Home » Archives for June 2011

Medical Humanities Blog

Posted: 30 Jun 2011 08:28 AM PDT

Bradley A. Arehart (Stetson, Law) has a new article forthcoming in the Yale Law & Policy Review 29, no. 347 (2011) entitled Disability Trouble. Here is the Abstract:

In the 1960s, the term "gender" emerged in the academic literature to indicate the socially constructed nature of being a man or woman. The gender/sex binary soon became standard academic fare, with sex representing biology and gender representing sex's social construct. However, in the 1980s feminists became concerned the gender/sex binary – by effectively designating sex as non-social – left room for biological determinism.

These feminists made "gender trouble" in part by arguing biological sex was a social concept. The resulting scholarship on sex and gender enriched feminist thought and catalyzed civil rights through an expansion of legal protections.

An almost identical binary exists for disability, the disablement/ impairment binary, in which writers characterize disablement as the social construct, and impairment as the disabled person's body. This disability binary has received sparse critical attention; while few legal scholars have provided ringing endorsements, none have provided a systematic critique of the binary or examined the legal implications attendant to such a critique. Yet, just as with legal scholarship on gender and sex, there are important legal implications to making further sense of the meaning of disability.

In this Article, I make disability trouble by arguing disability is more socially constructed than acknowledged. In particular, and contrary to most literature, I argue that biological impairment is itself a social concept. Initially, I explain how impairment, according to those who coined the disability binary, appears to be little more than diagnosis. From there, I argue, using concrete examples, that both the creation of diagnoses and acts of diagnosis are social processes. Finally, I examine the legal implications of disability trouble.

I share Areheart's belief that the notion of a "biological impariment" that exists separate and apart from social processes is itself incoherent. One of the profound lessons of the SDOH literature is the significance of embodiment, of the ways in which social phenomena, conditions, and events become embodied in context of health and its distribution in human populations.

The article is recommended.

(h/t the Professor)

Law & Humanities Blog

Call For Papers
Fighting It Out In a Seventeenth Century Literary Venue
Distinctions Between Construction and Interpretation
Categorizing Approaches To Law and Culture
Law, Literature, and the Media
A New Journal Devoted To Christopher Marlowe

Call For Papers

Posted: 29 Jun 2011 11:38 AM PDT

From Robert L. Tsai, Professor of Law, American University, Washington College of Law

CALL FOR PAPERS

Deadline: March 15, 2012

"Hate and Political Discourse"

Journal of Hate Studies

Volume X, No. 1 (2012/13)

Guest Editor:

Robert L. Tsai, J.D.

Professor of Law, American University, Washington College of Law

About the Theme

Often shielded by constitutional rules and nurtured by political discourse, hate has a
mercurial existence in the popular imagination. In the "arena of angry minds," as Richard Hofstadter called American political life, political actors sometimes choose to condemn hatred, distance themselves from it, appeal to its existence, or foment it.

Even when subjugation, discrimination, or violence is not the goal, the politics of hate can pay off. Rather than seeking its total eradication, many democracies assume the permanence of hate and seek to minimize its excesses or to punish and prohibit specific expressions. Are such assumptions well-founded, and such strategies wise?
Some of the social groups marked through the techniques of hatred have changed over time, as the political dividends for resorting to strategies of hate have shifted, while other groups seem to be consistent targets of hate.

Technological advances offer new tools to combat hatemongering even as they can make demagogues more effective.

What are the structural conditions that allow hate to thrive or might permit its isolation? How might inroads be made in the law or politics of inclusion, especially in countries with strong commitments to rhetorical freedom and popular sovereignty?

Call for Submissions

The Journal of Hate Studies welcomes original papers treating the theme, "Hate and
Political Discourse," from a wide range of disciplines, including history, law, philosophy, political science, sociology, criminal justice, social psychology, economics, anthropology,
geography, journalism, communications, rhetoric, literature, educational studies, and
cultural studies.

