Home » Archives for January 2014

UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

Centre for Languages, Linguistics & Area Studies e-Learning Symposium

Posted: 30 Jan 2014 07:12 AM PST

I attended the LLAS e-Learning Symposium last week in a rather wet Southampton and gave a talk about Bridge to Norway and Bridge to China.

It was an Aladdin’s cave of resources for linguists e.g. #mfltwitterati !

Law & Humanities Blog

The Civil War In Photographs: At NOMA Beginning January 31st

Posted: 29 Jan 2014 06:05 PM PST

A new photography exhibit opens at the New Orleans Museum of Art January 31 and runs through May 4: Photography and the American Civil War.

Read More... Law & Humanities Blog

Law & Humanities Blog

"Textual Poachers" and Fair Use

Posted: 28 Jan 2014 02:57 PM PST

Rebecca Tushnet, Georgetown University Law Center, is publishing 'I'm a Lawyer, Not an Ethnographer, Jim': Textual Poachers and Fair Use, in the Journal of Fandom Studies. Here is the abstract.

This short article, written for a festschrift for Henry Jenkins, discusses the influence of his work on media fandom in legal scholarship and advocacy around fair use.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Read More... Law & Humanities Blog

Law & Humanities Blog

Law, Gender, Islamophobia, and YouTube

Posted: 27 Jan 2014 09:00 AM PST

Suzanne Bouclin, University of Ottawa, Common Law Section, has published YouTube and Muslim Women's Legal Subjectivities in volume 3 of the Oñati Socio-Legal Series (2013). Here are the English and Spanish abstract.

English Abstract: This paper is located within the discursive and spatio-temporal landscape of post 9/11 Canada in which national identity and beliefs about belonging are embedded in pervasive Islamophobia. Its starting point is that social media are key sites for expression of discrimination and intolerance vis-à-vis people of the Muslim faith, and especially the constitution of Muslim face and head scarves as a metonym for Islamic terrorism and a quintessential symbol of uniquely fundamentalist manifestation of patriarchy.

I ask, however, whether new modes of visibility might be captured when we examine representational sites of Muslim femininity through the lens of 'new' or 'critical' legal pluralism. I highlight how women have used Social Networking Sites (SNSs) to respond and reconfigure more entrenched discourses around Muslim femininity circulated elsewhere, such as in formal institutionalized state-based law, mainstream/Western feminist discourses, and in popular cultural productions. I have found that Muslim women deploy social media to constitute or express alternative subjectivities and to represent and evaluate their own understandings of feminism, normative femininity, religious practices, including the multiple meanings that attach to the donning of Islamic headscarves.

Spanish Abstract: Este documento se encuentra en el paisaje discursivo y espacio-temporal de la Canadá post 11-S, cuya identidad nacional y creencias sobre la pertenencia están integradas en la islamofobia dominante. Su punto de partida es que las redes sociales son sitios clave para la expresión de la discriminación y la intolerancia vis-à-vis de la fe musulmana, y en especial la constitución del rostro musulmán y del pañuelo en la cabeza como una metonimia de terrorismo islámico y el símbolo por excelencia de la única manifestación fundamentalista del patriarcado. Me pregunto, sin embargo, si las nuevas formas de visibilidad pueden ser capturadas cuando examinamos sitios de representación de la feminidad musulmana a través de la lente de un "nuevo" o "crítico" pluralismo jurídico. La autora destaca cómo las mujeres han utilizado sitios de redes sociales para responder y volver a configurar discursos más arraigados alrededor de la feminidad musulmana distribuidos en otros lugares, como la ley formal basada en el estado institucionalizado, discursos feministas dominantes/ occidentales, y las producciones culturales populares. La autora encuentra que las mujeres musulmanas utilizan los medios sociales para constituir o expresar subjetividades alternativas y para representar y evaluar su propia comprensión del feminismo, la feminidad normativa o las prácticas religiosas, incluyendo los múltiples significados que se adhieren a la colocación del velo islámico.
Download the article from SSRN at the link. NB: The article is in English.
Read More... Law & Humanities Blog

Law & Humanities Blog

Call For Papers, Law Text Culture

Posted: 25 Jan 2014 03:47 PM PST

From Marco Wan, Associate Professor of Law, University of Hong Kong, comes this Call For Papers:

Law Text Culture – Volume 18 (2014) CALL FOR PAPERS

Law Text Culture is an interdisciplinary peer reviewed journal published by the Legal Intersections Research Centre at the University of Wollongong, Australia. http://lha.uow.edu.au/law/LIRC/LTC/index.html

Volume 18 will address the theme:
"The Rule of Law and the Cultural Imaginary in (Post-)colonial East Asia"

GUEST EDITORS: Marco Wan & Janny LeungFaculty of Law & School of English, University of Hong Kong

Email: mwan@hku.hk; hiuchi@hku.hk
Volume 18 of Law Text Culture explores how the rule of law is represented in a variety of discourses both within and outside the legal domain – including film, television, opera, court cases, and popular magazines – in East Asia.

It re-orients the study of 'Law and Humanities' by shifting the focus from the Western World to East Asia, and presents a new approach to the study of East Asian legal culture by approaching the region through a post-colonial lens.
We are particularly interested in contributions on Singapore, Malaysia and Korea, though articles on other countries or jurisdictions in the region are welcome. The volume will include both critical essays and less conventional forms of legal reflection such as memoirs, photo- essays, poetry and artistic pieces.
The relationship between the rule of law and (post-)colonialism has been the subject of lively scholarly debate. This volume investigates how the rule of law has been articulated, refracted, conceptualized, or resisted by different discourses in colonial and post-colonial societies in East Asia. It also builds on recent, site-specific works on post-colonial studies that give cultural and geographical precision to the arguably more universalist tone of the first generation post-colonial theorists. The volume's focus on (post-)colonialism will keep clearly in view continuities and underlying parallels between the East Asian region and places with a legacy of colonialism, such as India, Australia, and Canada. The term 'cultural imaginary' is broadly defined, and includes articulations or representations of the rule of law in a range of cultural products in human society, including, but not limited to, the law itself.
In you are interested in contributing to this special issue of Law Text Culture please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words to the guest editors by email by 28 February 2014. Authors will be informed of decisions on abstracts by the end of March. Selected authors will be invited to submit full papers by 31 May 2014, and will be informed of the outcome of the peer review process by August 2013. Volume 18 of Law Text Culture is scheduled for publication in December 2014.

Life Imitates Art

Posted: 25 Jan 2014 01:41 PM PST

CNN suggests Scandal's Olivia Pope would have a game plan for clients in pop star Justin Bieber's current legal situation. More here.

Read More... Law & Humanities Blog

Law & Humanities Blog

Fashion and Law

Posted: 23 Jan 2014 08:50 AM PST

If you missed it: check out Ruthann Robson's (CUNY Law) Dressing Constitutionally (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

Here's the description from the publisher's website:

The intertwining of our clothes and our Constitution raise fundamental questions of hierarchy, sexuality, and democracy. From our hairstyles to our shoes, constitutional considerations both constrain and confirm our daily choices. In turn, our attire and appearance provide multilayered perspectives on the United States Constitution and its interpretations. Our garments often raise First Amendment issues of expression or religion, but they also prompt questions of equality on the basis of gender, race, and sexuality. At work, in court, in schools, in prisons, and on the streets, our clothes and grooming provoke constitutional controversies.

Additionally, the production, trade, and consumption of apparel implicates constitutional concerns including colonial sumptuary laws, slavery, wage and hour laws, and current notions of free trade. The regulation of what we wear – or don't – is ubiquitous. From a noted constitutional scholar and commentator, this book examines the rights to expression and equality, as well as the restraints on government power, as they both limit and allow control of our most personal choices of attire and grooming.

Discusses how the government regulates what we wear and how we look - and how the Constitution influences this
Examines how the Constitution itself was shaped by fashion

Read More... Law & Humanities Blog

Law & Humanities Blog

She's Ba-a-a-c-k....
Sumptuary Laws From Magna Carta to the Constitution
Looking at Postcolonial Law and Literature
Law and Custom In Legal History

She's Ba-a-a-c-k....

