Legalities welcomes submissions in the broad field of socio-legal studies that are contextually sensitive, theoretically informed, critically engaged and interdisciplinary in scope, including on topics such as law and society, legal geography, law and politics, criminology, law and economy, law and culture, legal history, feminist legal theory, critical race studies, critical legal theory, law and colonialism/imperialism, queer and transgender legal theory, environmental law, law and psychoanalysis, law and literature, law and social activism, animal law, law and education. We are particularly interested in work that speaks to the context of Aotearoa, Australasia and the Global South.
 
Submissions must not have been submitted for publication elsewhere. Articles should not exceed 10,000 words (including references). A submission of up to 5,000 words (including references) may be considered for our Interventions section and a submission of up to 2500 words for reviews. Papers should be in typed format and double-spaced. 

Please send submissions by email to: Trish.Luker@uts.edu.au

The style guide can be accessed here.

Legalities: The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Law and Society (Edinburgh UP)

Managing Editors

Prof Carwyn Jones, Pūkenga Matua (Te Wānanga o Raukawa) and Honorary Adjunct Prof (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)
Assoc Prof Trish Luker, (University of Technology Sydney, Australia)
Prof John Page, (University of Canterbury, New Zealand)

Senior Editorial Consultant

Prof William MacNeil, (The University of Queensland and Victoria University, Australia)

Call for Papers 3rd Asian Legal History Conference

The Transnational Legal History Group of CUHK LAW’s Centre for Comparative and Transnational Law is organizing the Third Asian Legal History Conference at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Law, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong on 20-21 June 2023. The conference is supported by the Asian Legal History Association. Previous Asian Legal History Conferences have been hosted, organized and supported by the Faculty 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 CUHK LAW.

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 scholars anywhere in the world working on Asian legal history, broadly understood, and scholars based in Asia working on any legal history-related subjects.

Submissions on any subject, providing it pertains to legal history in Asia, will be considered. General topics may include:

• The historical evolution of common law, civil law, and socialist law traditions in Asia;
• Legal pluralism and jurisdictional clashes;
• The history of a particular area of law (constitutional law, property law, criminal law, etc);
• Theoretical and methodological issues involved in studying Asian legal history Dynastic law;
• Customary law;
• Colonial law;
• Religious law (broadly understood), e.g. Buddhist Law, Confucian Law, Hindu Law, Islamic Law, etc.

The conference organizers are particularly interested in papers addressing the following subjects:

• The history of law and empire;
• Asian approaches to and influences upon the history of international law;
• Explorations of the transnational connections between the manner in which the law has evolved in different Asian countries, and between Asian countries and other countries;
• The history of law, gender and sexuality;
• The history of international and regional organizations in Asia;
• The history of public order law;
• The history of law schools and of the formation of the judiciary and of members of the legal profession.

The conference will be held mixed-mode, including in person and online participants. Applicants should indicate whether they intend to attend in person or online. Applicants will be responsible for their own transportation and accommodation costs.

Proposals may be for individual papers or panels. Panel proposals are particularly welcome, as the field of legal history is wide, and while the organizers will endeavor to cluster like papers together, thematic, geographic and temporal diversity of topics inevitably means panels composed of individually-submitted papers will cover only loosely-related subject matters.

Individual paper proposals should include a 200-300 word abstract and the author’s contact information.

 Panel proposals should include a 200-300 word description of the panel, 200-300 word abstracts of three to four individual papers, contact information for each person on the panel and contact information for the chairs of the panel.

Applicants should indicate their current and/or former academic affiliations, as well as current professional affiliations,  on their applications by midnight (Hong Kong time) on March 15^th, 2023.

For more details and to submit applications, visit here – https://www.law.cuhk.edu.hk/app/events/call-for-papers-asian-legal-history-conference-136/

Theory, Race and Colonialism Essay (TRACE)

to honour the memory and continue the work of Tracey Banivanua-Mar

For the best article published in law&history that engages theoretically with the themes of race and colonialism over the previous two calendar years (max 4 issues of the journal)

Judges:

Professor Catharine Coleborne (University of Newcastle, Australia) and Professor Angela Wanhalla (University of Otago, Aotearoa New Zealand)

Congratulations to Sharleigh Crittenden for her article ‘Race, justice and democracy: how the historical and contemporary representativeness of the criminal jury sheds light on the citizenship status of Indigenous Australians’, which is forthcoming in law&history 2022 (2)