We especially encourage original treatments of the following topics:

• Hate and popular sovereignty

• How hate can foster alternative communities and movements

• Cultural foundations of hate

• Historical changes in rhetorical strategies

• Political parties and hate

• Necessary political conditions for hate

• Empirical approaches to the problem of hate

• The role of hate in nation-building

• How literature, rhetoric, journalism or other forms of communication can fuel
or discourage hate

• Geographical differences in how hatred is sustained or combated

• Comparative approaches and cross-cultural challenges

• New technologies in combating or fomenting hatred in the realm of political
discourse

We anticipate hosting an invitational Symposium in Fall 2012, either at American
University or Gonzaga University, in conjunction with the publication of this Volume.

Authors published in this Volume would be invited to present their work at the
Symposium.

About the Journal

The Journal of Hate Studies is a peer-reviewed publication of the Gonzaga University
Institute for Hate Studies. The Journal of Hate Studies is an international scholarly
journal promoting the sharing of interdisciplinary ideas and research relating to the study
of what hate is, where it comes from, and how to combat it. It presents cutting-edge
essays, theory, and research that deepen the understanding of the development and
expression of hate.

Guidelines for Submissions

Submissions are typically expected to be between 5,000 and 10,000 words.

Submissions may be made in either of the following ways.

• As an attachment sent by email to hatestudies@gonzaga.edu

• Through the Journal's online site

(http://journals.gonzaga.edu/index.php/johs/information/authors)

Submissions should be made in MS Word format. Please do not submit PDFs.

Submissions should be presented in APA format, with endnotes rather than footnotes.

However, legal scholarship may be presented in Bluebook or ALWD.

More information about submission guidelines, the Journal of Hate Studies, and the

Gonzaga University Institute for Hate Studies can be found at

http://gonzaga.edu/hatestudies

For Questions or Communications

Robert L. Tsai, J.D.

Guest Editor

Professor, American University Washington College of Law

rtsai@wcl.american.edu

202.274.4370

John Shuford, J.D., Ph.D.

Director, Gonzaga University Institute for Hate Studies

hatestudies@gonzaga.edu

509.313.3665

Fighting It Out In a Seventeenth Century Literary Venue

Posted: 29 Jun 2011 08:58 AM PDT

José Calvo González, University of Málaga Faculty of Law, has published Quevedo en tela de juicio, o sea El Tribvnal de la ivsta vengança de Luis Pacheco de Narváez. (De contiendas literarias y Derecho en la España del s. XVII), 525 in Estudios Jurídicos en Homenaje al Profesor Alejandro Guzmán Brito, volume 1 (Patricio-Ignacio Carvajal and Massimo Miglietta eds; Edizioni dell'Orso, Alessandria, 2011). Here is the abstract.

The paper examines the "procedural drama" created by Luis Pacheco de Narváez (1570 - 1640) in his Tribunal de la justa venganza [Court the just vengeance] (1635) for the prosecution of literary aesthetics (and moral ideas and values) Quevedo´s [Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas (1580-1645)].

The uniqueness of the case in the frequent literary controversies of the time lies in the nature of judicial inquiry that was built. In this legal-procedural dimension reprimanded experiencing a profound rethinking of the semantic roles in the "production of sens" between Law and Literature/ Literature and Law.
The essay is also available online at the Italian Society for Law and Literature (ISLL) website.

Distinctions Between Construction and Interpretation

Posted: 29 Jun 2011 08:41 AM PDT

Lawrence B.

Solum, Georgetown Law School, has published The Interpretation-Construction Distinction at 27 Constitutional Commentary 95 (2010). Here is the abstract.

The interpretation-construction distinction, which marks the difference between linguistic meaning and legal effect, is much discussed these days. I shall argue that the distinction is both real and fundamental – that it marks a deep difference in two different stages (or moments) in the way that legal and political actors process legal texts. My account of the distinction will not be precisely the same as some others, but I shall argue that it is the correct account and captures the essential insights of its rivals. This Essay aims to mark the distinction clearly!

The basic idea can be explained by distinguishing two different moments or stages that occur when an authoritative legal text (a constitution, statute, regulation, or rule) is applied or explicated. The first of these moments is interpretation – which I shall stipulate is the process (or activity) that recognizes or discovers the linguistic meaning or semantic content of the legal text. The second moment is construction – which I shall stipulate is the process that gives a text legal effect (either my translating the linguistic meaning into legal doctrine or by applying or implementing the text). I shall then claim that the difference between interpretation and construction is real and fundamental. Although the terminology (the words "interpretation" and "construction" that express the distinction) could vary, legal theorists cannot do without the distinction.

