The Faculty Lounge

CFP for Hybrid St. Thomas Symposium on Constitutionalism--Proposals due 9/15

JLPP Fall Symposium

Constitutionalism

November 18, 2022 (hybrid event, speakers are welcome to participate in-person or by Zoom)

University of St. Thomas School of Law

                        Constitutionalism is the idea that government should be limited and that a sphere of autonomy should be open to individuals to pursue their own interests. There is a paradox embedded in the idea – and that is that government voluntarily keeps its powers within carefully circumscribed limited even if it possesses a monopoly of coercive force.

                        Paradoxical as it seems, however, the idea of constitutionalism is a sturdy one. Some have traced its roots to the conciliarist movement of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, while others to John Locke and other British thinkers.

                        Whatever its precise origins, constitutionalism as an organizing principle has withstood numerous challengers. In its early days, its chief competitors were theories of absolute monarchy; then totalitarianism; more recently still authoritarianism.

                        Constitutionalism, however, is not an idea without its own flaws. One can rightly ask, how can a system of constitutional government call itself restrained when it permitted slavery to flourish.

                        Constitutionalism, however, remains a fundamental characteristic of the American project. It is a cornerstone of American claims to be a democracy and a source of American legitimacy. The same holds true for many of the other nations of the world. Like the United States, most nations have adopted constitutions and strive to pattern their conduct according to the rules set forth in these founding charters.

                        This Call for Papers welcomes contributions on any aspect of constitutionalism. Topics include:

1. The history of constitutional thought.
2. Philosophical foundations of constitutionalism
3. Congress and constitutional self-restraint
4. The Supreme Court and constitutional self-restraint
5. Constitutions and their place in the international order
6. Comparative constitutionalism

Please submit proposals of 250 to 500 words to Professor Charles J. Reid, Jr., (cjreid@stthomas.edu ) by September 15, 2022.

Successful submissions will be published in our Journal of Law and Public Policy. Successful submissions can expect a modest honorarium.

CFP: HODL and Horizons: How Technology is Changing the Legal Landscape

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Artificial Intelligence, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), ChatGPT.  Over the last few years, the world has seen an exponential proliferation of technology across all industries. With new inventions comes new legal territory as our judicial system begins to determine the boundaries within which these new technologies must operate. How will NFTs work under data privacy and copyright law? What laws govern the Metaverse? How will law firms adapt to the changing work environment brought on by COVID, work automation, and hybrid-office demands? The Elon Law Review invites submissions for our Symposium exploring such legal developments involving tech and law.

The Fall 2023 Symposium will be held on Friday, September 22, 2023 with a reception the evening before on Thursday, September 21, 2023. The central topic of papers must revolve around technology and the law. An abstract of the scholarly paper to be presented should be submitted no later than Friday, March 24^th, 2023, to Chief Symposium Editor, KimberMarie Faircloth, at kfaircloth4@elon.edu. Please attach a resume or CV to your submission. Accepted proposals will be organized into symposium panels around the proposed themes. Final papers will be due by Friday, June 30^th, 2023, for both presentation at the Symposium and publication in the Symposium issue of the 2023 Elon Law Review.

CFP: Harvard/Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum

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Harvard, Stanford, and Yale Law Schools are soliciting submissions for the 2023 Harvard/Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum, to be held at Yale Law School on June 29-30, 2023. Twelve to twenty junior scholars (with one to seven years in teaching) will be chosen, through a double-blind selection process, to present their work at the Forum. A senior scholar will comment on each paper. The audience will include the participating junior faculty, senior faculty from the host institutions, and invited guests. The goal of the Forum is to promote in-depth discussion about particular papers and more general reflections on broader methodological issues, as well as to foster a stronger sense of community among American legal scholars, particularly by strengthening ties between new and veteran professors.

