Juris Diversitas was founded in 2007 as an international, interdisciplinary community for the study of legal and normative mixtures and movements. Originally composed of comparative law scholars, the group has opened interdisciplinary conversations with anthropologists, geographers, historians, philosophers, economists, linguists, sociologists, both within the law and beyond, to explore the interaction of the law with all branches of human and social sciences. Members are to be found on all continents and in many fields, expanding the outreach of comparative legal studies way beyond the limits of the western world.
After Lausanne, Switzerland (2013), Aix-en-Provence, France (2014) and Limerick, Ireland (2015), Baton Rouge will host the 2016 Annual Conference, under the leadership of Prof. Olivier Moréteau, President, and Prof. Salvatore Mancuso (University of Capetown), Vice President.
Dates and venue: May 30 – June 1, 2016, LSU Law Center, Baton Rouge
Unity and/or Diversity
Theme: Comparative legal studies have long been perceived as an engine pulling legal traditions and systems towards convergence, harmonization, and unification. Today, legal pluralism pushes towards the recognition of human and social diversity. Does this mean that we have to choose between unity and diversity, Jus unum or juris diversitas? To what extent do pluralistic societies embrace or reject harmonization and uniformity, or simply ignore them? Do we unify or add layers, increasing the complexity of legal orders? Does history reflect a move from diversity to unity or an ongoing conflict between the two? What makes unity successful or sustainable? This is an invitation to discuss, in an interdisciplinary way, the development of laws and social norms, in the dialectical tension between the ontological unity of human beings and mankind and the plurality of individual aspirations and social arrangements.
Submissions: Panel proposals and interdisciplinary presentations are strongly encouraged, as is the participation of doctoral students and scholars from outside of the discipline of law. While parallel sessions of three twenty-minute presentations will be used, we encourage more original session structures.
Proposals should be in English or in French. Proposals of approximately 250 words (or 1000 words for panel proposals) should be submitted to Professor Salvatore Mancuso at JDLSU2016@gmail.com by January 31, 2016, with a short biography listing major or relevant publications. Make this a single Word document with minimal formatting, so that proposal and biography can be copied easily into the conference program.
Registration fees: €200 or €125 for Juris Diversitas members paid up for 2016. Membership and fee payment information is available on the Juris Diversitas Blog (http://jurisdiversitas.blogspot.com/). Please note that fees don’t cover travel, accommodation, or the conference dinner (€50).