One more preliminary point: the topic of this Essay is narrow and conceptual. This Essay, has three goals: (1) to explicate the nature of the interpretation-construction distinction, (2) to argue that this distinction marks a real difference, and (3) to suggest that the distinction is helpful in that it enables legal theorists to clarify the nature of important debates, for example debates about constitutional interpretation. The Essay does not offer any particular theory of interpretation or construction – that it is, it remains agnostic about questions as to how linguistic meaning can be discerned or how legal content ought to be determined. Nor does this theory offer an account of the history and origins of the distinction. Those topics are important, but raising them in this Essay might shift attention away from prior questions about the nature and value of the distinction itself.

Here is the roadmap. In Part II, this Essay shall discuss two preliminary sets of ideas: (1) vagueness and ambiguity, and (2) semantic content and legal content. In Part III, this Essay shall use these preliminary ideas to answer the questions, "What is interpretation?" and "What is construction?" In Part IV, this Essay shall consider some objections to the interpretation-construction distinction. In Part V, this Essay shall develop the argument that the distinction is fundamental and indispensable.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Categorizing Approaches To Law and Culture

Posted: 29 Jun 2011 08:38 AM PDT

Menachem Mautner, Buchmann Faculty of Law, Tel Aviv University, has published Three Approaches to Law and Culture at 96 Cornell Law Review 839 (2011). Here is the abstract.

This article discusses three major approaches connecting culture to law. The first is the historical school that arose in German jurisprudence in the first half of the nineteenth century. It views law as a product of a nation's culture and as embedded in the daily practices of its people. The second approach is the constitutive approach that developed in American jurisprudence in the 1980s. This approach views law as participating in the constitution of culture and thereby in the constitution of people's minds, practices, and social relations. The third approach, found in twentieth-century Anglo-American jurisprudence, views the law that the courts create and apply as a distinct cultural system. Law practitioners internalize this culture in the course of their studies and professional activity, and this internalization comes to constitute, direct, and delimit the way these practitioners think, argue, resolve cases, and provide justifications. The writings of Karl Llewellyn, James Boyd White, Pierre Bourdieu and Stanley Fish are discussed. Beyond these three approaches the article points out nine additional approaches in legal scholarship concerning the relationship between law and culture. This mapping is tentative. It is hoped, however, that it gives readers a preliminary idea of the widespread use of the concept of culture in the law and that it invites further reflection on other possible ways to employ the concept of culture in legal scholarship for a richer understanding of the legal phenomenon.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Law, Literature, and the Media

Posted: 29 Jun 2011 08:36 AM PDT

Maria Francisca Carneiro, Federal University of Paraná, and Maria Fernanda Loureiro have published Law, Literature and the Media. Here is the abstract.

In this article we consider the relation between Law and Literature. The possibility of investigating literary elements of Law implicit in popular culture leads us to inquire whether the media can also be an object of studies of juridical literature.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

A New Journal Devoted To Christopher Marlowe

Posted: 29 Jun 2011 08:29 AM PDT

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: A new journal on Christopher Marlowe is making its debut. Indiana University/Purdue University, Fort Wayne is publishing Marlowe Studies as an annual.

In the first issue:

Meghan C. Andrews, University of Texas, Austin, "The 1663 Doctor Faustus and the Royalist Marlowe"

James Biester, Loyola University of Chicago, "A Storm Brewing: Inspirations for The Tempest in Marlowe and Jonson"

Bruce Brandt, South Dakota State University, "A Decade Bibliography of Christopher Marlowe, 2000-2009"

Douglas Bruster, University of Texas, Austin, "Christopher Marlowe and the Verse / Prose Bilingual System"

Sara Munson Deats, University of South Florida, "Mars or Gorgon? Tamburlaine and Henry V"