Posted: 22 Jan 2014 03:42 PM PST

Christina Ricci resurrects lead character Lizzie Borden in Lifetime Movie Network's retelling of the famous unsolved murders of Andrew and his second wife in Lizzie Borden Took an Axe on January 25 at 8 p.m., 7 Central time. Clea DuVall plays Emma, Lizzie's older sister, who was away from the Borden home at the time of the murders. Will this tv movie erase memories of the Elizabeth Montgomery version made in 1975, when Christina Ricci was minus 5? Early looks at this entry in the Lizzie videography from Variety, the Los Angeles Times.

A number of scholars have studied Lizzie's path through law and popular culture. Here's a short and highly selective bibliography.

Filetti, Jean S., From Lizzie Borden to Lorena Bobbitt: Violent Women and Gendered Justice, 35 Journal of Am. Stud. 431 (December 2001).

Langlois, Janet L., Andrew Borden's Little Girl: Fairy- Tale Fragments in Angela Carter's "The Fall River Axe Murders" and "Lizzie's Tiger," 12 Marvels & Tales 192 (1998).

Miller, Stephanie, "How Unbearably Heavy These Skirts Can Be": Popular Feminism in 1970s America and The Legend of Lizzie Borden, 21 Women: A Cultural Review 323 (2010).

Robertson, Cara W., Representing "Miss Lizzie": Cultural Conventions In the Trial of Lizzie Borden, 8 Yale J. L. & Human. 351 (1996).

Roggenkamp, Karen, A Front Seat to Lizzie Borden: Julian Ralph, Literary Journalism, and the Construction of Criminal Fact, in Narrating the News: New Journalism and Literary Genre in Late Nineteenth-Century American Newspapers and Fiction 54 (2005).

Schofield, Ann, Lizzie Borden Took an Axe: History, Feminism and American Culture, 34 Am. Stud. 91 (Spring 1993).

Professor Douglas Linder of the University of Missouri (KC) School of Law guides us through the trial, evidence and related materials here.

Sumptuary Laws From Magna Carta to the Constitution

Posted: 22 Jan 2014 08:53 AM PST

Ruthann Robson, CUNY School of Law has published Beyond Sumptuary: Constitutionalism, Clothes, and Bodies in Anglo-American Law, 1215-1789, in volume 2 of the British Journal of American Legal Studies (Fall 2013). Here is the abstract.

Current scholarship is peppered with casual references to "sumptuary laws" whenever regulations of clothing or bodies are at issue. Too often, these references are incorrect, or at best incomplete. This Article is a careful consideration of the various regulations of attire and bodily markings from the Magna Carta in 1215 to the adoption of the United States Constitution in 1789.

This Article situates bodily regulation within Anglo-American constitutionalism, including nascent constitutional Tudor-era struggles between the monarch and Parliament, the status of colonial laws, the American Revolution, pre-constitutional slavery, and the formation of the Constitution, including a proposed "Sumptuary Clause."Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Looking at Postcolonial Law and Literature

Posted: 22 Jan 2014 08:49 AM PST

Dustin A. Zacks has published A Bend in the Law & Literature: Greed, Anarchy and Dictatorship in the African Worlds of V.S. Naipaul and Ngugi Wa Thiong'o in volume 34 of the North Illinois University Law Review (2013). Here is the abstract.

This Article examines two giants of colonial and postcolonial fiction involving African states that heretofore have been largely ignored by the law and literature movement. Nobel Prize winner V.S. Naipaul and East Africa's foremost novelist Ngugi Wa Thiongo'o are worth studying for their vivid descriptions of the challenges postcolonial societies face – challenges such as corruption and authoritarianism that are usually addressed, at least in legal scholarship, in the context of international or human rights law, rather than in the context of narrative fiction.

The Article also critiques traditional academic literary criticism for its disparate treatment of the two authors. Naipaul is attacked as being a snobbish Westerner, whose gloomy pronouncements about the state of the law and the prospect of reform in African states arise from his supposedly racialist opinions. Thiong'o, by contrast, has been heralded for giving an authentic, non-Western view of Kenya's independence and post-independence struggles.

The Article should serve as a reappraisal of the previous criticism of Naipaul's work in light of the precision of his dire descriptions of corrupt African officialdom, which compares favorably with Thiong'o's supposedly more authentic voice.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Law and Custom In Legal History

Posted: 22 Jan 2014 08:45 AM PST

P. G. Monateri, Sciences Po, Ecole de Droit; Law School, University of Turin; has published Law, Language and Custom. (Legge, Linguaggio e Costume.). Here is the abstract (in English and Italian).

