British legal history conference 2017 – networks and connections

23rd British legal history conference

In tracing the way that legal ideas emerge and expand, historians have become increasingly interested in exploring the way that networks are developed and connections made. Legal history is full of connections – between people and places, jurisdictions and ideas. The way that the law develops may be influenced by particular social, professional or political groups, or by wider national, imperial or transnational networks. The law may change direction because of new connections made, whether in the form of the transplantation of legal concepts from one forum to another, or in the form of the influence of new ways of thinking or acting. These connections or networks may be simple or complex, transitory or enduring, ad hoc or accidental. The aim of this conference is to explore the wide range of networks and connections which influence the development of law and legal ideas over time, in a variety of different scholarly contexts.

About the conference

The Conference will be held from the 5^th to the 8^th of July 2017. Registration will be on the 5^th of July. Delegates will be able to find accommodation in the wide range of nearby hotels.

Conference organisers

Dr Ian Williams, Faculty of Laws, UCL
Professor Michael Lobban, LSE Law

Programme - day 1 (Wednesday 5 July)

SESSION I, 13:45-15:15

Room 1: Medieval remedies and jurisdictions
Chair: Joshua Tate

Charles Donahue
‘Once More: The Rise of the Action on the Case’

Stephen Hewer
‘Creating the common law: the effects of repeated pleas in court on thirteenth-century English law in Ireland’

Anthony Musson
‘Networks and Influences: Contextualising Personnel and Procedures in the Court of Chivalry’

Room 2: European Connections
Chair: Mark Godfrey

Dolores Freda
‘The recurring myth of the justice of the peace: from the English justice de la peesto the Italian conciliatore’

Ulrike Müßig
‘Networkers of the Constitutional Discourses of 18^th century Europe – The British American discursive common law community’

Louis Sicking and Remco van Rhee
‘Victim reparation under the ius post bellum prior to Westphalia: Englishmen and Scots seeking redress through a network of legal institutions in the Low Countries’

Room 3: Personal Networks in the British Empire
Chair: Daniel Hulsebusch

Ray Cocks
‘Do Friends Matter? Networks and the Legal History of British India’

James McComish
‘Judicial Networks and Connections: Ireland and Victoria, 1841-1899’

Matthew Mirow
‘The Thistle, the Rose, and the Palm: Scottish and English Legal Officials in British East Florida’

SESSION II, 15:45-17:15

Room 1:

Legal Pluralism in a Connected Empire
Chair: Charlotte Smith

Shazia Ahmad
‘Colonial Law and Pakistan’s Early Interpretation of Islamic law’

Penny Sinanoglou
‘Legal networks and the response to polygamy in the British Empire, 1870-1950’

John Strawson
‘The Architecture of Imperial Law in early British Palestine’

Room 2: Eighteenth century doctrinal change
Chair: James Oldham

Kevin Costello
‘Municipal politics and mandamus: points of connection 1700-1835’

Michael Macnair
‘Wrongful connections? Conspiracy doctrine in the later 17^th and early 18^thcentury’

Katherine Watson
‘“By lying in wait, feloniously and unlawfully did make an assault”: Coventry’s Act and malicious injury in the long eighteenth century’

Room 3: Early Modern Codification, criminal law reform and legal discourse: A Critical and Comparative Analysis
Chair: Steve Banks

Yves Cartuyvels
‘The fundamental principles of a reformatory penology: convergences, transplantations and divergences in the penal codification of the 18 century in Europe’

Aniceto Masferrer
‘The Role of Nature in the 18^th-century criminal law discourse: A Critical and Comparative Analysis’

Selden Society AGM, 17:30-18:00- Darwin Lecture Theatre

PLENARY I, 18:00-19:00

Richard H Helmholz

‘Shakespeare and the European ius commune’

Drinks Reception, 19:15

Programme - Day 2 (Thursday 6 July)

SESSION III, 09:00-10:30

Room 1: Networks in the slave empire
Chair: Julia Rudolph

Aaron Graham
‘Legislation in Jamaica, 1664-1839, and the transatlantic legislative revolution’

Jennifer Wells
‘“Dies diem docet, One Day Teaches Another”: Experts and Legal Knowledge in Early Modern Empire Building’

Lee Wilson
‘Slavery and Subjecthood in Revolutionary Era South Carolina’