R. Carter Hailey, College of William and Mary, "The Publication Date of Marlowe's Massacre at Paris, with a Note on the Massacre Manuscript Leaf, Folger J.b.8"

Lisa Hopkins, Sheffield Hallam University, "Playing with Matches: Christopher Marlowe's Incendiary Imagination"

Jeremy Lopez, University of Toronto, "Alleyn Resurrected"

Paul Menzer, Mary Baldwin College, "Shades of Marlowe"

Barbara Parker, William Paterson University, "'Cursèd Necromancy': Marlowe's Faustus as Anti-Catholic Satire"

Jeffrey Rufo, Trinity University, "Marlowe's Minions: Sodomitical Politics in Edward II and The Massacre at Paris"

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Evolutionary Rap
Good Bye To Nearly All That
The Protection of Folklore

Evolutionary Rap

Posted: 28 Jun 2011 08:09 AM PDT

After taking the rap for the decline of morality for so many decades, Charles Darwin now has a rap of his own. Scholar Baba Brinkman, described as "[a] tall blond Canadian of Dutch ancestry," has put Mr. Darwin and a lot of other cool evolution stuff into 90 minutes' worth of rappa-tainment at Manhattan's Soho Playhouse. Olivia Judson reviewed the show for the New York Times last year and loved it, as does David Rooney, who points out that Mr. Brinkman's show is also a guide to the evolution of hip-hop.

Can't make it to Manhattan? Swag is available via the website, and at retailers online.

Good Bye To Nearly All That

Posted: 28 Jun 2011 07:52 AM PDT

Alessandra Stanley provides a look back at yet another series in Dick Wolf's venerable franchise, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, which aired its last first-run episode this week.

The Protection of Folklore

Posted: 28 Jun 2011 07:49 AM PDT

Ayoyemi Lawal Arowolo, Babcock University School of Law and Security Studies, has published Copyright Law and the Recognition of 'Folkloric Creations' and 'Folk Medicine' in Africa, at 5 Journal of Black and African Arts and Civilization 33 (2011). Here is the abstract.

Creations in traditional African societies are often categorized as folklore which is protectable under copyright law as expressions of folklore. They are indeed precious jewels which bear eloquent testimony to the wonderful civilisation and culture flourishing in traditional communities in Africa. The rich cultural heritage of Africa is a sign of the creative activities of the past. The present has not given enough recognition to the role and protection of works based on folklore thus compounding the misappropriation of folkloric works and folk medicine. The controversy on the protection of folklore is an issue African countries face and need to resolve. The invaluable role of folklore in African societies and the deficiencies in protecting creative works within traditional parameters to encourage intellectual creations is examined in this paper.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

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Law and Aesthetics
Law, Culture and the Humanities, June 2011 Issue
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
The History of Cohabitation, 1600-2010

Law and Aesthetics

Posted: 27 Jun 2011 01:59 PM PDT

Maria Francisca Carneiro, Federal University of Parana, has published Law and Aesthetics. Here is the abstract.

The aim of this article is to describe some aspects of the relation between law and aesthetics. To do this, two lines of aesthetics are examined, one gnoseological and the other artistic. The beautiful and the good are related to the just by considering the possibility of the existence of poetics in law, including autopoiesis. An aesthetic theory of justice is sketched out based on the criterion of proportionality, which is common to both art and law, as well as the faculty of judging. The similarities and differences between aesthetic judgment and juridical judgment are therefore discussed. It is concluded that the ludic impulse, and therefore the game, is an element which is common to both aesthetics and law, in light of which the importance is stressed of carrying out deeper studies concerning the aesthetic game in law, for example through theories of the balance between determination and indetermination. Both in the game as in law, there are defined and undefined rules to be followed, and in both there are also psychological and behavioral aspects in common.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Law, Culture and the Humanities, June 2011 Issue

Posted: 27 Jun 2011 11:19 AM PDT

The June 2011 issue of Law, Culture and the Humanities contains the following articles:

Austin Sarat, Editorial

Colin Dayan, Who Owns the Body, and When Does It Die

Irus Braverman, Hidden In Plain View: Legal Geography From a Visual Perspective

Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, Law's Spatial Turn: Geography, Justice and a Certain Fear of Space

