I Can Handle the Truth--Is Tom Cruise Playing Me?

Many people would be thrilled to be the real life model for a film character (and thrilled to get cash for the rights for their life stories, of course). But what happens when one spends years or decades believing that a character is based on one's experiences and then finds out that those beliefs might not have been well-founded? Apparently several Navy lawyers are finding that out now. They are the Navy lawyers, who have independently believed that they were, at least in part, the model for the Tom Cruise character in A Few Good Men. The New York Times' William Glaberson discusses the fall-out in this article. Says Mr. Glaberson,

Hollywood’s true-ish stories have a way of bringing out those claiming to be inspiration, especially when there are well-fitting uniforms involved. “A Few Good Men,” written by Aaron Sorkin, has fostered a particularly stubborn if little-noticed puzzle among a handful of lawyers over who inspired the main character, named Lt. Daniel Kaffee, who challenged Col. Nathan R. Jessep, played by Jack Nicholson, with his oft-quoted “I want the truth” demand.

It turns out four former military lawyers around the country have said Mr. Cruise was playing a character based entirely or partly on them. Beside Mr. Bansley, three others say the character was a composite constructed from the work of those three. They can be far from humble about this.

What does Aaron Sorkin, the writer of the film, say? Says Mr. Glaberson,

In an email, he responded carefully, "“The character of Dan Kaffee in ‘A Few Good Men’ is entirely fictional and was not inspired by any particular individual.”

He should have been a lawyer.

The Open Road and the Traffic Stop

Nancy Leong, University of Denver College of Law, has published The Open Road and the Traffic Stop: Narratives and Counter-Narratives of the American Dream. Here is the abstract.

American culture is steeped in the mythology of the open road. In our collective imagination, the road represents freedom, escape, friendship, romance, and above all, the possibility for a better life. But our shared dream of the open road comes to a halt in the mundane reality of the traffic stop - a judicially-authorized policing procedure in which an officer may pull over a vehicle if she has cause to believe the driver has committed even the most minor traffic violation. This paper examines the cultural texts - books, movies, songs - celebrating the open road and juxtaposes them against those documenting the traffic stop. The traffic stop, I conclude, interrupts the open road narrative closely associated with the American dream. Those stopped most frequently - in particular, racial minorities - are consequently denied full participation in an abiding national fantasy.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link. 

CBS Orders Pilots For Sherlock Holmes and "Mommy Track" Detective Series

From the Hollywood Reporter: news that CBS may schedule a new Sherlock Holmes series; it has ordered a pilot from CBS Television Studios and producers Sarah Timberman and Carl Beverly. In addition, the Eye is ordering a pilot based on Ayelet Waldman's series based on stay-at-home "Mommy Track"  sleuth (and former lawyer) Juliet Appelbaum. Ms. Waldman, like her detective a former attorney, will write, and Jennifer Levin and Sherri Cooper will produce. I really like the Juliet Appelbaum mystery novels,. Entertaining and well-written, they feature a genuinely smart woman--someone I'd like to know. First in the series: Nursery Crimes (Berkley, 2000).

Law and Happy Families

David Ray Papke, Marquette University Law School, has published Skepticism Bordering on Distrust: Family Law in the Hollywood Cinema as Marquette Law School Legal Studies Paper No. 11-20. Here is the abstract.

This article critiques Hollywood films from the last 20-30 years that relate to family law. More specifically, the films considered concern marriage, divorce, child custody, and adoption – four central concerns in family law as both a subject matter and an area of practice. The films are chosen not for their depth or precision but rather for their “box-office appeal” and general popularity. While the films are not tightly connected to one another and surely do not present a unified theme, they do share a surprising skepticism bordering on distrust regarding law, legal processes, and legal institutions. Hollywood appears to have picked up a general sentiment that family should be a private sanctuary, a place dominated by warmth and love. The last thing family needs, many Americans believe, is law as an intrusion of the state. The films incorporate this sentiment and also reinforce it by teaching viewers to be leery of law in family matters.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link. 

A Biography of James "Kaweli" Covey

Benjamin N. Lawrance, Rochester Institute of Technology, has published La Amistad’s ‘Interpreter’ Reinterpreted: James ‘Kaweli’ Covey’s Distressed Atlantic Childhood and the Production of Knowledge About Nineteenth-Century, in Slavery, Abolition and the Transition to Colonialism in Sierra Leone (Suzaane Schwarz and Paul Lovejoy eds., Africa World Press, forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

This article explores the life of Kaweli or James B. Covey via geographical phases and legal subjectivities deployed by the former child slave, seaman and interpreter. It is my first attempt to lay out his biographical timeline and physical movements. Generally, I am interested in advancing the debate about Atlantic creoles in a new direction, toward a focus on the implications of age of individual making Atlantic passages; this chapter is part of that larger project. But specifically here, I am interested in using Covey’s life to rethink what we know about the production of knowledge in the trial of La Amistad. Let us imagine for a moment what might have occurred without a Mende translator. Without a translator, the story of Cinque and the others would have remained unknown, and their attorneys would have been unable to advance the argument that they were originally from Africa. The court would have been forced to draw only on English and Spanish language texts and narratives; and it is quite conceivable that the survivors would have been returned to Cuba, and to certain death.

Kaweli, a.k.a. James B. Covey, was born circa 1820-21 of parents in the forested southwestern uplands, where today Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia meet. In infancy they relocated to the southeastern Moa River valley. At five or six he was kidnapped and sold to a Bullom chief, circa 1827-9. After three years he was resold to a European. From a coastal barracoon he became part of an illegal slave shipment in 1833. The Royal Navy captured his ship, and Covey was transferred to the Church Missionary Society. After five years in school he joined the crew of the HMS Buzzard in 1838. In 1839, while the Buzzard was in New York, he met Reverend Gibbs of Yale Divinity School, who engaged him as interpreter for La Amistad’s captives. After his detention under subpoena in the US, he returned to Freetown with the freed survivors of La Amistad.

This sketch is vague as uncertainty surrounds Covey’s life for four principal reasons. First, as epistolary evidence demonstrates, Covey was never the center of attention of the trials and remained peripheral to the white American abolitionists who championed the cause of the survivors of La Amistad. Second, and perhaps because of this, no scholar has spent more than several paragraphs on his contribution, let alone his origins and background. Third, adding confusion to the mix, as interpreter playing a pivotal role, he made multiple, and sometimes conflicting, declarations about his origins, background and experiences. And fourth, one consequence of his distressful past was a classic childhood survival technique, specifically the skillful crafting of knowledge and information for dispersal to particular audiences, especially potential protectors.

