Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society

Call for Positions on the Editorial Board

Deadline: 15 January 2026

The European Society for Comparative Legal History (ESCLH) is seeking applications for positions on the editorial board of its flagship journal, Comparative Legal History, including at least an articles editor and a reviews editor.

Evidence of scholarly ability, experience in editing or a willingness to learn quickly, willingness to contribute to journal projects beyond the narrow scope of the job title, and membership (or a commitment to become a member if appointed) of the ESCLH are requirements. Full training in the journal’s processes will be provided as needed.

You would contribute to the advancement of comparative legal history as part of a warm, supportive, and dedicated team.

The journal is an official academic forum of the ESCLH. It was first published in 2013 and aims to offer a space for the development of comparative legal history. The journal welcomes contributions that explore law in different times and jurisdictions from across the globe.

Applications, indicating to which position/s is being applied, with a brief cover letter and short CV (no more than 4 pages) should be sent to Luisa Brunori (Vice-President of the ESCLH), at luisa.brunori@ens.psl.eu, by 15 January 2026.

The ESCLH particularly welcomes applications from people underrepresented in academia generally, and in the ESCLH and the journal particularly.

These positions are not paid.

The call for papers for the British Legal History conference is now open, for submissions on the conference theme ‘Law and Governance’. Proposals are due by 15 September 2025. Further information can be found at: 

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/history-of-law-and-governance/british-legal-history-conference.aspx

The inaugural recipients of the Awards are as follows:

Ian Duncanson

In recognition of a significant and sustained contribution to knowledge of law’s history, particularly in the British Empire, as scholar and teacher, in founding the field in Australia with the first Law and History Conference at La Trobe University in 1982, and inspiring subsequent enduring research activity.

Christopher Tomlins

For his leadership and sustained contribution in advancing the study of law and history, through scholarly works of distinction, in mentoring and fostering the research endeavours of other scholars and organisations, and in founding the field in Australia by organising the first conference at La Trobe University in 1982.

Wilfrid Prest

For his long and distinguished engagement with the field of law and history, especially in his contribution to knowledge of William Blackstone and English common law, in fostering the field in Australia through scholarship, organising conferences, and actively supporting the journal and other endeavours of ANZLHS.

ANZLHS is enormously grateful for the respective contributions of each of these scholars over many years.

Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan on 31 July and 1 August, 2025

Doshisha University, with the support of the Centre for Comparative and Transnational Law’s Transnational Legal History Group at CUHK LAW and the Asian Legal History Association, is organizing the Fifth Asian Legal History Conference at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan on 31 July and 1 August 2025. Previous Asian Legal History Conferences have been hosted, organized and supported by the University of Law at Hue University, the Faculty of Law at Thammasat University, the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore and the Faculty of Law at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The conference aims to bring together a diverse, interdisciplinary group of scholars, researchers and graduate students to share their research findings on topics relating to legal history in Asia. The conference is open to both scholars anywhere in the world working on Asian legal history, broadly understood, and scholars based in Asia working on any legal history-related subjects.

The deadline for paper and panel proposals is 15 March 2025.

Click here for more information – https://www.law.cuhk.edu.hk/app/events/call-for-papers-the-5th-asian-legal-history-conference/

You are invited to apply for the distinguished J. Willard Hurst Summer Institute in Legal History. 

This 13th biennial two-week program, devoted to supporting early-career legal historians, will take place June 15-27, 2025, at University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. This one-of-a-kind gathering features presentations by guest scholars, discussions of core readings in legal history, and workshop sessions on fellows’ scholarly drafts.. 

The program is sponsored by the American Society for Legal History (ASLH) and University of Wisconsin Law School’s Institute for Legal Studies.

The 2025 cohort will be led by Michelle McKinley, Bernard B. Kliks Professor of Law at the University of Oregon Law School, and John Fabian Witt, Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law at Yale Law School. 

While this Institute is held in the United States, professionals focused on legal history of any time or place are welcome to apply. Candidates outside the U.S. should be pursuing or have earned a graduate degree in law. This program is not intended for students outside the U.S. working toward undergraduate degrees in law.

Apply now; the deadline is Jan. 15, 2025.

Applicants will be notified of a decision no later than March 3, 2025.

James Willard Hurst (1910-1997) is generally recognized as the founder of modern U.S. legal history. He graduated from Harvard Law School and clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis before joining the faculty of University of Wisconsin Law School in 1937, where he taught, wrote and mentored for four decades.

Learn more about the 2023 participants and become one of 12 fellows in “The Hurst” this summer!

Email hurst@law.wisc.edu with any questions or concerns.

The Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society is delighted to announce the winners of the Annual Prize in Legal History. In 2024, the prize has been awarded in two categories: best monograph, and best journal article or book chapter. The Society gratefully acknowledges David Plater and Richard Boast, and Kathy Bowrey and David V Williams who judged the monograph and journal article categories respectively.

