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Law & Humanities Blog

Interpretation In Legal Reasoning

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 01:39 PM PDT

Timothy A. O. Endicott, University of Oxford Faculty of Law, has published Legal Interpretation in the Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Law (A. Marmor ed., Routledge, 2012). Here is the abstract.


The focus of this work is the role of interpretation in "legal reasoning," defined to mean "finding rational support for legal conclusions (general or particular)". My argument is that each of the following aspects of legal reasoning need not involve interpretation: 1. Resolving indeterminacies as to the content of the law; 2. Working out the requirements of abstract legal provisions; 3. Deciding what is just; 4. Equitable interference with legal duties or powers or rights; 5. Understanding the law. I do not claim that interpretation is unimportant to legal reasoning, but that most legal reasoning is not interpretative. Much of what is commonly called "interpretation" can be done with no interpretation at all.
Download the text from SSRN at the link.

Assocation for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities Open For Proposals For Next Year's Conference

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 01:35 PM PDT

From Professor Linda Meyer, Quinnipiac College of Law

Call for Participation: 15th Annual ASLCH Conference




March 16-17, 2012

Texas Wesleyan School of Law (Fort Worth, TX)



The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities is an organization of scholars engaged in interdisciplinary, humanistic legal scholarship. The Association brings together a wide range of people engaged in scholarship on legal history, legal theory, jurisprudence, law and cultural studies, law and literature, law and the performing arts, and legal hermeneutics. We want to encourage dialogue across and among these fields about questions of meaning, value, and interpretation, particularly as they bear upon ideas or issues of justice, identity, authority, and obligation, and more broadly, an understanding of law's place in culture. How do ideas of justice change over time and under what conditions? How does law appear in the cultural imagination? What are the linguistic, literary, and cultural processes at work in the law, and what are its institutional processes? How is the legal subject conceptualized and mobilized, and what are the limits on its freedom and authority?



We invite scholars with interests across the range of areas, fields, and disciplines encompassed by Law, Culture and the Humanities to organize panels or submit proposals for individual paper presentations. Examples of recent panel topics include:



Interpreting Cases, Creating Law

Roundtable: Dead Certainty: The Death Penalty and the Problem of Judgment

Imagining Rights in the Era of Globalization

Explorations in Law, Science, and Governance

What Can the Humanities Offer to Law?

Humanistic Critiques of Legal Education

Law and the Sacred

Visual Media and The Law

Underwriting Society: Law and Literature as Mutual Modes of Imagining Community



(The complete programs from past conferences are available on the ASLCH website: http://www.law.syr.edu/academics/centers/lch/past.html)



We urge those interested in participating to consider submitting complete panels or session proposals. We welcome a variety of formats and subjects, such as: panels; roundtables; film screenings and performance art; sessions in which the focus is on pedagogy; sessions that create a space for participants to join in a directed reading of a text (e.g., a lyric poem); author-meets-readers sessions, which provide a forum for conversation about a recently published book in the field; sessions in which commentators respond to a single paper or issue, or in which the chair presents the papers and the authors respond.



Ideally, traditional panels should include NO MORE THAN 3 PAPERS. All panel proposals should indicate the name of the chair. In most cases having a discussant is desirable, and the discussant can be, but does not have to be, the chair. All panels should be planned in such a way that 30 minutes of the 1 hour and 45 minutes generally allotted for sessions is reserved for discussion/comments by the audience. Proposals must indicate whether a "smart room" with computer, audio or video presentation technology will be needed. More detailed instructions about participation rules and limits are listed on the first page of the online conference submission system, but please note that we will accept a maximum of NO MORE THAN ONE PAPER AND ONE ROUNDTABLE presentation for any individual participant, although participants may chair more than one panel. Additionally, each paper submission [abstract] is limited to 150 words, and because the site will not save partial submissions, it is important to have all the information for your proposed paper or panel completed before you begin the submission process.



We would also welcome you to volunteer to serve as a chair and/or discussant, whether you are submitting a paper proposal or not.
If you would like to serve as a chair and/or discussant, please indicate the areas or subjects of your interest/expertise.



We will accept proposals for panels, papers, roundtables, and other session proposals, and volunteers to serve as panel chairs or discussants, from July 1 until October 15, 2011.



