AMERICAN SOCIETY OF COMPARATIVE LAW YOUNGER COMPARATIVISTS COMMITTEE

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT

The Younger Comparativists Committee (YCC) of the American Society of Comparative Law (ASCL) is pleased toinvite submissions for its Tenth Annual Conference, to be held on October 21 and 23, 2021. The purpose of theconference is to highlight, develop, and promote the scholarship of younger scholars of Comparative Law.

This year the YCC annual conference will again be held together with the Annual Meeting of the ASCL. The YCC conference and the ASCL Annual Meeting will be hosted by the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison, Wisconsin. Both events are planned as in-person but can be moved online depending on the pandemic situation.

Conference Subject-Matter and Eligibility

Submissions will be accepted on any subject in public or private comparative law. For the purposes of the YCC conference, “younger scholars” are defined as graduate students, law teachers, lecturers, fellows, and other scholars, provided that they have not held a full-time academic appointment since before July 1, 2011 (i.e., less than 10 years as of June 30, 2021). Submissions from full-time faculty, research fellows, and graduate students are equally welcome.

Submission Instructions

To submit an entry, scholars should email an attachment in Microsoft Word or PDF containing an abstract of between 500 and 750 words to ycc.conference2021@gmail.com. The deadline for submission is July 10^th, 2021. Abstractsreceived after the deadline will not be considered.

Abstracts should reflect original research that will not yet have been published, but may have been accepted for publication. Interested participants should include the author’s name, title of the paper, institutional affiliation, contact information, and three to five keywords. In the email, the author should certify that she/he qualifies as a younger scholar. Graduate students should identify themselves as such in the email.

Proposals for fully formed panels are encouraged. Panels must center around a common theme and include a confirmed list of panel members, abstracts for each presenter, and other required information. Please include the words “PanelProposal” in the subject line of your email.

Each scholar may make only one submission. Both individual and co-authored submissions will be accepted. For co-authored submissions, both authors must qualify as younger comparativists.

The conference’s Program Committee will assign individual and co-authored submissions to thematic panels according to subject area.

Notification

Authors of the submissions selected for the conference will be notified no later than July 31^st, 2021.

There is no cost to register for the conference but participants are responsible for securing their own funding for travel, lodging and other incidental expenses. A limited number of travel stipends, of up to $400, may be awarded to those who indicate financial need. Priority will be given to faculty and students of ASCL Member Institutions.

If you would like to be considered for a travel stipend, please make that request in your submission, and indicate your institution’s status. 

All scholars selected for the conference—other than graduate students who wish to be considered for the Colin B. Picker graduate student prize listed below (and have an earlier deadline)—must submit final papers by email to ycc.conference2021@gmail.com no later than September 30, 2021.

Colin B. Picker Graduate Student Prize

The YCC will award the Colin B. Picker Prize for the best paper submitted by a graduate student. To be considered for the award, in addition to submitting an abstract by the above deadline, graduate students whoseabstracts are accepted for the conference must also submit their papers in their final form by September 15, 2021,ycc.conference2021@gmail.com with the following subject line: “Submission for Graduate Student Prize.”

Phanor J. Eder Prize in Comparative Law

The YCC will award the Phanor J. Eder Prize for the best paper submitted by a J.D., B.A., or LL.B. or other studentwho has not yet completed the first law degree as of September 1, 2021. A separate call will be forthcoming with the details of the Phanor J. Eder competition. Final papers will be due on September 15^th, 2021, in order to be consideredfor the competition.

Acknowledgements and Questions

The Younger Comparativists Committee gratefully acknowledges the support of the American Society of Comparative Law. Please direct all inquiries to Antonia Baraggia or Vera Korzun, Chairs of the Program Committee, by email atycc.conference2021@gmail.com.

YCC Board

Antonia Baraggia (Co-Chair) Vera Korzun (Co-Chair)Valentina Rita Scotti (Treasurer) Sara Ross

Claudia Haupt

21st April 2021 

Online congress via BBC

ASCL Members interested in participating are welcome to send a title and a short abstract to the following email address: mlkubica@uloyola.es as soon as possible, but no later than 1st of April. Abstracts out of deadline will be considered if the extension of the program allows it.  