Nicholas Blomley, Cuts, Flows, and the Geographies of Property

Lior Barshack, The Constituent Power of Architecture

Paul Raffield, The Elizabethan Rhetoric of Signs: Representations of Res Publica at the Early Modern Inns of Court

Lynn Mills Eckert, A Critique of the Content and Viewpoint Neutrality Principle in Modern Free Speech Doctrine

Ruth M. Buchanan, "Passing through the Mirror": Dead Man, Legal Pluralism and the De-territorialization of the West

Diana Young, Law and the Foucauldian Wild West in Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate

Keally McBride, Book Review: Emergency Politics: Paradox, Law, Democracy By Bonnie Honig, Princeton University Press, 2009, 218 pp. $26.95 (Cloth). ISBN-10: 069114298X

Rebecca Johnson, Book Review: The Scene of Violence: Cinema, Crime, Affect By Alison Young, Routledge, 2009, 200 pp. $53.95 (Paperback), $130 (Cloth). ISBN 978-0-415-58508-8

Judith Ferster, Book Review: Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption By Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton (with Erin Torneo), St. Martin's Press, 2009. 298 pp. $25.95 (Cloth). ISBN-13: 978-0-312-37653-6; ISBN-10: 0-312-377653-7

Paola Pasquali, Book Review: The Spatial, the Legal and the Pragmatics of World-Making. Nomospheric Investigations By David Delaney, Routledge-Cavendish, 2010, 224 pp. $125, £75 (Cloth). ISBN 978-0-415-46319

Roger S. Fisher, Book Review: Law's Cosmos: Juridical Discourse in Athenian Forensic Oratory By Victoria Wohl, Cambridge University Press, 2010, 362 pp. $99.00 (Cloth). ISBN 978-0-521-11074-7

Frederick Cowell, Book Review: Individual Human Rights: A History By David Whelan, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010, 328 pp. $59.95, £39.00 (Cloth).

ISBN 978-0-8122-4240-9

Thomas Jefferson and Slavery

Posted: 27 Jun 2011 10:54 AM PDT

Aaron Schwabach, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, has published Thomas Jefferson, Slavery, and Slaves, in volume 33 of the Thomas Jefferson Law Review (2010). Here is the abstract.

Thomas Jefferson was a controversial and divisive figure during his own lifetime, and has not grown less so with time. Perhaps no other person had a greater impact on the shaping of the American legal system than Jefferson. And perhaps no other person so completely embodied the contradictions and hypocrisies of the early American approach to questions of slavery and race: as Frederick Douglass put it, "the contradiction in the Constitution." Arguments may and do rage about Jefferson's religious faith or lack thereof, and on his views on federalism and states' rights or on the balance between government and individual liberty. Yet nothing about Jefferson elicits as immediate and emotional a response as his peculiarly complex relationship to the institution of slavery, and consequently to race.

The three sections of this article provide a preliminary exploration of Jefferson's views on slavery and race, and his relationships with slavery and slaves. The first attempts to describe Jefferson's relationship to the institution of slavery, both as a slave owner and as a political figure; as much as possible, it presents Jefferson's views on slavery and on race in his own words. This section also sets forth some of the notable features of the law of slavery in Jefferson's time, and attempts to measure Jefferson's impact on slavery.

The second section discusses the case of Howell v. Netherland, one of the two cases argued by Thomas Jefferson preserved in the law reports of colonial Virginia (compiled by Jefferson himself). Samuel Howell, an indentured servant, brought an action against his master for freedom; Jefferson represented him, unsuccessfully, before a judge (George Wythe, Jefferson's former law professor) who was far less ambivalent than Jefferson in his personal opposition to slavery.

The third section discusses the relationship, or what is known and what is believed and disbelieved about it, between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Hemings, a slave, was the half-sister of Jefferson's wife, and he was and is widely believed to have been the father of her children. The lives of Jefferson, Hemings, and their children and other family members are historically interesting. Our latter-day reactions to ongoing discoveries about them are at least as interesting for what they say about us and the degree to which, as a nation, we have succeeded or failed in coming to terms with the divide that defined Jefferson and his times.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The History of Cohabitation, 1600-2010

Posted: 27 Jun 2011 10:52 AM PDT

Rebecca Probert, University of Warwick School of Law, has published 'From Fornicators to Family: Cohabitants and the Law, 1600-2010'. Here is the abstract.