Room 2: Developing International law
Chair: Louis Sicking

Donal Coffey
‘The Failure of the plan for a Commonwealth Tribunal’

Michael Mulligan
‘The development of the concept of jus cogens: from the British and American campaigns against piracy to the Armenian genocide’

Inge van Hulle
‘Anglo-African Legal Connections and the Roots of Britain’s Imperial International Law in West Africa (1815-1884)’

Room 3: Early modern jurisprudential exchanges and interactions
Chair: Guido Rossi

Ryan Greenwood
‘Natural Rights in Early Modern England: Development and Influence, c. 1500-1650’

Andrew Lewis
‘Tithe Networks and Connexions: moduses and real compositions’

Lorenzo Maniscalco
‘Interpretatio ex aequo et bono – the emergence of equitable interpretation in European legal scholarship’

SESSION IV, 11:00-12:30

Room 1: Curial Connections: Appeals and Jurisdiction in the British Isles
Chair: Hamilton Bryson

Coleman Dennehy
‘Seventeenth-century appellate jurisdiction over Irish cases’

Mark Godfrey
‘Connections between Courts and Networks of Jurisdiction: the Court of Session and the Privy Council in Scotland 1532-1707’

Philip Loft
‘Making British Law: Scottish Appellants, Legal Pluralism, and the Westminster House of Lords as Scotland’s “Supreme Court”, 1707-1875’

Room 2: Transnational influences on private law
Chair: David Ibbetson

Anna Klimaszewska
‘The phenomenon of a hollow legal shell –a few remarks on the course of implementation of the French commercial law on the Polish territories in the 19^thcentury’

Emi Matsumoto
‘Valtazar Bogišić (1834-1908) and Gustave Boissonade (1825-1910): some neglected aspects of Modern Japanese Law’

Room 3: Private law disputes
Chair: Joshua Getzler

Ruth Paley
‘Montagu v Bath: a seventeenth century contentious probate’

Chantal Stebbings
‘Law Reporting and Law Making: the missing link in nineteenth-century tax law’

Andreas Televantos
‘Whose money is it anyway?: Trusts and the Doctrine of Reputed Ownership’

SESSION V: 13:30-15:00

Room 1: Lay participants in the medieval common law
Chair: David Seipp

Sara Butler
‘Benefit of the Belly?  Pregnant Convicts and Juries of Matrons in Medieval England’

Elizabeth Kamali
‘Gossip Networks, Craft Connections, and Legal Investigation: Homicide Inquests in London, 1321-1340’

Margaret McGlynn
‘Ecclesiastical gaols and lay convicts in early Tudor England’

Room 2: Connections between Domestic and International
Chair: David Rabban

John Hepp
‘“A sharp line between legal and moral wrongs:” The Anglo-American debate over war crimes at Versailles in 1919’

Daniel Hulsebosch
‘English Liberties outside England: Floors, Doors, Windows, Mirrors, and Ceilings in the Legal Architecture of Empire’

Herbert Lovelace
‘The World is On Our Side:  The U.S. and the U.N. Race Convention’

Room 3: Text, Translation and the Transmission of Ideas in Early-Modern Britain
Chair: Krista Kesselring

Alex Hitchman
‘Printers, Pamphlets and the Law in the first English Civil War’

Thomas Krause
‘Networking across the North Sea – the influence of German civilian authors  on Sir George Mackenzie’s “Laws and Customs of Scotland in Matters Criminal”’

Andreas Thier
‘Continental Natural Law Ideas and English Legal Culture: English Translations of Samuel Pufendorf’s De officio hominis et civis juxta legem naturalem of the 17th and 18th centuries revisited’

SESSION VI: 15:30-17:00

Room 1: Law and Peace: Empire, War and Law
Chair: Nurfadzilah Yahaya

Edward Cavanagh
‘Corporate Conquests: A Study of the Development of the Common Law and the Imperial Constitution, 1600-1923’

Chris Holdridge and Wm Matthew Kennedy
‘Colonial Administrators as Jurists? Boer POWs, Imperial Bureaucracy and the International Laws of War’

Kalyani Ramnath
‘War and Peace: Legal Regimes in South Asia during the Second World War’

Room 2:

Connecting Commerce and the Law in early-modern England
Chair: David Waddilove

Julia Kelsoe
‘Arbitration in English Law and Society before the Act of 1698’

Joanna McCunn
‘The movement of ideas in early modern interpretation’

Jeffrey Thomson
‘Merchant practices and understandings relating to marine insurance and the common law before Lord Mansfield

Room 3:

Networks and Connections in the Drafting of Legislation
Chair: Chantal Stebbings

Tola Amodu and Kate McCarthy
‘The “real”’ engine of change for the 1925 legislation’

Nga Bellis-Phan
‘Seeking efficiency in debt recovery: The influence of fairs’ merchants on French Early Modern insolvency law’

Patrick Graham
‘Legal tensions and the forging of Britain’s emergency powers framework, 1919–27’

PLENARY II, 17:15-18:30

Holly Brewer
‘Creating a Common law of Slavery for the Empire in the Seventeenth Century’

Drinks Reception

Programme - Day 3 (Friday 7 July)

SESSION VII, 09:00-10:30

Room 1: Law and text in medieval Britain
Chair: Gwen Seabourne

Riona Doolan
‘A Friend and an Enemy to Man: Fire in Medieval Irish and Welsh Legal Material’

Gwynedd Parry
‘Legal connections in medieval Welsh Literature: Dafydd ab Edmwnd’s eulogy to Siôn Eos’

Jonathan Rose
‘Maintenance and Medieval Literature’

Room 2: Connecting Criminal law to Context
Chair: Thomas P. Gallanis

Matthew Dyson
‘Mental states and careless acts: the development of fault in tort and crime since 1850’

Philip Handler
‘John Taylor Coleridge and the Criminal Law’

Conor Hanly
‘British Criminal Trial Procedure in Late Nineteenth-Century Ireland’

Room 3: Professional networks in Britain
Chair: Raymond Cocks

John Finlay
‘Scottish Solicitors in London 1740-1860’

David Hoffmann
‘Professional Networks and Connections at the Bar: life on the Northern Circuit in the 18^th Century’

Adelyn Wilson
‘Men of law and legal networks in Aberdeen, 1600-1650’

SESSION VIII, 11:00-12:30

Room 1: The circulation of legal ideas in medieval Britain
Chair: Andrew Lewis

Lucy Hennings
‘The Ius Commune and the Performance of Kingship during the personal rule of Henry III, c.1230-c.1250’

Thomas McSweeney
‘After Bracton: Redefining the Audience for Legal Literature in the Later Thirteenth Century’

Cynthia Neville
‘Wrongdoing and remission: canonical influences on royal pardon in later medieval Scotland’

Room 2: The Role of Networking for ‘First Female Lawyers’ in Europe
Chair: Chloe Kennedy

Judith Bourne
‘First English Women Lawyers’ Networks and Connections’

Mia Korpiola
‘The Belgian Lawyer Louis Frank, His Finnish Networks and Constructing La Femme-Avocat: Advocating the Female Cause by Networking’

Merike Ristikivi
‘Networks and Connections of the First Estonian Female Lawyers’

Room 3: English law in the British Empire
Chair: Stephen Kos

Michael Belgrave
‘Conflict over the law in New Zealand; 1840-1860: Evangelical networks and Māori understanding of English law’

James Jaffe
‘A Failed Transplant: The Troubled Life and Lingering Death of Trial by Jury in India’

David Williams
‘A “trust” to benefit indigenous peoples: The Nelson settlement, New Zealand, in the 1840s’

SESSION IX, 13:30-15:00

Room 1: Networks of legal ideas in medieval Europe
Chair: Thomas J. McSweeney

Dante Fedele
‘Exploring connections between private and public law. The contribution of the ius commune to the conceptualization of diplomatic representation’

Dirk Heirbaut
‘Networks of feudal lawyers in Flanders, Lombardy and Saxony’

Ada Maria Kuskowski
‘The Birth of Common Law and the Invention of Legal Traditions’

Room 2: Juristic Networks Making Law
Chair: Matthew Dyson

Nikitas Hatzimihail
‘The Making of a Discipline: The “Italian” “School” and the Creation of Private International Law’

Regina Poertner
‘Anglo-American Jurisprudence and Legal Discourse in Weimar Germany’

