Center for Law & History to Host Symposium on History, Property, and Climate Change

Prof. Jill Fraley, Director of the Center for Law & History

The Center for Law & History at the Washington & Lee University School of Law will host a symposium entitled History, Property & Climate Change in the Former Colonies this Friday, October 12, at the law school.  This symposium was organized by the Director of the Center for Law & Hisotry, Jill Fraley, an Assistant Professor of Law at W&L.

This symposium will bring together a variety of minds on the property implications of climate change including geologists, environmental scientists, an anthropologist, and land use planning specialists.  The symposium, which offers Virginia CLE credit, is free, open to the public, and there is no registration required in advance.

To see the full schedule of events, click here.

The mission of the W&L Center for Law and History (CLH) is to encourage and support the interdisciplinary study of law in its historical context. It aims to achieve that mission by bringing together scholars from W&L and throughout the world to promote research and teaching in all areas and periods of legal history. The center is focusing its immediate efforts on bringing history into dialogue with geography, particularly in the context of critical, emerging issues.

W&L Law Faculty Present at SEALS

Several Washington and Lee Law School faculty members presented last week at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS). In addition, David Millon, J. B. Stombock Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law, took the helm as President of SEALS for the 2012-13 term.

In addition to his duties with the organization during the conference, Millon also served as a panelist in a session on how recent Supreme Court decisions and congressional legislation are affecting business and regulatory issues and in a discussion group focused on teaching business law in a new economic environment. Other presentations by W&L faculty included:

• Johanna Bond, who participated in a discussion group on contemporary issues in gender and the law.
• Christopher Bruner, who presented a paper during a panel on recent developments in corporate governance.
• Mark Drumbl, who participated in a discussion group on the growing importance of international matters to legal education.
• Jill Fraley, who presented her research on maps as legal arguments in a new scholars panel.
• Brant Hellwig, who participated in a discussion group on tax reform in 2012.
• John Keyser and Todd Peppers, who participated in a panel on social science and the law.
• J.D. King, who participated in a panel on implicit racial bias in the criminal justice system.
• Joan Shaughnessy, who served as a moderator of a new scholars panel.
• Robin Wilson, who participated in a panel on cutting edge issues in family law.

Call for Papers: Climate Change

This October, the Washington and Lee University School of Law’s Law and History Center, in partnership with Virginia Sea Grant, will host a symposium on Climate Change in the Former Colonies: Challenges of Property and History. Dr. Jill Fraley, the Director of the Law and History Center, is overseeing the symposium details.

Recognizing the unique impact that the colonial legal experience continues to have on Eastern states, the symposium will focus on the application of legal historical research to contemporary problems and opportunities in the areas of policy-making, property rights, and hazard resilience in coastal communities. Panel presentations and potential topics include:

• How the colonial legal experience affects modern property rights and our responsiveness to climate change
• Historical and modern property doctrines—particularly nuisance, zoning, and eminent domain—and their relation to current climate change challenges and policies
• Changing notions of acceptable land use and natural resources
• Environmental hazard resilience policies and opportunities for their enhancement via legal strategies

For details, see the Symposium’s Call for Papers page.

Prof. Fraley on Constitutional Change

Professor Jill M. Fraley, Assistant Professor of Law, recently posted on Professor Jack Balkin’s blog, Balkinization.

The post discusses the history of the Appalachian Regional Commission, which developed from John F. Kennedy’s campaign visit to West Virginia. It possesses a unique structure. State governors or their appointed representatives govern the board. The president appoints one co-chairman as a federal representative. State governors elect the second co-chairman. Proposals may be initiated at the local level, but must be officially proposed by a state. No proposals can originate at the federal level. Various constitutional protections were put into place to allay fears that a federal group would be controlled by the states. Slowly, however, these safeguards were eroded, the last one falling in 1998.

Ultimately, Prof. Fraley believes this constitutional history is a strong cautionary tale.  When we focus on the judiciary and narrow our constitutional questions to violations, we neglect a broader view of trajectories and drifts. When we focus on narrative history, we illuminate the successes and failures of powerful social movements without interrogating their potential for the unanticipated and unintentional: stealth constitutional change.

You can find the post here.