There is a widespread assumption among scholars and other commentators that the modern popularity of cohabitation is nothing new, but simply a reversion to older trends. Yet this is based on fundamental misunderstandings of the language used to describe relationships outside marriage and their treatment by the law. In the eighteenth century – and well into the twentieth – the term 'cohabitation' did not necessarily mean that the parties were sharing a home. Nor was there any concept of 'common-law marriage': rather than being treated as married, couples who were cohabiting risked punishment for fornication. This paper traces the way in which the law has moved from treating cohabitants as 'fornicators' to accepting them as 'family'. It provides new evidence on the extent of cohabitation in earlier centuries, identifies linguistic faux amis, and evaluates the relationship between law and practice. While the increase in cohabitation may seem to have occurred without legal encouragement, an analysis of women's magazines and newspapers suggests that the way in which the law was misunderstood was more important than what it actually was.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

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Dictionaries and Legal Interpretation

Posted: 25 Jun 2011 10:52 AM PDT

Stephen C. Mouritsen has published The Dictionary Is Not a Fortress: Definitional Fallacies and a Corpus-Based Approach to Plain Meaning at 2010 Brigham Young University Law Review 1915. Here is the abstract.

"Plain meaning," said Judge Frank Easterbrook, "as a way to understand language is silly. In interesting cases, meaning is not 'plain'; it must be imputed; and the choice among meanings must have a footing more solid than a dictionary."

This paper proposes an empirical method for determining the "ordinary meaning" of statutory terms; an approach grounded in a linguistic methodology known as Corpus Linguistics. I begin by addressing a number of commonly held, but ultimately erroneous assumptions about the content and structure of dictionaries – assumptions that find their way into judicial reasoning with alarming frequency.

I then outline an approach to the resolution of lexical ambiguity in statutory interpretation – an approach based on Corpus Linguistics methods. Corpus Linguistics is an empirical methodology that analyzes language function and use by means of large electronic databases called corpora.

A corpus is a principled collection of naturally occurring language data, typically tagged with grammatical content and searchable in such a way that the ordinary use of a given term in a given context may be ascertained.

Though Corpus Linguistics is not a panacea, the methodology has the potential to remove the determination of ordinary meaning from the black box of the judge's mental impression and render the discussion of the ordinary meaning of statutory terms one of tangible and quantifiable reality.Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Foucault's Footsteps

Posted: 25 Jun 2011 08:02 AM PDT

Mariana Valverde, University of Toronto Centre of Criminology, has published Specters of Foucault in Law and Society Scholarship at 6 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 45 (2010). Here is the abstract.

To reflect on how we, in 2010, might make the best use of the analytical tools developed by Michel Foucault, we need first to go back to the 1970s and situate his work in the intellectual history of the European left. We then see that Foucault was extremely careful to avoid developing a new model, a grand social theory that might replace the Marxism that was dominant then. Instead, he cultivated more empirically grounded, historically specific habits of thought, in a series of books that did not follow a consistent plan. In Foucault's work, the basic terms are themselves tactical weapons, and hence do not have fixed meanings. That is, the terms are not concepts. This has gone largely unnoticed in the literature: Most of the scholars who use Foucault adopt the content but use it to prop up old forms. The governmentality literature has been particularly influential in many law and society circles, and it tends to use Foucault to produce an improved sociology of modernity - rather than to question our own desire to call ourselves modern and challenge our yearning for static models. This review examines one attempt to turn Foucault into a legal philosopher, a more novel but equally problematic effort to use Foucault to renovate old disciplines. The key argument of the review is that Foucault's work is most useful when, rather than attempt to "apply" it, we use it as inspiration to ourselves to examine the preconditions and foundations of our own present's intellectual habits.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

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Law and Humanities, June 2011 Issue
The Intellectual Foundations of International Legal Discourse
Capturing the "What" of International Criminal Law

Law and Humanities, June 2011 Issue

Posted: 24 Jun 2011 10:05 AM PDT

The June issue of Law and Humanities contains:

Paul Raffield and Gary Watt, Editorial

Christian Biet and Lissa Lincoln, Introduction: Law and Literature

Gilles Lhuilier, Law & Literature (as an epistemological break in legal theory)

Allison Tait and Luke Norris, Narrative and the Origins of Law

Leif Dahlbert, Before the Temple of Justice: Reading Roman Law Reading

Klaus Stierstorfer, Klaus, Law and (which?) Literature: New Directions in Post-Theory?

