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Law & Humanities Blog

The Humanities--Why?
Atticus Finch as a Christian Lawyer
A "Mad Scientist" For Real? And In a Movie?

Posted: 28 Feb 2011 11:09 AM PST

The American Conference of Academic Deans and Phi Beta Kappa are co-sponsoring a conference for which the theme is "Are the Humanities Now a Luxury?" The conference, scheduled for November 10-12 in Charleston, SC, has posted its request for proposals at the website here.

Atticus Finch as a Christian Lawyer

Posted: 28 Feb 2011 10:43 AM PST

Lance McMillian, Atlanta's John Marshall Law School, has published Atticus Finch - Christian? in volume 77 of the Tennessee Law Review (2010).

Here is the abstract.

This essay is the third-part of A Dialogue Commemorating the Fiftieth Anniversary of to Kill a Mockingbird's Publication between Professors Lance McMillian and Judy Cornett, featured in the Tennessee Law Review. In this piece, Professor McMillian answers three questions posed to him by Professor Cornett: (1) Is Atticus Finch really a Christian in any meaningful sense?, (2) Is Atticus Finch's Christian faith the "but for" impetus behind his actions?, and (3) Should Atticus Finch be judged a hero at all under today's standards?

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

A "Mad Scientist" For Real? And In a Movie?

Posted: 28 Feb 2011 10:41 AM PST

The Scientist features Jim Fields' documentary about neurologist Robert White, who died last year. Mr. Fields notes that Dr. White might fall into the class of the "real" "mad scientist," someone whose thoughtful integration of research and imagination led him toward the boundaries of what we now consider commonplace. But he did some unusual things in the lab, too--things we still consider odd, and maybe off-limits, such as grafting one monkey's head onto another body.

Bioethicists Will Gaylin and Dan Callahan, who co-founded bioethics think tank, The Hastings Center, in 1969, remember talk of brain transplantation when organ transplant technology was developing. "It used to be kind of a joke," says Callahan. "If you transplant my brain into somebody else's head, who would that person be? Is a person the brain or the body?"

....

"Real mad scientists...are not lone wolves like in the movies," says Fields. "They're doing things that are sanctioned in their time and place, in society, that are only considered by later values to be wrong."

...

While Callahan doubts that White would have been allowed to do this research today, he notes that he likely received approval from a number of organizations in his day. But does that context of permission make his actions ethical? "I don't think you can go back and prejudge generations of people," says Gaylin, "but by the time he was doing his research, there were a significant number of people talking about medical ethics in an advanced form."

So which is it? Was White a researcher outside the boundaries of bioethics or a man doing right by the standards of his time?

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UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

Usable websites for people with learning disabilities

Posted: 28 Feb 2011 10:00 AM PST

A reminder: in this week’s Painless Introduction on Wednesday, 2 March, Pete Williams will talk about creating usable websites for people with learning disabilities. This lunchtime event will take place from 13:05 to 13:50 in Room G31, UCL Department of Information Studies, Foster Court, London [announcement | map]. See you there!

UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

Are digital technologies creating engaging visitor experiences?

Posted: 25 Feb 2011 04:54 AM PST

Digital technologies are beginning to play a vital role in the work of museums and galleries, whether on websites and handheld devices or in gallery displays and many are using digital technology in innovative ways to support visitor experiences. They are becoming more embedded, and networked, and are changing the experience of visiting museums be providing more [...]

Law & Humanities Blog

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 07:21 AM PST

Andrea Bianchi, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, has published Terrorism and Armed Conflict: Insights from a Law & Literature Perspective at 24 Leiden Journal of International Law 1 (2011). Here is the abstract.

This article examines some selected issues relating to terrorism and international humanitarian law (IHL): the characterization of the nature of armed conflicts in which armed groups, qualified as 'terrorist,' are involved; terrorism as a war crime; and the determination of the status and treatment (including detention) of terrorist suspects apprehended in the course of an armed conflict. The analysis emphasizes the importance of legal categories and legal qualifications of factual situations for the purpose of determining the applicable law as well as the crucial importance of taking societal practice into account when evaluating the state of the law in any given area. The main focus of the article, however, is on providing a few basic insights, drawn from the law & literature movement, on international humanitarian law and terrorism. Short of any epistemological ambition, literature is used as a remainder that the law is not a set of neutral rules, elaborated and applied independently of context and historical background; that the human condition remains central; and that legal regulation cannot be oblivious to it. Finally, mention is made of interpretive techniques, developed in the field of literary studies, that may help establish social consensus on the interpretation of IHL grey areas.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

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UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

Speakers and Workshop Leaders Confirmed for InterFace 2011

Posted: 24 Feb 2011 06:04 AM PST

The InterFace 2011 committee has just announced all the speakers and workshop leaders for the forthcoming InterFace. Including UCLDH’s very own Director Claire Warwick and Deputy Director Melissa Terras! The keynote speakers are: Melissa Terras (UCL) Digitsation of Cultural Heritage and Image Processing Stephen Scrivener (University of the Arts, London) Design Research and Creative Production The workshops are: Data [...]

