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Law & Humanities Blog

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 10:29 AM PDT

Jason Gillmer, Gonzaga University School of Law, has published Crimes of Passion: The Regulation of Interracial Sex in Washington, 1855-1950 at 47 Gonzaga Law Review 393 (2012). Here is the abstract.

This Article explores the regulation of interracial sex and marriage in the state of Washington from its time as a territory through the first half of the twentieth century. Drawing on local records rather than canonical cases, the Article's main thesis is that, although the criminal bans on the practice were short-lived, Washingtonians used legal mechanisms to discourage and penalize interracial families in much the same way. The result of these efforts may not have been prison time; but, lawyers and judges regularly used the law to ensure that wealth and property remained in the hands of whites rather than racial minorities.

In doing so, the legal system became an effective deterrent to interracial relationships, perpetuating existing notions of race that privileged whiteness over other racial groups.Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The Court of Chancery, Inheritance, and Policy in the Eighteenth Century

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 10:26 AM PDT

Adam S. Hofri-Winogradow, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Faculty of Law, has published Parents, Children and Property in the Late Eighteenth Century Chancery in volume 32 of the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies (2012). Here is the abstract.

The late eighteenth century court of Chancery established a balance between the respective interests of parents and their children in the family's property. The court required parents, especially fathers, to themselves provide for the maintenance and education of their minor children, even where money was made available for these purposes from a non-parental source. It prevented parents from intercepting gifts given to their children by third parties. It permitted parents, however, to make their children's entitlements to marriage portions conditional, for children marrying before majority, on the children's choice of spouse being consented to by a parent or parental surrogate. Chancery's overall intergenerational policy was notably anti-dynastic: it made sure that younger generations, specifically those just reaching adulthood, marriage and parenthood, were endowed with sufficient property to give them at least a measure of independence from their elders, and some power over their own children.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

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UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

New AHRC Project at UCLDH: CHIPS – Computer Human Interactive Performance Symposium

Posted: 28 Mar 2012 04:13 AM PDT

As part of our expanding programme of research and teaching in computational musicology and computer music at UCL, we are pleased to announce a new AHRC-funded project (prospective PhD and MA/MSc Digital Humanities students may like to note this activity, particularly the COMPGC20 Computer Music module available as an option on the DH degree). The [...]

UCLDH Day of DH 2012

Posted: 28 Mar 2012 02:42 AM PDT

Yesterday was the Day of Digital Humanities. This project, running since 2009, aims to “bring together digital humanists from around the world to document what they do on one day, March 27th this year. The goal of the project is to create a web site that weaves together the journals of the participants into a [...]

Law & Humanities Blog

Law, Arbitrary Rule, and the Oresteia

Posted: 27 Mar 2012 09:39 AM PDT

Timothy Sandefur, Pacific Legal Foundation, has published Love and Solipsism: Law and Arbitrary Rule in Classical Drama

What distinguishes the rule of law from the lawless, arbitrary rule of brute force — which can almost interchangeably be described as tyranny or as anarchy — is that in a lawful rule the government's coercive power operates according to principles of generality, regularity, fairness, rationality and public-orientation, whereas the arbitrary or lawless ruler wields power in the service of his (or their) own self-interest, or by mere ipse dixit. Law is to arbitrariness as reason is to mere will. In this paper, I explore the dichotomy between lawful and arbitrary rule as it has been represented in literature. I examine first the primal foundation of lawful rule, as depicted in Aeschylus' Oresteia, in which law is generated by domesticating the use of force, through persuasion and willing union.

Athena creates lawful order, not by fiat, but by marrying the Furies to "Persuasion": the ambient coercive powers of the people — morally justified, yet dangerously personal urges for vengeance — will now be rationalized in accordance with public, logical, and articulable principles. By contrast, in Shakespeare's Richard III, we witness the subversion and near-destruction of lawful order by a man who will tear apart the newly framed lawful order and make the state serve his own private ends. The contrast of these two dramas reveals that the tyrant is essentially a solipsist: his ultimate goal is to make the real world obey his say-so. And if law is like love, the tyrant is like the rapist: the forced surrender of intimacy is the best facsimile of love the solipsist can create; but it can never actually be love, because the two are separated by the same invisible and impenetrable boundary that separates truth from falsehood, or genuine loyalty from the rule of terror.