In reality, however, Covey and two others provided the invaluable service of translating the narratives of the survivors. These survivor narratives then became the knowledge basis that gave rise to the legal arguments winning their freedom. While Covey features marginally in most stories about the trial, his role in the production of knowledge could not have been more central. For that reason alone, it makes sense to reconsider what we know and do not know about him and to scrutinize the role of translator. My research reveals that there is a lot more to be said about Covey’s background than previously realized, and that this new background information provides an important avenue to reconsidering the type of expertise and knowledge he provided. Covey’s movements across the Atlantic offer insight into the place of children within the illegal nineteenth-century slave trade, the role of rescued children in Christianity’s West African expansion, and African participation in British naval patrols. While Covey is perhaps most famous for serving as an interpreter, his childhood experiences were fundamental in establishing the context of illegality and making his mediation possible.

The various sources for Covey, including polysemous “autoethnographic” texts, originate in the U.S., Europe and West Africa. I discern four phases in Covey’s childhood, which are anchored geographically: 1. his familial origins and first enslavement in Kono/Koranko/Mende territory; 2. his second enslavement, forced migration and rescue in the Gallinas region; 3. his education and service in the Atlantic, and; 4. his sojourn in North America and Freetown homecoming. But in order to contextualize these four geographical phases, I first explore the historical bases of Covey’s self-narration. From the documentary record, I interpret his self-narration as a form of subjectivity characteristic of “distress” and emanating from a supplicant. Covey’s distressed subjectivity recasts his significance: he was no simple interpreter, but rather a cultural broker whose interpreting constituted part of a broader creolizing process.

Covey’s distressful childhood and attempts to ameliorate his situation by garnering protectors’ attention may be mapped geographically. The Covey emerging from the historical record deployed what I describe as quasi-legal subjectivity, which in turn provides for a rethinking of his significance. Covey was effective in trial because he brokered experiences that mirrored his own. This article thus narrates the geographical and historical stages of Covey’s life, in order to specifically advance the idea that his experiences prior to the trial of La Amistad’s survivors are central to understanding why he was so successful in court. With this new perspective on an erstwhile peripheral character, I suggest that, rather than thinking of the trial of La Amistad as a touchstone of Anglo-American mid-nineteenth-century abolitionism, it is perhaps time to redirect our attention to African contributions to the end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

The Real Life Origins of "Downton Abbey"

Julian Fellowes, who created the hit series Downton Abbey, reveals that his family's experiences inspired the series, and some of the most powerful scenes in the show. Part One's concluding scene, in which the family and its friends hear the news that Great Britain is going to war, comes from Mr. Fellowes' father's own memories of entrance into World War I. In addition, he is passionate about gender equality, which is a theme of the series. He notes that his wife, who is a niece of the current Earl Kitchener, cannot inherit his title. Mr. Fellowes mentioned in a recent interview that he finds this situation "ridiculous" and "outrageous".

Call For Submissions/Nominations: Julian Mezey Dissertation Award

From Professor Leonard Feldman, a Call For Submissions/Nominations

Julien Mezey Dissertation Award

The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities invites submissions for its 2012 Julien Mezey Dissertation Award. This annual prize is awarded to the dissertation that most promises to enrich and advance interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of law, culture and the humanities.

The award will be presented at the Association's 2012 annual meeting, which will be hosted by Texas Wesleyan University School of Law on March 15‐17, 2012. The Association seeks the submission of outstanding work from a wide variety of perspectives, including but not limited to law and cultural studies, legal hermeneutics and rhetoric, law and literature, law and psychoanalysis, law and visual studies, legal history, legal theory and jurisprudence. Scholars completing humanities‐oriented dissertations in SJD and related programs, as well as those earning PhDs, are encouraged to submit their work. Applicants eligible for the 2012 award must have defended their dissertations successfully between September 1,
2010 and August 31, 2011. The deadline for nominations for the 2012 award is November 1, 2011. On or before that date, each nominee must submit the following: 1) a letter by the nominee detailing the genesis, goal, and contribution of the dissertation; 2) a letter of support from a faculty member familiar with the work;
3) an abstract, outline, and selected chapter of the dissertation; 4) contact information for the nominee.

All materials should be sent to:

Leonard Feldman, lfeldman@hunter.cuny.edu

Award finalists will be notified by December 1, 2011. Finalists must then submit an electronic version of the entire dissertation. The winner will be determined by early February and invited to the 2012 ASLCH annual meeting in Dallas. ASLCH will pay travel and lodging costs.

Questions should be addressed to Leonard Feldman, lfeldman@hunter.cuny.edu

Hegel, the French Revolution, and the Concept of Liberty

Andrew Norris, University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Political Science, has published The Disappearance of the French Revolution in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit as an APSA 2011 Annual Meeting Paper. Here is the abstract.

    

The French Revolution of 1789 is one of the central developments in the history of the concept and practice of political rights. Hegel recognized this, and so valued the Revolution that he claimed always to drink a toast to the storming of the Bastille on July 14th. Nonetheless, in both the Phenomenology of Spirit and the Philosophy of Right Hegel advances an enduring and influential attack upon the Revolution, one that, like that of Edmund Burke, links the Revolution’s accomplishments inextricably with the Reign of Terror of 1793 and 1794. In each Hegelian text, the Revolutionary conception of liberty is presented as being so one-sided and extreme as to be incompatible with a stable polity, and to produce, of necessity, only “a fury of destruction” (P 436/359 and PR §5A). The central line of thought here is relatively clear. The French Revolutionaries enacted a reductive, “abstract” conception of freedom as grasped by the Understanding or Verstand; this “negative freedom” (PR §5A) or “absolute freedom” (P 431/355ff) entails the absence of restriction. When made into a social policy, this can never produce a stable set of institutions, but instead only the destruction of any potential restriction - including, ultimately, those presented by the citizenry themselves. The Revolutionary government was thus destined to descend into the fury of the Terror. In the essay that follows, I do not wish to fundamentally challenge this picture of Hegel’s view. Instead, I will argue that Hegel’s elaboration of it in the Phenomenology in particular is more complicated and nuanced than it initially appears to be, and that attending to the textual details of the Phenomenology’s account allows one to see that Hegel is advancing a particular political diagnosis according which the first “victim” of the Revolution is the apparent agent of the Terror, the volonté générale or general will, a will that only “vanishes” in its own attempt to express itself in action, a vanishing that makes possible the factions, suspicion, guilt, and death of the Jacobins. In connection with this I will also propose that Hegel’s account of the Terror there needs to be read as a response to the immediately preceding account of Utility (die Nützlichkeit), and that when it is so read it shows one of its sides to be a critique of the attempt to “master” a world in which everything is considered as an object of use, a critique that bears comparison with Heidegger’s more famous reflections on the dangers of die Technik.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

A Law and Science Fiction Blog

Those interested in law and science fiction might want to check out Omphalos' SF Book Reviews, which reviews and comments on sf and books and pop culture that discuss sf. The emphasis is on legal issues.

