Workshops, Seminars, and Working Groups

United States – Northeast

  • Law and History Workshop, Harvard Law School
    Intended “to facilitate interaction and scholarship about law and history among interested faculty and students.” Part of Harvard Law's “Law and History” program of study.
  • Clark Legal History Workshop, Boston University Law School
    Lecture series in which distinguished historians of law give a lecture on campus. Open to the BU community and the general public.
  • Legal History Roundtable, Boston College Law School
    Opportunity for Boston area people to discuss pre-circulated paper in legal history.
  • Legal History Forum, Yale Law School
    Annual series of work-in progress workshops by both junior and senior scholars.
  • Abdallah S. Kamel Center for the Study of Islamic Law and Civilization Lecture Series, Yale Law School
    Lecture series by scholars from a range of disciplines on topics related to Islamic law and culture.
  • Institute for Constitutional History, New York Historical Society
    Seminars and workshops on constitutional history topics. Doctoral students, junior faculty, lawyers, and educators may participate by application.
  • Center for Chinese Legal Studies, Columbia University
    Offers a wide range of courses on Chinese law and Chinese legal history, including a Chinese legal history colloquium and a course in Chinese law and society.
  • Legal History Colloquium, New York University Law School Annual seminar series of research in progress, including 2-3 annual Samuel Golieb Fellows, who are either completing graduate work in legal history, or are recent recipients of the Ph.D.

United States – Southeast

  • Program on Legal and Constitutional History, University of Virginia Law School
    Monthly presentation of work-in-progress by legal historians and students in Virginia’s JD-MA joint degree program, and the Colloquium in American Legal History, in which a law school classes discusses recent work in legal history with the authors.
  • The Center for Law and History, Washington and Lee University
    Annual series for visiting scholars who present work-in-progress, as well as two annual lectures by eminent legal historians.
  • Triangle Legal History Seminar, Carolina Seminars
    Convened by members of the Duke, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University communities; meets at the National Humanities Center, providing a forum for the presentation of pre-circulated drafts of work-in-progress.

United States – Midwest

  • Institute for Legal Studies, University of Wisconsin Law School
    Interdisciplinary center for the study of law and society, overseeing a variety of workshops, lectures, and related events, and offering a range of courses for undergraduates and law students.
  • Program in Legal History, University of Illinois College of Law
    Annual series of three to six presentations in legal history, mostly by invited visiting scholars, and mostly in the field of British or American legal history.
  • ABF Legal History Seminars, American Bar Foundation
    Monthly series of presentations of works-in-progress within the field of legal history, broadly construed, primarily by scholars resident in the Chicago area.
  • Law Workshops, University of Chicago Law School
    Multiple series on significant themes in legal studies and legal history. Topics include International and Comparative Law, Constitutional Law, Law and Economics, and “Crime and Punishment.” American Legal History now part of the “Public Law and Legal Theory” workshop.
  • Legal History Workshop, University of Michigan Law School
    Presentations by leading scholars from around the United States that explore “a range of substantive and methodological questions arising in the course of legal-historical work.”
  • Program in Law and History, University of Minnesota
    One of several institutes within the University of Minnesota Law School; offers a regular workshop series and an annual fellowship.

United States – West

  • Center for the Study of Law and Society, University of California-Berkeley
    Weekly interdisciplinary speaker series featuring scholars based in law schools, and social science and humanities departments, including a number of historians.
  • Legal History Workshop, Stanford Law School
    Series in which “faculty and students from both the Law School and the History Department can discuss some of the best work now being done in the field of legal history.” Invited speaker gives lectures every other week; offered as a first-year J.D. seminar course.
  • Stanford Center for Law and History,
    Hosts conferences, workshops, and lectures exploring the relationship between law and history.
  • Center for Law, History, and Culture, University of Southern California
    Annual series of biweekly workshops, mostly for visiting scholars, who present research-in-progress. Also sponsors lectures and occasional conferences.

Canada and the U.K.

  • Osgoode Society Legal History Workshop, University of Toronto
    Informal evening lecture series in legal history, open to the public. Participants include graduate students and faculty from the University of Toronto, York, McMaster, and other institutions, as well as law students and lawyers.
  • History and the Law, University of Cambridge
    Working group for scholars of law and history affiliated with the Centre for History and Economics. In addition to a workshop series, group has curated some digital resources in legal history, including recorded interviews with legal historians, a research network, and articles on working with legal sources.
  • Oxford Legal History Forum
    Talks, lectures, and workshops about legal history, primarily geared towards workshopping new research and supporting young scholars.
  • Forum for Legal and Historical Research, University of Reading
    Forum for discussion of the discipline of law in history broadly defined, with the aim of encouraging dialogue between scholars, archivists, and librarians.

Elsewhere

  • Rechtshistorische Causerieen, The Ghent Institute for Legal History (Instituut voor Rechtsgeschiedenis)
    Dutch language informal forum for young researchers to present legal history research.
  • Max-Planck-Institute for European Legal History
    Monthly colloquium for guests to present work; twice per semester Frankfurt Legal History Evening Lecture; summer academy for legal history.
  • Legal History Workshop, Tel Aviv University
    Regular workshops of research-in-progress in legal history, with participation by Israeli and non-Israeli legal historians.