In-person/Face to face; some online attendance will be available.
Theme
Change and Continuity
Conference abstracts are invited to engage with the themes, tensions, and dynamics of change and continuity across law and history.
Change and continuity are recurring themes in law and history, the inexorably shifting ebbs and flows as society and its laws adapt to the dynamic contours of space, place, and time; and the physical and metaphysical influences of context. Change presages reform, disruption, and transformation, while continuity assures of stability, permanence, or the perceived comfort of incremental ‘progress’. Change and continuity appear as polar opposites, and they often are, yet at times, they also complement each other, speaking to latent tensions that are both coherent and incoherent and compatible and incompatible, often at the same time.
Change and continuity also remind us of circularity and relativity. As the truism goes, ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’, yet often, it seems that time speeds up (change) while on occasions, it passes more slowly (continuity). Or change and continuity are simply different gears on an erstwhile linear trajectory, where each co-informs and co-constitutes an ongoing confluence of legalities and histories.
We look forward to receiving your abstracts by 31 August. Please send them to anzlhs2024@gmail.com
An Early Career Researcher (ECR) session will be held on 17 November 2024. If you are an ECR, please indicate your interest in attending the session on your submission.
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Papers are invited on any topic, but the conference organisers (Prof. Prue Vines, Prof. John Page and Dr. Henry Kha) particularly welcome abstracts that address the broad themes of ‘Change and Continuity’. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words, and should be accompanied by a short biography (100 words). Panel submissions are also warmly encouraged. Submissions should be sent to anzlhs2024@gmail.com
Plenary speakers
Professor Lisa Ford, School of Humanities & Languages, UNSW Sydney
Lisa Ford is Professor of History at the University of New South Wales. She is the prize-winning author of three monographs: Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia, 1788-1836 (Harvard UP, 2010); Rage for Order: The British Empire and the Origins of International Law, 1800-1850 (Harvard UP, 2016), co-authored with Professor Lauren Benton; and The King's Peace: Law and Order in the British Empire (Harvard UP, 2021). Professor Ford has also co-edited two books: with Tim Rowse, Between Indigenous and Settler Governance (Routledge 2013); and with Peter Cane and Mark McMillan, The Cambridge Legal History of Australia (Cambridge UP, 2022).
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Commissions of inquiry were sent to diagnose law, governance, and economy in almost every British colony between 1819 and 1833. They produced an enormous archive of public and private commentary on the nature of colonial law, the imperial constitution, and the social and political life of the colonies. This was a counter-revolutionary, conservative project, yet its findings underpinned some stunningly ambitious efforts to reconstitute the empire, as my colleagues Kirsten McKenzie, Naomi Parkinson, David Roberts and I outline in a forthcoming book.
In this address, I will use our project to explore the dynamics of continuity and change in the processes of nineteenth-century conservative reform. I will do so by focusing on the archive itself. Drawing from examples across the empire, I will outline how the ways commissioners gathered, stored and communicated information shaped the outcomes of their inquiries. I will show how key bureaucrats used (and ignored) this information to turn reform ideas into pan-imperial templates that themselves contain important articulations of the nature and limits of the imperial constitution. And I will explain how this sprawling and diverse archive profoundly shaped our own research questions.
Professor Warren Swain, Auckland Law School, University of Auckland | Waipapa Taumata Rau
Warren Swain is a Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law at the University of Auckland. Educated at Hertford College, Oxford, he lectured at Hertford College and the Universities of Birmingham and Durham in the UK and was a Professor the TC Beirne School of Law, the University of Queensland. He is a Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in the UK in recognition of his contribution to historical scholarship. He has widely published on both modern private law and the history of private law. He has written several books including, The Law of Contract 1670-1870 with the Cambridge University Press. An edited collection with Sagi Peari, Rethinking Unjust Enrichment: History, Sociology, and Theory published by the Oxford University Press was just published.
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Few scholars, except perhaps the most quixotic of legal theorists, and certainly no respectable legal historian, would suggest that the law of contract can be extracted from the society in which it operates. It would be ridiculous to suggest that contracts in ancient Mesopotamia, the Roman Empire and nineteenth century London, were anything other than quite different in character. But in making that assertion another angle is typically overlooked. Context should not exclude all other considerations. Features of the law of contract in quite different societies show lawyers grappling with some problems which, if not identical, are, on closer inspection, in fact quite similar. This is not a reflection of some legal land of lost content, nor some nostalgic vision of a golden age, nor even a theory of legal transplants. Differences between legal systems geographically and across time are very real. I would, nevertheless, suggest that other sorts of valid comparisons can be made. For want of a better terminology these might be termed echoes – or a study of the way that different legal systems approach what are at base analogous problems.