TOPICS: Each year the Forum invites submissions on selected topics in public and private law, legal theory, and law and humanities topics, alternating loosely between public law and humanities subjects in one year, and private law and dispute resolution in the next. For the upcoming 2023 meeting, the topics will cover these areas of the law:

Administrative Law

Antidiscrimination Law and Theory

Constitutional Law—theoretical foundations 

Constitutional Law—historical foundations
Criminal Law

Critical Legal Studies 

Environmental Law 

Family Law

Jurisprudence and Philosophy 

Law and Humanities

Legislation and Statutory Interpretation 

Public International Law

Workplace Law and Social Welfare Policy

CFP: The Future of the Global IP System

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The Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia  is hosting a workshop in Vancouver from June 28-30, 2023.  The workshop theme is "The Future of the Global IP System" and invites proposals from scholars throughout the world. There will also be a remote option for anyone whose proposal is accepted but who cannot travel to Vancouver for the workshop.  More details can be found here.

 

CFP: Democracy in Disrepair? Examining the Continued Legitimacy of the Supreme Court

Abstracts are due Nov. 14 & the Symposium is March 15. Read the full CFP here:  Download 2023 JRGE CFP (1)

Trusts and Estates Collaborative Research Network (CRN56)

CALL FOR PAPERS 

Annual Meeting on Law and Society

San Juan, Puerto Rico

June 1-4, 2023

IN PERSON ONLY

Abstracts deadline: 8 November 2022

The Trusts and Estates Collaborative Research Network invites you to submit your paper and panel proposals for the upcoming annual meeting on Law and Society, to be held in San Juan, Puerto Rico. This conference will be in-person only. There will be no hybrid or virtual panels. 

We invite papers and proposals that touch in any way on succession (inheritance), equity, or wealth transfers more generally. Subjects of inquiry may involve any aspect of government or social policy with respect to trusts, estates, inheritance, wealth transfer, equity or courts with jurisdiction over these issues.

The conference theme of ‘Separate and Unequal’ offers an opportunity to explore the role of law in normalizing inequality and discrimination. However, papers are not limited to these topics.

We welcome any papers on the topic of trusts and estates. For more information about the conference theme, visit:

https://www.lawandsociety.org/sanjuan2023/

How to submit:

To be included in a CRN56 Trusts and Estates session please submit your proposal directly through the Law and Society Association’s website by November 8, making sure to select CRN56 from the dropdown menu. 

We welcome any of the following submissions: 

• Individual papers (we will organize submissions into panels).
• Paper sessions: panels formed around a single theme, with 4 or 5 paper presenters, and a chair/discussant.
• Roundtables: formed around a single topic with 4 to 8 participants, and a chair. 
• Author Meets Reader (AMR): for scholarly books published in 2022. 

Individual abstracts can be submitted in English or Spanish

Session abstracts must be in English, but can be presented in Spanish as long as all papers in the session are in Spanish. 

For more information on the different submission types, and how to submit, visit: https://www.lawandsociety.org/types-of-submissions/

Important information about the conference:

More information including details regarding visa requirements, and accessibility information can be found at the conference website: 

https://www.lawandsociety.org/sanjuan2023/

 

CFP: Ninth Applied Legal Storytelling Conference in London, July 2023

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This is the call for proposals for the ninth biennial conference on Applied Legal Storytelling. We are offering two deadlines for submitting proposals: December 2, 2022 (priority deadline) and February 3, 2023 (extended deadline).

About the Conference

The Applied Legal Storytelling Conference brings together academics, judges, other law-makers, practitioners, and any other type of legal storyteller. The conference has previously convened in 2007 (London), 2009 (Portland), 2011 (Denver), 2013

(London), 2015 (Seattle), 2017 (Washington D.C.), 2019 (Boulder), and 2021 (Virtual/Mercer).

Applied Legal Storytelling (AppLS) examines the use of stories, storytelling, or narrative elements in law practice, legal education, and the law. This definition is intentionally broad to allow people creativity in the way they think and present on the topic. Examples may include: the ways in which fiction-writing techniques or narrative theory can inform legal storytelling; stories in the law, or law as stories; legal storytelling and metaphor; client story advocacy; legal storytelling and cognitive science; and ethical considerations in legal storytelling. Undoubtedly there are many other avenues to explore.

