[H-verkko] CFP: “Learning law by doing: exploring legal literacy in premodern societies”

[agricola at utu.fi]

Agricolan artikkelipyyntöihin on lähetetty uusi ilmoitus:
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“Learning law by doing: exploring legal literacy in premodern societies”
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“LEARNING LAW BY DOING: EXPLORING LEGAL LITERACY IN PREMODERN SOCIETIES”
14-15 January 2016, Faculty of Law, University of Turku, Finland

In many European regions, there was a gap between learned law and the largely
illiterate laity. Especially where the legal language was another than the
vernacular, such as Latin or Law French,  this effectively helped to monopolize
law and legal knowledge to learned lawyers.


Yet, in the shades of what are generally called legal professionals, there were
many other people who had some legal literacy, i.e., knowledge of the law and
legal skills. Indeed, one may regard legal know-how as a sliding scale between
what could be called true professionalism and complete ignorance.


While trained legal professionals have been much researched, the legal knowledge
and skills of laymen have largely been unexplored in legal history. In this
largely unresearched grey area, one finds people who had pursued some law
studies, but never taken a degree or finished the required curriculum. There
were also people doing some legal work or
part-time advocacy such as scribes, scriveners, clerks, bailiffs and officials.
Jury-members, 
lay magistrates and priests were legal literates in their communities and could
also act as legal intermediaries between the people and the authorities. In
eighteenth-century Japan even inn-keepers started to offer legal services to the
people. Legal literates had often acquired some knowledge of the contents of the
law or legal skillsby doing law-related work or being exposed to the practice of
law in their lives.  
This way more marginal groups such as peasants, women and children could acquire
a modicum of legal literacy. However, little research has been done on legal
literacy in the premodern world,  partly because of a scarcity of sources and
the marginality of many common people. This conference explores many facets of
legal literacy in the pre-modern world: Europe and European colonies, but also
other non-European legal cultures. Believing that cross-fertilization of
different academic disciplines (law, social history, literacy studies etc.) will
help research the elusive phenomenon, we invite papers on various aspects of the
phenomenon, e.g.:

• groups or individuals who had acquired some legal literacy

• what legal skills and knowledge were acquired and how this was manifested

• mechanisms of acquiring legal literacy

• the uses of legal literacy

• what legal literacy signified for individuals personally and as members of
their community

• conflicts and/or cooperation between self-made legal literates and members
of the legal profession

• sources for exploring legal literacy

PROPOSAL SUBMISSIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION: For more information about the
conference or to submit a proposal (about 200 words), please contact
Professor Mia Korpiola (mia.korpiola[at]utu.fi, Faculty of Law, University of
Turku). The deadline for submitting paper proposals is 23 November 2015. 
Please feel free to share and circulate this CFP. _________________________ Dr.
Mia Korpiola Professor of Legal History Faculty of Law 20014 University of Turku
Finland

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Ilmoituksen lähetti: Anu Lahtinen <mia.korpiola at utu.fi>
Ilmoitus vanhentuu: 25.11.2015