Organized by:
Jacqueline Ross, University of Illinois College of Law
Kim Scheppele, Princeton Program in Law and Public Affairs
Maximo Langer, University of California at Los Angeles
We invite all interested comparative law scholars to consider submitting a paper to the next annual Comparative Law Work-in-Progress Workshop, which will be held on Friday and Saturday, March 1 and 2, 2013, at the University of Illinois College of Law in Urbana-Champaign.
OVERVIEW: The conference will begin mid-day on March 1 and continue through the end of March 2. Participants should plan to arrive either Thursday evening (February 28) or Friday morning (March 1), and to leave on Sunday (March 3.) We bid a fond farewell to outgoing co-organizer Jim Whitman, from Yale University Law School, who has been called away by other duties. We thank him for his invaluable help with this workshop and will miss him. We are also delighted to welcome our new co-organizer, Maximo Langer, who is Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law. The Comparative Law Work-in-Progress Workshop will rotate between our home institutions and continues to be co-sponsored by the American Society of Comparative Law.
The annual workshop continues to be an important forum in which comparative law work in progress can be explored among colleagues in a serious and thorough manner that will be truly helpful to the respective authors. We will accept up to seven papers and select a mix of both junior and senior scholars. The participants will consist of the respective authors, commentators, and faculty members of the host institutions. The overall group will be kept small enough to sit around a large table and to allow serious discussion. Each paper will be discussed by two commentators and all authors are expected to have read and be prepared to discuss all of the papers selected for the workshop. The papers will not be presented at the workshop. They will be distributed well in advance and every participant must have read them before attending the meeting. Commentators will present and discuss the papers, after which the workshop participants will be invited to join in the discussion. The author will be given an opportunity to respond and ask questions of his or her own. There are no plans to publish the papers. Instead, it is up to the authors to seek publication if, and wherever, they wish.
The Workshop will be funded by the host school and by the American Society of Comparative Law. Authors of papers and commentators will be reimbursed for their travel expenses and accommodation up to $600, by either the University of Illinois College of Law or by the American Society of Comparative Law, in accordance with the ASCL reimbursement police (as posted on its webpage.) The ASCL asks that authors inquire into funding opportunities at their home institutions before applying for reimbursement by the ASCL.
PAPER SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: Interested authors should submit papers to Jacqueline Ross, jeross1@illinois.edu by January 5, 2013. We will inform authors of our decision by the end of January.
“Work in progress” means scholarship that has reached a stage at which it is substantial enough to merit serious discussion and critique but that has not yet appeared in print (and can still be revised after the workshop, if it has already been accepted for publication.) It includes law review articles, book chapters or outlines, substantial book reviews, and other appropriate genres.
Our objective is not only to provide an opportunity for the discussion of scholarly work but also to create the opportunity for comparative lawyers to get together for two days devoted to nothing but talking shop, both in the sessions and outside. We hope that this will create synergy that fosters more dialogue, cooperation, and an increased sense of coherence for the discipline.