Call for Speakers & Papers on Technology, Cybersecurity, & Ag Law--deadline Oct. 15

Call for Speakers and Papers:
South Dakota Law Review Technology, Cybersecurity, and Agricultural Law Symposium

 

The South Dakota Law Review seeks speakers, panel participants, and article proposals for a symposium on issues related to technology, cybersecurity, and agricultural law. The Technology, Cybersecurity, and Agricultural Law Symposium will take place at the USD Knudson School of Law in Vermillion, South Dakota on Monday, March 27, 2023. Article proposals of 300-500 words may be submitted by October 15, 2022, with papers due December 16, 2022.

 

The symposium will focus on issues at the nexus of technology, cybersecurity, and agricultural law in South Dakota and the United States at large. Over the past several decades, rapid and extensive changes in technology and agribusiness have opened new opportunities and challenges to farmers and stakeholders surrounding cybersecurity and agriculture. The editors seek speakers, panelists, and articles that address one or more of the following topics, or other related topics:

 

1. Changes in technology and agribusiness involving data, cybersecurity, and agricultural law
2. Ag data privacy and confidentiality
3. Ag data integrity
4. Ag data availability and/or disruption to data and ag communication networks
5. Control of ag communication networks
6. Technology, agribusiness, and antitrust law
7. Any other topic related to cybersecurity and agricultural law

 

The editors actively seek diverse viewpoints and diverse scholarly approaches.  Although the symposium is not a historical or comparative project, the editors welcome articles with historical or comparative features.

 

The Call for Speakers and Papers will remain open until Saturday, October 15, 2022. Please contact Jaquilyn.WaddellBoie@coyotes.usd.edu with your interest in speaking, and/or with an article proposal. Selected participants and writers will be notified by Friday, October 21, 2022. Finished articles will be due Friday, December 16, 2022. Our editors will work with you over the winter 2022-23 to prepare your work for the symposium and/or publication. Transportation and lodging is provided for all selected speakers and panelists. Articles will be published and released in the summer of 2023.

Financial Restructuring Roundtable Call for Papers

Financial Restructuring Roundtable Call for Papers 

The Financial Restructuring Roundtable (formerly the West Coast Bankruptcy Roundtable) will be held in person on April 6, 2023 in New York City. Spearheaded by Tony Casey, Samir Parikh, Robert Rasmussen, and Michael Simkovic, this invitation-only event brings together practitioners, jurists, scholars, and finance industry professionals to discuss important financial restructuring and business law issues. 

The Roundtable invites the submission of papers. Selected participants will receive a $2,000 stipend and have the opportunity to workshop their papers in an intimate, collegial setting. Last year’s attendees included Ken Ayotte, Douglas Baird, Bruce Bennett, Jared Ellias, Anna Gelpern, Marshall Huebner, Ed Morrison, Mark Roe, David Skeel, and Jamie Sprayregen. 

We seek papers exploring diverse topics and will be interested in interdisciplinary perspectives. Papers will be selected through a blind review process. Scholars are invited to submit a 3 – 5 page overview of a proposed paper. Submissions may be an introduction, excerpt from a longer paper, or extended abstract. The submission should be anonymized, and – aside from general citations to the author’s previous articles – all references to the author should be removed.

Please submit proposals by October 1, 2022. Invitations will be issued via email by November 1.  Working drafts of papers must be available for circulation to participants by February 10, 2023.  

Proposals – as well as questions and concerns – should be directed to Samir Parikh at sparikh@lclark.edu. 

The Financial Restructuring Roundtable is hosted by the University of Chicago Law School, USC Gould School of Law, and Lewis & Clark Law School in partnership with the Penn Restructuring Institute and Sidley Austin. 