Professor John Page, School of Private and Commercial Law, UNSW Sydney
John Page is a Professor in the School of Private and Commercial Law in the Faculty of Law & Justice at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. His research explores the diversity of property in the common law tradition. His most recent book, The Lawful Forest: A Critical History of Property, Protest and Spatial Justice (with Cristy Clark) (Edinburgh University Press 2022) was the winner of the 2023 Penny Pether Prize for its contributions to the scholarship of law, literature and humanities in Australasia.
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This paper explores the notion that our lawful relations with land are not always rational. Or indeed, of this world. These landed relationships cannot be categorised as simply transactional, or efficient, or involving the exercise, enjoyment, or enforcement of prosaic property rights such as the right to exclude, the right to alienate, the right to possess, and so on. Rather, such ‘less than rational’ relations are, what I term ‘metaphysical,’ adopting a dictionary definition meaning, ‘of, or relating to the transcendent, or to a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses.’ Similes for ‘metaphysical’ include ‘abstract’, ‘esoteric’, ‘spiritual’, ‘philosophical’, or even ‘supernatural’.
There is a rich heritage of interests in land that speak of relationships that evoke or imagine the metaphysical. They subsist alongside a series of fault lines where the ancient and the modern, the sacred and the secular, the worldly and the otherworldly, and the ‘enchanted' and the ‘disenchanted’, converge and coalesce. This is an interstitial, amorphous space that has been largely lost to plain sight due to the narrow, ahistorical understanding of real property that dominates our contemporary understanding of the institution, and its laws, customs, doctrines and theories.
This paper looks to the past to explain (or at least identify) this hidden, largely peripheral, often arcane, yet extant present of things metaphysical in real property. This paper seeks to remind us of the institutional mysteries of land, our ancient lawful relations with it, and the sometimes-strange contours of property law that reflect this provenance.
ECR session
ANZLHS Early Career Researcher (ECR) Session
Sunday 17 November 2024, 3 – 5 pm
ECRs who are either currently postgraduate research students or 5 years post-PhD are welcome to attend the first ever ECR session. Join us on Sunday 17 November 2024, 3–5 pm at the UNSW Faculty of Law and Justice for an enriching afternoon dedicated to navigating the academic landscape. The discussions will be panel led. Gain practical advice on surviving the PhD journey, refining research methodologies, and carving a path to success in academia. Furthermore, this session will offer assistance with paper presentations, practical career guidance and support to effectively showcase your research findings to the wider academic community.
Following the session, all conference attendees are welcome to attend the welcome drinks starting at 5 pm.
Panel:
Prof. Prue Vines – Professor, University of New South Wales (ANZLHS President)
Dr. Henry Kha – Senior Lecturer, University of New South Wales (ANZLHS Treasurer)
Ms. Inma Conde – PhD Candidate, University of Sydney (ANZLHS ECR Representative)
Program
- Sunday 17 November
- Monday 18 November
- Tuesday 19 November
Time
Session
3pm - 5pm
Early Career Researcher Workshop
Prue Vines, Henry Kha and Inma Conde
Room: 203
5pm - 6pm
Welcome Drinks
Student Lounge, Lv 1
Time
Session
9am
Registration
9:30am
Conference Welcome
Room: G04
9:45am - 10:45am
Plenary
Lisa Ford, ‘The Limits of Legal Change in the Counter-Revolutionary British Empire: A View from the Archive’
Room: G23
10:45am - 11:30am
Morning Tea, hosted by LexisNexis
Student Lounge, Lv 1
11:30am - 1pm
Parallel Session 1a - Interpreting Legal History
Chair: Prue Vines
Room: G23