Call For Papers--Law and Education Conference

Call for Papers


International Studies on Law and Education


Centro de Estudos Medievais - Oriente & Ocidente - EDF/FEUSP Universidade de São Paulo


Universidade do Porto

Faculdade de Direito

Inst. Jurídico Interdisciplinar



MALLORQUÍ_RUSCALLEDA, Enric (org.).

Law and Culture in Medieval /Early Modern Europe & the Atlantic World


The international peer reviewed journal International Studies on Law and Education (ISSN 1516-6821) published by the Universidade de São Paulo, the Universidade do Porto and the Editora Mandruvá of Brazil requests submissions of previously unpublished articles that treat any aspect of the interrelationship between law and culture in Medieval/early modern Europe and the Atlantic world. Studies with a strong comparative and or interdisciplinary focus are encouraged.



Submissions and any questions should be directed to Prof. Enric Mallorquí-Ruscalleda (emallorq@hotmail.com), Assistant Professor of Medieval Iberian and early modern Transatlantic studies at Mississippi State University (USA), and coordinator of this volume.

Although the language of preference is English, studies written in any romance language, as well as German, will be considered.



The deadline for submission is the 3oth of November of 2011, and decisions regarding acceptance will be communicated no later than fifteen days later (along with necessary modifications, if applicable).



For more information about the journal, the evaluation criteria, or other relevant questions, please see:



http://www.hottopos.com/harvard1/index.htm

A Conference on Jack the Ripper

Paula Marantz Cohen discusses academic interest in Jack the Ripper here in the September 4, 2011 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. She and a colleague, Fred J. Abbate, have organized a conference on the issue, which will be held October 28-29 at Drexel University.

John Grisham Novel Wins First Harper Lee Prize For Legal Fiction

John Grisham's latest book, The Confession (Doubleday, 2010) is the inaugural winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, bestowed by the University of Alabama and the ABA Journal. The Confession has received a number of very good reviews (Maureen Corrigan for the Washington Post, Barry Forshow for the Independent). Following the presentation of the award to Mr. Grisham in Washington, D.C. on September 22 at the National Press Club, David Baldacci will moderate a discussion of The Confession and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird with panelists Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Linda Fairstein, author of the Alex Cooper mysteries, noted attorney Robert J. Grey, Jr., Dahlia Lithwick of Slate.com and attorney/author Thane Rosenbaum.

Here are the criteria for the 2012 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction.

Entry must be a published book-length work of fiction that exemplifies the roles of lawyers in society, and their power to effect change.

Original publication date of submission must be within calendar year 2011.

Entry must have an ISBN and must be readily available for purchase in retail or online bookstores.

Was Thomas Jefferson the Father of Sally Hemings' Children?

It's back. The "it" is the debate over Thomas Jefferson's relationship with Sally Hemings and whether he fathered her children. At the Chronicle of Higher Education's blog Innovations, Peter Wood discusses a new publication, The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy: Report of the Scholars Commission, and its conclusions. The thirteen scholars involved have scoured the evidence, and, after one year of study, twelve conclude that "honorable people can and do disagree" about whether Mr. Jefferson fathered Ms. Hemings' children. "The allegation is by no means proven." The twelve scholarly jurors deliver their verdict: from skepticsm about Mr. Jefferson's paternity to "almost certainly" that he was not the father.

One scholar contributed a minority report. His assessment? "More likely than not."

The Jefferson-Hemings Controversy is available from Carolina Academic Press. Here from CAP's website is the abstract describing the book.

In 2000, the newly formed Thomas Jefferson Heritage Society asked a group of more than a dozen senior scholars from across the country to carefully examine all of the evidence for and against the allegations that Thomas Jefferson fathered one or more children by Sally Hemings, one of his slaves, and to issue a public report. In April 2001, after a year of study, the Scholars Commission issued the most detailed report to date on the issue.

With but a single mild dissent, the views of the distinguished panel ranged from "serious skepticism" to a conviction that the allegation was "almost certainly false." This volume, edited by Scholars Commission Chairman Robert F. Turner, includes the "Final Report"—essentially a summary of arguments and conclusions—as it was released to the press on April 12, 2001. However, several of the statements of individual views—which collectively total several hundred carefully footnoted pages and constitute the bulk of the book—have been updated and expanded to reflect new insights or evidence since the report was initially released.

(Full disclosure: I have published several titles with CAP as a contributor and/or editor).

More about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings at these sites:

Thomas Jefferson: Monticello

Jefferson's Blood (PBS) 

"Sampling" Legal Writing? Hip Hop and Legal Ethics

Kim D. Chanbonpin, The John Marshall Law School, is publishing Legal Writing, the Remix: Plagiarism and Hip Hop Ethics in the Mercer Law Review (forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

In this Article, I focus on hip hop music and culture as an access point to teach first-year law students about the academic and professional pitfalls of plagiarism. Hip hop provides a good model for comparison because most of our entering students are immersed in a popular culture that is saturated with allusions to hip hop. As a point of reference for incoming law students, hip hop possesses a valuable currency as it represents something real, experienced, and relatable.



Significant parallels exist between the cultures of U.S. legal writing and hip hop, although attempting direct analogies would be absurd. Chief among these similarities is the reliance of both cultures on an archive of knowledge, borrowing from which authors or artists build credibility and authority. Whether it is from case law or musical recordings, the necessary dependence on a finite store of information means that the past work of others will be frequently incorporated into new work. The ethical and professional danger inherent in this type of production is that one who borrows too freely from the past may be merely copying instead of interpreting or innovating. In the academic world, this is plagiarism. Members of the hip hop community call this “biting.” In neither culture is this mode of production celebrated.



My goals for this project are two-fold. First, as a professor of legal writing, I want to ameliorate the problem of plagiarism that I have seen growing worse each year. Second, as a scholar, I would like to contribute to the growing body of literature on hip hop and the law. This Article marks the beginning of my attempt to theorize a hip hop ethics and develop its application to the teaching, the academic study, and perhaps eventually, the reform of the law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Another Jack the Ripper Candidate

Retired detective Trevor Marriott suggests a new candidate as the real "Jack the Ripper": a German seaman named Carl Feigenbaum, executed in 1896 in New York for murdering his landlady. Alan Boyle writes in an article for MSNBC.com that Mr. Marriott has lined up some old sailing records and has come to the conclusion that Feigenbaum could have been in London at the time of the Ripper killings. That, and the fact that he had the demonstrated capacity to carry out a brutal murder of a woman, makes him a likely suspect in Mr. Marriott's eyes.