Law & Humanities Blog

New CBS Comedy Features Yes, More Lawyers
Call for Panelists AALS Section on Law and Humanities
Identifying Scientism
Legal Interpretation
Well, "L": The Green Bag Takes On the NYT

New CBS Comedy Features Yes, More Lawyers

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 04:39 PM PST

Not enough TV lawyers in your life? Then by all means check out the new CBS comedy Mad Love, which airs Mondays at 8:30 (7:30 Central time). It stars Jason Biggs as Ben and Tyler Lapine as Leo, two young attorneys in the Big City (that's NY), haplessly looking for love. The sitcom's the work of Matt Tarses. Other stars: Sarah Chalke (of "Scrubs") as Ben's new found love Kate and Judy Greer (a frequent guest star on such Chuck Lorre comedies as "Two and a Half Men" and "The Big Bang Theory") as Connie, Kate's roommate, who spectacularly does not get along with Leo. We suspect we know how that relationship will turn out. So far, the show has been amusing and well-acted, but predictable, and the law takes a back seat to the developing romance between Ben and Kate. Episodes already aired available here.

Call for Panelists AALS Section on Law and Humanities

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 07:19 AM PST

Call for Panelists AALS Section on Law and Humanities

"Excavating and Integrating Law and Humanities in the Core Curriculum" 2012 AALS Annual Meeting January 4-8, 2012 Washington, D.C.

The AALS Section on Law and Humanities will hold a program during the AALS 2012 Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. with panelists who will share methods of teaching law and humanities perspectives in "core courses" such as property, torts, contracts, corporations, federal income tax, civil procedure, contracts, or criminal law, and others not traditionally understood to include these perspectives.

Many agree that law and humanities perspectives are important vehicles for unpacking the substantive content of the core curriculum, as well as for building and honing key skills necessary for legal practice. Though many acknowledge that these perspectives are vitally important, there is less agreement as to how faculty can successfully implement these perspectives in their classrooms. This program will include a variety of panelists and will explore ways law and humanities perspectives can be used successfully to enrich law school teaching.

To be considered as a panelist, please submit a statement of interest by Friday, March 25, 2011, including a description (2-3 paragraphs is sufficient) of the course that you teach and the methods that you use to excavate and integrate law and humanities perspectives that you would discuss as part of the panel. Please also submit an updated curriculum vitae.

Panelists will be selected by April 11, 2011. Each selected panelist will be required to submit a 4-6 page draft in October 2011, describing their law and humanities teaching technique(s), for use by the moderator. The Section hopes to have these papers published as part of an online mini-symposium sponsored by the California Law Review.

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 Melissa Murray, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law via electronic mail at mmurray@law.berkeley.edu.

Identifying Scientism

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 07:17 AM PST

Susan Haack, University of Miami School of Law and Department of Philosophy, has published Six Signs of Scientism (Seis Signos De Cientismo) in Discusiones Filoficas, Ano 11 (No. 15) June 2010. Here is the abstract.

As the English word "scientism" is currently used, it is a trivial verbal truth that scientism-an inappropriately deferential attitude to science-should be avoided. But it is a substantial question when, and why, deference to the sciences in inappropriate or exaggerated. This paper tries to answer that question by articulating "six signs of scientism": the honorific use of "science," etc; using scientific trappings purely decoratively; preoccupation with demarcation; preoccupation with "scientific method"; looking to the sciences for answers beyond their scope; denying the legitimacy or worth of non-scientific (e.g. legal or literary) inquiry, or of writing poetry or making art.

Download the article from SSRN at the link. NB: The text is in Spanish.

Legal Interpretation

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 07:12 AM PST

George H. Taylor, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, has published Legal Interpretation: The Window of the Text as Transparent, Opaque, or Translucent at 10 Nevada Law Review 700 (Summer 2010). Here is the abstract.

