Since 1994, Richard Kaeuper and I have promoted a series of annual panels on this general theme at the International Congresses on Medieval Studies held in May of each year at the Medieval Institute of Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo MI. Our sessions have from the start been under the sponsorship of the American Society for Legal History. From the year 2000, The Selden Society of London has joined in co-sponsorship.

We are all too aware that Legal History can be a forbidding field that offers few apparent attractions to non-lawyers, even within the European Middle Ages. Kalamazoo offeredn appropriate environment to take the subject beyond its specialist confines. We have therefore tried each year since then to formulate a specific topic that would encourage colleagues from the many and diverse disciplines of Medieval Studies to submit papers and enjoy the discussion. The record speaks for the successful start to this enterprise. ("Res ipsa loquitur".) But since much remains to be done here and elsewhere, I make available here the seed ideas we have spread around in the hope that further thought about and criticism of them will in due course bear better and more lasting fruit elsewhere.

We would be happy to hear of any manner of topic within our theme for the current year. Please, submit ABSTRACTS AND PROPOSALS in good time for the Congress Deadline of September 15 to:

Richard Kaeuper, Dept. of History, University of Rochester, ROCHESTER NY 14627;
or Paul Hyams, History Dept., Cornell University, ITHACA NY 14853-4061

Better still E-Mail Kaeuper <rkpr@uhura.cc.rochester.edu> or Hyams <prh3@cornell.edu>, and you will likely receive a swifter response! 

1994: APPROACHES TO VIOLENCE

Esther Cohen (Ben Gurion U. of the Negev), "Judicial Violence and the Culture of Pain in the Later Middle Ages"
Paul Hyams (Cornell), "The Prosecution of `Crime' in Angevin England: A Failed `Shift of Control'"
Amy E. Phelan (Cornell), "Violent Acts in Galbert of Bruges and The Tale of Gamelyn"

Lynn Laufenberg (Cornell), "The Prosecution of Adultery in Fourteenth-Century Florence"
Anne E. Moss (U. of Alabama), "Royal Bastards and Legitimation in Medieval France"
Larry Poos Catholic U. of America), "'As I be saved, He never was myne husbonde': Sex, Marriage and the Church Courts of Later Medieval England"

William Calin (U. of Florida), "The Bad Man, the Good Citizen and Twelfth-Century Literature"
John Aberth (Norwich U.), "Criminal Churchmen in Fourteenth-Century England: The Case of Thomas de Lisle, Bishop of Ely"
Philipp Schofield (Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Oxford, England), "Peasants and Law c. 1300: The Plea of Trespass and Formal Violence in a Suuffolk Vill"
Richard Firth Green (U. of Western Ontario), "The Placita Coronae as a Handbook for Felons"

F.R.P. Akehurst (U. of Minnesota), "Meanings of Droit in the French Coutumiers"
Kate Parkin (U. of Leicester, England), "The Force of the Deathbed Surrender in Medieval English Manor Courts"
Nicole Clifton (Northern Illinois U.), "Women's Inheritance and Landlordship in the Middle English Ywain and Gawain"
Paul Brand (London, England), "Family Values and the Law of Property: Inheritance by the `Hearth-Child' in the King's Courts of Thirteenth-Century England"

James A. Brundage (U. of Kansas), "Conflict of Interest: A Problem in Legal Ethics"
David J. Seipp (Boston U. Law School), Legal Services for the Poor in the Early Common Law"
Richard Firth Green (U. of Western Ontario), "Public Perception of the Law in the Fourteenth Century"

Karina Tokareva-Parker (Indiana U.), "Champions, Outlaws & Avengers: Legal Language, Notions and Rituals in Beowulf"
F.R.P. Akehurst (U. of Minnesota), "Philippe de Beaumanoir as Story-Teller"
Mary Jane Schenck (U. of Tampa), "When Narrative is Not Fiction: The Truth of Legal Stories"
Charles A./ Donahue, Jr. (Harvard Law School), "The Story of a Failed Marriage: Witnesses' Narratives in the Late Medieval Court of York"

Julia Barrow (Nottingham Univ.), "Death Comes to the Canon: The Other Year of Grace"
Russell Peck (U. of Rochester), "Gower on Time: History, Memory, and Law"
Richard H. Helmholz (U. of Chicago Law School), "Delay in Choosing Pastors: The Canon Law and English Common Law"

2001: PERSONAL VENGEANCE AND PUBLIC JUSTICE IN ENGLAND
 

Chris Briggs (Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure), "Assessing Attitudes to the Use of Law and Litigation in Medieval English Peasant Culture"
Mary M. Rogers (U. of Toronto), "Prudence vs. Vengeance in the Tale of Melibee"
Paul Hyams (Cornell), "Righting Wrongs in Medieval England: The Less Violent Option"