Matilde Cazzola's research project examines the role of the 'protection' framework in the British colonial state, focusing on how it facilitated the governance and profitability of the mobility of indentured labourers and indigenous peoples. It highlights that this mobility was regulated and secured by law to remove disorderly or criminal elements, closely linking protection with policing and crime prevention from the early nineteenth century. She also explores the use of protection as a justification for the collection of social knowledge about these groups, which informed social policies and legal measures.

In German-speaking countries, the ‘science’ of law is primarily understood as a normative practice whose primary task is the production of practice-relevant legal doctrine. Since the beginning of the 20th century, however, there has also been a perspective that studies law empirically, i.e. how it is actually applied in society. In his research project, Christian Boulanger explores the history of the sociology of law in Germany and places it in a broader academic context.

Our upcoming Max Planck Lecture in Legal History and Legal Theory (on 4 July) will focus on 'The Property/License Interface'. This lecture by Larissa Katz (University of Toronto) is based on a chapter from her forthcoming book on People (Offices) and Things. She insists on the traditional property/licence distinction and explains how these two ideas relate. She argues that the property/licence distinction captures two basic and quite different ways in which someone in an office (whether public or private) can involve others in carrying out their mandate.