 

CFP: Industrial Prison Complex System

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The LSU Law Journal for Social Justice and Policy is pleased to announce its Call for Papers for our upcoming symposium on the Industrial Prison Complex System. The Symposium will take place in a virtual format on November 11, 2022. 

Submissions can include but are not limited to the following topics:

• Capital Punishment
• The Business of Private Prisons
• Hard Labor as Punishment
• Implications of the 8^th Amendment
• Federal v. State v. Private Prisons
• The implications of the current prison system
• Restitution for Innocent individuals imprisoned
• Sentencing Guidelines and the impact on prisons
• Alternatives to Prison for non-violent offenders
• Economic Impacts of the Current Prison System
• Two-Year Anniversary of George Floyd: Where are we at now?
• Decriminalizing Marijuana
• Privatization of Probation
• No Cash Bail v. Cash Bail

LJSJP seeks to elevate underrepresented voices in legal academia and to confront pressing social justice issues of the day. Academics at all levels and in all disciplines (not just law) are encouraged to apply.

To apply, please submit an abstract of approximately 350-750 words through this form by August 29, 2022.

CFP: "Models of Laws and in Law" (special issue of LAWS)

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Call For Submissions

Special Issue of LAWS: "Models of Law and in Law: Uses, Opportunities, and Risks"

Guest editors: Prof. Michael Madison, University of Pittsburgh School of Law and Prof. Christian Turner, University of Georgia School of Law

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/laws/special_issues/RD9Q950LB6

Submission deadline: 15 March 2023

Modeling methods are gaining ground as rapidly in law as they are elsewhere in our social life. Machine learning algorithms, increasingly prevalent in decision-making systems of many sorts, are created, trained, and deployed to recognize objects in images and videos, generate artwork, and, increasingly, to surveil and regulate. “Digital twin” models are being developed for everything from urban planning to medical research. Models of human cognition and behavior are increasingly prominent in policy making on topics as diverse as public health and mis- and dis-information.

At the same time, some newer theories of human consciousness and decision making posit modeling as a critical element of our subjective experience. For example, predictive coding and active inference theories suggest our internal model of the relevant world composes the contents of our consciousness and is constantly updated as our senses report errors from the model’s predictions. Legal decision making may involve the maintenance of mental models of legal causes and effects, categories, and expected outcomes.

Taken together, those developments reveal how interest in modeling spans numerous fields with overlaps and implications for law: information technology, health and medicine, psychology, neuroscience, economics, political science, philosophy, and computer science.

 

South Dakota Law Review Symposium Call for Papers

USD Law Review will be hosting a Symposium on Cybersecurity and Agricultural Law this coming Spring. Abstracts are due 8/23/22. More info. here: Download South Dakota Law Review - CFP 2022

CFP for Law & Rurality Workshop

Workshop to be held at University of Nebraska Lincoln on October 21. Proposals are due 8/22. See attached for more information: Download CFP - 10.21.2022 Law and Rurality Workshop 

CFP Mercer L.Rev: Legal Narratives and Justice

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Mercer Law Review seeks papers and proposals for its Annual Symposium. This year’s Symposium, Past is Prologue: Legal Narratives and the Law’s Potential for Justice and Injustice, focuses on conflicting legal narratives in briefs, judicial decisions, press accounts, and conventional wisdom. The Symposium will be held October 7, 2022 with proposals due on or before July 31, 2022. Proceedings from the Symposium are published in the Lead Articles edition from of the Mercer Law Review.

More information, including contact information and a submission form, is contained in the call for proposals.

Washburn LR CFP: Climate Change, Environmental Law and Natural Resources Law

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The Washburn Law Journal is soliciting articles for Issue I, Volume 62 of the Journal. The lead Essay for the issue is written by Professor Daniel Bodansky and discusses the UN climate change regime, the Paris Agreement, and COP 26. Each year, Washburn University School of Law invites a distinguished scholar to present the Foulston Siefkin Lecture. This year, Professor Bodansky—a Regents’ Professor of Law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University—presented “The UN Climate Change Regime Thirty Years On—A Retrospective and Assessment.” (His presentation can be found at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DSCV5w2q9E).

