Call for Papers: Second Annual International Junior Faculty Forum

The following call for papers may be of interest to junior scholars whose home institution is outside of the United States. Subject matter is not limited to international law, but in the past a number of international law and comparative law papers have been accepted. Here's the call:

The first annual International Junior Faculty Forum was held at Stanford Law School on October 17 and 18th, 2008. Organized by Professors William P. Alford and Lawrence M. Friedman, it was sponsored jointly by the Harvard and Stanford Law Schools. Ten papers were selected for presentation, out of a large number of applicants. A panel of twenty distinguished senior scholars from the United States and several other nations was involved in the final selection process. At the Forum itself, each of the selected papers had two commentators, drawn from the panel of international senior scholars. The papers represented a wide range of subjects and disciplines, and, together with the senior scholars, represented more than a dozen different countries.

The stated purpose of the Forum was to stimulate the international exchange of ideas and research among members of the legal academy, to encourage and further the work of younger scholars in the international community, and to surmount barriers between scholars of different traditions and cultures, in the interest of the development of legal scholarship on a transnational basis. In this regard, the consensus of the participants was that the Forum was successful, that it made an excellent start.

The sponsoring schools, Harvard and Stanford law schools, now announce plans for the second International Junior Faculty Forum. Harvard will be the host school in 2009. The dates fixed for the Forum are November 6-8, 2009, at the Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Junior scholars whose home institution is outside the United States and who have held an academic position for less than seven years, as of 2009, or whose last degree was earned less than ten years earlier than 2009 and are not U.S. citizens, are invited to apply for the 2009 session. Students currently enrolled in a degree program in a U.S. law school are ineligible. The first step in applying is to submit an abstract of no more than five pages that lays out the major argument of the paper that he/she would submit, states what method the scholar will pursue to advance that argument, and indicates the paper’s potential contribution to scholarship. The abstract must be in English and must be submitted by January 15, 2009 electronically to both Juliet Bowler (jbowler@law.harvard.edu) and Mary Tye (mtye@law.stanford.edu) with a subject line of International Junior Faculty Forum. Additionally, the abstract must contain the author’s name, home institution and paper title.

On the basis of these abstracts, the sponsoring schools will invite the electronic submission of full papers by May 25, 2009. The paper may be on any legally relevant subject, and may utilize any legally relevant approach, quantitative or qualitative, sociological, anthropological, historical, or economic, on the role and function of law and legal systems in the modern world, or in the past. The papers will be reviewed by an international committee of senior legal scholars, representing many different countries and many different styles and approaches. Approximately ten of the papers will be selected for presentation at the conference. As before, each paper will have two commentators, drawn from the international committee of scholars.

The sponsoring schools will cover expenses of travel, including airfare, lodging, and food, for each participant. Questions should be directed to Juliet Bowler (jbowler@law.harvard.edu).