It is a common metaphor that the text is a window onto the world that it depicts. In legal interpretation, the metaphor has been developed in two ways – the legal text as transparent or opaque – and the Article proposes a third – the legal text as translucent. The claim that the legal text is transparent has been associated with more liberal methodological approaches. According to this view (often articulated by critics), the legal text does not markedly delimit meaning. Delimitation comes from the interpreters. By contrast, stress on the opacity of the legal text comes from those who give priority to the text rather than to any separable purpose lying behind the text. Frederick Schauer, for example, argues that rule-following requires treating a rule's generalization as entrenched and hence opaque. The Article's emphasis on the legal text as translucent builds on the hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur and emphasizes the interrelation of text and context. To comprehend a legal text by reference to its context is to appreciate the light that the context brings to the text and renders the thickness and color of the text no longer opaque but translucent. The text is translucent to its context. The context is not outside the text but part of it. Attention to the text without regard for its external context may distort its meaning. The Article exemplifies this perspective by drawing on recent work by Laurence Tribe and Justice Breyer and applies it briefly to recent Supreme Court jurisprudence. The Article frames the attention to the legal text by referencing the debate over the text as transparent, opaque, or translucent in literary and philosophic interpretation.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Well, "L": The Green Bag Takes On the NYT

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 07:10 AM PST

Ross E. Davies, George Mason University School of Law; The Green Bag, is publishing Gray Lady Bowdler: The Continuing Saga of the Crimson Spot in the Green Bag Almanac and Reader 2012. Here is the abstract.

This is a short, true story about the Green Bag versus the New York Times, two periodicals doing their best according to their respective lights to serve their respective readerships. The story is told for the most part through recent email correspondence between, on one side, a variety of Times editors and, on the other side, one Green Bag editor. Reasonable minds might differ about the relative merits of the positions taken and the practices followed by the two periodicals and their spokespeople, but no reasonable person could deny the entertainment value of some of their exchanges. Those exchanges are reproduced in chronological order, starting on the next page. But first, a small dose of background...

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

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UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

Seminar: Developing digital communities

Posted: 23 Feb 2011 08:20 AM PST

In the next Centre for Audio-Visual Study and Practice in Archaeology [CASPAR] and UCL Institute of Archaeology [IOA] joint seminar, Andy Bevan (UCL) and Lorna Richardson (UCL) will talk about ‘Developing digital communities’. See details below: Date: Monday, 28th February 2011 Time: 4pm – 6pm Location: Room 612, UCL Institute of Archaeology, 31-34 Gordon Square, London [WC1H 0PY] All [...]

Medical Humanities Blog

On Nun Apothecaries in Renaissance Florence

Posted: 22 Feb 2011 06:40 AM PST

A new article authored by Sharon T.

Strocchia (Emory University) is available early view in Renaissance Studies entitled The nun apothecaries of Renaissance Florence: marketing medicines in the convent. Here is the Abstract:

Using unpublished archival sources, this essay analyses the development of convent pharmacies in sixteenth-century Florence and situates them in a changing medical and political landscape. These female-run apothecary shops shed light on several important issues for historians of Renaissance medicine and society: the nature and extent of women's medical agency; the acquisition and transmission of specialized knowledge outside a university or guild setting; the regulation of unofficial practitioners by guild and state authorities. By producing and marketing drugs to the public, Renaissance religious women both augmented the medical resources available in Italian urban society and acquired roles of public significance beyond the spiritual realm. I analyse the roots of convent pharmacies in new social welfare initiatives circa 1500, then consider their products, clientele, business practices and methods of training new practitioners. Finally, I ask how convent pharmacies were regulated and why they were protected by early Medici dukes. I argue that Florentine convent pharmacies remained vigorous entities throughout the sixteenth century despite tighter enclosure provisions and professionalizing aspirations, partly because contestations over their status enabled Cosimo I de' Medici and his successors to advance their personal authority within a centralizing state.

The article is recommended. (It should be plain to readers of MH Blog why Renaissance medicine is important not just in its own right, but for the ways in which it shapes contemporary understandings about medicine, science, and (late) modernity in general).

Law & Humanities Blog

Mixed Juries In Ireland in the Nineteenth Jury

Posted: 18 Feb 2011 10:55 AM PST

Niamh Howlin, Queen's University Belfast, has published Fenians, Foreigners and Jury Trials in Ireland, 1865-70 iin The Irish Jurist 2011. Here is the abstract.