Articles chosen for publication will be published in December 2022. Articles must discuss climate change, environmental law, or natural resource law to be accepted for publication. Authors may email articles to journalarticles@washburn.edu with the subject line “WLJ Call for Papers.” Authors must include a full draft of their article, cover letter, and a curriculum vitae with their submissions. Articles must be a minimum of 10,000 words and no more than 30,000 words. Submissions will be accepted until August 1, 2022. The Journal will extend offers for publication to selected authors no later than August 22, 2022. A limited number of publications will be chosen for publication.

If you have any questions, please reach out to the Editor-in-Chief, Marisa No at marisa.no@washburn.edu or the Senior Articles Editor, Elisabeth Wilder at elisabeth.wilder@washburn.edu.

CFP: SALT-LatCrit-ClassCrit Conference

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2022 SALT Teaching Conference, in partnership with the LatCrit-SALT-ClassCrits Junior Faculty Development Workshop 

Rest & Resistance:
Preserving Our Democracy while Protecting Our Peace

Friday and Saturday, October 14 -15, 2022 
Loyola University Chicago School of Law, Chicago, Illinois 

Society has experienced so much in the last two years—a global health pandemic, ongoing attacks against Black, Indigenous, Latinx, Asian American and Pacific Islander, and other marginalized communities, and deterioration of our democracy and constitutional rights. To overcome these challenges, we must reinforce the pillars of Rest & Resistance as bedrock to the fight for justice. The 2022 SALT Teaching Conference will provide an opportunity for academics and activists to explore these pillars as a framework for self-care and social justice, with the strategies, support, and resources necessary for faculty, students, and lawyers to rest and resist within a culture of systemic injustice.

CFP: 4th Annual Equality Law Scholars' Forum

Call for Proposals for the Fourth Annual Equality Law Scholars’ Forum

November 4-5, 2022 – Loyola Law School, Los Angeles

Building on the success of the Equality Law Scholars’ Forum held at UC Berkeley Law in 2017, at UC Davis Law in 2018, and at Boston University Law in 2021, and in the spirit of academic engagement and mentoring in the area of Equality Law, we (Tristin Green, University of San Francisco, visiting Loyola Los Angeles AY 2022-23; Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Boston University; and Leticia Saucedo, UC Davis) announce the Fourth Annual Equality Law Scholars’ Forum to be held in Fall 2022. 

This Scholars’ Forum seeks to provide junior scholars with commentary and critique and to provide scholars at all career stages the opportunity to engage with new scholarly currents and ideas.  We hope to bring together scholars with varied perspectives (e.g., critical race theory, class critical theory, queer theory, feminist legal theory, law and economics, law and society) across fields (e.g., criminal system, education, employment, family, health, immigration, property, tax) and with work relevant to many diverse identities (e.g., age, class, disability, national origin, race, sex, sexuality) to build bridges and to generate new ideas in the area of Equality Law.  

We will select five or six relatively junior scholars (untenured, newly tenured, or prospective professors) in the U.S. to present papers from proposals submitted in response to this Call for Proposals. In so doing, we will select papers that cover a broad range of topics within the area of Equality Law.  Leading senior scholars will provide commentary on each of the featured papers in an intimate and collegial setting.  The Forum will take place all day Friday through lunch on Saturday.  Participants are expected to attend the full Forum.  The Equality Law Scholars’ Forum will pay transportation and accommodation expenses for participants and will host a dinner on Friday evening.  

This year’s Forum will be held on November 4-5, 2022, at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

Junior scholars are invited to submit abstracts of proposed papers, 3-5 pages in length, by June 10, 2022.   

Full drafts of papers must be available for circulation to participants by October 20, 2022. 

Note: We urge submission of proposals for drafts that will still be substantially in progress in October/November 2022 over drafts that will be in late-stage law review edits at that time.

