Call for Papers and Presentations
Deadline April 15, 2016
We are seeking proposals for papers to be presented during the U. S. Feminist Judgments Project conference October 20-21, 2016 at the Center for Constitutional Law at The University of Akron School of Law in Akron, Ohio. We are also seeking proposals for “snapshot” presentations to be included in the final plenary of the conference. The conference is co-sponsored by The University of Akron School of Law and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas – William S. Boyd School of Law.
This conference will celebrate the 2016 publication of U.S. Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court. That volume brought together more than fifty feminist legal scholars and lawyers to rewrite, using feminist reasoning, significant Supreme Court cases from the 1800sto the present day. (For more information, see the project website here.) Illustrating the value of this method of practical scholarship, the volume demonstrates that different processes and different outcomes would have been possible had decision makers applied feminist theory and methods in critical Supreme Court cases despite the restrictions of stare decisis.
The conference is designed to provide the appropriate setting and the essential participants for a structured conversation that explores and assesses the effects of feminist methods and theories on real-world judicial decision making. We expect the conference will identify common core principles and propose directions for future scholarship.
To this end, we seek proposals for papers that incorporate feminist theory and methods or report on research that furthers feminist thought. The organizers view feminism and feminist theory broadly as covering issues of inequality related to gender and gender norms, but also intersectional dynamics related to race, sexual orientation, immigration status, socioeconomic class, and disability.
Potential topics cover a broad range, including women in the judiciary, women in the legal profession, women and rhetoric, women in politics, empirical studies involving gender or gender norms, feminist theory, reproductive freedom, pregnancy, reproduction, families, sex, sexuality, violence against women, employment, sexual harassment, or affirmative action. We welcome with enthusiasm proposals from faculty in disciplines other than law, and we would especially appreciate proposals from new voices in feminism and feminist theory.
Our hope is to build on the insights of the U.S. Feminist Judgments book and to explore new avenues of inquiry for feminist legal scholarship. We hope to provide a supportive atmosphere to foster scholarship and networking among teachers, scholars, and others who are interested in gender equality and the law.
The conference will include plenary sessions related specifically to the U.S. Feminist Judgments book as well as sessions that will be more general in focus, concurrent sessions drawn from this Call for Papers, and a closing panel also drawn from this Call for Papers. The closing panel will be a brainstorming session to consider future directions for scholarly and practical projects that relate to gender equality, the judiciary, future Feminist Judgments projects, or all of the foregoing.
Concurrent Sessions – Paper Proposals
The concurrent sessions will feature presentations on any topic related to gender equality issues, with preference given to presentations related to the topics of women in the judiciary, women in the legal profession, women and rhetoric, women in politics, empirical studies involving gender or gender norms, feminist theory, reproductive freedom, pregnancy, reproduction, families, sex, sexuality, violence against women, employment, sexual harassment, or affirmative action. We will organize the presentations into panels based on the subject matter of the proposals.
Interested persons should submit a brief written description of the proposed paper (no more than 1000 words) and a resume. Please let us know in the proposal which of the above categories or what other, non-listed category best fits your proposal. Please use the subject line “U.S. Feminist Judgments Project October Conference Paper Proposals” and e-mail these materials to Maria Campos (maria.campos@unlv.edu) by April 15, 2016. We will notify selected speakers by June 1, 2016.
Brainstorming Presentations – Snapshot Proposals
The final plenary session of the conference will feature snapshots, or very brief presentations, of ideas for future projects that will advance gender equality in the law. Each selected participant will be limited to five minutes to present her or his idea or project. The presentations will be followed by audience feedback and comments. We welcome proposals for this brainstorming session on any topic related to gender equality.
Interested persons should submit a brief written description of the proposed presentation (no more than 300 words) and a resume. Please use the subject line “U.S. Feminist Judgments Project October Conference Snapshot Proposals” and email these materials to Maria Campos (maria.campos@unlv.edu) by April 15, 2016. We will notify selected speakers by June 1, 2016.
