Information transmise par Z. Muslu:
Colloque Louvain 2010
Undoing law, framing contexts.
Normativity across the disciplines
Normativity across the disciplines
Marie Curie Actions
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
March 4-6th, 2010
For complementary information about the activities of the students, please visit: http://www.mariecurieculturesjuridiques.blogspot.com/
Présentation
Conference proposal
The aim of this conference is to bring together scholars of law who tackle it from different disciplinary perspectives. Our wish is to understand and critically assess the widespread urge to “contextualise” law which characterises a large spectrum of academic endeavours addressing the quaestio iuris.
How and to what extent can “contextualisation” still be claimed to be a useful guiding principle for such studies? The idea that law cannot be entirely understood if it is not situated in, or related to, a (social, economic, or cultural) context in which it actually lives is certainly not new. This idea gained prominence in the first half of the 20th century as an attack against the predominantly formalist legal orthodoxy of the times. It found expression in many currents of legal thought, mainly American Legal Realism, and has not disappeared from the radar screen of jurisprudential enquiry since then. Critical Legal Studies, Feminist Legal Theory, Law and Economics can all be seen as contemporary forms of this critique. For sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and other scholars not directly participating in these jurisprudential debates, the idea that law could be separated from its multiple contexts and considered abstractly is likely not to make much sense. The question to be asked would rather concern the role that the law plays in the more general process of social normativity.
Apart from any disagreement, many feel that a line can, and has to be drawn between what is law and what is not, between the text of law and its con-text. It is precisely this activity of distinguishing between the legal and the non-legal that we would like to examine more closely. In order to come to grips with this complex question, we propose a two-fold strategy. First, we would welcome specific “case studies”, which draw on already existing work and analyse it with the following questions in mind: How does the notion of context come into play as an analytical tool in studies taking law as their object? What are the merits and limits of various “contextualising” methodologies? How does the notion of context appear (explicitly or implicitly) in specific historical narratives of a particular legal institution or the law in general? How are these narratives structured? What has “context” been taken to mean in various theoretical contributions? Should it be redefined?
On the other hand, we also expect contributions which approach the subject matter of the conference in more general terms, addressing questions such as: How can historians, philosophers and sociologists challenge representations of the law as pertaining to a purely formalistic normativity, devoid of any history, on the one hand, and depictions of the law as a pure course of events, indifferent to formal legal norms, on the other? Is the formalist habit of drawing a line between law and non-law still to be denounced as a “lethean draught” which makes all historical and political particulars fall into oblivion? Or is it rather the case that all the currents which attempt to balance the formalistic approach with a closer look at the empirical level (by studying, for example, the “actual” functioning of the judiciary) have induced us to neglect the specific kind of logic which characterises legal norms as such? Finally, would it not be useful to distinguish between the set of institutions that is generally called the law (with its jurists, judges, law professors and students) and a more pervasive legal function, dispersed and immersed in society and sailing under the colours of con-text?
Hopefully, but not necessarily, these two manners of approaching the question of law and its contexts will intersect at some point at the conference, opening up new perspectives on an apparently familiar theme. We are therefore not strictly limited to the outlined agenda, but will also accept proposals framing the law-context-problem differently. By combining contributions from international scholars with different disciplinary backgrounds – ranging from historians, philosophers, and lawyers to sociologists – it is our intention to offer an all-too-rare opportunity to catch a transversal glimpse of the law as well as to question the assumptions which shape the various disciplines that study it.
Programme European legal cultures
Contract MEST - CT - 2005 - 021145
Huis Van Bethlehem, Auditorium WolfspoortSchapenstraat 34, Leuven, Belgium
This conference represents the final stage of the “European Doctorate in history, sociology, anthropology and philosophy of legal cultures in Europe”, a multilingual PhD programme financed by the European Commission and conceived to deepen the links between law and social sciences, in order to cross the boundaries that separate the different fields of study as well as the different countries.The topic of the meeting, “Undoing law, framing contexts. Normativity across the disciplines”, aims to encourage a reflection on the concepts of law and context, bringing together scholars with different academic backgrounds but with a common interest in law.
Many feel that a line has to be drawn between what is law and what it is not, between the text of law and its con-text. It is precisely this activity of distinguishing between the legal and the non-legal that we would like to examine more closely.