Proposals should be submitted to:

Leticia Saucedo, UC Davis School of Law, lmsaucedo@ucdavis.edu.  Electronic submissions via email are preferred.

CFP: Kentucky Law Journal Symposium on Redistricting

The Kentucky Law Journal is pleased to invite proposals for its annual symposium, which will be held on October 14, 2022.  The KLJ symposium is entitled Drawing the Lines: Redistricting After the 2020 Census and will focus on the legal issues and policy implications of the 2020 Census and redistricting cycle. From policy arguments regarding who should draw the lines to legal disputes on new maps all across the country, a fundamental question remains: does the redistricting process give us the democracy we deserve?

The KLJ will host this symposium in person in beautiful Lexington, Kentucky, on October 14, 2022, with a pre-symposium dinner held on the evening of October 13.  In addition to presentations at the symposium event, presenters will publish pieces in Volume 111 of the Kentucky Law Journal.  The editors are particularly interested in publications serving as one of two feature articles in the range of 15,000–20,000-words.  In order to apply for the symposium, please submit an abstract of no more than 1,000 words.  In addition, please submit a current CV. 

Submissions are due by June 3, 2021, at editors@kentuckylawjournal.org.  Please send any questions to KLJ Special Features Editor, Holly Couch, at holly.couch@uky.edu, KLJ Editor-in-Chief, Jackson Sanders, at jackson.sanders1@uky.edu, or KLJ’s faculty advisor, Joshua Douglas, at joshuadouglas@uky.edu. 

CFP: Gender & Law Emerging Scholar Award

Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University

Gender & the Law Emerging Scholar Award: Call for Submissions

The Elisabeth Haub School of Law is pleased to announce the competition for its annual Gender & the Law Emerging Scholar Award.  This paper competition is open to all having with five (5) or fewer years of full-time law teaching experience as of July 1, 2022. The deadline for submissions is July 1, 2022.

The purpose of the award is to encourage and recognize excellent legal scholarship related to gender and the law.  The work chosen for the Gender & the Law Emerging Scholar Award should make a substantial contribution to legal literature and reflect original research and/or major developments in previously reported research.

Papers will be reviewed on a blind basis by a committee comprised of three members of the Haub Law faculty with expertise in this area: Bridget Crawford, Noa Ben-Asher and Emily Gold Waldman.  The winner of the competition will be invited to present the paper to selected students and faculty at Haub Law (located in White Plains, NY) during the 2022-2023 academic year, with reasonable travel expenses from within the continental U.S. paid, or via Zoom, as circumstances permit and by mutual agreement.

ELIGIBILITY:

• All persons who have held full-time teaching positions for five (5) or fewer full academic years as of July 1, 2022 are eligible for consideration. One does not have to be on the tenure-track or tenured to be eligible. Time as a VAP or Fellow does not “count” against the five (5) year clock.
• There is no subject-matter limitation for submissions, as long as the paper relates in some way to gender and the law.
• Jointly authored papers are accepted as long as each author independently meets the eligibility requirements.

PUBLICATION COMMITMENTS/LIMITATIONS:

• There is no publication commitment associated with the competition. 
• Papers are eligible regardless of whether they were published prior to submission date, are scheduled to be published after the submission date, or are not yet under submission.
• Each applicant is limited to one (1) entry.
• Papers considered in prior years’ competitions are eligible for resubmission.
• There are no page-length or word-count limitations.
• All publications (including scholarly articles, book chapters, legal briefs and other writings) are eligible for consideration.

SUBMISSION:

• We will accept submissions for the Emerging Scholar Award from May 10, 2022, through July 1, 2022. The winner will be announced by August 30, 2022.
• To participate, please email your article, redacted as necessary to preserve anonymity (for the blind judging process), as a portable data file (PDF) to Judy Jaeger, Senior Staff Associate, at jjaeger@law.pace.edu with the subject line “Emerging Scholar Award.”