David Schorr
‘The Society for Comparative Legislation and the Liberal Imperial Origins of Comparative Law’

Room 3: Britain’s Imperial Constitution
Chair: Niamh Howlin

Coel Kirkby
‘The Constitution of Empire: Nation and Treaty in the Late Victorian Legal Imagination’

Dylan Lino
‘Dicey’s Defence of the Unwritten Imperial Constitution’

Priyasha Saksena
‘Jousting Over Jurisdiction: Sovereignty and International Law in Late Nineteenth-Century South Asia’

SESSION X, 15:30-17:00

Room 1: Connecting the Living and the Dead in medieval England
Chair: Paul Brand

Will Eves
‘Connecting Treatise and Reality: Mort d’ Ancestor in Bracton and in the Courts’

Timothy Haskett
‘Connections through instrumenta in the wills of England 1066 to 1300’

Gwen Seaborne
‘The live issue of live issue: considering medieval curtesy’

Room 2: Networks of Modern Jurists
Chair: Kjell Åke Modéer

Nader Hakim and Annamaria Monti
‘“Network of Jurists” A project on legal cultures in Europe’

Prune Decoux
‘The Transatlantic Dialogue Between the American and French Scholars (1900-1950)’

Mariana de Moraes Silveira
‘Between “national reality” and looking outwards: Brazilian and Argentine lawyers in dialogue with Europe (1917-1943)’

Room 3: Law in Practice in the Eighteenth Century British Empire
Chair: Matthew Mirow

Sally Hadden
‘The Last British Justice in Colonial America: Charleston’s Board of Police, 1780-1782’

David Ibbetson
‘English Law in Bengal, 1774-1796’

Tim Soriano
‘The Royal Navy, Legal Pluralism, and Authority in Early Colonial Sierra Leone: 1670 – 1815’

PLENARY III, 17:15-18:30

Philip J Stern
‘The Google of its Time?  The East India Company’s Past in Our Present’

Drinks Reception, sponsored by the Journal Of Legal History, 18:30-19:30

Conference Dinner, 19:30

Programme - Day 4 (Saturday 8 July)

SESSION XI, 09:30-11:00

Room 1: Texts and Connections in Medieval Canon Law
Chair: John Hudson                       

Bruce Brasington
‘“That We May Uphold the Justice Found in the Law” A Late-Twelflth Century Notabilia in an Oxford College Manuscript’

Danica Summerlin
‘Schools, networks and ‘new law’: the genesis of the Breviarium of Bernard of Pavia’

Sarah White
‘Arguments of Law in the Thirteenth-Century Court of Canterbury’

Room 2: The Jury
Chair: Philip Handler   

Kevin Crosby
‘Female Jurors and Administrative Independence in Early 1920s England’

Niamh Howlin and Mark Coen
‘“Mere Surplusage”? Jury Riders in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’

Avis Poai
‘Nineteenth Century Hawai’i’s Mixed Jury System and the Insanity Plea’

Room 3: Commercial networks
Chair: Neil Jones

Julia Rudolph
‘Credit Networks in the Eighteenth-century Empire: Mortgage in England and Ireland’

Sean Thomas
‘The History of Factors and Pledges: Paterson v Tash in Context’

David Waddilove
‘Sureties in Early-Modern England’

PLENARY IV, 11:30-13:00

Catharine Macmillan
‘Trans-Atlantic connections: The Enduring Legacy of J.P. Benjamin’

LUNCH, 13:00 – 14:00

 Conference ends

Accommodation near UCL

UCL is located in the heart of the Bloomsbury district in London and is surrounded by a wealth of accommodation to suit all budgets.

Some local hotels, all within walking distance of the venue are:

UCL Residences:
UCL has a number of student residences into which visitors can book accommodation. Ian Baker House and Ramsay Hall are all within a 5 minute walking distance to the venue. Please see information on the Residences website at:
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/residences

Hostels:
There are a number of decent hostels local to the venue:

• Radisson Blu Edwardian Grafton
• The Academy Hotel
• The Ambassadors Bloomsbury Hotel
• The Goodenough Club
• Thistle Euston
• Montague on the Gardens
• Hilton London Euston
• The Wesley Hotel
• The Generator
• Youth Hostel Association – St Pancras
• Youth Hostel Association – Fitzrovia
• The Indian YMCA