Monday, June 4, 2012

Legal History at the LSA Meeting

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The Law and Society Association meets this week in Hawai'i. Here is a sampling of the legal history offerings, culled from the preliminary program:

Changing Conceptions of Law and Society in American Legal Thought
Chair: John H Schlegel (SUNY, Buffalo)
Panelists:
Charles Barzun (University of Virginia), The Forgotten Foundation of Hart and Sacks  
Robert W. Gordon (Stanford University), Law and Society in Critical Historicism
David M Rabban (University of Texas), From the American Historical School to Sociological Jurisprudence
John H Schlegel (SUNY, Buffalo), What Everybody Knows about American Legal Realism
Discussant: Susanna Blumenthal (University of Minnesota)

Author Meets Reader--Common Law, History, and Democracy in America, 1790–1900, by Kunal Parker
Chair: Renisa Mawani (University of British Columbia
Author: Kunal M. Parker (University of Miami) kparker@law.miami.edu
Readers:
Marianne Constable (University of California, Berkeley)
Eve Darian-Smith (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Jon Goldberg-Hiller (University of Hawai`i)
William Novak (University of Michigan)

Chinese Ritual, Property, and Family Litigation
Chair: Mary Szto (Hamline University) 
Panelists:
Dong Jiang (Renmin University of China), A Review of Traditional Chinese Family Law: Property Rights and Dispute Resolution under Li
Chun Shan (China University of Political Science and Law), Family Law and Its Ethical Facets in Chinese Tradition
Mary Szto (Hamline University), Strengthening the Rule of Virtue and Finding Chinese Law in "Other" Places: Gods, Kin, Gifts, and Guilds
Discussant: Pitman B. Potter (University of British Columbia)

Comparative Approaches to the Law of Slavery and Race in the Americas
Chair: Michelle McKinley (University of Oregon)
Panelists:
Robert J. Cottrol (George Washington University), Raça no Pais do Futuro: Brazil’s Journey from Branqueamento to “Racial Democracy”
Ariela J. Gross (University of Southern California), Comparing Law and Racial Identity under Slavery in Colonial Cuba, Louisiana, and Virginia
Sarah Levine-Gronningsater (University of Chicago), Both Free and Bound: Northern Slavery and Gradual Emancipation Law
Michelle McKinley (University of Oregon), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Black): Legal and Cultural Constructions of Race and Nation in Colonial Latin America
Discussant: Christopher L. Tomlins (University of California, Irvine) 

Constitutional Legal History: Evidence of the Emergence of Civil Rights Provisions and Mechanisms Associated with Federal -State Conflicts
Chair/Discussant: Joanna Grisinger (Northwestern University)
Panelists:
Jocelyn Evans (University of West Florida), Courthouse as Court House: The Social Meaning of American Judicial Architecture
Noga Morag-Levine (Michigan State University), Common Law, Civil Law, and the History of Precaution
Charles M. Yablon (Yeshiva University), Madison's Full Faith and Credit Clause: A Historical Analysis

Intimate Relationships and the State: Reconsidering the Trope of Separate Spheres
Chair/Discussant: Joanna L. Grossman (Hofstra University)
Panelists:
Rebecca Probert (University of Warwick), Presumptions, Precedents, and Private Choices: Regulating Cohabitation in Nineteenth-Century England
Carolyn B. Ramsey (University of Colorado), The Exit Myth: Family Law, Gender Roles, and Changing Attitudes toward Female Domestic Violence Victims
Gail Savage (St. Mary's College of Maryland), The Private Sphere in the Public Domain: Divorce as Punishment in Nineteenth Century England
Danaya C. Wright (University of Florida), Is the Trope of Separate Spheres Useful in Post-Modern Family Law History? A Question, an Excursus, and a Hypothetical

Islamic Court Procedures: Medieval Texts and Their Social Contexts
Chair: Tamir M Moustafa (Simon Fraser University)
Panelists:
Mohammad Fadel (University of Toronto), Evidentiary Presumptions and the Social in Medieval Islamic Law
David S Powers (Cornell University), Judicial Review in Islamic Law
Intisar Rabb (Boston College), Judicial Independence in Early Islamic Law and Society
Lena Salaymeh (University of California, Berkeley), The Interplay of Courts: Judicial and Political Authority in Medieval Islamic History


New Developments in the History of Intellectual Property
Chair/Discussant: Margaret Chon (Seattle University)
Panelists:
Oren Bracha (University of Texas), How Did Film Become Property? The Early Film Industry and American Copyright
Catherine L. Fisk (University of California, Irvine), Intellectual Property without Law or Property: Attribution in Advertising and Screen Credit
Jenny Roth (Lakehead University), Monica Flegel (Lakehead University), It’s Like Rape: Exploring Social Understandings of Copyright in Debates between Fans and Creative Producers
Brad Sherman (Griffith University), Public Ownership of Private Spectacles: Copyright and Television
Steven Wilf (University of Connecticut), The Patent Wars in Late 19th Century America

The Histories of Lawyers as Shapers, Administrators, and Resistors of Social Change
Chair: Robert W. Gordon (Stanford University)
Panelists:
Tomiko Brown-Nagin (University of Virginia), Looking Below to Find Economic Conceptions of Civil Rights: A Movement and Its Lawyers' Struggles in the Southern Ghetto
Susan D. Carle (American University), Inventing Civil Rights Lawyering: A Comparison of the Turn-of-the-Century Work of the National Association of Colored Women and the Niagara Movement (1895-1910),
Jefferson Decker (Rutgers University), The Public-Interest Right and the Reagan Administration: Political Mobilizations around the Takings Clause
Robert E. Rosen (University of Miami), The Hubris of “Counsel to the Situation”: Louis Brandeis and Plaster Casts
Daniel Sharfstein (Vanderbilt University), Legalizing Massive Resistance
Discussant: Lauren Robel (Indiana University)

Are you at the conference and taking notes? We love to receive coverage of panels and lectures. Send us an email if you have something to contribute.