• Please include in the body of the email your name, institutional affiliation and confirmation that you meet the eligibility requirements.
• Unredacted or late papers will not be considered.

Information on Emerging Scholar Award and the Elisabeth Haub School of Law

The Elisabeth Haub School of Law is pleased to host an annual paper competition for its Gender & the Law Emerging Scholar Award.  The law school at Pace University is one of a small number of schools in the United States named after a woman, and we are proud of our school’s long-standing commitment to gender justice.

Since the establishment of the Women’s Justice Center in 1991, Haub Law has made gender justice a priority.  Students have the ability to pursue a path to practice in Women, Gender & the Law, through which they develop skills and strategies for effective representation and advocacy for gender justice, regardless of what career they pursue.  The Haub Law faculty includes nationally-recognized academic experts and advocates for gender justice. Our faculty teach, research and write about gender equality and justice as it relates to constitutional law, corporate law, criminal law, education, environmental law, estate planning, juvenile justice, legal theory, poverty, public health, social media, and taxation, to name just a few areas.  An important hallmark of Haub Law is that in addition to our specialty classes that focus on gender, issues involving gender are also integrated into a wide range of other courses.

Prior Winners

2020 – Greer Donley, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, Contraceptive Equity: Curing the Sex Discrimination in the ACA’s Mandate, 71 Ala. L. Rev. 499 (2019).

2021 – Marie Amélie George, Exploring Identity, 54 Fam. L.Q. 1 (2021)

CFP: Nevada Law Journal, Dark Necessity? The Supreme Court's Shadow Docket

Call For Papers: Dark Necessity? The Supreme Court’s Shadow Docket
Volume 23, Issue 3 of the NEVADA LAW JOURNAL
University of Nevada, Las Vegas  
William S. Boyd School of Law  

The NEVADA LAW JOURNAL is pleased to announce a call for papers for its symposium issue, Dark Necessity? The Supreme Court’s Shadow Docket. This symposium will address what the “shadow docket” is and what it could become.  
The Supreme Court is composed of nine justices—appointed for life or good behavior. The justices decide which cases they will review by selectively granting certiorari. They typically receive briefings from petitioners, respondents, and amici curiae, then hear oral arguments before issuing opinions. The opinions identify authors and votes. But the Supreme Court’s shadow docket does not follow these procedural standards.  

The shadow docket is comprised of emergency orders and summary decisions. Because these cases are decided on applications for emergency relief, the merits may be unresolved at the lower courts. And because these decisions are outside of the Supreme Court’s main docket, the abbreviated proceedings are without both parties’ complete written and oral advocacy. Here, any five (to nine) justices may anonymously affirm or overrule legal doctrine without saying why. That is, the shadow docket allows the Supreme Court to issue unsigned, unexplained orders with short and long term effects.  

The shadow docket has become a hot topic among scholars, senators, and even the justices themselves. On the one hand, those that fear the shadow docket stress that it is beginning to resemble “some ghoul in a late night horror movie.” On the other hand, those that revere the shadow docket believe that the Court’s legitimacy is in fact bolstered by issuing these decisions. Yet what underlies this debate remains undisputed: the shadow docket’s use has considerably increased in recent years.  

This NEVADA LAW JOURNAL issue seeks to explain the shadow docket’s past and present use as well as its substantive effects on particular areas of law. We invite interested parties to submit abstracts of at least 375 words; we welcome longer summaries and draft papers. The abstracts should be proposals for articles between 15,000 and 30,000 words. Submissions should be sent to Alyssa Williams, Symposium Editor, at alyssa.williams@unlv.edu with the subject line “NLJ Call for Papers.”  