Scientific director                                 Luz M. Martínes Velencoso (luz.martines@uv.es)

Technical secretary                               Marina Sancho López (marina.sancho@uv.es)

Scientific Committee                Javier Plaza Penadés, Maria Kubica, Jakub Szczerbowski

The aim of this International Congress is, in the realm of the R&D and Innovation Project CONTRACTS, TRANSPARENCY AND PROTECTION OF DATA IN THE DIGITAL MARKET (Ref. RTI2018-097354-B-I00) led by the Professors of the UV Javier Plaza Penadés and Luz M. Martínez Velencoso, to contribute to the outreach of the results of research regarding the challenges that technological advancement poses in the protection of people’s privacy.

For this purpose, various thematic blocks are established:

A) Privacy&Biotechnology

Biotechnology is a relatively new field that has great potential for boosting medical progress that can generate great advances in so-called personalized medicine. The principal aim is to allow that patients receive the treatments most in line with their specific conditions, taking into account their genetics and other medical characteristics. 

For the advancement of these therapies, research is carried out which systematically collects genetic data so that researchers can assess, for example, whether different responses to a medicine can be explained by genetic factors. 

The European Data Protection Regulation defines genetic data as “data relating to the inherited or acquired genetic characteristics of a natural person which give unique information about the physiology or the health of that natural person and which result, in particular, from an analysis of a biological sample from the natural person in question” (art.4.13). These are highly sensitive data that have a high level of protection. In order to resolve the conflict of interest that arises between the necessary scientific advancement, on the one hand, and the protection of privacy, on the other hand, the law provides for instruments of anonymization and “pseudonymisation” of data with certain guarantees.

B) Privacy&Robotics

In the realm of robotics, it is necessary to establish rules with the aim, among others, of protecting people against possible privacy violations that may arise due to the processing of personal data by so-called artificial intelligence. Thus, for example, the “European Parliament resolution of 16 February 2017 with recommendations to the Commission on Civil Law Rules on Robotics (2015/2103(INL))” states as one of the ethical principles the necessary protection of the right to privacy. Researchers and designers must ensure that private information will be kept secure and will only be used appropriately. Artificial Intelligence undoubtedly poses challenges for the protection of personal data as a technology based on predictive algorithms that, for its operation, requires huge amounts of personal data which are screened by data mining systems, and whose results can lead to certain biases or discriminations.

C) Privacy&Technology

The European Personal Data Protection Regulation certainly means a paradigm shift in the security and privacy of personal data. However, it is based on centralized digital data storage and transmission models. Having this in mind, Blockchain’s new decentralized paradigm presents new challenges that must be solved by the common framework of European data protection regulation.

Taking into account a number of factors, technology may itself be a limitation on the effective fulfilment of certain rights. Additionally, we must not disregard its constant evolutionary nature, which may result in a fleetingness in the effectiveness of the legal measures taken. This seems to be the case of the Blockchain technology. Based on a distributed and encrypted database, built on data chains designed to circumvent its modification, its content is visible to everybody. Nowadays, it can be affirmed the Blockchain’s application has spread into financial services sector, giving rise to use of Bitcoins, and expanded into others, mainly through smart contracts, such as telecommunications or health industry. This can cause, in certain cases, problems with its compatibility with data protection regulations, as the data chains that make up that technology cannot be modified, deleted, or reconstructed.

Online congress via BBC

10.00: 13.00                                              [Panel: General Data Protection Implications]

Javier Plaza Penadés, UV

“Transparencia en Internet y Big Data: el Nuevo marco legal europeo”

Marek Salamonowicz, University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn 

“The open access to research data and the right to privacy as its restriction. The perspective of public universities’ policy”

Rossana Ducato, University of Aberdeen

“EdTech: current data protection challenges and the    future of (postpandemic) university”

Florian Möslein and Clara Beise, Marburg University

“Data sovereignty and private law”

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