe Legal History Fellowship at Harvard.

As well as working on their research (in any field of legal history), they will acquire other skills and experience through involvement in organising the Harvard Law School Legal History Colloquium. The Harvard website states: "The purpose of the fellowship is to enable the fellow to complete a major piece of writing in the field of legal history, broadly defined. There are no limitations as to geographical area or time period." This said, past recipients listed have all been working on a relatively modern field of US history, with the concerns of contemporary US legal historians obviously to the fore, which is fair enough.

The deadline for applications is 15 February 2012.

See http://www.law.harvard.edu/academics/fellowships/raoul-berger-mark-dewolfe-howe-legal-history-fello.html

 

Interesting Gifts

At the beginning of a New Year it is worth reflecting on one of the more curious events in Edinburgh in the past year, and bringing it to the attention of the wider legal historical community, particularly since law is a discipline of words. Edinburgh is a Unesco City of Literature. Conan Doyle was brought up and educated here; Sherlock Holmes is obviously in part inspired by one of his teachers at the Medical School. Walter Scott studied arts and law at the University, and gave great praise to his teacher Baron David Hume. Robert Louis Stevenson also studied law in the University and once even considered seeking one of the chairs in law. Among contemporary writers one need only mention Ian Rankin, Sandy McCall Smith, once a professor in the Law School, and J. K. Rowling, who studied in the now Faculty of Education, and has become a great University Benefactor.

Through the year, at various important cultural institutions, including the Poetry Library, the National Library, the Film House, the City Library, and the National Museum of Scotland, charming paper sculptures appeared with notes in support of the significance of literature. The sculptures were always appropriate for the institution: a tyrannosaurus rex bursting through a book at the Museum, for example. It is interesting to note there were quite a number of links to Ian Rankin, an Edinburgh graduate, who set out to study the novels of Muriel Spark for his doctorate. In all ten were found, finally with a farewell note that indicated the artist to be a woman.

The sculptures are exquisite. Edinburgh photographer Chris Scott has documented them. Internet searches will turn up any number of websites relating too them, but a good place to start is the blog: http://thisiscentralstation.com/featured/mysterious-paper-sculptures/