English Abstract: The Author investigates the ambiguities of the term Law and Custom, to deepen the relationship they maintain with the language devoted to their presentification. Law always supersede the words that try to capture its meaning, and the opposition between Law and Custom is never the same in Legal History. Peculiarly today old theories are employed to establish a new concept of soft law as a powerful tool of global governance, but they rest on quicksands. These theories point at a 'suspension of disbelief' grounded more on aesthetic metaphors than on scientific premises.
Italian Abstract: L'autore investiga le ambiguità dei termini Legge e Costume, per approfondire la relazione che mantengono con il linguaggio incaricato di presentificarli. La Legge oltrepassa sempre le parole che cercano di catturarne il significato, e l'opposizione tra Legge e Costume non è mai costante nella storia del diritto. In particolare oggi le vecchie teorie sono impiegate per stabilire nuovi concetti come soft law in grado di fungere da potenti strumenti di governo del globale, ma le loro fondamenta giacciono sulle sabbie mobili. Queste teorie puntano invero ad una 'sospensione dell'incredulità' fondata pià su metafore estetiche che su premesse scientifiche.

The full text of the paper is not available from SSRN.

Read More... Law & Humanities Blog

Law & Humanities Blog

A Law and Humanities Conference at Australian National University

Posted: 21 Jan 2014 03:33 PM PST

An announcement of a law and humanities conference at Australian National University:

Law and the Visual—Transitions & Transformations
Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University: 7 - 8 July 2014
The Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University is one of the world's oldest and best-known research centres in interdisciplinary humanities. As part of its 2014 Annual Theme, Now Showing: Cultures, Judgements, and Research on the Digital Screen, we are calling for papers on themes of visual representations of law in history and the contemporary world, focusing in particular on moments of transition and transformation. Over the long journey of modernity, technologies of law and technologies of the visual have been marked by their volatility and inventiveness. On the one hand, changing technologies of law – the emergence of the text, the development of legislation, the might of sovereignty, structures of colonialism, mechanisms of human rights, new modes of regulation, governance, and discipline – have continually transformed our understanding of and relationship to legality. On the other hand, changing technologies of visual representation – the development of perspective, the triumph of printing, photography, film, and video games to name a few – have equally transformed our understanding of and relationship to images. In what ways can each shed light on the other?
v How have technologies of visual representation reflected, illuminated, and constituted ideologies of law and legality – particularly at moments of significant transition or transformation?
v In what way do visual representations of law throughout the pre-modern, modern and contemporary periods illuminate and challenge our understanding of the changing relationship between law, aesthetics, and power?
v In what ways do contemporary media allow new opportunities for a cross-cultural conversation around key legal issues and conflicts?
v How does the aesthetics and technology of the digital screen transform the representation of legal concepts such as the rule of law, sovereignty, justice, or human rights?
Only a limited number of papers can be accepted for this symposium. It provides a rare opportunity to join an outstanding cast of international scholars in legal history, legal theory, and legal aesthetics to discuss and present exciting new work on the intersection of law and the visual. Negotiations are currently underway with possible partners for the publication of selected papers.

Confirmed participants include—

Alison Young (University of Melbourne), criminologist; author of Judging the Image (2005), and Street Art, Public City (2014)

Peter Goodrich (Cardozo School of Law), legal historian; author of Oedipus Lex (1996), and Legal Emblems (2013)

Richard Sherwin (New York Law School), director of the Visual Persuasion Project; author of Visualizing Law (2011)

Desmond Manderson (Australian National University), founding director, Institute for the Public Life of Art and Ideas; author of Kangaroo Courts & the Rule of Law (2011)

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be directed to the Convenor. Please include a 75 word bio note, institutional affiliation, and contact details, and put TRANSITIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS in the subject line. Closing date for submissions is 31 March. On-line registration will be available from the end of April.
Professor Desmond Manderson, Convenordesmond.manderson@anu.edu.auHumanities Research Centre, ANUhttp://hrc.anu.edu.au/2014HRCAnnualTheme

Check out the conference website here.

