ICYMI: Robert Barsky, Clamouring for Legal Protection: What the Great Books Teach Us About People Fleeing from Persecution (Bloomsbury, 2023).

ICYMI:

Robert Barsky,  Clamouring for Legal Protection: What the Great Books Teach Us About People Fleeing from Persecution (Bloomsbury, 2023). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

In this novel approach to law and literature, Robert Barsky delves into the canon of so-called Great Books, and discovers that many beloved characters therein encounter obstacles similar to those faced by contemporary refugees and undocumented persons. The struggles of Odysseus, Moses, Aeneas, Dante, Satan, Dracula and Alice in Wonderland, among many others, provide surprising insights into current discussions about those who have left untenable situations in their home countries in search of legal protection. Law students, lawyers, social scientists, literary scholars and general readers who are interested in learning about international refugee law and immigration regulations in home and host countries will find herein a plethora of details about border crossings, including those undertaken to flee pandemics, civil unrest, racism, intolerance, war, forced marriage, or limited opportunities in their home countries. Table of Contents Introduction: Opening Up the Great Books I. Canons, Great Books and Classics II. 'Popular' Culture III. From Cultural Reflection to Legal Protection IV. Why Fiction? What About the Real World? V. From Escapism to Engagement VI. From Empathy to Revelation 1. Spreading Disease, or Inoculating Us from Intolerance? I. Pandemics in Literature and Culture A. The Arc of Disease, Suffering and Death II. The Foreignness of Diseases III. The Rhetoric of Blame A. From Vulnerable to Unwanted and Diseased IV. The Plague V. From Symptoms to Panic VI. Creating Empathy VII. Limbo and the Will to Move Around VIII. From Quarantines to Quarrels to Empathy? IX. Art in the Time of Cholera X. Crossing the Border into Obscenity XI. Predicting Post-Pandemic Politics 2. Following Pathways, Networks and Guides I. The Cessation Clause II. Following Intermediaries in Religious Texts III. Human Smugglers IV. Language Issues and Displacement V. Pursuing the Land of Milk and Honey VI. Divine Intermediaries and Shift s to Immigration Policy VII. Guides from Behind the Veil VIII. Intermediaries to Eden IX. From Freedom Fighter to Refugee X. From Civil War to Hell XI. A Reluctant Follower XII. Fleeing with Loved Ones XIII. The Purposeless Quest XIV. Constantly on the Road XV. The Search for Treasure XVI. The Promised Land 3. Opening Doors and Scaling Walls I. From Protection to Integration II. From Victim to Slave III. Supplicating Before the Gatekeeping King IV. Consulting Constituents on Border Policy V. Opening the Right Doors VI. Doors, Doorways and the People Hidden Behind Them VII. Before the Law VIII. Ill-Advised Strategies for Opening Doors IX. Real-World Gatekeeping X. Rights at the Border XI. Behind Closed Doors XII. Doors Towards Metaphysical Voyages 4. Confronting Inhospitable Spaces and Hostile Hosts I. Storms, Floods and the Purging of Unwanted Civilisations II. The Romantic Refugee III. Mary and Percy Shelley: Feminist and Atheist IV. Refugees in a Time of Climate Change A. Mary Shelley, Victor Frankenstein and His Monster: Climate Refugees B. Percy Shelley's Perspective on Climate and Geomorphology C. Lord Byron: Catastrophism, Climate Change and Ensuing Darkness V. From Creation of the Earth to Apocalypse VI. Being Misled into the Wrong Paradise VII. Finding Revelation Instead of Refuge VIII. From Persecution to Punishment IX. Chance Encounters X. Finding Hell XI. Transformation into Darkness 5. Encounters with Aliens, Monsters and Terrorists I. Monsters in the Great Tradition II. Insidious Monsters in the (Real) World III. First Encounters IV. The Monstrous Unfamiliar V. A Refugee Amongst Refugees VI. Confronting Your Neighbour: The Monster VII. Identifying the Monsters, then Living with Them Conclusion: From Persecution to Wonderland

Call For Papers: Law and the Humanities World (1 & 2 September, 2026, Lucerne)

