Law in Empire. Law among Empires. We invite papers that consider how law has worked within empires at different times and places, how it has worked at the contact points between empires, and how imperial subjects have attempted to work law to their advantage. Law has facilitated, constituted, and enabled connections. People and societies have both suffered and benefitted from the uncertainties produced as empires have spread, imposed themselves on local populations, and competed with each other. Legal ideas have moved with people who had legal training and people without it. Institutions have formed and reformed, succeeded, failed, and produced intended and unintended consequences. In this fourth Legal Histories of Empire conference, we seek to explore these movements and connections, including the construction of illegality and non-legality. We hope to bring together historians working in different legal traditions and with a range of different sources to reveal the threads that have bound, ordered, and separated different empires, places, laws and legal traditions across the globe.
Please send abstracts to LHE2025conference@uts.edu.au by 31 August 2024. Acceptances will be sent by the middle of October 2024.
We are pursuing avenues to allow us to provide funding for travel, especially for graduate students and scholars from the Global South. Those interested in seeking funding should sign up for updates from our website, lhbe.org.
Format: Chiefly in-person. We may have some limited capacity for online participation. Please indicate on your abstract whether your participation is contingent on the availability of online participation.
Personal information: For each participant (presenter, chair, or commentator), please submit: 1) Biographical details of no more than 150 words; 2) Where, and in what timezone, you will be in July 2025 if you are not physically in Toronto.
Individual papers: If you are submitting an individual paper, please submit an abstract of no more than 200 words.
Panels (of no more than 4 speakers: a chair and/or commentator can be included): If you are submitting a panel, please include: 1) A panel abstract of no more than 150 words; and 2) Individual paper abstracts of no more than 200 words.
Streams We anticipate having streams in the program on the following themes, coordinated by the scholars listed below. If your proposal is to a particular stream please indicate that clearly in your abstract.
Illegality in Empire: Dr David Chan Smith
The American Empire: Dr Sam Erman
Empire in Oceania: Dr Mary Mitchell
Law in Africa: Dr Yolanda Osondu
Legal Transfer in the Common Law World: Prof Stefan Vogenauer and Dr Donal Coffey
Comparing Empires: Judicial Institutions and Legal Actors: Prof Heikki Pihlajamäki