Prosecuting Dorian Gray

Posted: 21 Jan 2014 07:14 AM PST

Simon Stern, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, is publishing The Trial of Dorian Gray in Dorian Gray in the Twenty-First Century (Richard Kaye, ed.; Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

Wilde's three trials in 1895 served, in effect, as an obscenity prosecution of The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890/91). Though the novel was not formally charged with obscenity, Dorian Gray's first reviewers suggested that it was obscene, and the book remained unavailable in England for nearly two decades after Wilde's trials. The novel's relation to Wilde's trials thus raises a number of questions about the use of fiction as legal evidence and about the ways in which a criminal prosecution might be taken to reveal the meaning of the defendant's writings. This essay discusses the late Victorian campaign against obscene literature and the victims of that campaign; the reviews of the original version of Dorian Gray (in Lippincott's Magazine, 1890); the oblique manner in which the innuendo about its obscenity functioned during Wilde's three trials (1895); Wilde's own ironic engagement, at several key points in the novel, with the conception of influence at work in the legal test governing the evaluation of obscenity (R. v. Hicklin, 1868); the relation of the painting itself, and of the notorious French novel that Dorian borrows from Lord Henry, to that conception of influence; and Wilde's reenactment of his ironic perspective at the narrative level.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Read More... Law & Humanities Blog

UCL Centre for Digital Humanities

The Stephen Robertson Prize

Posted: 21 Jan 2014 06:04 AM PST

UCLDH are pleased to announce the Stephen Robertson prize for the best dissertation in the UCL MA/MSc in Digital Humanities, sponsored by Microsoft.

Stephen Robertson obtained his PhD (on the experimental evaluation of information retrieval systems) from UCL, from what was the School of Library, Archive, and Information Studies (now Department of Information Studies), in 1975.

Starting as a part-time student, Robertson was given a Royal Society Scientific Information Research Fellowship in 1973, which allowed him to pursue his PhD and related research interests for five years. Following this, he moved to the Department of Information Science at City University, where he remained for 20 years, with eight as Head of Department, and founding and running a research centre, one of whose research tools was the Okapi system (first an online library catalogue and then a free-text search system, prefiguring the current web search engines). Robertson was recipient of the 1998 Tony Kent Strix Award (from the Institute of Information Scientists, now part of CILIP). In 1998 Robertson moved to Microsoft Research in Cambridge, where he led a small group of researchers in information retrieval, making significant contributions to Microsoft products and services, including the current Microsoft web search system, Bing. The Gerard Salton Award (ACM SIGIR) followed in 2000, and in 2003 he became a Fellow of Girton College, University of Cambridge. Recently retired, Robertson is now Professor Emeritus at City University, and a Visiting Professor in the Department of Computer Science at UCL.

The first recipient of the £500 prize will be named from the finishing cohort of UCL Digital Humanities MA/MSc students in November 2014, and the prize will continue for 5 years in the first instance. We thank Microsoft, and Stephen Robertson, for their generosity.