I conclude with a look at the dissenter living in a lawless order, as depicted in two variations on the story of Antigone — the first by Sophocles and the second by Jean Anouilh. In both, the lawless, arbitrary rule is challenged in the name of law, and in each, the ruler nearly succeeds in substituting his private realm of mere words for the public realm of actual things. What emerges from this study is that the basic premise of all lawful order — the root of all secure liberty — is that there is a gap between the will of the ruler and the genuine law. Whenever such a gap exists — whenever it is meaningful to deliberate over whether the ruler's commands are, in fact, law — the society will, to that extent, become one of lawful order and of (at least some) freedom. The link between tyranny and solipsism is that where the ruler's will is accounted the law, there can be no genuine law, and thus no freedom. The paradox whereby tyranny is lawless is explained by the fact that tyranny is an attempt to impose by convention what does not originate in nature — and in the end, neither physical nature nor the nature of human relationships can be subjected to such commands. The ultimate demand of the lawless ruler(s) is to substitute his (or their) word for the world — to compel the subject to love him (or them). And because that can never be accomplished, arbitrary rule is doomed to eventual collapse.Download the paper from SSRN at the link. Read More... Law & Humanities Blog

Law & Humanities Blog

A New Book Series: Law, Knowledge, and Imagination
Rape, Law, and Art
American Society for Legal History Announces Paul Murphy Prize

A New Book Series: Law, Knowledge, and Imagination

Posted: 26 Mar 2012 03:22 PM PDT

Dean Ken Randall and the School of Law at The University of Alabama are pleased to announce a new book series – Law, Knowledge, and Imagination – edited by Austin Sarat, the Justice Hugo L. Black Visiting Senior Faculty Scholar and the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.

Books in the series, some of which are published by Cambridge University Press and others by The University ofAlabama Press, explore the ways law is known and imagined in a diverse array of disciplines, including political science, history, cultural studies, philosophy, and science.

The series examines the conjunctions of law, knowledge, and imagination as they play out in debates about theory and policy and speak to venerable questions as well as contemporary issues.

Books published so far include:

§ Dissenting Voices in American Society: The Role of Judges, Lawyers, and Citizens
§ Imagining Legality: Where Law Meets Popular Culture

§ Merciful Judgments and Contemporary Society: Legal Problems, Legal Possibilities
§ Sovereignty, Emergency, Legality
§ Speech and Silence in American Law
§ Transitions: Legal Change, Legal Meanings
For more information on the entire series please see the Symposium Archives page here.

Rape, Law, and Art

Posted: 26 Mar 2012 10:07 AM PDT

Yxta Maya Murray, Loyola Law School Los Angeles, has published Rape Trauma, the State, and the Art of Tracey Emin in volume 100 of the California Law Review (2012). Here is the abstract.

Prosecutors use "rape trauma syndrome" evidence at rape trials to explain victims' "counterintuitive" behaviors and demeanors, such as their late reporting, rape denials, returning to the scenes of their attacks, and lack of emotional affect. Courts and experts, in instructions and testimony, usually describe victim reticence as a product of "shame" or "trauma." Feminist critics of R.T.S. evidence posit that the syndrome's profile is based on incomplete evidence, because most rapes are unreported. Furthermore, they object to its condescending, sexist, and colonial construction of rape victims and their emotions.

In this Article, I respond to feminist critics by studying the work of Tracey Emin. Emin is a British-Turkish artist who suffered an unreported rape at the age of 13, and who has been commenting on that rape through her art ever since. Expanding and innovating upon the work of law and humanities scholars, I apply the insights found in art – or, what I describe as "artifacts," with a deliberate play on the word – to rape law. Through my study of the facts limned in art, I show how the complexities of Emin's reactions to rape challenge the too-streamlined and often confusing stories of victims told by prosecutors, experts, and courts. Emin's art demonstrates that she harbors suspicions of the state, a skepticism based in part on her failure to correspond to "real rape" victim stereotypes. Her critique adds much needed insight into problems of the R.T.S. model. Based on the lessons learned, I make suggestions for rape law reform, and for changes to be made to the administration of rape prosecutions in the U.S. and U.K.

Download the Article from SSRN at the link.

