Dear all,
Seminar 1— Harmony (25 May)
A first feature of the western legal tradition is the internal coherence of its constructions, namely, the idea of a legal system. As it is well-known, some early examples are to be found in sixteenth century France, in the works of Duaren, Doneau, Bodin, and other authors later known as the Systematiker. This seminar shows that the idea of a system was borrowed from the vocabulary of music. It reached law through the standard teaching on liberal arts, which included commentaries on Boethius’ and Pythagoras’ music theory. But a complete understanding of this essential feature of western law requires an understanding of the musical chord and of its powerful symbolism.
Seminar 2 — Time (26 May)
It is an obvious observation that legal phenomena are deeply embedded in a dimension of
Seminar 3 — History, with the participation of M° Luigi De Filippi (27 May)
Adolfo Giuliani’s CV:
AbstractLegal anthropology attempts to give a different view of law. Through the examination of culture and tradition, legal anthropology has studied both the traditional others, such as indigenous peoples, as well as more familiar subjects such as Western lawyers. The lectures offer three viewpoints of law and anthropology, the first historical, the second and third contemporary. The historical part examines how lawyers and anthropologists struggled to study societies without law, whereas the second illustrates the tensions between traditionalism and the modern human rights discourse. The final installment discusses the rights of indigenous peoples through the issue of land tenure.
Class Schedule
1) Legal Anthropology: Disputes and Culture
2) Claiming Rights Against Tradition: Activism in and around Science
3) How the Natives Lost Their Land: Customary Land Tenure and Colonialism
Each class consists of two parts: a) an introductory lecture, followed by a discussion, and b) a case study involving the reading material and discussion.
Readings
1) Bronislaw Malinowski, ‘Primitive Law and Order’, Nature 117 (1926), pp. 9-16
2) Sally Engle Merry and Rachel E. Stern, ‘The Female Inheritance Movement in Hong Kong: Theorizing the Local/Global Interface’, Current Anthropology 46 (2005), 387-409.
3) Pauline Peters, ‘Challenges in Land Tenure and Land Reform in Africa: Anthropological Contributions’, World Development 37 (2009), pp. 1317–1325.
Kaius Tuori’s CV
Dr. Kaius Tuori holds a doctorate in Law and a M.A. in History from his studies at the universities of Helsinki, Finland, and La Sapienza in Rome, Italy. His research interests include legal history, Roman law, legal anthropology, and classical archaeology. In his work on intellectual history he has studied how modern law affected the history of ancient Roman law during the nineteenth century and how American Legal Realism influenced the study of early law during the mid-20th century. Currently he is finishing a book project on the early history of legal anthropology. He is Senior Researcher at the Center of Excellence of Global Governance Research at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights in Helsinki. His work has been published in the Journal of Legal Pluralism, Law, Culture and the Humanities, The Journal of Legal History, Revue Internationale des Droits de l'Antiquite and the Legal History Review.
His website is http://blogit.helsinki.fi/katuori
Dear all,Traditionally, when scholars encounter anomalies in Dante’s juridical otherworld, they search for doctrinal answers that safeguard and reconfirm the classifications of his penal order. The working hypothesis of this seminar instead posits that Dante creates an otherworld based on an elaborate network of laws, jurisdictions, and rulers in order to contemplate the significance of exceptions to this system. Dante wrote the Commedia, in order words, to probe the limits of the law. The workshop will be divided into three classes, each corresponding to a distinct key word. The first class will focus on the concept of privilegium and in particular on the singular privilege granted Dante to traverse the territory of the otherworld, immune from the laws of his own construct. The second class will explore the concept of arbitrium in Dante, especially the relationship that judicial discretion and poetic license in his thinking. The third class will turn to the concept of infamia, and ask how Dante’s autobiographical legal disgrace affects the concept of justice in the poem as well as its own defamatory aesthetics. The readings are not extensive but will require close attention to detail.
Dear all,READINGS
A)
- The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 98, No.8, “Popular Legal Culture” (June 1989) (“Introduction”, pp. 1545-1558; Lawrence M. Friedman, “Law, Lawyers, and Popular Culture”, pp. 1579-1606)
- Stefan Machura/Peter Robson (eds.), Journal of Law and Society, Vol. 28, No. 1, “Law and Film” (March 2001). The “Introduction”, pp.1-8, includes a selected bibliography (1986-1999)
B)
- “Motion Pictures and the First Amendment”, The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 60, No. 4. (April 1951), pp. 696-719.
- John Wertheimer, “Mutual Film Reviewed: The Movies, Censorship, and Free Speech in Progressive America”, The American Journal of Legal History, Vol. 37, No. 2. (Apr., 1993), pp. 158-189.
Esteban Conde's CV:
Esteban Conde (Barcelona, 1971), Legal Historian (Universities of Barcelona –Autónoma- and now Huelva), received his Ph.D. in Law in 2003. He has written two books (1998, 2006) about the main (and constructive) role played by ‘enlightened’ censorship in Spain, and several articles on police power (its metaphors, tradition and development at the end of the Ancien Régime).
Over the past five years, he has used some interdisciplinary approaches as a tool to teach legal history: literature and law, and more recently cinema and law.