Other Ripper experts are not convinced. Dr. Xanthe Mallett, a forensic anthropologist and "star" of television's History Cold Case team, considers Mr. Marriott's theory, as well as other evidence, in this article for the BBC online site. She thinks one person, perhaps Feigenbaum, could have committed one, some, or all of the killings. Jack the Ripper still holds his secrets.

Read more here from the online Metropolitan Police files and here, at Casebook: Jack the Ripper.

The Santa Clara All-Stars Retry Clarence Darrow

A group of all star lawyers and judges will re-enact People v. Clarence Darrow, as part of the University of Santa Clara School of Law centennial celebration. 

Chief Judge of the 9th Circuit Alex Kozinski will play Judge George Hutton. Defense Attorney Michael Tigar will be Darrow's defense attorney Earl Rogers. 9th Circuit Judge Stephen Trott will take on the role of John Fredericks, prosecutor and politician. The juicy role of Clarence Darrow goes to U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer (yes, brother of the Supreme Court Justice).

More here at the School's website, and here, on the trial, by the Honorable Robert L. Gottsfield.

Call For Papers: Extended Deadline

From Josh Wodak at Australian National University:

Honour Killing Across Culture and Time - EXTENDED Call for Papers

(1 September deadline)



Australian National University

Canberra, Australia

7-9 December 2011



Honour-motivated violence is a trans-historical and cross-cultural phenomenon, yet it has recently become a metonym for Islamic and anti-modern cultures.



How can inter-disciplinary conversations unpack this association to produce innovative ways of thinking about and acting against violence justified through claims of honour?



This conference will explore honour killing across periods, places, political contexts, legal regimes and religions. It will bring together scholars, artists and activists. This event will be the ANU Gender Institute's Signature Event for 2011.



For more information:

http://history.cass.anu.edu.au/honourkillingconf

An Art and Law Blog

Here's an interesting blog devoted to the intersection of art and the law: Art and Artifice. Some recent posts discuss art and politics, blasphemy in Poland, and the notorious Louboutin red heel trade mark infringement case.

Legal Writing: Tips From Fiction

Michelle Falkoff, University of Iowa College of Law, has published Lessons from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop: Using Fiction Workshop Teaching Techniques in the First-Year Legal Writing Classroom, forthcoming in the Journal of Legal Education. 

The ability to critique one’s own work is invaluable to writers in every field, but teaching students how to critique their work and the work of others is one of the most difficult lessons to impart. The goal of this Article is to talk about ways that legal writing teachers can incorporate fiction workshop techniques as a means of teaching students the art of critiquing their own and others’ writing. In particular, this Article focuses on the workshop techniques employed at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the development of a common language for discussing writing in group settings.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Don't Tell Me Who Did It! I Paid a Lot For This Book!

A forthcoming study from two University of California, San Diego academics supports what I've thought for a long time: knowing whodunit in a mystery or thriller doesn't necessarily ruin the experience. I think it explains why some people (like me) re-read mysteries (and no, it's not because I can't remember the endings). Nicholas Christenfeld, one of the study's co-authors (I really like the presentation of his publications here), says the research explains why people actually enjoy knowing the ending. I understand that. They can concentrate on the journey along the way rather than obsess over the problem of the perpetrator.

But some people don't agree. They like the mystery, and that's understandable as well. They like puzzles. That's why they read crime novels, and watch thrillers. This research by Dr. Christenfeld and his co-author Dr. Jonathan Leavitt might also explain part of the debate in magic circles over exposure. Some practitioners say it ruins the performance for the audience, and condemn those magicians (like Penn & Teller) who make a practice of explaining at least some illusions to their audiences. But some magicians say knowing how a magician performs an illusion doesn't really matter. A magician can still amaze with a performance.

More here on the study, which is forthcoming in Psychological Science (available to subscribers).

Selected New Books

Some new scholarly books in law and humanities:

Brundage, W. Fitzhugh, Beyond Blackface: African Americans and the Creation of Popular Culture, 1890-1930 (Raleigh: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).

Chakkalakal, Tess, Novel Bondage: Slavery, Marriage, and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011).

Jones, Paul Christian, Against the Gallows: Antebellum American Writers and the Movement to Abolish Capital Punishment (Ames: University of Iowa Press, 2011).

A Little Solitaire: John Frankenheimer and American Film (Murray Pomerance and R. Barton Palmer, eds.; Rutgers University Press, 2011). 

Markovitz, Jonathan, Racial Spectacles: Explorations in Media, Race, and Justice (Routledge, 2011).

Montell, William Lynwood, Tales From Kentucky Sheriffs (University Press of Kentucky, 2011).  

Reframing Rights: Bioconstitutionalism in the Genetic Age (Sheila Janasoff, ed.; Cambridge,  MIT Press, 2011). 

France, the United States, and Coming to Terms With Slavery

Ariela J. Gross, University of Southern California Law School, has published All Born to Freedom? Comparing the Law and Politics of Race and the Memory of Slavery in the U.S. and France Today as USC Legal Studies Research Paper No. 11-18. Here is the abstract.

Both the United States and France have seen a burgeoning of memorialization of slavery and abolition in recent years, and France has even passed a memorial law declaring slavery a crime against humanity. This Essay compares law, racial politics, and the memory of slavery in two nations trying to come to terms with their slave pasts. Despite important differences in their histories and civil rights regimes, I argue that in both France and the U.S., movements that oppose race-conscious law portray slavery as part of the deep past, and a generalized past detached from race, whereas those seeking some form of recognition or reparation emphasize that slavery is “not even past.” In both countries, the originary revolutionary moment – in France, associated with the Declaration of the Rights of Man, and in the U.S. with the 1787 Constitution – is invoked to create a sense of the timeless continuity of the principle of colorblindness, with slavery (and race-conscious legal remedies today) temporary deviations.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

The Development of Western Constitutional Ideas

Jean LeClair, Université de Montréal Faculty of Law, has published L'Avènement Du Constitutionnalisme En Occident: Fondements Philosophiques Et Contingence Historique (The Advent of Western Constitutionalism: Philosophical Foundations and Historical Contingency) in volume 41 of the Revue de droit de l'Université de Sherbrooke (2011). Here is the abstract.