Sebastian McEvoy, Slot-Thinking, or Categorisation, in Law and Literature

Laurent de Sutter, Piracy as Method: Nine Theses on Law and Literature

Marie Bouhaïk-Gironès, Simon Gabay, Jelle Koopmans, and Katell Lavéant, Legal Theory, Legal Practice and Drama

Joël Blanchard, A Logic of Appropriation: Practical Relationships between Law and Literature in the Middle Ages

Bruno Méniel, Law and Literature in the Humanist Period: Encyclopaedic versus Specialised Thought

Romain Descendre, The Experience of Law and Art Literature in the Sixteenth Century: Benvenuto Cellini's La Vita

Romain Jobez, From Obsessive Metaphors to Juridical Myth: Some Proposals for a Metaphorical Reading of Early Modern Law and Literature

Dominique Goy-Blanquet, Schools of Law, School of Drama

Natacha Israël, A Possible Co-Constitution of Theatre, Literature and Law, through the Example of Seventeenth-Century England

Stéphanie Loncle, Freedom of the Theatre: A Matter of Law?

Martial Poirson, For Extending the Domain of Research between Law, Economics and Literature

Christian Delage, Creating an International Court: A Movie Project

Jeanne Gaakeer, The Future of Literary-Legal Jurisprudence: Mere Theory or Just Practice?

Anna Krakus, Crime Stories: The Polish Secret Police File and the Conflation of the Legal and the Literary

Barbara Villez, Law and Literature: A Conjunction Revisited

Daniela Carpi, Equity: Assessing the Results of a Project

Gary Watt, The To Be Of And: Reflections on the Bridge

Paul Raffield, The Oneiric Imagination and the Dream of Law

Sandra Travers de Faultrier, Appearing, or 'Face-to-Face' Dialogue

Guy Spielmann, Judicial Spectacle Events as Reality and as Fiction

Lissa Lincoln, Justice Imagined: Albert Camus' Politics of Subversion

Richard H.

Weisberg, A-N-D

The Intellectual Foundations of International Legal Discourse

Posted: 24 Jun 2011 09:39 AM PDT

Ulkf Linderfalk, Lund University Faculty of Law, has published On the Many Functions of International Legal Concepts, Part One. Here is the abstract.

According to the ontological stance adopted in this essay, a concept is a mental representation. It is the generalized idea of an empirical or normative phenomenon or state of affairs or a class of such phenomena or state of affairs. This essay is concerned with a specific category of concepts typically referred to as "concepts of international or international law" or "international legal concepts." International legal concepts figure prominently in the way international lawyers think and talk about international law. This raises questions about their possible function or functions. Arguably, international legal concepts would not be used on such a large scale if they did not also fill important needs. What exactly are those needs? What does international legal discourse need legal concepts for? The Danish professor Alf Ross wrote on this topic in the beginning of the 1950's. As he observed, the function of legal concepts is intimately connected with their role as meddling links or connectives in legal inferences. This observation led Ross to the conclusion that legal concepts serve to economize the expression of law in verbal form. As I will argue, by reason of their role as meddling links in legal inferences exactly, legal concepts serve a number of other functions as well. To substantiate my argument, in this essay I will illustrate the "camouflaging," "normative," "disclosing," "systemizing," and "formative" functions of legal concepts in international legal discourse.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Capturing the "What" of International Criminal Law

Posted: 24 Jun 2011 09:34 AM PDT

Markus D. Dubber, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, has published Common Civility: The Culture of Alegality in International Criminal Law