American Society for Legal History Announces Paul Murphy Prize

Posted: 26 Mar 2012 09:42 AM PDT

The American Society for Legal History announces the Paul Murphy Prize to support the completion of a book on the history of civil liberties that addresses any topic or any time in American history. The award will be given out two times only, in 2012 and 2013. Recipients will receive $5000 to support their work. Nominees at all levels of seniority will be considered, however the award is not for the completion of a dissertation.

The award honors Paul L. Murphy (1923-1997), who spent much of his career at the University of Minnesota where he rose to the rank of Regent's Professor of History and American Studies. At the time of his death, he was in the second year of his term as president of the ASLH. During his tenure at Minnesota he became one of the nation's leading constitutional historians and a mentor to generations of undergraduate and graduate students. Among his most important books were: The Meaning of Freedom of Speech: First Amendment Freedoms from Wilson to FDR (1972); World War I and the Origin of Civil Liberties in the United States (1979); Historic Background of the Bill of Rights, Vol. 1 (1990); and The Shaping of the First Amendment: 1791 to the Present (1991). In addition, civil liberties played a fundamental role in the argument he developed in what was likely his most influential book, The Constitution in Crisis Times 1918-1969 (The New American Nation Series, 1972). Murphy's commitment to civil liberties and his passion for the subject was evident in his deeds as well as his words. He was an ardent and committed member of the American Civil Liberties Union throughout his life. For additional information on Murphy please see the tribute to him in the Law and History Review, 16 (Spring 1998), ix-xi.

To be considered for this award, authors or nominators should send a book proposal with chapter descriptions, a discussion of the book's contributions, and a time-line for completion; a sample chapter; and a c.v. to committee chair Mary L. Dudziak at

mdudziak at law.usc.edu

Submissions via e-mail are preferred, and attachments can be in Word or PDF. Please put "Murphy Prize" in the subject line. If you must submit by hardcopy, please send four copies of these materials to arrive by the deadline to this address: Professor Mary L. Dudziak, USC Gould School of Law, 699 Exposition Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90089. The deadline for receipt of proposals for this year's award is June 30, 2012.

Members of the Murphy Prize Committee are:

Mary L. Dudziak, Chair, University of Southern California

Robert Kaczorowski, Fordham University

Serena Mayeri, University of Pennsylvania

David M. Rabban, University of Texas

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UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

Reflections on ThatCamp Luxembourg / Trier 2012

Posted: 26 Mar 2012 08:16 AM PDT

On 29 and 30 March I attended ThatCamp Luxembourg / Trier in order to give a joint workshop on the Text Encoding Initiative. Having not had the chance to attend a ThatCamp before I have to say that I am really impressed by how interesting and productive it was. One of my favourite sessions was called [...]

Medical Humanities

Poet Sheila Black considers pain, disability, selfhood and ‘the problem of normal’

Posted: 25 Mar 2012 12:39 PM PDT

Interesting blog posting by Robin Amer about how poet Sheila Black has been inspired by the depictions of pain and selfhood evident in the work of Freida Kahlo.

Kahlo's 1939 painting 'Los Dos Fridas.' (AP/Collection Museo de Arte Moderno)

Law & Humanities Blog

New Adaptation of "1984" Under Consideration

Posted: 22 Mar 2012 08:20 AM PDT

George Orwell's 1984 may be returning to the screen. Brian Grazer and Ron Howard at Imagine Entertainment were looking into adapting the iconic novel with the assistance of artist Shepard Fairey.

At the same time, LBI Entertainment's Julie Yorn had a similar project in the works.As a result, the two companies have decided to team up.

1984 has been adapted before: In 1956 Edmond O'Brien and Michael Redgrave starred in a big screen adaptation and in 1984 John Hurt and Richard Burton starred in a big screen production.

Love, Loyalty, and Sacrifice in "To Kill a Mockingbird"

Posted: 22 Mar 2012 07:58 AM PDT

Linda Ross Meyer, Quinnipiac University School of Law, has published Love, Law and Sacrifice in 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. Here is the abstract.

This paper reflects on themes of love, loyalty, and sacrifice in the film version of 'To Kill a Mockingbird.' Using the typology of Kierkegaard's knight of the infinite/knight of faith, the paper argues that Atticus does not stand for liberal principles of universal law but rather faith in the possibilities of friendship and neighborliness.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

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UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

The Future of the Past

Posted: 22 Mar 2012 07:29 AM PDT

On Tuesday Melissa Terras spoke at the Institute of Historical Research’s roundtable on Digital History (#dhist). In this post, Greta Franzini provides a short summary. The IHR’s roundtable session, The Future of the Past discussed the future of history and how digital resources affect the way historians preserve history. The panel included Dr Melissa Terras (Co-Director [...]