Pour le bénéfice des non-initiés aux arcanes du droit constitutionnel occidental, l’auteur, après avoir brièvement décrit les notions de droit constitutionnel et de constitutionnalisme, s’attarde à retracer les idées-force qui, en Occident, ont rendu possible l’avènement de ces notions. Par la suite, il examine la trajectoire historique empruntée plus spécifiquement par les constitutionnalismes anglais, français et américain. L’auteur cherche ainsi à démontrer que, malgré la contingence historique du constitutionnalisme canadien, les principes philosophiques qui en sont à la source tirent leur origine de ce qu’on pourrait appeler un « patrimoine intellectuel occidental.

For the benefit of those unacquainted with the arcane features of Western Constitutional law, the writer, after briefly describing the notions of “constitutional law” and “constitutionalism”, seeks to set out the fundamental ideas which have enabled these notions to develop in the Western World. He then examines the historical trajectory of British, French and American constitutionalism. In so doing, the author seeks to underline that, notwithstanding the historical contingency of Canadian constitutionalism, the philosophical ideas upon which it is grounded may be described as originating from a “Western intellectual patrimony.”

Download the article from SSRN at the link. (NB: Text is in French).

King Lear and Leviathan

Alex Schulman, Duke University, has published From Lear to Leviathan: On States of Nature and Social Contracts in Shakespeare's Politics as an APSA 2011 Annual Meeting Paper. Here is the abstract.

Philosophers have been more ready to incorporate insights from the dramas of William Shakespeare than political theorists, who have focused more of their energies on ancient Greek tragedy. I argue that Shakespeare’s plays are a valuable and necessary resource for a political theory open to imaginative literature, by focusing specifically on King Lear and reading it against Hobbes’s Leviathan. I argue that Shakespeare tragically depicts the same process – the recreation of sovereignty out of a state of nature and emergent social contract – that Hobbes argues for normatively. Shakespeare’s play shows what is required of us psychologically and even emotionally in carrying out the Hobbesian process of disassembling hierarchical feudalism and constructing a modern political rationalism. will be provided by author.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Freedom, Power, and the Control of Women in "Vertigo"

John (Jay) Steinmetz, University of Oregon, has published 'They Had the Power and the Freedom': A Genealogy of Patriarchal Violence in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo as an APSA 2011 Annual Meeting Paper. Here is the abstract.

The control of women is at the center of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, a misogyny of domination that is easily apparent. Less apparent in previous literature on Vertigo is the connection to a history of violence against women that threads through key scenes, where the expression "the freedom and the power" is spoken by the wife-murderer Gavin Elster, an authority on San Francisco history, and John "Scottie" Ferguson, who stalks and obsesses over what becomes three women: Madeleine Elster, Carlotta Valdez, and Judy Barton. The freedom and the power is something men once had, but they are slowly losing it, and there emerges the paranoia, the real vertigo. This phrase and its connotation, that of controlling women, connects both freedom and power to the mechanisms of patriarchy. One such mechanism in Vertigo is the deployment, in Foucaultian terms, of a myth: that Carlotta Valdez, thrown away by a rich man nearly 100 years ago, haunts Gavin Elster's wife Madeleine. This myth, the spurned woman, covers up the darker violence underneath, that of uxoricide. Foucault's repressive hypothesis, a deployment in discourse on the freedom and power of sexuality, can be mapped onto the myth of Carlotta Valdez and the killing of women that lies below its surface.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

The Myth of Rights

Jeffrey Dudas, University of Connecticut Department of Political Science, has published 'A Madman Full of Paranoid Guile': The Myth of Rights in the Modern American Mind, as an APSA 2011 Annual Meeting paper. Here is the abstract.

Stuart Scheingold’s path-breaking The Politics of Rights ignited scholarly interest in the political mobilization of rights. The book was a challenge to the reigning popular and scholarly common sense regarding the supposedly self-executing nature of rights (what Scheingold called the “myth of rights”). Rights, Scheingold argued, could be resources for the pursuit of social change; but their realization in court doctrine and legislative output was not itself tantamount to meaningful social change. Thus embedded in The Politics of Rights is skepticism (or at least ambivalence) about the utility of rights politics for social movements. Scheingold was not ambivalent about the moral or normative value of rights themselves, although he did argue that the realization of rights was not by itself enough to overcome the manifold inequalities that structure modern life. The Politics of Rights, accordingly, is clear-eyed, but not cynical about rights advocacy. It is thus surprising, and keenly revealing, that Scheingold’s final work – The Political Novel, which is ostensibly not about rights at all – points to mass cynicism, alienation, and the collapse of faith in governing institutions and logics as the animating elements of modern liberal democracies, including especially the United States. That rights are a vital part of the civic mythology whose collapse defines modern times suggests that the civil rights context of aspiration and struggle in which Scheingold, and nearly all of his followers (this author included), have conceived rights may be unnecessarily narrow. Rights may also be embedded, that is, in the modern condition of alienation, despair, and felt powerlessness. Inspired by Scheingold’s investigation of how literature points to this modern condition of political estrangement, I offer an alternative backdrop for The Politics of Rights that is rooted in the bleak renderings of the American character found in much 1970’s American popular and intellectual culture. Such a contextualization, I will argue, suggests that we envision The Political Novel as a companion piece to The Politics of Rights; together they keenly illuminate both the mobilizing and de-mobilizing potential of the myth of rights.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Philosophers and States of Emergency

Tyler Curley, University of Southern California, has published Sounding the Alarm: Machiavelli, Locke and States of Emergency as an APSA 2011 Annual Meeting Paper. Here is the abstract.

Leaders have long sought to redefine the legal and political order in states of emergency. In this paper, I detail the theoretical formulations of emergency powers provided by Machiavelli and Locke. These theorists offer contrasting accounts about the tolerable use of executive authority to define when emergencies arise and to rule accordingly. Even though they both discuss these powers as inevitable features of political life, I argue there should be a distinction between the authority to delineate what situations constitute emergencies and the permissible executive powers during these times. Extralegal power automatically flows from the determination of an emergency for these theorists, which I find problematic and disquieting. I warn against Machiavelli’s idea that self-interested princes alone should determine when emergencies exist and the extent of powers to eradicate these threats. While I am more sympathetic to Locke’s attempt to limit extralegal executive authority, I find he does not adequately account for abuses of emergency powers. Both theoretical accounts lead to disturbing political communities wherein the same person is given the dual authority to determine when a situation constitutes an emergency and the scope of powers in these times.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Theosophy and Nationalism

Mark Bevir, University of California, Berkeley Department of Political Science, has published Theosophy, Cultural Nationalism, and Home Rule as an APSA 2011 Annual Meeting Paper. Here is the abstract.

This essay contains three sections. The first shows how western theosophists simplified and appropriated Indian thought, deploying it to resolve dilemmas confronting occult and other religious traditions. The second section explores how theosophical ideas then provided one inspiration for a tradition of cultural nationalism within India itself.