To that purpose, the conference will propose a two-fold strategy. It will first welcome specific “case studies”,
presented with the following questions in mind: How does the notion of context come into play as an analytical tool? On the second hand, other contributions will approach the subject matter in more general terms, addressing questions such as: How can historians, philosophers and sociologists challenge representations of the law as pertaining to a purely formalistic normativity, devoid of any history, on the one hand, and depictions of the law as a pure course of events, indifferent to formal legal norms, on the other?
Hopefully, but not necessarily, these two manners of approaching the question of law and its contexts will intersect at some point at the conference. By combining contributions from international scholars ranging from
historians, philosophers, and lawyers to sociologists, it is our intention to offer an all-too-rare opportunity to catch a transversal glimpse of the law.
Programme
Thursday, March 4th
09.30-10:30. - Academic opening and introduction, Prof. Paolo Napoli - EHESS-Paris, France, Prof. Rainer Kiesow - MPIER-Frankfurt a.M., Germany10:30-13:00 - Morning Session
10.30-11:30 - Legal Indicators: Prospects and Perils, Prof. Kevin Davis, New York University - School of Law, USAChair - Eliardo Teles
11:30-12:00. - Break
12:00-13:00 - The Context of the Law on Roads. Examples of the 'Normative Syndrome', Prof. Andres Botero, Universidad de Medellín, Colombia
Chair - Pablo Avilés Flores
13:00-14:30 - Lunch Time
14:30-17:30 - Afternoon Session
14.30-15.30 - The Culture of Noncompliance in Latin America, Prof. Mauricio Garcia-Villegas, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, BogotàChair - Carolina Vergel
15.30-16:00 - Break
16:00-17:00 - Human Rights and the Moral Imagination in Contemporary Latin America, Prof. Mark Goodale, George Mason University, USA
Chair - Rodrigo Míguez
Friday, March 5th
09:30-12:00 - Morning Session
09.30-10.30 - A Pathway for a Post-statalist, Theory of Sources of Law: Pre-statalist Recollections Revisited, Prof. Antonio Hespanha, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
Chair - Stefania Gialdroni
10.30-11:00 - Break
11:00-12:00 - Constitutional Transfer – Introducing the IKEA Theory, Prof. Günther Frankenberg, J.W. Goethe Universität-Frankfurt a.M., Germany
Chair - Hent Kalmo
Saturday, March 6th
09:00-13:15 - Morning Session
09.30-10:30 - Intorno all'eccezione: privilegio, decreto, grazia nel linguaggio giuridico e politico italiano. Secoli XII-XV, Prof. Massimo Vallerani, Università di Torino, ItalyChair - Magda Schusterova
10:30-11:30 - Il diritto fuori del diritto: letteratura, miti, immagini, Prof. Aldo Mazzacane, Università di Napoli Federico II, Italy
Chair - Silvia Falconieri
11:30-12:00 - Break
12:00-13:00 - The Statute of Pisa, Authenticae, and Roman Jurists in the Early Twelfth Century: The Context is Everything, Prof. Kenneth Pennington, Catholic University of America, USA
Chair - Michele Spanò
13.00-14.30 - Lunch Time
14:30-19:15 - Afternoon Session
14.30-15.30 - The Law and History of the Undoing of Law, Dr. Anton Schütz, Birkbeck College, School of Law-London, UKChair - Stefanie Günthner
15:30-16.30 - La possibilité de normativités fortes, Prof. Jean Clam, CNRS-Paris, France / CMB-Berlin, Germany
Chair - Pierre Thévenin
16.30-17.00 - Break
17:00-18:00 - Ce droit si gênant: droits réels et ius in corpus, Prof. Marta Madero, Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Chair - Sebastian Provvidente
18:00-18:30 - Conclusions, Prof. Emanuele Conte, Università Roma Tre, Italy
Pratique
Lieu
Huis Van Bethlehem, Auditorium Wolfspoort - Schapenstraat 34, Beguinage-Leuven, Belgium
Final schedule of the conference
Documents et informations complémentaires
- Download here Information and registration: http://www.europeanlegalcultures.eu/fileadmin/site_files/Programmes/locandinadef.pdf
- For further information visit: http://www.europeanlegalcultures.eu
- The conference is free and open to all. If you are interested in attending it, please send an e-mail to: europeanlegalcultures@gmail.com. Registration will be taken into account within the limits of the seats available.
