XClose

Department of Greek & Latin

Home
Menu

Use and Abuse of Law in the Athenian Courts

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

16-18 April 2013

The department of Greek and Latin at UCL is pleased to announce the international conference Use and Abuse of Law in the Athenian Courts, which will take place on 16-18 April 2013.


There is a continuing and growing interest in recent scholarship on the use and exploitation of law in Athenian courts, and modern scholars have emphasised not only the status of law as an atechnos pistis, but also, and perhaps more importantly, its rhetorical use and presentation in the speeches: this has implications not only for the status of law but also for any approach to the Athenian legal system. Although much significant research has been done on this important area, there are still many questions which demand an answer and others which need to be asked. These questions will form the focus of an international conference which will bring together a cluster of world-leading scholars on Greek Oratory and Law, including:


Professor M. Gagarin (University of Texas, Austin), Professor A. Lanni (Harvard University), Professor D. Phillips (UCLA), Professor V. Wohl (University of Toronto), Professor M. Edwards (University of Wales, Trinity St Davis), Professor E. M. Harris (Durham University), Professor R. Osborne (Cambridge University), Professor L. Rubinstein (Royal Holloway University of London), Professor G. Thür (Graz, Austria).

Papers will cover a wide variety of themes, and in particular the use, misuse, abuse, stretching and manipulation of law and legal procedures: more specifically --

The rhetoric of law
Law in Lycurgus' Against Leocrates
Athenian Homicide Law and the Model Penal Code
Jurisdiction and jurisprudence in Demosthenes 23 (Aristocrates)
The use and abuse of law in the speeches of Antiphon
The Athenian view of an Athenian Trial
Can we talk of "stretching" the law in classical Athens?
Clauses out of context: partial citation of statuses in Attic forensic oratory
Misuse of the laws of homologein, ancient and modern

The Conference will take place at

UCL Medawar G01 Lankester Lecture Theatre

The event is generously supported by UCL Classics Alumni, the Classical Association, UCL Leventis Fund.

Organisers: Professor Chris Carey, Ifigeneia Giannadaki