The winners are:

Alecia Simmonds, Courting: An Intimate History of Love and the Law (La Trobe University Press, 2023)

This is an engaging and insightful study to the now archaic sounding tort known as ‘breach of promise to marry’. The author brings this action and its vexed history to light in a manner that is both erudite, illuminating and engaging. The author offers new perspectives on, and dimensions to the rationale and history of this cause of action in Australia. Despite its Pride and Prejudice overtones, the action for breach of promise to marry remained part of the law in Australia until well into the 20th century. The action provided jilted lovers a legal means to claim compensation for ‘breach of promise to marry’. Through the history of this tort the author explores the changing relationships between men and women, gender and law and changing social values and expectations. 

This book has many strengths. It draws skillfully on both original court reports and the sometimes sensational and lurid newspaper accounts. Its extremely clear and engaging writing style is telling. It is a book of appeal to a general audience as well as an academic or specialist audience. The author opens an amazing window into human relationships, to say nothing of the lives and status of women in Australia. It makes extremely innovative and powerful use of press reports, primary legal material and the somewhat unpromising one of court documents relating to breach of promise proceedings. The book uses legal materials as a vehicle for writing social and cultural history that is hugely impressive. The use of testimony giving in the courtroom is really innovative, and the book shows how this neglected type of primary material can be used by a skilled researcher and historian as is utilised here to bring social history to life.  The author’s compassion and wide sympathies were also impressive. 

The book provides a significant and original contribution to a forgotten side of Australian law and history. The book thoroughly deserves the 2024 prize in a very competitive field. 

Sophie Couchman and Kate Bagnall, 2023 ‘Identification Photography and the Surveillance of Chinese Mobility in Colonial Australasia’ Australian Historical Studies 54 (2): 299–329.

This rich archival research presents a detailed and balanced consideration of the power of the state to implement anti-Chinese immigration laws and practices, highlighting the role of photographs attached to identification and exemption processes. An engaging contextualisation of the law and the significance of the records comes from the successful weaving of personal narratives to show how Chinese subjects positioned themselves in relation to ever shifting regulations and arbitrary administrative practices. The authors show the duality of submitting to unjust laws and resisting their capacity to control personal lives, through denying mobility and access to opportunity. Photographs are read from a top down and a bottom-up perspective. From a top-down perspective, the photograph is part of the demand for official documentation where the primary concern of the state is to enable control of Chinese populations by challenging the veracity of the record. From a bottom-up perspective, the photograph is a necessary tool to enable mobility, but also an assertion of self-awareness of identity, read through the photographic subject’s choices in mode of dress (western or Chinese) and engagement with photographic conventions in framing and props. Photographic copies had circulation beyond official use. The authors use historical records to bring to life the way belonging and acceptance is negotiated with the state through everyday practices and with officials, and negotiated by the exercise of agency of those subject to dehumanising laws as Chinese applicants to entry interact with the various iterations of a racist administration.

Congratulations to Alecia, Sophie and Kate!

Shaping International Law in Global Transformations: Australian Experiences, Western Sydney University, 27-28 February 2025.

The conference organisers (Chris Michaelsen, Maddy Chiam, Jeremy Farrall and Jordy Silverstein) invite submissions that investigate, understand and evaluate how Australia and Australians have influenced, or failed to influence, the development of international law in times of global transformation. Contributions from all disciplines, including law, history, politics, and more are welcome. Doctoral scholars, post-doctoral scholars and early career researchers are particularly encouraged to apply.

Please submit an abstract of 300 words and a biographical paragraph of 150 words to globaltransformations@latrobe.edu.au by Monday 9 December 2024.

Successful applicants will be notified by email by 20 December 2024. Some travel bursaries are available for individuals who need it. Please identify and explain the need for a travel bursary in your submission.

Full Call for Papers can be found here: Call for papers – Global Transformations

The Politics of Royal Commissions in Australia

Guest editors

Margaret Hutchison, Joshua Black, Michelle Arrow

Australia has held more than 140 royal commissions of inquiry since 1901, and 24 since 2000. As this figure might suggest, royal commissions have become commonplace in contemporary Australia, tasked with investigating and reporting on a range of issues from child sexual abuse, aged care and natural disaster arrangements to the most recent inquiry into defence and veteran suicide. Historically, royal commissions have served multiple functions: to define policy problems, manage (and potentially depoliticise) difficult issues, investigate allegations of impropriety, hold governments accountable, or justify a policy response (Gilligan 2002). They investigate issues and problems, but do they also manage and contain them? This special issue of AJPH examines the long history, impact and legacies of royal commissions in Australia and how they have shaped our political landscape. The guest editors invite proposals for articles on any aspect of the history, politics and legacies of royal commissions for a special issue planned for 2026.  Please submit proposals of no more than 300 words to Dr Margaret Hutchison (margaret.hutchison@unsw.edu.au) by 30 August 2024.