Law, Culture, and Humanities 28th Annual Conference

Uprooted Law: Reflecting on the Origins and Outgrowths of Law

What do we follow when we follow the law? Is law what is on the books, or what is observed, or what should be observed? The English term “law” descends from the plural form of the Old Norse “lag,” designating “things laid down or fixed.” Yet law must be flexible enough to adjust and respond to changes. Particularly today, when the line between legal norms and norms rooted elsewhere has blurred, it is difficult to determine law’s location. What is law’s function in times of technological, political, and societal change? Does the law have a responsibility toward itself, and if so, who can be trusted with its observation? Given that law borrows from other areas of culture, from literature and rhetoric to the sciences and dramatic arts, the humanities are in a premier position to respond to these questions.

This conference invites reflections on the origins of law in the broadest sense. What substantiates the rule of law in practice, and how does law itself mediate the difference between original and copy, present and past? How do an ensemble of methods, disciplines, movements, texts, and technologies come together to help law create the past and future? We invite reflections on these and related questions and welcome papers, roundtables, and work-in-progress sessions that help us understand law’s current position by looking at it through a humanistic lens.

Submission Guidelines

We encourage the submission of fully constituted panels, as well as panels that reimagine or experiment with models for academic presentation, such as roundtables, “author meets reader” sessions (which may include multiple books and their authors in conversation), works-in-progress sessions, workshop-format panels that focus on engaging participants in shared thinking or other kinds of productive co-creation, multi-panel streams, etc. Individual proposals should include a title and an abstract of no more than 250 words.

Panels, whether virtual or in-person, should include three papers (or, exceptionally, four papers). Please specify a title and designate a chair for your panel. The panel chair may also be a panel presenter. It is not necessary to write an abstract or proposal for the panel itself.

Submission Deadline

January 31, 2026

How to Submit?

For more information on how to submit a proposal, please visit our website:

https://lawculturehumanities.com/event/2026-twenty-eighth-annual-conference/

Contact Information

Please email lch@lawculturehumanities.com with any queries.