Finally, the third section examines how this cultural nationalism transformed Congress in the years immediately surrounding Gandhi’s return from South Africa.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Voegelin and Metaphor

Glenn Hughes has published Voegelin's Use of Metaphor as an APSA 2011 Annual Meeting paper. Here is the abstract.

This paper discusses Eric Voegelin's use of key metaphors at the core of his philosophy of existence. After a look at Voegeli's notion of "symbol," it offers definitions of analogy and metaphor, then goes on to introduce notions of "existential metaphors" and "primal metaphors," the latter defined as those pertaining to transcendence or to human participation in transcendence. Voegelin's choice to rely in his philosophy on primal metaphors such as "the Beyond" and " the In-Between" is examined, and this choice is finally related to his openness to and analyses of myth.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

New International Law and Language Journal

A new online journal, the International Journal of Law, Language, & Discourse, and accompanying website, have launched here.

Here's the mission statement.

The International Journal of Law, Language & Discourse is published quarterly and presents articles related to legal issues, review of cases, comments and opinions on legal cases.

The International Journal of Law, Language & Discourse is a scholarly publication that examines a wide field of international legal issues. The Journal serves as both a practical resource for lawyers, judges, and legislators and those academics who teach the future legal generations. The Journal combines academic areas of law, discourse analysis, English linguistic analysis, combined with psycho-legal-linguistics.

A Peruvian Law and Literature Website

Welcome to a new website, Jus Literaria, created by students of law and literature at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (Lima, Peru), Facultadad de Derecho. At least, I think it's new, or at least the addition of the counter on the home page is new; it indicated (according to my translation which could very well be wrong) fewer than 30 total hits when I visited today. I've added a link to the site under "Resources" here at the Law and Humanities Blog.

The website has links to figures in art and law (example: Daumier), founding scholars in the field of law and literature in various countries (Benjamin Cardozo and Richard Weisberg for the US), suggestions for secondary reading,  and links to associations. I'm not entirely sure why it's set up the way it is: why the French phrase "droit et littérature" takes you to a bibliography while the Italian equivalent takes you to an association, but maybe the logic will become clear with further use. At any rate, the site provides a lot of information, particularly for those interested in Latin American law and literature. I hope the students continue to keep it updated.

Pretty Little Philosophers?

Timothy Lukes has published The Politics of Beauty: Locke, Shaftesbury, and Burke as an APSA 2011 Annual Meeting Paper. Here is the abstract.

I argue that liberalism adulterates beauty, that Shaftesbury cannot resist the survival agenda of Locke, and that Burke's concept of the sublime is the result.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Notre Ami Montequieu

Kirsten Nussbaumer, Saint Louis University, has published Republican Election Reform and the American Montesquieu. Here is the abstract.

 

At the time of the American founding, discourse about election regulation was shaped by a venerated -- but now long-forgotten -- “republican” (or “whig”) tradition that taught that important election rules ought to be “fixed” in constitutions, not left to mere ordinary law, in order to protect popular sovereignty and limit electoral manipulation for incumbent, factional or partisan advantage. Men speaking on all sides of the debates about the framing and ratification of the U.S. constitution repeatedly invoked Montesquieu as authority for this tradition, and used (their understanding of) his precepts in order to evaluate each elections provision of the proposed constitution for its conformity to the tradition. While some elections provisions were received as sharp departures from the tradition, others were taken to be faithful accommodations of the republican tradition to a new variant of federalism. Over time, the republican electoral tradition evolved from an emphasis on entrenching election rules against change to mere entrenchment of a requirement that election reform be channeled through constitutional processes.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Grotian Rhetoric

John D. Haskell, University of Helsinki, University of London, and International University College of Turin, has published Hugo Grotius in the Contemporary Memory of International Law: Secularism, Liberalism, and the Politics of Restatement and Denial in volume 25 of the Emory International Law Review (2011). Here is the abstract. 

Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) frequently occupies the title, ‘father of international law’. While the origins of professional lineage were a source of professional and personal conflict for jurists in the 19th century, scholars today tend to treat Grotius as either a symbolic marker of changing historical thought, or the symbolic figure of a style or school of global governance. These two contemporary streams of remembrance operate within a dense background of assumptions about the nature and possibilities of the global order, which raise at least three sets of curiosities. First, in light of nuanced scholarship of Grotius’ primary materials in recent decades, what does an emphasis on the actual content of Grotius’ work impart about the character of his times, and through what lens should we organize our understanding (e.g., political, juridical, theological, and so on)? Second, what inspires the almost cyclical (or perhaps more perversely, fetishistic) attraction to Grotius in the fields of international law and politics, and how might this help us better understand both the psychological and structural underpinnings of contemporary practice, or even the nature and trajectory of the profession in a more broad sense? And third, in lieu of any findings, what if any possibility does this attraction to Grotius open up for future strategic, or even imaginative engagement? In sum, what stories does the Grotius rhetoric allow us to tell about the international legal order, and do such stories carry any political, if not personal, impact?

It is these questions that I attempt to grapple with in this paper in the hopes of providing a concise synthesis of the various engagements within the Grotian tradition to better understand the imaginative contours of our contemporary professional vocabularies and reflect on any emancipatory possibilities this might open up. What seems particularly striking is while ever more scholarship exposes a strong empirical dissonance in respect to the memory of Grotius, such representations continue to exercise powerful sway over ongoing discussions about the past, present, and future of global governance. In response, I have organized the paper into three themes, which overlapping in some respects, are nevertheless helpful in parceling out the various approaches and motivations at work in the literature. The first and second sections provide an overview and then a revisionist account of the claims to what might be labeled the turn to ‘the secular’ and ‘liberal tolerance’. In the third section, the paper moves to reflect more broadly upon the implications of this attraction, attempting particularly to deduce some possible motivations for the continuous misreading of Grotius’ actual work. In conclusion, I briefly trace out some initial suggestions about an alternative future towards the legacy of the Grotian tradition, what might be characterized as a shift from a politics of restatement and denial to a politics of truth.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

The Permanence of Legal Fictions

Frederick Schauer, University of Virginia School of Law, has published Legal Fictions Revisited. Here is the abstract. 

There was a time when the topic of legal fictions engaged many of the most important thinkers about law, including Jeremy Bentham, Morris Cohen, John Chipman Gray, Jerome Frank, Lon Fuller, Rudolf von Ihering, Hans Kelsen, Henry Sumner Maine, Alf Ross, and Pierre de Tourtoulon, among many others. But that time has passed, and these days “legal fiction” has become little more than a loosely used all-purpose term of legal criticism. This change is unfortunate, however, because real legal fictions still exist and are still important. Even more significantly, however, understanding legal fictions helps us to understand legal presumptions, and, even more broadly, provides a valuable window into understanding legal truth and legal language. This paper, prepared for the Project on Truth and Law of the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), explores these issues, recapturing some of the historical thinking about legal fictions, distinguishing true legal fictions from the notion of a fiction in Kelsenian legal philosophy, deflating the notion that legal presumptions are legal fictions, and examining the relationship among true legal fictions, legal truth, and legal language.