Paper #1: Paula Jane Byrne, ‘The Criminal Crown Solicitor’s Register, Maitland, 1856-1860’
Paper #2: Tanya Josev, ‘Change and Continuity in Australian Judicial Biography – Some recent developments’
Paper #3: Anna Taitslin, ‘Legal Revolutions: Russia and Germany in the 20th century via the prism of Kelsen’s basic norm’
11:30am - 1pm
Parallel Session 1b - Trusts and Speculation
Chair: Isabella Alexander
Room: G02
Paper #1: M Scott Donald, ‘A history of trustee “speculation” in the Antipodes’
Paper #2: Sarah Wilson, ‘Change and continuity perspectives on promoting longevity for Trusts Law research within the discipline (of Law) and beyond’
1pm - 2pm
Lunch
Student Lounge, Lv 1
2pm - 3:30pm
Parallel Session 2a - Indigenous Legal Issues
Chair: Catherline Bond
Room: G23
Paper #1: Anne Maree Payne, ‘Coming to terms with the past? Truth-telling, justice and historical understanding in Australia’
Paper #2: Tonia Chalk, ‘“A particular formation of nullius”: Coronial investigations into suspicious Aboriginal female deaths in Queensland during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’
Paper #3: Jay Herbert and Carolyn Rock, ‘Bridging Decades of Legal Stasis: Enforceable First Nation Law in the Contemporary Context’
2pm - 3:30pm
Parallel Session 2b - Legal Histories & Land
Chair: John Page
Room: G02
Paper #1: Clare Davidson, ‘F.W. Maitland on feudal orders: towards a critical theory of legal medievalism’
Paper #2: Prue Vines - ‘Further investigations into the pre-1890 probate jurisdiction of NSW and the passing of title to land’
Paper #3: Jason Taliadoros, ‘Thirteenth-Century Legislation—More than Just Land Law: A Case Study of the Statute of Westminster I (1275)’
3:30pm - 4pm
Afternoon Tea
Student Lounge, Lv 1
4pm - 5:30pm
Parallel Session 3a - Early Modern Law
Chair: Prue Vines
Room: G23
Paper #1: Andreas Thier, ‘Legal change and its qualification in European jurisprudence during the late Middle Ages and early modern period: the example of the insurance contract’
Paper #2: David Magalhães, ‘Changing Law by Analogy. The Importance of Analogical Reasoning to the Dynamics of Private Law, since Roman Legal Thought’
Paper #3: James McComish, ‘Litigation in the Court of King’s Bench, c. 1540 – 1570: Patterns of Change and Continuity’
4pm - 5:30pm
Parallel Session 3b - Navigating Colonial Histories
Chair: Catherine Bond
Room: G02
Paper #1: Imran Ahmed, ‘Constitution is Not Enough’: Debating Minority Rights and Equal Citizenship in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, 1947-1954
Paper #2: Geoffrey Keating, ‘From Colony to Coloniser – Establishing Australian rule in Papua’
Paper #3: Alecia Simmons, The campaign for women’s jury rights and the geography of citizenship c. 1900- 1997
5:30pm - 7:30pm
Book Launch & Drinks
Staff Common Room, Lv 2
Time
Session
8:30am
Registration
9am - 10am
Plenary
Warren Swain, ‘The Law of Contract and the Land of Lost Content’
Room: G23
10am - 10:30am
Morning Tea, hosted by Federation Press
Student Lounge, Lv 1
10:30am - 12pm
Parallel Session 4a - Expanding Intellectual Property Histories
Chair: John Page
Room: G23
Paper #1: Isabella Alexander and Cristina S. Martinez, ‘Is the copyright era over? A view from the 18th century’
Paper #2: Jani McCutcheon, ‘Copyright, the origins of the Adaptation Right and Illustrated Fiction in the 19th Century’
Paper #3: Sushmita Choudhury, ‘Advocating reform in the Legal Treatment of Seeds’
10:30am - 12pm
Parallel Session 4b - Business & Corporate History
Chair: Prue Vines
Room: G02
Paper #1: Marina Nehme and Jodie Boyd, ‘“A position approaching a scandal”: The proprietary company in Victoria, 1896-1938’
Paper #2: Lucie O’Brien, ‘“The cheerful insolvent”: legal and popular narratives of bankruptcy in 1920s Australia’
Paper #3: Natasha Naidu, ‘Companies of Australian Empire: The Colonial Sugar Refining Company in Fiji, 1847-1916’
10:30am - 12pm
Parallel Session 4c - Law & Relationships
Chair: Catherine Bond
Room: 101
Paper #1: Henry Kha, ‘Ne Temere and the Marriage Law of New South Wales’