In this timely and insightful article, Sharleigh Crittenden offers a sophisticated analysis of how ‘race’ and racism has produced franchise inequality and unrepresentative juries in Australia. Drawing on examples from Aotearoa New Zealand and Canada, Crittenden illuminates how the principle of random selection often overrides representativeness on juries, thereby further marginalising Indigenous participation in the legal system and generating further injustice. The most significant barrier to Indigenous participation in juries, though, is enrolment to vote, which only became compulsory for Indigenous Australian in 1984. Crittenden’s article is an extremely worthy winner of this award as it exemplifies the TRACE model by examining the historical significance and meanings of racism as it is both embedded and continues to live on through institutions shaped by colonialism and its aftermath.

The judges agreed that a second article should be Highly Commended:

Jennifer Jones, ‘Acknowledging Sovereignty: Settlers, Right Behaviour and the Taungurung Clans of the Kulin Nation’, law&history, 2021 (2)

Jennifer Jones has written a highly engaging article that examines the concept and practice of ‘right behaviour’ to re-examine relationships between the Taungurung clans of the Kulin nation and white settlers in the colony of Victoria. By using oral accounts and also re-reading settler memories it evokes the lived experiences of racism and oppression, forms of Indigenous recognition, and creates an action template for researchers. This is an original and extremely well-crafted piece of writing that is deeply rooted in evidence and in the material effects of colonialism.

You can check out the full conference program here –

Conference registrations are now open for the ANZLHS 2022 conference –

https://events.humanitix.com/australian-and-new-zealand-law-and-history-society-2022-conference

The Executive Committee is delighted to announce the award of Kercher scholarships to support the attendance of postgraduate students at this year’s ANZLHS conference.  Congratulations to the following researchers, all of whom will be presenting a paper in Sydney:

• Elizabeth Bowyer, Victoria University of Wellington
• Tonia Chalk, Griffith University/University of Southern Queensland
• Inma Conde, Macquarie University
• Averyl Gaylor, La Trobe University
• Caroline Ingram, University of Western Australia

A gift from South Auckland law firm Kayes Fletcher Walker has enabled the award of an additional scholarship this year. A scholarship supported by the firm has been awarded to Tonia Chalk, a Budjari scholar, whose doctoral research investigates the context of Queensland coronial inquiries into the deaths of Aboriginal women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

21 – 23 June 2023
University of Augsburg, Germany

Call for Papers

The Organising Committee and the Executive Council of the European Society for Comparative Legal History are pleased to call for papers for the upcoming Society’s Seventh Biennial Conference to be held from 21 to 23 June 2023 at the University of Augsburg, Germany.

A conference in 2023 will be a change to our normal timing. We began in Valencia (2010), followed by Amsterdam (2012), Macerata (2014), Gdańsk (2016), Paris (2018), and most recently, after a delay caused by Covid, we enjoyed the event in Lisboa (2022). However, not only does that mean we did not have a conference for four years. Covid has also moved some other large international conferences now to even-numbered years. To avoid collision with these other conferences, the ESCHL conferences would after 2023 continue at two-year intervals moving them to uneven-numbered years. The offer from Augsburg was made some years ago, but kindly deferred and the Executive Council is delighted to be able to take it up now.

For the Augsburg event in 2023, there is no general conference theme. Rather, the organisers hope that the sessions will reflect – in terms of covered topics, time periods, and regions – the full breadth of international research in comparative legal history. The Organising Committee does so in the believe that the Society’s Biennial Conference should foremost be a platform for researchers to present their most recent research in comparative legal. Papers should address and explore doctrinal, theoretical, cultural, or methodological aspects of comparative legal history. Papers should also be comparative, covering at least two legal systems, as well as historical.

To offer a paper, please send an abstract of up to 400 words by 15 November 2022. Papers, and abstracts, should be in English. The abstract should give the title of your paper and your personal data (full name, email address, work affiliation). Please also send a short CV (no more than 4 pages). Everyone, at whatever stage in their research career can offer a paper. The application should be sent to: phillip.hellwege@jura.uni-augsburg.de.

Abstracts will be assessed against: (1) the aim to have a diverse conference; (2) the novelty of the work; (3) the evidence of scholarly rigour and promise of a fully researched and referenced paper; (4) in order to allow as many people as possible to speak at the conference, a person may normally offer only one paper.