Download the full text from SSRN at the link.

Assault Of the Zombie Verbs and Vampire Nouns

After taking emeritus status at Cooley Law School, Norman Otto Stockmeyer has apparently taken up the cudgels. He's proposing the killing off of those nouns-turned-verbs ("Let's dialogue") and those verbs-turned-nouns ("A wonderful dine") before they attack us all. I'm down with that. More here, in "Zombie Verbs and Vampire Nouns," in the spring issue of The Scrivener. Could invented phrases ("Play a factor") be his next target?

Come and Be Kilt

Phil Rickman, of the BBC Blog WalesArts, examines the genre affectionately known as "Tartan Noir."  Says Mr. Rickman in part,

This is the term invented for dark Scottish crime novels about doomed hardmen with noses broken by Glasgow kisses and arteries clogged by fried Mars bars. The street-level, socially-aware antidote to traditional upper class English crime by Agatha Christie and co.

It's all a marketing scam, of course, promoted by people who conveniently forget that, as well as breeding Ian Rankin, Chris Brookmyre and Stuart MacBride, Scotland is also the home of the awfully genteel, endearingly inoffensive Alexander McCall Smith whose characters make Miss Marple look hard-boiled.

But Tartan Noir really works. It's a killer brand that's sold millions of books in places a long way south of Scotland.

It seems to have begun back in the 1970s when William McInvanney, an established literary novelist, turned out a couple of intelligent thrillers featuring a Glasgow cop called Laidlaw. It never became much of a series, but it did inspire the young Ian Rankin to create a similar cop operating in Edinburgh - John Rebus.

Mr. Rickman notes that a few mystery novelists sets their works in Wales, and wants to know if the Welsh are ready for their own genre. (But what would it be called?) Read on here, MacDuffs!

Green Bag Trading Cards: Scalia's Up

The Green Bag has released its latest Supreme Court Sluggers trading card: Antonin Scalia. He's a catcher (earlier releases featured Chief Justice John Roberts, pitcher, Associate Justice John Paul Stevens, also a catcher, and Arthur Goldberg). More on the Supreme Court trading cards project here.

Want Green Bag swag, like the cards or the bobbleheads created by Green Bag editor Ross Davies and his cohorts? In brief, you have to subscribe to the journal or otherwise make your case to the masthead mavens.

"Tell Me, (Mr. or Ms.) Editor: Am I Stupid?"

In the Chronicle of Higher Education, Rachel Toor writes about the anxieties many people feel about their academic work, and that yes, it's normal. A helpful and well-written column.

Words, Words, Words

Dwight Garner writes about the uses of communications in today's New York in "The Words We Live By," a column in the August 3rd New York Times. His tale takes in, among other things, MOMA, the Strand Book Store, a favorite candy emporium, several eateries and a bus; his comments concerning the interactions of words, laws, and deeds are delightful. A sample, from his discussion of a visit to Isaac Bashevis Singer Boulevard.

On that street sign Singer’s name is spelled entirely in capital letters — in all-caps, as word people say. This turned out to be worth noticing. New York City is in the process of eliminating its all-caps street signs; they turn out to be less legible than those in upper- and lower-case. The New York Observer has called this sign-swapping project, due to be completed in 2018, a “$28 million copy edit.”

More here.

Call For Papers: Melbourne Doctoral Forum on Legal Theory

From Laura Peterson, University of Melbourne, a Call for Papers for the Melbourne Doctoral Forum on Legal Theory, which will take place on December 15-16, 2011.

The Melbourne Doctoral Forum on Legal Theory will take place on 15-16 December 2011.

Law and Its Accidents - Melbourne Doctoral Forum on Legal Theory

The fourth annual workshop will again bring together higher research students and early career researchers, who in different disciplines and across diverse fields of scholarship, engage with law and its theoretical and methodological questions.

This year we embark on an investigation of law and its accidents, because to critically engage with legal theory is not only to track the modalities of law, but also to probe its interstices. It is to ex- pose law’s fault-lines and its exceptions, its interruptions and its crises, but also its coincidences and serendipities. This workshop will try not just to prod those fragile points where law buckles and sways, but attempt to build new jurisprudential approaches to understanding the happenstances of law. The accidents of law are neither novel nor exemplary. They often appear subtly in the narrative of a judgment, the methodologies of legal scholarship and the ceremonies of justice. In law the accident never just happens; it is embedded in the forms and materialities of law.



The catalyst for this workshop is the suggestion that with the invention of any technology, we also invent its accident. From natural selection to environmental catastrophes to outcomes of regulation – common to all are the simultaneous inventions of a technological apparatus and its accident.

Yet how do we account for the accidents of law? Is the accident an exception or is it integral to law’s operation? Is law in itself an accident? Is it an accident of justice and/or progress?

In a year already exposed to the superlative accident of nuclear catastrophe, this workshop attempts to construct a museum of legal accidents. It provides a collegial forum and supportive intellectual community for exploring the encounters between law and its accidents. We welcome participants from all disciplines who in their own research projects engage with questions of law, theory and methodology.



Relevant areas of law may include (this list is not exhaustive): law and culture, law and technology, law and the humanities, environmental law, employment law, tort law, international law, military law, migration law, and law and economics.



Possible topics may include:

• narrating and archiving law and its accidents • faulty networks: laws of technology and technologies of law • governance, sovereignty and its exceptions • globalisation, virtuality and the crisis of the nation state • citizenship, refugees and migration: accidental citizens • collateral

damage: legitimatisation of accidental causalities in war • accidents of humanity: bio-ethics, transhumanism and animal law • the unforeseen consequences of regulation and reform • accidental waste: law and economy • the ruins of progress: accidents of time, history and law • memory and trauma: forgetting to remember • the dea(r)th of judgment: destabilising the legal text • the conviviality of ceremony: law’s laughter



A limited number of bursaries will be available for interstate and international presenting participants who are unable to claim funding to cover the full cost of travel from their home institution. The bursaries are intended to contribute towards travel expenses. Please indicate in your application whether you would like to be considered for a bursary.



Send abstracts of 500 words and biographies of 100 words to:

law-mdflt@unimelb.edu.au by Monday 19 September 2011.