Paper #2: Jacobin Bosman, ‘“Of a Domestic Character:” Ladylike Legal Partners, Married Men-Women, and the Limits of Tolerance’
Paper #3: Nirogini Vichvaneadhdhiran, ‘British Colonisation and Legal Subordination under Tesawalamai in Sri Lanka’
12pm - 1pm
Lunch
Student Lounge, Lv 1
ANZLHS AGM
Room: G23
1pm - 2:30pm
Parallel Session 5a - International Legal Histories
Chair: Henry Kha
Room: G23
Paper #1: Ivan Lee, ‘The Satsuma Mutiny and the Inter-Colonial Origins of the Fugitive Offenders Act 1881’
Paper #2: Pablo del Hierro Lecea and Lucas Lixinski, ‘Making the World Safe from Politics? A History of International Extradition Law in the 20th Century’
Paper #3: Inma Conde, ‘“Do International Law, No War”: A Historical Perspective of the CISG, A Legal Project for International Peace’
1pm - 2:30pm
Parallel Session 5b - Rights & Citizenship
Chair: Warren Swain
Room: G02
Paper #1: Ben Hingley, ‘R v Johnston, Clarke, Nicholson, Castles, and Crear [1824] NSWSupC 8’
Paper #2: Justin Cahill, ‘Rights without law: the role of privileges as a source of rights in early colonial NSW (1788-1819)’
1pm - 2:30pm
Parallel Session 5c - Women’s Legal Histories
Chair: Katherine Sanders
Room: 101
Paper #1: Jessica Lake, ‘“Free white females”’ and intercourse with ‘negroes’: sexual slander in antebellum Georgia
Paper #2: Rian Sutton, ‘Insanity Defences, Failed Masculinity and Systemic Instability in Women’s Homicide Trials: New York City and London, 1880-1914’
Paper #3: Diane Kirkby, ‘Working Women as Agents of Legal Change’
2:30pm - 2:45pm
Afternoon Tea
Student Lounge, Lv 1
2:45pm - 4:15pm
Parallel Session 6a - Panel: Place, Property and Profit: Intersections of Natural and Built Environments and the Law
Chair: John Page
Room: G23
Panel speakers: Kate Stevens, Julie McIntyre and Matthew Bailey
2:45pm - 4:15pm
Parallel Session 6b - Criminal Law
Chair: Isabella Alexander
Room: G02
Paper #1: Tegan Evans, ‘“A Favourable Soil for the Seeds of Passional Crime”: Inversion and the Criminal Trial in Early 19th Century New South Wales’
Paper #2: Deborah Oxley, ‘English Criminal Law and Practice, 12th– 19th centuries’
2:45pm - 4:15pm
Parallel Session 6c - Legal History & Moral Challenges
Chair: Henry Kha
Room: 101
Paper #1: Megan Taylor and Karena Vilianti- Northway, ‘Ignoring the same old issues under the guise of progress: The use of artificial intelligence and the continued marginalisation of People with Disabilities in planning “Smart Cities”
Paper #2: Michelle Blake, “Illegal abortion” in Tasmania from 1863 to 1938: Changes to the understanding of the law
4:15pm - 5:15pm
Plenary
John Page, ‘Things Metaphysical in the Common Law of Real Property’
Room: G23
7pm
Conference Dinner
Swissôtel Sydney
68 Market St, Sydney
Registration
Registration is now open. Please follow the link below to register your attendance.
Accommodation
Swissôtel Sydney
68 Market St, Sydney NSW 2000 (PH: 02 9238 8888)
Special conference rates have now expired, please book rooms directly with the hotel.
Learn more on the Swissôtel website.
Coogee Sands Hotel & Apartments
161-167 Dolphin Street, Coogee NSW 2034 (PH: 02 9665 8588)
To book, delegates will need to either email the hotel directly info@coogeesands.com.au or call them on +61 2 9665 8588 and advise the hotel staff and that they would like to book a room from the group booking held under the name Mariam Goubran from UNSW Law & Justice.
Room type: King Studio
Check in: from 2pm Sunday, 17 November
Check out: 10am Wednesday, 20 November
Cost: $230 per room/per night (room only)
This property does not offer any dining (including breakfast); however, the property is surrounded by many cafes and restaurants.
King Studio
28sqm, boasting an abundance of beachside charm, our King Studio rooms are a great value option providing an open plan layout with a fully equipped kitchenette, lounge area and workspace. The perfect space for business trips.
Learn more on the Coogee Sands Hotel & Apartments website.