CFP - Class Crits XIII, Unlocking Inequality: Revisiting the Intersection of Race and Class

Call for Papers and Participation

ClassCrits XIII:

Unlocking Inequality: Revisiting the Intersection of Race and Class

Co-Sponsored by ClassCrits, Inc., TapRoot Earth, and Thurgood Marshall School of Law

October 21-22, 2022

Where: Thurgood Marshall School of Law, Houston, TX (we anticipate a live conference)

Proposal Types:  Individual Presentations, Panels, Junior Scholar Works-in-Progress

 Deadline:  June 30, 2022

Conference Proposals:  Submit at www.classcrits.org

Conference Theme, Unlocking Inequality: Revisiting the Intersection of Race and Class

The Civil Rights Era of the mid 20th century brought about some reforms, it did not achieve substantive equality for people of color, and in particular for African American, Latinx and Native American communities.  The wealth and income of these communities are far below that of whites, their poverty and unemployment rates are far above the national average, and they are far underrepresented among college graduates and in professions requiring higher education.  There is still widespread de facto racial and ethnic segregation in schools and residential living patterns.  And people of color are often harassed and brutalized by police and private citizens when engaged in normal human activities. 

For several decades, scholarship in Critical Race Theory and LatCrit Theory has examined the role of ongoing racial discrimination in perpetuating persistent injustices and inequalities against African Americans and other people of color.  A somewhat different perspective is found in the literature on “racial capitalism.”  Inspired by scholars in the Black radical tradition such as W.E.B. DuBois, Cedric Robinson, and Sylvia Wynter, historians and theorists of capitalism have begun to trace the relationship between global capitalism and white supremacy.  From the dispossession of indigenous people in the “New World” to the establishment of Atlantic slavery, through the construction of empires of cotton, sugar, bananas, and other commodities that pulled colonized and racialized peoples around the globe into new supply chains designed to serve the European metropoles, the cheap land and labor produced by white supremacy has been central to the emergence of capitalism.  The climate crisis, which currently threatens the well-being of the entire world and of which people of color and other marginalized communities bear the brunt, is an outcome of a globalized economic system based on extraction from and exploitation of these communities and of the planet at large.  Indeed, new historical research suggests that capitalist tools and mechanisms—from accounting and management practices to mortgages, the corporate form, and private property itself—are the products of a mindset that has distributed the privileges of “humanity” unequally.  This account refuses the conventional question of “Is it race or class?” and suggests that the two are intimately intertwined.

This backdrop poses several questions.  Is it possible to overcome white supremacy with the existing tools of American law?  Can white supremacy and capitalism be disentangled?  Is it possible, given what DuBois called the “wages of whiteness,” to build a more egalitarian society with minimal wealth and income disparities, high quality education and guaranteed employment for all, and comparable opportunities to seek fulfillment in life?  Despite the enormous power of the moneyed elite, is it possible and what would it take to transform our society from one based on competition, profit, and individual satisfaction to one whose core values are working cooperatively, meeting people’s needs, and fairly sharing what society collectively produces among all its members? 

Proposals

We invite proposals for individual paper presentations and panels that speak to this year’s theme of Unlocking Inequality: Revisiting the Intersection of Race and Class as well as to general ClassCrits themes.[1] We anticipate at present that our conference will be live and in-person, although that could easily change with new developments in the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

[1] ClassCrits themes include:

• The legal and cultural project of constructing inequalities of all kinds as natural, normal, and
• The relationships among economic, racial, and gender inequality.
• The development of new methods (including the interdisciplinary study and development of such methods) with which to analyze and criticize economics and law (beyond traditional “law and economics”).
• The relationship between material systems and institutions and cultural systems and
• The concept and reality of class within the international legal community, within international development studies and welfare strategies, and within a “flattening” world of globalized economics and geopolitical relations.

[1] ClassCrits themes include:

• The legal and cultural project of constructing inequalities of all kinds as natural, normal, and
• The relationships among economic, racial, and gender inequality.
• The development of new methods (including the interdisciplinary study and development of such methods) with which to analyze and criticize economics and law (beyond traditional “law and economics”).
• The relationship between material systems and institutions and cultural systems and
• The concept and reality of class within the international legal community, within international development studies and welfare strategies, and within a “flattening” world of globalized economics and geopolitical relations.