The recent (and ongoing) economic upheaval in the United States and elsewhere highlights the extent to which individual well-being is connected to actions and actors beyond individual control. American legal history is marked by contestation between our society’s assumption of individual capacity and sovereign autonomy and legal and policy commitments that recognize the limits of such capacity. Efforts to protect the public have often been derided as contrary to the values of individualism and anti-paternalism within American law and society. The ideological commitment to individual capacity has underwritten certain legal determinations that fail to take into account the fragility of individual (or national) well-being, whether in the due process context or in international law.

Even where vulnerability is recognized in American law, it is often recognized as an exceptional state of affairs—bestowed upon children or the aged. Moreover, the recognition of vulnerability is often denied certain classes of persons based on race or class, as in the case of the treatment of minority juvenile offenders, or particular victims of domestic violence. Can vulnerability be understood as the ordinary state of affairs? Can humanistic inquiries aid in the law’s capacity to take vulnerability (both individual and global) seriously in a society committed to the freedom and autonomy of the individual? This panel will take up these issues in wide-ranging areas, included, but not limited to, race, class, age, ethnicity, geography, affectional orientation, disability, foreign affairs, and national security. Methodological approaches include, but are not limited to, historical, philosophical, literary, theological, and critical.

This program will explore these issues with several invited panelists and panelists who are accepted through this call.

To be considered as a panelist, please submit a statement of interest by Friday, March 30, 2012, including a description (2-3 paragraphs are sufficient) of your presentation that will address themes highlighted in the above description, and the methodology through which you advance such themes. Please also submit an updated curriculum vitae.

Panelists will be selected by April 16, 2012. The Section hopes to have these papers published as part of an online mini-symposium sponsored by a law review, either in print or online.

All panelists will be responsible for paying their annual meeting registration fee and travel expenses. Full-time faculty members of AALS member and fee-paid law schools are eligible to submit papers. Foreign, visiting (and not full-time on a different faculty) and adjunct faculty members, graduate students, and fellows are not eligible to submit.

Any inquiries about the Call for Panelists should be submitted to Professor Charlton Copeland, University of Miami Law School, via electronic mail at ccopeland@law.miami.edu.

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The Forum’s objective is to encourage the work of young scholars by providing experience in the pursuit of scholarship and the nature of the scholarly exchange. Meetings are held each spring, alternating between Yale, Stanford, and Harvard.

Paper submissions for the Forum should be sent to Ms. Kaitlin Burroughs at Harvard Law School (1525 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138). Electronic submissions should be sent to kburroughs[at]law.harvard.edu. The deadline for submission is February 15, 2012. Please note on the cover letter which topic your paper falls under.

Inquiries concerning the Forum should be sent to Adriaan Lanni (adlanni[at]law.harvard.edu) or Gabriella Blum (gblum[at]law.harvard.edu) at Harvard Law School, Joseph Bankman at Stanford Law School (jbankman[at]stanford.edu), or Ian Ayres at Yale Law School (ian.ayres[at]yale.edu)

The focus of this year’s session will be public law and the humanities. The topics to be addressed are:
Administrative Law
Constitutional Law
Criminal Law
Employment Law, Social Welfare Policy, and Anti-Discrimination Law
Environmental Law
Family Law
Jurisprudence and Philosophy
Law and Humanities (including Law and Literature, Critical Legal Studies, and Gender Studies)
Legal History
Public International Law
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• “Copyright: Contexts and Contests” (The Bibliographical Society of America) Molly O’Hagan Hardy, mollyohardy [at] mail.utexas.edu (pp. 2-3)
• “Authors and Readers in the Eighteenth Century” (Society for the History of Authorship,
  Reading, and Publishing — SHARP) Marta Kvande, marta.kvande [at] ttu.edu (p. 17)
• “Law & the Arts in the Long Eighteenth Century” Andrew Benjamin Bricker, abricker [at] stanford.edu (pp. 41-42)
• “Scotland, England, and Copyright Law” Jared Richman, jrichman [at] coloradocollege.edu (p. 51)
• “I Testify: Truth and Self in Law and Fiction” Kate Gaudet, ksgaudet [at] uchicago.edu (p. 54)
• “Literature and Human Rights in the Eighteenth Century” Ramesh Mallipeddi, ramesh.mallipeddi [at] hunter.cuny.edu (p. 58)

The deadline for proposals is Sept. 15, 2011. mw

This workshop will bring together leading scholars from international law, history, anthropology, international relations and literature, to assess the role of law in the organisation and occasional critique of formal and informal empire, and the role of empire (and the righteous critique of empire) in the organisation of modern international law.

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The conference is intended to promote reflection on “creativity and the law” in all the possible senses of that phrase: law and its interaction with the arts, including literature and theatre; innovation within the law and innovative uses of the law; the development of new law; legal postmodernism; new and distinctive ways of interpreting law; the relationship between law and religion; the application, adoption or appropriation of law in or by other disciplines…and in a thousand other ways.

The call for papers deadline is Feb. 4, 2011.

GikII is a workshop concerned with exploring the legal interaction between popular culture, speculative fiction, and new technologies. It has been described unimaginatively as trail-blazing, innovative, fun and informative. We like to think of GikII as the legal workshop equivalent of a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, in other words, it is “like having your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick”. GikII is where the bravest, fun-est (not to be confused with funniest) and zaniest ideas about law and technologies are discussed. In some instances we explore technologies so new that in fact there is not even a term to describe them, while some other times we have discussed technologies long gone. We only ask that you are imaginative and think of your fellow travellers instead of yourself. GikII is all about giving legal scholars the opportunity to engage in blue skies thinking (variations of the visible electromagnetic radiation spectrum may occur depending on which planet you may currently inhabit). If you have a paper that is languishing at the bottom of your hard drive and is crying out to see the light of a USB stick, GikII is the place for you. We laugh in the face of tradition and make rude comments about scholarly convention.

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