2002
European and American Judicial Models in Interdisciplinary Contexts
Arpaillargues, France, October 18-20, 2002
Cardona, Spain, October 15-17, 2001
Innovating an existing tradition of scholarly collaboration and exchange, the Robbins Collection and the Max-Planck Institute for European Legal History (Max-Planck-Institut für Europäische Rechtsgeschichte), met in Cardona, Spain, in October 2001 to initiate a new program of multidisciplinary and comparative research on European and American models of justice. An annual event, the exchange will be based upon a program of two-year cycles, in which participating scholars from Europe and the United States present and discuss detailed works in progress during the first year's meeting and then reconvene during the second year to present concluded projects ready for publication. While participants and venues may change with the conclusion of each two-year cycle, the exchange will maintain a broader continuity of focus over a period of years. By returning to a set of central questions and themes through a number of cycles—but each time with new and diverse approaches—the exchange itself will become an ongoing and evolving project in which the fullest articulation and contextualization of these themes may be realized.
The scholars who introduced their projects at the first meeting in October proved to be a group exemplary of the spirit of the exchange, not only in their strongly interdisciplinary professional backgrounds, but also in their enthusiasm to explore the connections between their diverse and compelling fields of research. The sessions yielded several themes that the group will continue to examine in the coming year. Most prominent were the interrelated issues of law and memory/countermemory; ethics and commemoration in legal culture; and judicial representation and self-representation in literary and popular culture.
The 2001 participants whose projects inaugurated the exchange in Cardona were Antonio Serrano González of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Valerie Lasserre of the University of Paris II, Pantheon-Assas; Rainer Maria Kiesow and Alessandro Somma of the Max-Planck Institut for European Legal History, Frankfurt; Ticien Sassoubre of Stanford University; and Norman Spaulding of the University of California, Berkeley. Dieter Simon, Director of the Max-Planck Institut for European Legal History and President of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, and Laurent Mayali, Director of the Robbins Collection, presided at the meeting sessions and moderated the discussion of projects; and Julianne Gilland, Robbins Collection Program Coordinator, also participated in the meeting sessions and discussion.
The 2001 exchange was a lively and productive one. The work presented went far as a preliminary exploration of these new themes linking law and memory, their interconnections and their boundaries. The projects that they have initiated promise not only groundbreaking conclusions at next year's meeting, scheduled for October 18-20, 2002, in Arpaillargues, France, but also provocative and fruitful debate for years to come.
Project Abstracts
Avoiding Adjudication in Faulkner's Go Down, Moses and Intruder in the Dust
Ticien Sassoubre
Stanford University
The decade in which Faulkner wrote Go Down, Moses (1942) and Intruder in the Dust (1949) was one of tension and transition in American law. Doctor Sassoubre examines the role that Faulkner assigns to adjudication and law in the communities of these two novels, arguing that the lawyers and judges in each work conclude that they must avoid applying the law in order to protect the stability of the community. She goes on to explore the implications of the two novels in the broader legal and cultural contexts of the 1940's, as New Deal legislation and the National Labor Relations Act imported a new law from the Federal Government to the South.
Ethics of Memory in Judging
Norman Spaulding
University of California, Berkeley
Examining the role of memory in judicial culture, Professor Spaulding proposes that judicial history is memory: it is organic and responsive to present needs, and it is built around an adherence to a national ethos or narrative. Focusing on cases involving the Reconstruction amendments of the U.S. Constitution during three phases, 1870-1937, 1937-1970, and 1970-present, he explores how in all phases, judges ignore that these amendments are fundamental revisions of institutional commitments and are counter to the national narrative. Professor Spaulding posits this "counter-memory" approach to adjudicating national identity as the central question in dealing with memory and constitutional interpretation.
Images of Justice in Twentieth-Century Spain
Antonio Serrano González
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
The establishment of the Cuerpo Facultivo de Abogados del Estado in Spain in 1881 created an elite corps of attorneys who gained a new professionalism, formality and prestige as a group. They not only enjoyed special status, but also took on powers that traditionally pertained to judges. Examining images of self-promotion and self-representation of this group from 1881 to the present, which took form in biographies, collections, and, most significantly, portraits, Professor Serrano identifies the emergence of a group of legal "proto-martyrs" whose institutionalization and glorification mirror the culturopolitical transitions in twentieth-century Spain.
Le juge et le préjuge
Valerie Lasserre
Max-Planck-Institut für Europäische Rechtsgeschichte
Professor Lasserre begins by tracing the historical development of jurisdiction in the French justice system using the example of Paris. Focusing on the traditional administration of justice by arrondissement, the role of the local Justice of the Peace in this system, and the evolution of the Cour de Cassation in Paris, Professor Lasserre moves on to examine questions of judgment and "prejudgment" in French judicial administration. Comparing the French judicial system to the U.S. system, she highlights the inadequate means of case filtering in the French model and considers the development of divided chambers within the Cour de Cassation as an attempt to correct this inadequacy.
Images of the Italian Justice System in Film
Alessandro Somma
Max-Planck-Institut für Europäische Rechtsgeschichte
Doctor Somma's project catalogs the portrayal of the Italian justice system in twentieth-century cinema. Drawing from well-known films as well as bringing to light lesser-known but significant works, Doctor Somma examines how cinematic portraits of justice have been used as sources of law and have come to serve a normative function in Italian culture and society.
Das Gericht will nichts von Dir/The Court wants nothing from you
Rainer Maria Kiesow
Max-Planck-Institut für Europäische Rechtsgeschichte
Doctor Kiesow elucidates the relationship between communication and the law in the fiction of several twentieth-century European and American writers. Citing a range of works from the novels of Kafka and Dostoyevsky to Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener," Doctor Kiesow locates the entanglements of communication and law in the fates of their protagonists. From there he moves forward to consider the philosophical connections between law, life and death in twentieth-century literature and culture.
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