 From Dr. Steven Howe, University of Lucerne:

CFP: Law and the Humanities World (1 & 2 September, Lucerne)

 

In Humanities Theory (2025, with Amanda Anderson), Simon During offers a suggestive mapping of a “humanities world” – a loosely linked “conglomeration of practices, interests, comportments, personae, offices, moods, purposes and values” that inhabit “various settings, disciplines and institutions”. The “humanities world” is plural and diverse; it has no essence or centre, even as it is threaded by shared – if contested – histories, understandings and commitments. It transcends disciplinary lines and geographical formations. Vitally, it also embraces a flourishing “extramural” humanities – of books, artworks, exhibitions, performances, films, TV shows, and podcasts – that bears only loose relation to the professional humanities ensconced in universities.

 

For this inaugural conference of the new Swiss Law and Humanities Hub, we take the idea of a ‘humanities world’ as a prompt to reflect again on the place(s) of the legal humanities. We call on contributors to give new and further thought to where law and humanities work is performed and pursued, and to the ways in which such work comes to be done in the ‘beyond’ of academia. What happens when we shift our purview away from universities to public spaces, cultural institutions and other locations of collective life? How might this reorientation reshape our understanding of theory, method and practice? More broadly, the conference aims to encourage reflection, collaboration and the sharing of creative approaches that (re-)think legal critique and critique of law through different forms of humanities work – public, popular, and vernacular.

 

Full call for papers here. Deadline: 12 June 2026.

 

Contact: steven.howe@unilu.ch

 

Link to the Institute for Interdisciplinary Legal Studies/Iucernaiuris here. 

 

Martinico on Frames of Injustice: Comics as Constitutional Critique/Marcos de Injustica: Los cómics Como crítica Constitucional

Giuseppe Martinico, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Pisa, has published Frames of Injustice: Comics As Constitutional Critique; Marcos De Injusticia: Los cómics Como crítica Constitucional at 11 Constitutional Studies 511 (2026). Here is the abstract.

This article examines the potential of comics as a medium for critically analyzing legal pathologies, with particular attention to the insufficiency of law and the role of legal norms in producing discrimination. Contributing to the emerging field of graphic justice, it builds on the interdisciplinary tradition of law and humanities while proposing an original framework for exploring how constitutional concepts are represented, questioned, and contested in popular culture. The article argues that comics not only reflect social perceptions of law but also actively shape collective imaginaries of justice. Their circulation across different legal and cultural contexts further highlights their transnational dimension, allowing shared concerns about law, authority, and justice to be articulated through a common visual language. Focusing primarily on superhero comics, the article analyzes Batman as a figure of extra-legal justice operating in a systemically corrupt legal environment, illustrating the tension between law and justice. More broadly, the article demonstrates the relevance of comics as analytical tools in constitutional studies.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Gindis and Medema on Henry Manne, Pareto in the Pines, and the Origins of the Law and Economics Movement

David Gindis, University of Warwick Law School and Steven G. Medema, Duke University, Department of Economics, have published Henry Manne, Pareto in the Pines, and the Origins of the Law and Economics Movement as Center for the History of Political Economy (CHOPE) Workshop Paper No. 2026-3.  Here is the abstract.

Law and economics—or the application of economic reasoning and methods to the study of law—was a niche topic of study at Chicago and Yale in 1950s and 1960s, before coming out of the wilderness in the early 1970s and becoming an institutionalized feature of American legal education by the late 1980s. Relying on archival material, the paper shows how this remarkable transformation was driven by an academic entrepreneur, Henry Manne, who in 1971 started a summer school in economics for law professors. This program prepared the ground for, and gave shape to, the intellectual and geographical spread of law and economics. But Manne's enterprise would not have succeeded had there not been a widespread demand for the inclusion of social science research in the law school curriculum, combined with the failure of the alternative law and society movement—which sought to apply sociological concepts and methodologies to the study of legal phenomena—to establish a real toehold in the law school world.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Stevens on Private Law and Statute

Robert Stevens, University of Oxford, Faculty of Law, has published Private Law and Statute. Here is the abstract.