Eligibility
Anyone interested in issues of law and gender equality is eligible to submit a proposal, including full-time faculty members, fellows, visitors, and adjuncts who teach in undergraduate or graduate schools; judges; practitioners; government officials; and business, community, and non-profit leaders. The conference is free and open to the public.
There is no publication commitment associated with the conference. Presentation abstracts will be made available on the website of the Center for Constitutional Law at The University of Akron, and by mutual agreement of interested authors and journal editors, remarks may be published in a special symposium issue of ConLawNOW, the online companion journal run by the Center for Constitutional Law.
There is no registration fee for the conference but proposers and panelists must pay all of their own expenses associated with conference attendance. There will be a conference-negotiated rate at a local hotel. The University of Akron is located approximately 15 minutes from the Akron-Canton Airport and approximately 40 miles southeast of Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.
Please direct questions regarding this Call for Papers and Presentations to Kathy Stanchi (kstanchi@temple.edu), Linda Berger (linda.berger@unlv.edu), and Bridget Crawford (bcrawford@law.pace.edu).
●WORKSHOP ON LEGAL TEXT, DOCUMENT, AND CORPUS ANALYTICS (LTDCA-2016) FIRST CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
Workshop Description
Recent improvements both in Human Language Technology (HLT) and in techniques for storage and rapid analysis of large data collections have created new opportunities for automated interpretation of legal text, improved access to statutory and regulatory rules, and greater insights into the structure and evolution of legal systems. These techniques hold promise for the courts, legal practitioners, scholars, and citizens alike. These advances have coincided with a rapid expansion of interest in automated processing and understanding of legal texts on the part of industry, government agencies, court personnel, and the public.
This workshop is intended to be a forum for discussion of research ideas and practical developments that involve interpretation of legal text, analysis of structured legal documents, improved publication and access to document collections, predictive analysis based on legal text mining, and visualization of legal corpora. Participation is invited on all topics relevant to these research themes, including:
• Application of “Big Data” techniques, including data mining and machine learning, to legal and financial document corpora
• Network models of statutory and case law, including visualization techniques specialized for legal networks and legal tasks
• Global, emergent, and dynamic properties of legal text collections, such as modularity, language models, complexity, and trends in legal doctrine and practice
• Techniques for improving public access to, understanding of, and compliance with statutory and regulatory rule sets
• Legal question-answering systems
• Legal document analysis, including semantic analysis, information extraction, abstraction, summarization, topic modeling, coreference resolution, and document-structure analysis
• Induction of predictive and descriptive models from legal corpora, such as probability of success of a motion or claim, expected case duration and settlement value, and expected consequences of alternative litigation decisions
The intended audience for the workshop includes researchers and practitioners from industry, academia, and government working at the intersection of HLT, artificial intelligence, social science, data and network science, and law.
The workshop will be one day in length consisting of paper presentations, invited talks, demonstrations, and a panel discussion.
Submission information
Submissions are invited for research papers (at most 10 pages long), extended abstracts (at most 5 pages long), and proposals for system demonstrations. Papers must be submitted electronically in pdf format to the conference support system, https://www.conftool.net/ltdca2016/ by 29 April 2016. Research papers and abstracts must be in the ACM proceedings format, http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html.
Venue
The Workshop will be held at Warren Hall, University of San Diego Law School, San Diego, California.
Important Dates
29 April 2016: Workshop Paper Due Date
13 May 2016: Notification of Acceptance
27 May 2016: Corrected papers due
17 June 2016: Workshop Date
Program Chair
Karl Branting, The MITRE Corporation, USA, lbranting@mitre.org, (+1) 410-660-9094
Program Committee
Thomas Bruce, Cornell Law School, tom@liicornell.org
Jack G. Conrad, Thomson Reuters, Corp. R&D, jack.g.conrad@thomsonreuters.com
William Hamilton, University of Florida Law School, hamiltonw@law.ufl.edu
Matt Koehler, The MITRE Corporation, mkoehler@mitre.org
David Lewis, David D. Lewis Consulting LLC, davelewis@daviddlewis.com
Jana Sukkarieh, NOHA Z, LLC, jana.sukkarieh@gmail.com
Daisy Zhe Wang, University of Florida, daisyw@cise.ufl.edu