Stand-up for Digital Humanities

Posted: 22 Mar 2012 04:23 AM PDT

It was my second week enjoying the wonders of my new role as Research Manager at UCLDH, and then it took a new turn. I was quite happily sipping wine and chatting away at some New Staff Welcome Do, when I was taken advantage of. Claire Thomson from Scandinavian Studies bounced up to me and [...]

Medical Humanities

Medical Humanities and Engagement Grants

Posted: 21 Mar 2012 09:48 AM PDT

Medical Humanities and Engagement (MH&E) Grants provides funding for high-quality research and activities in the fields of medical humanities and public engagement with biomedical science.

They aim to build and maintain research capacity in medical history and biomedical ethics while capitalising on opportunities to support the broader medical humanities.

The team manages the funding committees and associated budgets for the division's grant programmes, monitors active grant portfolios, reports on outcomes and outputs of grants, evaluates the impact of Trust-funded projects and supports grantholders with their awards.

Details of the internship

You will be involved in capturing and presenting the outcomes of our funded research and activities. You will get a sense of what and how we fund, and you will have the opportunity to meet researchers and science communicators and attend some funded events.

In addition, you will help to plan and deliver public engagement grantholder packs and work with advisors to develop a framework for creative workshops in public engagement, helping to develop our grant-making capacity. You will also help to coordinate the planning and implementation of an event to celebrate five years of the Arts Awards.

Specific requirements

In addition to meeting the general eligibility criteria, you will need to be studying for a degree in life sciences or medical humanities and have good writing and communication skills. Some previous experience of devising and collating content for the web would be useful, and an interest in the work of the MH&E Division (in particular, science communication, public engagement, medical humanities, the history of medicine and/or biomedical ethics) will be an advantage.

More details here Read More... Medical Humanities

Law & Humanities Blog

Crime Shows Recognized At Royal Television Society Programme Awards

Posted: 21 Mar 2012 09:52 AM PDT

Two law-related shows won awards at the Royal Television Society Programme Awards, held March 20th in London. The acclaimed crime drama Luther, which stars the wonderful Idris Elba, took home honors as best drama series. Mr. Elba won a Golden Globe earlier this season for his role as Luther, the conflicted detective.

Dominic West and Emily Watson, stars of Appropriate Adult, a miniseries dramatizing the career of serial killer Fred West and Janet Leach, the social worker who sat in on his meetings with police, won for their roles as Fred and Janet. The Sundance Channel bought the rights to the series last fall. More here from the BBC about the miniseries.

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Law & Humanities Blog

Law and Literature In the First Year Curriculum: Tort Law
International Law, Torture and "24"
Law, Culture, and Housing Law and Policy

Law and Literature In the First Year Curriculum: Tort Law

Posted: 20 Mar 2012 12:38 PM PDT

Zahr Said, University of Washington School of Law, has published Incorporating Literary Methods and Texts in the Teaching of Tort Law at 3 California Law Review Circuit 170 (January 2012). Here is the abstract.

This essay, presented in a Law and Humanities Section panel at the 2012 AALS Annual Meeting, discusses my use of literature to aid and amplify legal analysis in a first-year Torts class. Literary texts and methods helped my students investigate how the law conceives of, and expresses, duties and losses among parties. The course drew on several diverse strands of law-and-literature methodology and it incorporated literary texts and methods into discussions of case law and legal policy to produce analysis that is deeply interdisciplinary.

Content and methodology, to the extent they can be satisfactorily decoupled, informed my teaching of Torts in separate ways. First, I incorporated a central literary text that accompanied more traditional legal materials. Second, I required students to engage in close reading and I helped them theorize the act of reading itself. By emphasizing the textually mediated nature of the cases — both as a function of common law's system of authority through analogy, and as a function of the casebook editors' choices — I hope to have made clear to students that this is a new type of reading they are doing in law school, and that they are learning to think in new ways.

In growing acculturated to legal analysis, law students are learning not just a new language, but a new awareness of how and why they read the way they do.

