Arguing for the Rule of Law: Using the Hebrew Bible and Caricatures of Foreigners in British and Spanish America How did settlers, imperial officials, indigenous peoples, and Africans in the New World seek to demonstrate, or disprove, that a polity respected the rule of law?  (The phrase “rule of law” is modern; but the core […]

Membership in Communities and States in the Early Modern Atlantic World: Legal Rules, Social Judgments, and the Negotiation of Citizenship Organized by Richard Ross, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the linked processes of statebuilding and overseas colonization in the Atlantic world drew upon and helped transform inherited citizenship practices. […]

Law, Religion, and Social Discipline in the Early Modern Atlantic World Organized by Richard Ross, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. There has been much scholarship in the last generation on the intertwined use of law and religion in early modern Europe to “discipline” populations. Discipline in this context does not mean “social control” so much […]

Criminal Justice in the British Atlantic World, 1500-1850 Organized by Bruce Smith, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Author-Meets Readers Session 1 Andrea McKenzie, Tyburn’s Martyrs: Execution in England, 1675-1775, (Hambledon, 2007) Reader 1: Randall McGowen, University of Oregon Reader 2: Michael Meranze, University of California, Los Angeles Response: Andrea McKenzie, University of Victoria Panel I: Capital […]

The Law of Nations and the Early Modern Atlantic World Organized by Eliga Gould, University of New Hampshire, and Richard Ross, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Of the various changes associated with Europe’s post-1492 expansion, few were more important than the pan-European development of what came to be known as the law of nations. Aware […]

New Perspectives on Legal Pluralism Organized by Lauren Benton, New York University, and Richard Ross, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Colonialism enhanced legal pluralism. European, African, Asian, and American polities relied on layered and multi-centric systems of law, and their encounters generated new and often repeating patterns of jurisdictional politics. This widespread legal pluralism at […]

The Struggle for Land: Property, Territory, and Jurisdiction in Early Modern Europe and the Americas Organized by Tamar Herzog, Stanford University, and Richard Ross, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The struggle to possess and control land, both as property and as jurisdictional territory, was central to the formation of early modern European societies as well […]

Law and the French Atlantic Organized by Allan Greer, McGill University, and Richard J. Ross, University of Illinois The French Atlantic has not yet received the sustained attention given to the British and Spanish Atlantic, particularly where the topic of law is concerned. This conference will explore the legal dimension (broadly conceived) of the French […]

Meanings of Justice in New World Empires: Settler and Indigenous Law as Counterpoints Understandings of justice differed among New World empires and among the settlers, imperial officials, and indigenous peoples within each one.  This conference will focus on the array of meanings of justice, their emergence and transformation, and the implications of adopting one or […]