Posted by Sasha Volokh:
Kalamazoo
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_07_05-2009_07_11.shtml#1246991480
Cornell medieval historian [1]Paul Hyams and I are organizing a panel
called Law as Culture: Lordship, Profit, and Rationality at the
[2]45th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan
University in Kalamazoo, which will take place May 13-16, 2010. The
deadline for submissions is September 15, 2009. Instructions for
submission are [3]here. Here's the call for papers:
Law as Culture: Lordship, Profit, and Rationality
Both economic and legal argument draws deeply on notions of reason and
logic. These are found among ordinary men and women far from the
schools. As economic historians document, medieval people (prudent
peasants, as McCloskey puts it) were perfectly capable of responding
to economic incentives. Moreover, law played a crucial role in shaping
those incentives. We welcome proposals for papers that explicitly link
legal history with economic history in explaining the dynamics of
medieval life and culture.
Here are some examples of possible topics:
* The canon law generated regulations concerning Usury, the Just
price etc. during the "long" Twelfth Century. Meanwhile, secular
laws sought to regulate markets (through laws on forestalling,
regrating, engrossing, Assize of Bread and Ale etc.) and boosted
those on coining offenses. This sustained attempt to restrain
economic activity through law must be largely explicable from the
context of economic change against which it was made. How might
the Legal Revolution (the whole or any part) and the rising
"Profit Economy" (Lester Little) be causally linked?
* Why did England�s Angevin reforms of land law precede by at least
a generation the provision of common law remedies for defaults by
economic agents (action of Account) and the alienation of capital
assets by tenants for life (action of Waste)?
* How far can economics (e.g., far fewer seigniorial demesnes)
explain why the Capetians and other European rulers did not
transform their land law in a similar way to the English?
* Did the development of accounting practices (e.g., input-output,
like the English Pipe Rolls, double-entry, profit-and-loss, etc.)
advance the cause of rationality in commerce and law in any
material way? The lexicography of �reason� and associated words
would be interesting in this context. So might possible changes in
the themes of literature such as fabliaux, such as the balance
between sexual and financial trickery in the victories of women
and other supposedly disempowered characters over their superiors.
* What measure of economic analysis was possible before words like
capital, interest, profit entered European languages in the
generations surrounding 1200?
* Were advances in numeracy as relevant to legal history as they
patently are to the development of economic rationality?
Most generally, we welcome contributions along the following lines:
* What economic phenomena can be better understood as driven, or at
least influenced, by legal change?
* What medieval social phenomena previously thought to be beyond the
domain of economics can be explained as rational behavior by
goal-oriented agents maximizing their utility subject to
constraints?
* Can the tools of modern economics such as game theory, contract
theory, or behavioral economics enhance our understanding of
medieval history?
* To what extent can we explain legal change itself as the response
of particular people in power to economic incentives?
Alexander Volokh, Emory Law School, 1301 Clifton Rd., Atlanta, GA
30322, volokh at post dot harvard dot edu.
Paul Hyams, History Dept., Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
14853-4601, prh3 at cornell dot edu.
References
1. http://www.arts.cornell.edu/history/faculty-department-hyams.php
2. http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/index.html
3. http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html#Paper
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