David Abraham
University of Miami

Jeremy I. Adelman
Princeton University

David A. Bell
The Johns Hopkins University

Mary Frances Berry
University of Pennsylvania

Mary Sarah Bilder
Boston College

Bettina Bradbury
York University, Toronto

Elizabeth R. Dale
University of Florida

Adrienne Dale Davis
University of North Carolina

Martha F. Davis
NOW Legal Defense, New York

Thomas J. Davis
Arizona State University

Cornelia Hughes Dayton
University of Connecticut

Christine A. Desan
Harvard University

Charles R. Donahue
Harvard University

Markus Dirk Dübber
SUNY, Buffalo

Laura Engelstein
Princeton University

Daniel R. Ernst
Georgetown University

William E. Forbath
University of Texas at Austin

Judy Fudge
York University, Toronto

Stephen Garton
University of Sydney

Paul Hyams
Cornell University

Nancy Isenberg
University of Tulsa

Bruce Kercher
Maquarie University

Diane Kirkby
La Trobe University, Melbourne

Michael Klarman
University of Virginia

Louis A. Knafla
University of Calgary

Mindie Lazarus-Black
University of Illinois, Chicago

Kenneth F. Ledford
Case Western Reserve University

Brian P. Levack
University of Texas at Austin

Sanford V. Levinson
University of Texas at Austin

Jeanette M. Neeson
York University, Toronto

William J. Novak
University of Chicago

James P. Oakes
CUNY Graduate Center

James Oldham
Georgetown University

Ruth Paley
History of Parliament, Wedgwood House, London

Pablo Piccato
Columbia University

W. Wesley Pue
University of British Columbia

Gerry R. Rubin
University of Kent, Canterbury

Lucy E. Salyer
University of New Hampshire

Reva B. Siegel
Yale University

Robin Chapman Stacey
University of Washington

Robert J. Steinfeld
SUNY, Buffalo

Carolyn Strange
University of Toronto

Emily Z. Tabuteau
Michigan State University

Kendall Thomas
Columbia University

Barbara Y. Welke
University of Minnesota

James Q. Whitman
Yale University

Martin J. Wiener
Rice University

Andrew Wood
University of East Anglia

Call for Papers

The Law School at the University of Pennsylvania will host "Law and the 'Disappearance' of Class in Twentieth-Century America" on November 15–17, 2002. While historical scholarship has argued that class, like race and gender, should be central to historical inquiry, little has been written about the essential role of law in reinforcing and rationalizing class distinctions in the twentieth century. Historically, law and legal theory have shaped, maintained, and justiFied class hierarchies, as well as helped hide them from political view. Puportedly neutral legal concepts such as fault and responsibility conceal both the class consequences of their application and how class influenced their articulation. The conference will address the role law played in reinforcing class differences while obscuring issues of class during the twentieth century, such that a meaningful rhetoric of class is now largely absent from political discourse despite the importance of class in American politics, culture, and society.

     "Law and the 'Disappearence' of Class in Twentieth-Century America" invites papers on any aspect of class that relates to law, legal rhetoric, or legal ideology. For example, issues in labor law and labor relations, criminal law and the criminal justice system, housing discrimination, zoning, and landlord-tenant relations, have obvious relevance to a legal history of class in the twentieth century, but so also may topics in religion, civil rights, freedom of expression, privacy, gender-based discrimination, family law, commercial credit, and consumer protection, to name but a few. Participants need not think of themselves primarily as legal historians. Submissions from both legal scholars and historians interested in exploring ideas related to the theme of the conference are welcome.

     Interested scholars should submit a curriculum vitae and a prospectus of no more than 1000 words describing the substance of the paper and its relationship to existing scholarship. Final papers will be distributed in advance of the conference to facilitate lively discussion. The conference sponsors expect to be able to publish the papers in an edited volume.

     Please send the requested submission material by March 15, 2001 to Conference Committee, care of Professors Bruce Mann and Sarah Barringer Gordon, University of Pennsylvania Law School, 3400 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 19104-6204. Email submissions are encouraged. Submissions and inquiries should be sent to Benjamin Field, bField@history.upenn.edu