Least ambitiously, this paper tries to capture the ethos of international criminal law. More ambitiously, it argues that international criminal law is, or can profitably be seen as, an ethos, rather than a body of law. In this telling, international criminal law, despite its name, emerges as an ethical-administrative enterprise rather than a legal one. If placed alongside global administrative law, international criminal law appears as alegal rather than illegal, as ignoring the principle of legality, say, rather than violating it, so that to criticize international criminal law for its illegality would be like faulting apples for not producing orange juice, and oranges for not making apple pie.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

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Ever More Potter
Call For Papers: Justice In Ottoman Society
Looking For Like-ness
Anarchy

Ever More Potter

Posted: 23 Jun 2011 12:12 PM PDT

J. K. Rowling has announced her new interactive website, Pottermore. Potter around it (a litter) here. I'm sure Potter fans are already raven about it, even though it doesn't actually launch until October. The faithful, though, can sign up via email, to get sneak peeks on July 31st.

More from the Daily Telegraph and the Hollywood Reporter.

Meanwhile, I direct your attention to these tomes:

The Law and Harry Potter (Jeffrey Snyder and Franklin Snyder, Carolina Academic Press, 2010).
The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts For Muggles (William Irwin and Greg Bassham, eds.; Wiley, 2010).
Want, Robert S., Harry Potter and the Order of the Court: The J. K. Rowling Copyright Case and the Question of Fair Use (NationsCourts.com, 2008).

Call For Papers: Justice In Ottoman Society

Posted: 23 Jun 2011 10:27 AM PDT

Juris Diversitas notes a call for papers for a Workshop on Justice in Ottoman Society, being held January 7-8, 2012, at the Institut Français d'études Anatoliennes in Istanbul.

Looking For Like-ness

Posted: 23 Jun 2011 11:56 AM PDT

Bernard E. Harcourt, University of Chicago Law School, is publising Radical Thought from Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, Through Foucault, to the Present: Comments on Steven Lukes' 'In Defense of False Consciousness' in the University of Chicago Legal Forum. Here is the abstract.

In his essay "In Defense of 'False Consciousness'" and book, Power: A Radical View, Steven Lukes mounts a forceful defense of the idea of false consciousness; however, Lukes presents false consciousness and the notion of truth regimes as mutually exclusive. In this essay, I suggest that there are important family resemblances between the theory of ideology in the Marxian tradition, especially as developed by the Frankfurt School, and the critique of truth regimes rooted in the Nietzschean tradition of genealogy, especially as developed by Foucault – family resemblances that make it counter-productive to argue that one theory would make us reject the other. The task is not to defend one theory at the expense of the other, but to explore the intricate relationship between the two in order to sharpen our own critical interventions. That is the goal of this essay, drawing on the radical thought of Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and Foucault. In addition, I go further and call for resistance, not simply to this or that way of being governed, but resistance to truth. The task, as I see it, is to unmask and enlighten, but then to shed the tools we have used before those very beliefs become oppressive themselves.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Anarchy

Posted: 23 Jun 2011 10:11 AM PDT

Sirus Kashefi, York University, Osgoode Hall Law School, has published A Look at Anarchism: The Broad, Paradoxical, and Living Ideas and Movements at the Core of Our Hierarchical, Dominative, and Oppressive Societies. Here is the abstract.

As a critical look, this paper analyzes that anarchism is not only a political philosophy (idea), but also a way of life or of protest against State law and existing order (action). Thus, unlike common opinion, anarchism is not a utopia. Indeed, due to the varieties and paradoxes of anarchist thought according to end and means, the anarchist movements have hitherto been heterogeneous and plural. Despite the vagueness, diverse, and paradoxical anarchist concepts, these movements share some common characteristics (freedom, mutuality, anti-imperisliam, and anti-war, for example), and fight against our hierarchical, dominative, and oppressive societies around the world by emphasizing individual and social freedoms, equality, and justice. As a matter of fact, heterogeneity and direct action have constituted two forces that keep alive the anarchist movements. Are they able to present some alternatives to our hierarchical, dominative, and oppressive societies? I will answer this question at the end of my paper through other critical questions.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

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