Law & Humanities Blog

A Comparative Law Conference In Aix-en-Provence

Posted: 16 Jan 2014 09:43 AM PST

From Olivier Moreteau, Louisiana State University Law Center

CALL FOR PAPERS / APPEL À COMMUNICATIONSJURIS DIVERSITASANNUAL CONFERENCE / CONGRÈS ANNUEL 17 July (evening) to 19 July 2014 / 17 juillet (soir) au 19 juillet 2014Faculté de droit et de science politiqueAix-Marseille Université - Aix-en-Provence, France COMPARATIVE LAW AND …/ LE DROIT COMPARÉ ET … Inherently interdisciplinary, the conference's primary focus will be comparative law's links to a wide variety of other disciplines and themes (e.g., anthropology, economics, feminism, history, the humanities, legal education, legal philosophy, literature, politics …). Proposals may be theoretical analyses or case studies on the past or present, North or South, East or West … Le congrès sera interdisciplinaire et explorera les liens entre le droit comparé et toute branche, discipline ou thématique des sciences humaines et sociales (anthropologie, économie, féminisme, histoire, éducation juridique, philosophie, littérature, science politique etc.). Les propositions peuvent prendre la forme d'approches théoriques ou pratiques, portant sur le passé ou le présent, le Nord ou le Sud, l'Orient ou l'Occident… Proposals may be in either English or in French. Any proposal on comparative law will be considered. Panel proposals are strongly encouraged, as is the participation of doctoral students and scholars from outside of the discipline of law. Proposals of circa 250 words (or 1000 words for panel proposals) should be submitted to Olivier Moréteau at moreteau@lsu.edu by 28 February 2014. Please attach a short biography or resume.
Toute proposition portant sur le droit comparé, en anglais ou en français, sera considérée. Les offres de table ronde sont bienvenues, de même que la participation de doctorants et d'universitaires non juristes. Les propositions de 250 mots environ (ou 1000 mots pour une proposition de table ronde) sont à envoyer à Olivier Moréteau (moreteau@lsu.edu) avant le 28 février 2014. Merci de joindre une biographie ou un bref CV.
Registration fees are €200 (€125 for Juris Diversitas members paid up for 2014). Membership information and information on fee payment is available on the Juris Diversitas Blog (http://jurisdiversitas.blogspot.ie/). Note that registration fees don't cover travel, accommodation, or the conference dinner (€50).
Les droits d'inscription sont de €200 (€125 pour les membres de Juris Diversitas à jour de leur cotisation pour 2014). Les informations pratiques sont disponibles sur http://jurisdiversitas.blogspot.ie/. Les droits ne couvrent pas les frais de voyage et de logement, ni le banquet du congrès (€50).

Read More... Law & Humanities Blog

Law & Humanities Blog

A Free Event at the Center for Public Scholarship, The New School

Posted: 15 Jan 2014 11:47 AM PST

The Center for Public Scholarship at The New School is pleased to announce a free public event:

Speaking for the Humanities

On Thursday, February 20, 2014, from 6 to 8 p.m.

The New School

Arnold Hall, 55 West 13th Street, 2nd floor, NYC

February 20, 2014

Reception follows

RSVP at goo.gl/4djG7C

The CPS invites readers of the Law and Humanities Blog to attend.

On the occasion of the publication of Humanities and Public Life by Fordham University Press, a panel of scholars discuss how to defend and even talk about the humanities without succumbing to the instrumentalist language of their detractors (measuring outcomes and deliverables) or retreating into the ivory tower by simply asserting that the humanities don't need justification.

Panelists:

Judith Butler, Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Visiting Professor of the Humanities, Columbia University; Maxine Elliot Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley

Richard Sennett, Centennial Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics; University Professor of the Humanities, New York University

Patricia J. Williams, James L. Dohr Professor of Law, Columbia Law School

Moderator:

Peter Brooks, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Scholar, Professor, University Center for Human Values, Department of Comparative Literature, Princeton University

Human Rights From Conrad to Coppola

Posted: 15 Jan 2014 08:56 AM PST

P. G. Monateri, Sciences Po, Ecole de Droit; Law School, University of Torino (Italy); University of Turin, Faculty of Law, has published In the Shadow of an Absent Law. Human Rights and the Meaning from Conrad to Coppola, Via Eliot and Brooks in 19 The Cardozo Electronic Law Bulletin (2013 Edition), The Fall Issue. Here is the abstract.

A Presentation Held at the Annual Meeting of Italian Association of Law and Literature (AIDEL) analyzing the way Coppola produces meaning through deferral giving the Human Rights content to the faceless horrors of Conrad's Kurtz, via essential quotations from Eliot. In this way the Author also purport a theory of the meaning of the Waste Land through the close reading of its Epigraphe after Pound's interventions.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Read More... Law & Humanities Blog

Law & Humanities Blog

Sherlockery Mockery

Posted: 14 Jan 2014 11:06 AM PST

London's Mayor Boris Johnson says the fake news story that pops up at the end of the most recent episode (Season 3, episode 1) of the BBC hit series Sherlock doesn't bother him, even though it makes reference to the "current" Mayor of London's plan to situate an airport in the middle of the Thames. Mr. Johnson takes the position that the BBC has the right to criticize politicians and that the show's writers might be making reference to one of his predecessors in office. The BBC noted that Sherlock, is after all, just a tv show. Oh, and calling that fictional mayor "incoherent" with "hair-brained" (sic) schemes? Nothing to do with Mayor Johnson at all.

Cross-posted from Media Law Prof Blog