This paper examines the circumstances which led to the empaneling of a Swiss watchmaker, a French professor and an Italian hatter, along with nine others, to try an American Fenian in Cork in 1865. This was the trial of Captain John McCafferty, a former Confederate soldier who later became an important figure in the Irish nationalist movement. His trial for treason-felony in 1865 is a fascinating example of the use of what was known as a jury de medietate linguae; a mixed jury consisting of half locals and half aliens. It is significant because it appears to be the only recorded use of a mixed jury in Ireland, although interestingly, it attracted very little comment, despite the unusual nature of the tribunal. After a brief history of the origins and development of this unique tribunal, this article will compare the historical use of mixed juries in common law countries. McCafferty's trial will then be considered in the wider context of the Fenian organisation's activities in the 1860s, and particularly in light of subsequent Fenian cases where mixed juries were sought.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

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UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

Seminar: Archaeology, television and the public

Posted: 17 Feb 2011 02:30 AM PST

Just a reminder about the Centre for Audio-Visual Study and Practice in Archaeology [CASPAR] and UCL Institute of Archaeology [IOA] joint seminar: Tim Schadla-Hall (UCL) and Chiara Bonacchi (UCL) will talk about ‘Archaeology, television and the public’. See details below: Date: Monday, 21st February 2011 Time: 4pm – 6pm Location: Room 612, UCL Institute of Archaeology, [...]

Medical Humanities Blog

On the University of Chicago-Stateville Prison Malaria Experiments

Posted: 17 Feb 2011 07:43 AM PST

Bernard Harcourt (University of Chicago Law) has a working paper up on SSRN (full-text open-access) entitled Making Willing Bodies: Manufacturing Consent Among Prisoners and Soldiers, Creating Human Subjects, Patriots, and Everyday Citizens - The University of Chicago Malaria Experiments on Prisoners at Stateville Penitentiary. Here is the Abstract:

In March 1944, doctors at the University of Chicago began infecting volunteer convicts at Stateville Prison with a virulent strand of malaria to test the effectiveness and side-effects of potent anti-malarial drugs. According to Dr. Alf Alving, the principal investigator, malaria "was the number-one medical problem of the war in the Pacific" and "we were losing far more men to malaria than to enemy bullets." This refrain would rehearse one of the most productive ways of speaking about prisoner experimentation. The Stateville prisoners became human once again and regained their citizenship and political voice by sacrificing their bodies to the war effort. This paper explores how the consent of the prisoners was fabricated and compares this to the way in which the willingness of soldiers to sacrifice their lives is manufactured - and, far less dramatically, to the way in which we produce our own willingness in our everyday acceptance of the daily and ordinary routines of work, family life, and citizenship. Like the prisoners at Stateville, we are made to feel the need to sacrifice ourselves - to work, to vote, to serve, to abide, to agree - through very similar associations of bodily sacrifice with citizenship, loyalty, and patriotism.

The article is recommended.

For those interested in the general history linking malaria research, human subjects, and war, see the excellent monographs by Leo Slater and Margaret Humphreys. For those interested in the theoretical point regarding bodily sacrifice, patriotism, and citizenship in context of coercive human subjects research, see Goodman, McElligott, and Marks's excellent anthology.

(h/t The Professor)

Medical Humanities

Health, Illness and Ethnicity conference

Posted: 17 Feb 2011 01:32 AM PST

Two-day Conference: 'Health, Illness and Ethnicity: Migration, Discrimination and Social Dislocation'

Centre for the History of Medicine in Ireland, University College Dublin, 10-11 June 2011

Organisers Catherine Cox (University College Dublin), Hilary Marland (University of Warwick) and Sarah York (University College Dublin and University of Warwick).

This two-day Wellcome Trust funded conference will focus on the relationship between illness and migration, discrimination and social dislocation. By migration, we refer to both migration between countries and internal movements of populations, for example between regions or from rural to urban areas.

Our focus is primarily on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but we are also interested in exploring the relationship between historical concerns surrounding health and ethnicity and current health practice and policy. The workshop is intended to contribute to debates on the susceptibility of specific groups to medical interventions, as well as interpretations of the relationship between health and illness, migration and ethnicity, and the management of the health and illness of ethnic groups within broader health and welfare strategies. The workshop will explore the experiences of particular groups, be these 'foreigners', migratory peoples, patients of varied religious denominations and those suffering from particular disorders or diseases. Participants will include keynote speaker Alison Bashford, Roberta Bivins, Kat Foxhall, Alan Ingram and John Welshman. The conference will also provide the organisers with an opportunity to present on their project on 'Madness, Migration and the Irish in Lancashire, c.1850-1921' (funded by the Wellcome Trust). We are keen to involve a mix of early career and established scholars, historians and academics from a broad range of disciplines, policy makers and practitioners in the conference.

We request that titles and abstracts for the conference be submitted by 1 March 2011. Abstracts should be c 500 words and include a title and summary of the paper, as well as details of the address, email and telephone numbers of the speaker(s). The workshop will be held at University College Dublin. Local costs for hotel accommodation (2 nights) and meals will be covered by the organisers, but we ask participants, where possible, to cover the costs of their travel to Dublin drawing on their own institutional resources. Modest funds may be available to cover the travel costs of speakers lacking institutional support.