It is also possible to submit a proposal for a complete panel. Panels normally consist of three papers. A panel proposal should – in addition to the abstracts and CVs of those who wish to present a paper in that panel – include an abstract for the entire panel as well as a CV of the panel organizer.

Applicants will be informed by 15 December 2022 whether their paper has been accepted. The conference programme will be published on 31 December 2022 on the conference website: https://www.uni-augsburg.de/de/fakultaet/jura/lehrende/hellwege/seventh_esclh_conference_2023/

The conference website will also contain information on the attendance fee for those who are not members of the ESCLH, on transport to and from Augsburg, on accommodation in Augsburg. The conference website will allow, starting 15 December 2022, registration for the conference.

Finally, the conference will be preceded by an additional PhD-workshop on 21 June 2023. Further information about the workshop will also be published on 15 December 2022.

The call for abstracts for this year’s ANZLHS conference (1-3 December, University of Technology Sydney) has been extended to 2 September. You can find more conference details here.

Applications for the Kercher scholarships to provide support for postgraduate students to attend the conference are also open. Applications must be received by 2 September. You can find scholarship details here.

The organising committee of the ANZLHS are delighted to announce the keynotes for this year’s conference:

Constance Backhouse, Distinguished University Professor, University of Ottawa

Reckoning with Racism: Disturbing Evidence of Police and Judicial Racism in Canada’s RDS Case  

Post-World War II Canadians have prided ourselves on a reputation for racial tolerance and multi-culturalism.  The 1997 RDS case, which began with the violent arrest of a Black male teen by a white police officer, and turned into the unprecedented scrutiny of a Black female judge’s “racial bias”, provides a searing illustration of the level of Black racism that has framed the Canadian legal system.  A micro-history of the case offers an opportunity to consider the intersectionality of race, gender, and class, and the layers of tradition and privilege that insulate us as academic scholars and justice professionals from a full analysis of race. The conference framework, “How Legal Historians Create Knowledge” permits an exploration of how a single case can branch out into multi-directional research and resonate with current anti-racism activism.

Katherine Biber, Distinguished Professor, University of Technology Sydney

Touching the death of Joe Governor: Coronial violence and the scientific body trade

In October 1900, the proclaimed outlaw, Joe Governor, was shot dead by civilians. A Wiradjuri and Wonnarua man, Joe Governor had, with his brother Jimmy, committed murders of white settlers on the colonial frontier of NSW. A coronial inquest was held in a Singleton pub, with Joe Governor laid out on the billiard table. Twelve jurors rapidly justified his death and celebrated the bravery of his killers. This paper investigates a sinister transaction that occurred behind the scenes, when the local Government Medical Officer removed a part of Joe’s body and send it to the University of Sydney for scientific examination. It unleashed a media frenzy, a parliamentary investigation and a scientific scandal. This paper follows my journey from the Hunter Valley to the university pathology museum, characterised by local rumours, gossip, silences and missing records. I met with people connected to this history and heard their family stories. This presentation reveals the implication of scholarly ambition and scientific networks in the trade in First Nations ancestral remains and the ongoing work of activists demanding their repatriation.

Vale Dr JM Bennett, AO, who died on 17 July 2022.

Dr Bennett’s work on legal history and biography laid strong foundations for further legal history research on Australia. He taught law at the University of Sydney and the University of Technology Sydney and was a Senior Research Fellow in the ANU Research School of Social Sciences.

Along the way he wrote two major publications about the legal history of NSW – A History of the Supreme Court of NSW (1974) and A History of Solicitors in NSW (1984). These two books remain foundational books for anyone interested in the legal history of NSW.

He also wrote many judicial biographies of colonial judges in Australia including Sir James Martin: Premier 1863-1865, 1866-1868, 1870-1872 and Fourth Chief Justice 1883-1876 of New South Wales (2005); George Higinbotham: Third Chief Justice of Victoria 1886-1892 (2006); Sir Alfred Stephen: Third Chief Justice of New South Wales 1844-1873 (2009); Sir Queensland (2014); and (with RC Solomon), Sir Francis Villeneuve Smith: Premier 1857-1860, Supreme Court Judge 1860-1870, Chief Justice 1870-1885 of Tasmania  (2019).

Many members of the Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society will remember and continue to use his work for a long time to come. 

Professor Prue Vines,

President, ANZLHS