The University of Belgrade Faculty of Law is now receiving paper proposals for the First student conference on legal history – the Iustoria 2020, to be held on the 25th and 26th of March, 2020, its topic being “Law Codes and Women”.

The choice of this subject stems from an anniversary – this year marks the 175th anniversary of the Serbian Civil Code (1844), and one of the most heavily debated issues during its creation was precisely the regulation of the position of women: a woman’s right to inherit, her role in the family, the legal capacity of a married woman… Without a doubt, dilemmas such as these were present in the minds of other creators of civil codes pertaining to the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century – however, this is but a small portion of the issues that fall under the realm of this conference. What was the status of women as perpetrators – or victims – of crimes in criminal codes? What was the procedural status of women as parties in lawsuits or as witnesses? Did commercial codes contain special rules for women merchants? When we move further into the past, the very presence of norms that are concerned with the status of women in the legal codes of the Antiquity and the Middle Ages tells us a lot about their position in society, and many laws contain specific and original institutions that deserve scholarly attention. In recent history we could divert our attention to women as lawmakers, and analyse their influence on modern codes of law. We are looking forward to proposals related to these and many other issues pertaining to the main subject!

All students of graduate and post-graduate studies pertaining to law or other humanities are eligible to apply for the conference. The applications should contain basic personal information (name and surname, faculty, department, level and year of study), along with an abstract containing anywhere between 500 and 1000 words.

The applications should be e-mailed to iustoria@ius.bg.ac.rs before the 15th of January, 2020. The students will be informed by the 25th of January whether or not their application has been accepted. A provisional programme for the conference will be announced by the 1st of February. Drafts of the chosen papers need to be sent by the 15th of March. For any additional information you may enquire at the same e-mail address, or consult the official Facebook page of the conference – https://www.facebook.com/iustoria

Apart from the presentations given by their colleagues, the students at the conference will have an opportunity to attend several lectures given by renowned experts – more details on this will be available in the final version of the programme.

As a general rule, the participants who do not reside in Belgrade are expected to cover the travelling and accomodation expenses by themselves. Exceptionally, there is a possibility of securing accomodations either at the student dorms or with student host families for those students who are unable to finance their stay at Belgrade. These arrangements will depend on the number of available spots.

The final versions of the papers presented at the conference, with final changes and corrections submitted within a reasonable time after the conference, will be published in the first issue of the future student journal for legal history!