A paper on the relationship between legislation and private law in the common law world. Lists seven common problems with legislative reform of private law doctrine. Originally delivered in Brisbane in 2015.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Clark on The Knowledge of the Law Is Like a Deep Well: Coke and Bonham's Case in Context

David Clark, Emeritus Professor of Law, Flinders University, has published The Knowledge of the Law is like a Deep Well: Coke and Bonham's Case in Context. Here is the abstract.

The paper takes a private act approach to the case as it was based on a private act of parliament and shows how the legal and linguistic concepts of early seventeenth century England explain the case. The paper critiques prior scholarship for not noting this key distinction and argues that the cases and statutes cited in the case make sense because private acts were treated as on a par with conveyances, grants and other private legal instruments, and as such could be held void in the sense that the act was applicable in the circumstances of the case.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Simonson and Ahmed on Legal Satire in an Age of Political Repression

Jocelyn Simonson, Brooklyn Law School, and Zohra Ahmed, Boston University School of Law, are publishing Legal Satire in an Age of Political Repression in volume 74 of the Buffalo Law Review. Here is the abstract.

Central to the political repression of left social movements is the use of the criminal law to target movement work. One of the blueprints for the Trump Administration's current campaign of collective criminalization is a RICO conspiracy case brought by the Georgia Attorney General against 61 organizers and activists in the movement to Stop Cop City in Atlanta in 2023. In this Article, we tell the story of a creative tactic through which the movement to Stop Cop City resisted the conspiracy and RICO charges against them, charges which were dismissed in December 2025. In doing so, this Article also recounts a longer history stretching back to the first Red Scare of how left social movements have devised creative, strategic, and galvanizing ways to combat repressive criminalization. This Article’s analysis centers on the “People’s RICO,” a 2023 parody crafted by lawyers, organizers, and artists in response to the real RICO prosecution brought by the state that same month. In the short film, the People’s RICO issues its own RICO indictment, condemning a counter-conspiracy between state and private actors. This Article presents a reading of the People’s RICO that connects it to the history of social movements responding to conspiracy prosecutions with their own accusations of counter-conspiracies on the part of those in power. The Article reads the People’s RICO parody on three levels: satire, structural analysis, and legal imaginary. First, the film ridicules the genre of theatrical law enforcement press conferences to expose it for what it really is: the state silencing its opponents. Second, the People’s RICO uses the legal concepts of conspiracy and RICO to identify and indict the law and political economy of the carceral state, found within the tangle of public and private actors advancing their plans for a police training facility for their collective material enrichment. Third, the film imagines another world in which a group of lawyers representing the “People,” can reclaim legal forms and political power to condemn state and corporate actors that have deployed their prosecutorial power for political gain. But that hope for accountability is partial and qualified. The conspiracy and counter-conspiracy accusations between the State’s RICO and the People’s RICO help underscore contemporary anti-carceral movements’ ambivalent relationship to the legal form, and the legal form’s imperfect fit for a nuanced abolitionist praxis. Taken all together, the innovative approach of the People’s RICO should provide inspiration to movement actors, lawyers, and their allies in figuring out how to respond creatively to politically motivated prosecutions: by using the law without capitulating to its narrow horizons.

Stern on Detective Fiction

Simon Stern, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, has published Detective Fiction in the Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Law and Literature, ed. Robert Spoo and Simon Stern (London: Elgar, 2025), 149-51.

This is a preprint draft of a contribution to the Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Law and Literature, ed. Robert Spoo and Simon Stern (London: Elgar, 2025), 149-51. To quote or cite, please consult the published version.] [DOI: https://www.elgaronline.com/display/book/9781803925912/ch39.xml] Abstract: Detective fiction has been one of the most fruitful genres for studying the relations between law and literature, because it offers so many opportunities for examining fictional treatments of legal actors, criminal procedure, and jurisprudential thought. Recent research has built on these well-established connections to explore questions about the case form, scientific and epistemological aspects of forensic evidence and technology, and the problems of analyzing and representing intention. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about Sherlock Holmes provide an especially useful means of examining these issues, because the period in which Doyle was writing-the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries-witnessed a series of important changes in all these areas.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.