The paper includes an appendix listing some discussion questions for The Sweet Hereafter, by Russell Banks, one of the texts I used in the class.Download the article from SSRN at the link.

International Law, Torture and "24"

Posted: 20 Mar 2012 11:35 AM PDT

Knut Fournier has published Torture Justification in '24': Aesthetics of the Bush Administration

In the context of the War on Terror, fiction is a support of ideologies for the Bush administration. The TV series '24' resorts on all legal justifications of torture made by the Bush administration, and justifies torture as being necessary, effective, and lawful. In that justification process, the thesis of the main international lawyers supportive of the Bush doctrines are used in a very detailed way, maintaining a 'simulacra' in the sense of Baudrillard.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link. NB: The text is in French.

Law, Culture, and Housing Law and Policy

Posted: 20 Mar 2012 07:53 AM PDT

Lisa T. Alexander, University of Wisconsin Law School, has published Hip-Hop and Housing: Revisiting Culture, Urban Space, Power, and Law, at 63 Hastings Law Journal 803 (2012).

U.S. housing law is finally receiving its due attention. Scholars and practitioners are focused primarily on the subprime mortgage and foreclosure crises. Yet the current recession has also resurrected the debate about the efficacy of place-based lawmaking. Place-based laws direct economic resources to low-income neighborhoods to help existing residents remain in place and to improve those areas. Law-and-economists and staunch integrationists attack place-based lawmaking on economic and social grounds. This Article examines the efficacy of place-based lawmaking through the underutilized prism of culture. Using a sociolegal approach, it develops a theory of cultural collective efficacy as a justification for place-based lawmaking. Cultural collective efficacy describes positive social networks that inner-city residents develop through participation in musical, artistic, and other neighborhood-based cultural endeavors. This Article analyzes two examples of cultural collective efficacy: the early development of hip-hop in the Bronx and community murals developed by Mexican immigrants in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. These examples show that cultural collective efficacy can help inner-city residents mitigate the negative effects of living in a poor and segregated community and obtain more concrete benefits from urban revitalization in their communities. Cultural collective efficacy also provides a framework to examine important microdynamics in the inner-city that scholars and policymakers have ignored. Lastly, this Article devises new combinations of place-based laws that might protect cultural collective efficacy, such as: (1) historic districts with affordable housing protections secured through transferable development rights, (2) foreclosure prevention strategies, (3) techniques to mitigate eminent domain abuse, and (4) reinterpretations of the Fair Housing Act's "affirmatively furthering" fair housing mandate. These examples of place-based lawmaking may more effectively promote equitable development and advance distributive justice in U.S. housing law and policy.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

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Law & Humanities Blog

More Baseball Trading Cards
Race, Law, and American Literary Studies: A Conference at the University of Maryland
Harry Potter in the Law School Curriculum

More Baseball Trading Cards

Posted: 19 Mar 2012 11:32 AM PDT

Ross E.Davies, George Mason University School of Law; The Green Bag, Craig D. Rust, George Mason University School of Law Alumni, and Adam Aft, George Mason School of Law Alumni, have published Supreme Court Sluggers: Introducing the Scalia, Fortas, and Goldberg/Miller Trading Cards in volume 2 of the Journal of Law (2012). Here is the abstract.

We are pleased to introduce a few new members of the"Supreme Court Sluggers" trading card lineup. The addition of Justice Antonin Scalia to the team is in keeping with our goal of expeditiously compiling and publishing data for all current members of the Supreme Court. (We have issued cards featuring Chief Justice John G.

Roberts and Justice John Paul Stevens, and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Samuel Alito are in the works.) This season, we have also completed the first two cards of what might be called our "Veterans" series of those who served long ago: Justice Arthur Goldberg, who appears in the company of baseball great Marvin Miller, and Justice Abe Fortas.Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Race, Law, and American Literary Studies: A Conference at the University of Maryland

Posted: 19 Mar 2012 09:15 AM PDT

From Christopher Brown, Ph.D. candidate, Department of English, University of Maryland, news of an exciting upcoming conference at the University: Race, Law, and American Literary Studies. Among the speakers are Brook Thomas, Nan Goodman, and Eric Foner. The conference runs from March 29 through March 30.

Harry Potter in the Law School Curriculum

Posted: 19 Mar 2012 07:21 AM PDT

Marc Roark of the Literary Table on using Harry Potter in the Law School curriculum.

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