Please contact either Catherine Cox or Sarah York for further information. Read More... Medical Humanities

UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

DH’s Hidden Histories

Posted: 11 Feb 2011 06:17 AM PST

We are delighted to report that Julianne Nyhan and Anne Welsh, of UCL Information Studies and UCLDH have been awarded funding from the University of Trier’s Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche Forschungszentrum (HKFZ) for a project entitled ‘Digital Humanities as Wissensraum: uncovering hidden histories (c. 1949-1980)’. The application of computing to the Humanities is not new and can be [...]

InterFace 2011: Call for Participation

Posted: 11 Feb 2011 03:50 AM PST

InterFace is a symposium for humanities and technology. In 2011 it is being jointly organised by colleges across London and will be an invaluable opportunity for participants to visit this active hub of digital scholarship and practice. InterFace is a conference organised by post-graduates for post-graduates in technology and the humanities. It's part conference, part [...]

Law & Humanities Blog

The Higher Moral Law and the Fugitive Slave Act
Secularism, Religious Thought, and Human Rights
The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations

The Higher Moral Law and the Fugitive Slave Act

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 10:55 AM PST

Steven Lubet, Northwestern University School of Law, has published The Oberlin Fugitive Slave Rescue: A Victory for the Higher Law in volume 13 of North & South (2011). Here is the abstract.

This article tells the story of the Oberlin fugitive slave rescue and the ensuing prosecutions in federal court. The trial of rescuer Charles Langston marked one of the first times that adherence to "higher law" was explicitly raised as a legal defense in an American courtroom. The article is adapted from my book – Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial – which tells this story (and several others) in much more detail.

In the fall of 1859, John Price was a fugitive slave living in the abolitionist community of Oberlin, Ohio. He was lured out of town and captured by Kentucky slavehunters, but he was able to raise an alarm. Hundreds of Oberliners – including many students and graduates from the eponymous college – came to his rescue. They chased the slavehunters to nearby Wellington, where they freed John Price by force.

The pro-slavery Buchanan administration could not ignore such a blatant violation of the Fugitive Slave Act, and soon obtained indictments against thirty-seven rescuers, including twelve black men. The ensuing trials would be one of the first times that adherence to the "Higher Law" was raised as an explicit legal defense in a United States court.

Charles Langston – a free black man and the son of a Virginia plantation owner – was brought to trial in Cleveland the following spring. Langston was a militant abolitionist and a leader of Ohio's African-American community. Although convicted, he shocked the country when he defiantly addressed the court at sentencing. Langston announced that he would proudly continue to violate the Fugitive Slave Act, and he would assert the "God given right to freedom" in the face of any warrant or legal requisition.

Langston's attorney stunningly also declared himself a "votary of the Higher Law," thus setting the stage for a courtroom confrontation between morality and legality.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Secularism, Religious Thought, and Human Rights

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 10:50 AM PST

Zachary R. Calo, Valparaiso University School of Law, has published Religion, Human Rights and Post-Secular Legal Theory. Here is the abstract.

This paper proposes that the fundamental challenge for religious legal theory is the question of the secular and, in particular, a certain mode of secular reason that has shaped the idea of law within modernity. The fundamental ambition of modern legal thought was to sever law from a connection to a sacred cosmic and intellectual order. The idea of human rights, at least in its regnant expression, embodies this project most fully in that it has increasingly been defined as a moral tradition that stands over and against religion. This paper, by contrast, argues that the destabilization of secular meaning creates the space, and indeed the necessity, for a pluralist theological turn within the idea of human rights.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations

Posted: 10 Feb 2011 10:47 AM PST

Benedict Kingsbury, New York University School of Law, has published Introduction: The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations in The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations: Alberico Gentili and the Justice of Empire (B. Kingsbury & B. Straumann eds.; Oxford University Press, 2010). Here is the abstract.

Where did the writers of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries seek the legal maxims and methods, the principles governing treaties or embassies or jurisdiction or property, and the broader ideas of justice in the inception, fighting, and conclusion of war, which they built into a law of nations of enduring importance? To a considerable extent, they looked to Roman law, Roman debates about the justifications of Rome's wars and imperial expansion, and a rich tradition of ius naturae and ius gentium deriving from Greco-Roman and early Christian sources. This book brings together a set of fresh perspectives exploring the significance and implications of the use made of Roman legal concepts, and of Roman just war theory and imperial practice, by early modern European writers who shaped lasting approaches to natural law and the law of nations.

Download the introduction from SSRN at the link.

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