Law & Humanities Blog |
- Law and Aesthetics
- Law, Culture and the Humanities, June 2011 Issue
- Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
- The History of Cohabitation, 1600-2010
| 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
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.Download the article from SSRN at the link.
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.
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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