Call For Papers

The Art and Politics of Irony/L’art et la politique de l’ironie

12-14 April 2012 ~ Montréal, QC

An interdisciplinary conference hosted by the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas, McGill University, in collaboration with Improvisation, Community and Social Practice (SSHRC-MCRI) and the Département d’études anglaises, Université de Montréal

Call for papers

“The ironist does not have the new within his power . . . he destroys the given actuality by the given actuality itself.” Søren Kierkegaard

Irony makes the world new by putting the world that exists in question. Its strength lies in its destabilizing power—it is the politics of art, the art of politics, and the language of dissent. By enabling critical representations of the world as it is known, but from within and against the familiarity of our own expectations, irony gives art and discourse special kinds of access to the public sphere, especially by mining beneath the given, the actual, and the known.

In politics, philosophy, art and literature, across post-modernism, post-colonialism, and globalization, the question of irony is of expanding relevance to a range of fields of cultural formation and inquiry. Yet it remains insufficiently noticed, understood, or theorized; ironically powerful and silent at once. What is the meaning of irony? What does it accomplish and exactly how and with what effects? Is irony impoverished or indispensable, disenchanted or enchanting, world-breaking or world-making?

Conference organizers invite proposals for papers addressing the public and public-making function of irony across time and through a range of contexts and media. Disciplines may include but are not limited to:

Architecture and Design

Art History

Classics

Film

Fine Arts

Gender and Sexuality

History

Law

Literature

Media and Communications

Musicology and Music Performance

Philosophy

Politics

Theatre and Performance



Proposals for complete panels as well as for individual papers in English or French are welcome. Researchers are invited to submit paper abstracts of 250 words and brief (2 page) cvs to: irony@mcgill.ca. Deadline for submissions: 30 September 2011

Blackmail In Libertarian Theory

Walter E. Block, Loyola University of New Orleans, College of Business, has published A Libertarian Theory of Blackmail. Here is the abstract.

This article will attempt to analyze the law prohibiting blackmail from a libertarian perspective. Libertarianism is a political philosophy; as such, it is a theory of the just use of violence. From this viewpoint, the just use of violence is essentially defensive: one may employ force only to repel an invasion; only to protect one’s person or property from external threat, and for no other reason.

Download the text from SSRN at the link.

NPR's Crime In the City Series

More from NPR's Crime In the City series here. Today's featured author: George Pelecanos (Washington, DC). Authors discussed on prior shows: Archer Mayor (Brattleboro, Vermont); Marcia Muller (San Francisco); Naomi Hirahara (Los Angeles); Ridley Pearson (Sun Valley, Idaho); Janet Evanovich (Trenton, New Jersey); Diane Wei Liang (Beijing, China); Philip Kerr (Berlin, Germany); Cara Black (Paris, France); and Mark Billingham (London, England). More authors and cities here.

Criminal Law In "Othello"

Richard H. McAdams, University of Chicago Law School, has published Vengance, Complicity and Criminal Law in Othello, in Shakespeare and the Law: A Conversation Among Disciplines and Professions (Martha Nussbaum and Richard Streier eds.; University of Chicago Press, 2012). Here is the abstract.

Criminal law offers an interesting frame for examining Othello, while the play offers an interesting thought experiment for law. First, the play shows the virtue of legal processes by the tragedy its absence produces. In Act V, Othello refuses to accord Desdemona the very procedures that vindicated him of a false charge in Act I. Second, Othello brilliantly illustrates some perpetually vexing problems in the doctrine of complicity. Through Iago, the play vividly shows that an encourager of crime can be more responsible for its occurrence – more monstrous – than the one he encourages. Third, I use English law of the late 16th century to explain certain puzzling choices Iago makes. Iago avoids being present at the scene of Desdemona’s killing and dissuades Othello from using poison in order to preserve his status as an accessory, which allows him to avoid criminal liability for Desdemona’s death under a variety of scenarios. Iago’s brilliant deviousness allows him to manipulate law as well as people.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

A French Law and Film Blog

Check out the blog Droit et Cinema, a French site devoted to the subject of law and film. One post discusses

the fascinating film Commis d'office (2009), based on the novel by attorney Hannelore Cayre (she also directed). The poster doesn't seem to have liked the film as much as I did, finding it less realistic than it could have been, but still thinks it worth watching for its picture of an attorney caught in the day-to-day criminal justice system. The film (the title would translate as something like "Legal Aid" or perhaps "Public Defender") does not seem to be available in the U.S. although Amazon has copies of the novel (in French).

 

The site also gives links to a number of other interesting blogs, all in French.   

Medieval English Juries

Daniel Klerman, University of Southern California Law School, has published The Selection of Thirteenth-Century Disputes for Litigation, as USC Law School Olin Research Paper No. 00-10. Here is the abstract.

Priest and Klein's seminal 1984 article argued that litigated cases differ systematically and predictably from settled cases. This article tests the Priest-Klein selection model using a data set of thirteenth-century English cases. These cases are especially informative because juries rendered verdicts even in settled cases, so one can directly compare verdicts in settled and litigated cases. The results are consistent with the predictions of the Priest-Klein article, as well as with the asymmetric-information selection models developed by Hylton and Shavell.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

The Old Bailey, Trial Practice, and Legal Culture

Bruce Bower discusses the use of old trial records to study both cultural history and trial practice in this article from Science News. Digitizing those records helps also. Visit the Old Bailey's database here.

An Unlikely Place For a Homicide

From NPR: a discussion of the criminal fictional goings-on in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Race, Poverty, and Disability on "The Wire"

Rabia Belt, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, has published 'And then Comes Life': The Intersection of Race, Poverty, and Disability in HBO's, 'The Wire'. Here is the abstract.

Despite its low ratings and lack of Emmys or Golden Globes, HBO’s groundbreaking show, The Wire, has caught and kept the attention of critics, academics, and others interested in urban life. Though the show has disappeared off the airways, it is now becoming part of the academic landscape through conferences, panels, books, and courses. The article will be the first to examine The Wire, from a legal perspective. I focus upon The Wire’s lack of attention to disability. Injury abounds in The Wire. Police officers are shot, suspects are beaten, and drug addicts overdose. Despite the onslaught of injury, disability is an underdeveloped part of the world of The Wire. The Wire is not alone in its failure to adequately examine the intersection of race, poverty, and disability, but it is a helpful lens through which to examine the neglect of poor people with disabilities and disabled people of color with disabilities. The article will open new avenues in a longstanding debate concerning appropriate policy and legal interventions for the urban poor, link together disability studies with critical race studies, and illustrate the use of an artistic medium to convey complex policy and legal ideas. The article will be of substantial utility for the growing number of scholars who teach classes on The Wire, critical race scholars, disability law scholars, and poverty law scholars.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.