3rd Ars Iuris Legal Potentials Conference - Call for Papers

The law constructs entities that define our world, and is thereby a powerful force in shaping our reality. While we primarily understand ourselves as human beings, the law rather sees us as subjects of law. And while an extraterrestrial would probably see the USA and Mexico as a connected landmass, we view these as two different legal entities (States) – with a deadly border in between. And who has ever seen a company? Nonetheless, we do not doubt that there are companies as legal actors.

The well-known distinction of personae and res in Roman law is a fundamental part of civil law. While personae are subjects with rights and obligations, res are mere objects, even if they are enslaved humans. There will be no legal claims if there are no legal subjects claiming them against each other. Civil law construes human beings as legal subjects and constitutes groups of people as corporate bodies. International law relies on the assumption of different States as subjects of the law of nations. International and constitutional law play a crucial role in constructing the State as the single most important political body of modernity.

This conference aims to bring together different perspectives on the construction of legal entities, inviting papers exploring this constructive role from doctrinal, comparative, theoretical, or methodo-logical perspectives. Doctrinal contributions may analyse legal norms of subjectivity in areas such as public, private, corporate, or criminal law. Topics of interest also include the making of the State through constitutional identity, the pouvoir constituant, and the reliance on a national “we the people.” Furthermore, subjectivity in international law, including the State as the most important subject, can be discussed.

We invite anonymized abstracts of 500 words (in PDF file format). Please attach your academic CV (one page maximum, PDF file format) and, if available, a sample of academic writing (e.g., a recent publication). Please send your submission to ars.iuris@univie.ac.at until July 4th, 2025. Notifications of acceptance will be communicated by the beginning of August.

Your presentation should be 20-30 minutes. All conference-speakers will have the opportunity to publish a corresponding paper (30.000-50.000 characters) in a special edition of the University of Vienna Law Review. The finished paper has to be submitted by October 10th, 2025 via email (ars.iuris@univie.ac.at). Following the conference, you will be able to make modifications to your paper until November 17th, 2025.

Zum Download des offiziellen Call for Papers.