PLEASE NOTE: To submit proposals, please go to the online submission site: http://www.regonline.com/15thannualmeetingLCH



As it becomes available, additional information about accommodations and other conference matters, will be posted to the, "ASLCH Annual Conference Information" page on the ASLCH webpage at: http://www.law.syr.edu/academics/centers/lch/conference.html.



Participants will be notified by December 31, 2011. We cannot promise that we will be able to accommodate all proposals.





Questions, please contact Matthew Anderson (manderson@une.edu)







Call for Nominations, Dissertation Award, Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 01:32 PM PDT

From Professor Linda Meyer, Quinnipiac College of Law

Julien Mezey Dissertation Award




The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities invites submissions for its 2012 Julien Mezey Dissertation Award. This annual prize is awarded to the dissertation that most promises to enrich and advance interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of law, culture and the humanities. The award will be presented at the Association's 2012 annual meeting, which will be hosted by Texas Wesleyan University School of Law on March 15-17, 2012.



The Association seeks the submission of outstanding work from a wide variety of perspectives, including but not limited to law and cultural studies, legal hermeneutics and rhetoric, law and literature, law and psychoanalysis, law and visual studies, legal history, legal theory and jurisprudence. Scholars completing humanities-oriented dissertations in SJD and related programs, as well as those earning PhDs, are encouraged to submit their work. Applicants eligible for the 2012 award must have defended their dissertations successfully between September 1, 2010 and August 31, 2011.



The deadline for nominations for the 2012 award is November 1, 2011. On or before that date, each nominee must submit the following:



1) a letter by the nominee detailing the genesis, goal, and contribution of the dissertation;

2) a letter of support from a faculty member familiar with the work;

3) an abstract, outline, and selected chapter of the dissertation;

4) contact information for the nominee.



All materials should be sent to:

Leonard Feldman, lfeldman@hunter.cuny.edu



Award finalists will be notified by December 1, 2011. Finalists must then submit an electronic version of the entire dissertation. The winner will be determined by early February and invited to the 2012 ASLCH annual meeting in Dallas. ASLCH will pay travel and lodging costs.



Questions should be addressed to Leonard Feldman, lfeldman@hunter.cuny.edu.




Call for Applications, Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities, Graduate Student Workshop

Posted: 01 Jul 2011 01:29 PM PDT

From Professor Linda Meyer, Quinnipiac College of Law


The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities (ASLCH) welcomes applications for its first ever Graduate Student Workshop, to be held March 15, 2012. The half day Workshop immediately precedes the ASLCH Annual Meetings, to be hosted by Texas Wesleyan University School of Law March 16-17, 2012. Applicants can be graduate students from any discipline or law students with scholarly interests in Law, Culture, and the Humanities.




The Workshop's aims are to promote the future development of the field of Law, Culture and the Humanities through the development of our junior colleagues by bringing together graduate students and established scholars in Law, Culture, and the Humanities. During seminars, panel discussions, informal conversation, and shared meals, we will discuss scholarly work, give feedback on student research projects, address issues pertinent to professional development, and facilitate scholarly networks between graduate and faculty colleagues by encouraging intellectual community.



The Graduate Student Committee of ASLCH for 2011-2012, who will be planning the Workshop, includes Paul A. Passavant, Chair (Department of Political Science, Hobart and William Smith Colleges), Austin Sarat (Departments of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought and Political Science, Amherst College), Stewart Motha (Kent Law School, University of Kent), Marianne Constable (Department of Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley), and Ravit Reichman (Department of English, Brown University).



ASLCH will subsidize the participation of up to 15 successful graduate student applications. The deadline for applications is Friday December 2, 2011. Applications should be sent electronically to Professor Paul A. Passavant, Department of Political Science, Hobart and William Smith Colleges (Passavant@hws.edu).



Applications should include a Curriculum Vitae (CV), the title and abstract of the student's proposed paper for the ASLCH Annual Meetings March 16-17, 2012, and a letter not longer than two pages describing the student's status in graduate school, the student's dissertation or significant interest in Law, Culture, and the Humanities, and what the student hopes to gain from attending the Workshop.





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