The Creation and Transformation of Legal Regimes
Summer Institute for Community College Instructors
June 2 - 3, 2023
Over the past five centuries, expanding imperial ventures, human migrations, and emerging technologies created challenges to governance. As increasing numbers of merchants and soldiers, bureaucrats and laborers traveled the world, what systems of rules governed their behaviors? To what extent did the legal regimes of their home governments constrain or direct their individual activities as well as their interactions with others? What happened when the movement of people around the globe brought two legal regimes into contact with one another?
The answers to these questions are at the intersection of broad political policies and day-to-day life. In court cases and administrative decisions, we see lawyers and bureaucrats differentiating between trade and smuggling, labor contracts and enslavement, taxation and theft, ruler and ruled. As states, communities, and individuals negotiated individual cases, they transformed local governance practices into legal regimes that spanned the world.
This ORIAS summer institute will focus on the emergence and transformation of global legal regimes from the late 18th century to the present. Through the lens of crime and punishment, participants will learn about the historical processes through which legal regimes have been created, reinforced, negotiated, and expanded. We will also explore the role of global legal regimes in modern international issues like human rights, disaster relief, migration, and climate change.
This ORIAS Summer Institute is intended for instructors of modern world history and global studies, as well as macroeconomics, international relations, and political science. It is open to community college instructors and (space permitting) high school teachers of AP history-social science courses.
This FREE program will take place in person and lunch will be provided. Space is limited to 20 people on a first-come, first-served basis.