Netolitzky on But My Ghosts Are So Hard to Hear: Pseudolaw and Conspiracy Culture @DNetolitzky @UAlberta

Donald Netolitzky, University of Alberta, has published But My Ghosts Are So Hard to Hear: Pseudolaw and Conspiracy Culture at 8 International Journal of Coercion, Abuse, and Manipulation 11 (2025).

Pseudolaw is an alternative counter-law that has propagated worldwide post-2000. Pseudolaw’s core rules and concepts are surprisingly conserved despite this scheme’s adoption by diverse marginal dissident anti-authority populations and individuals. Pseudolaw and its users are frequently identified as a “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorists,” respectively. This article evaluates those designations. Pseudolaw’s “good law” versus “bad law” narrative and the Strawman Theory core concept clearly satisfy the criteria to classify pseudolaw as a conspiracy theory. However, whether persons who use pseudolaw should be identified as conspiracy theorists is more complex. At least some “mercenary” pseudolaw users are greed-based operators who have no interest in pseudolaw’s substance, including its conspiratorial aspects. Attempts to evaluate whether pseudolaw “believers” exhibit traits and characteristics identified by the recent broad academic investigation of conspiracy theorists are unfortunately frustrated by the uncooperative responses from pseudolaw users to social sciences investigators and our limited access to pseudolaw “insider” perspectives.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Jewel on Time As a Flat Circle: Lessons From Past and Present Conspiracy Theories @ljewel @UTKLaw

Lucy A. Jewel, University of Tennessee College of Law, is publishing Time is a Flat Circle: Lessons from Past and Present Conspiracy Theories in volume 3 of the LSU Journal for Social Justice & Policy (2023). Here is the abstract.

This essay analyzes how conspiracy theories were viewed in the 1990s, particularly in the context of the then-existing debate over racial differences in perception, and how they are dealt with today, where prevalent conspiracy theory adherents are White and conservative (QAnon, Pizzagate, and widespread voter fraud) in the 2020 election). In the 1990s, conflict over conspiracy theories was part of a larger culture war involving critical race theory, conspiracy thinking, truth, reason, and post-modern theory. These cultural flashpoints are obviously still with us today. But now, high-profile persons holding false, unreasonable beliefs often hail from the right and are assailed by those on the left. This pattern is visible in congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has supported tenets of the QAnon conspiracy theory1 as well as House Republicans who have expressed skepticism and hostility for Covid-19 vaccine efforts.2 This essay begins by looking at two prominent sources from the 1990s––Regina Austin’s Beyond Black Demons & White Devils: Anti-Black Conspiracy Theorizing and the Black Public Sphere3 and Jeffrey Rosen’s The Bloods and the Crits: O.J. Simpson, Critical Race Theory, the Law, and the Triumph of Color in America, which engages in part with Austin’s ideas about conspiracy theories.4 It then contextualizes these two pieces within the raging conflict over Critical Race Theory that was occurring in law schools at the time. Next, the essay discusses trends that have emerged since the 1990s that shed light on the topic. How have things changed and how have they just remained the same? Critical Race Theory remains a tremendous flash point, but the dynamics are different now. There is a greater consensus (as first articulated by critical race theorists) that people do arrive at perceptions differently, based on differing social realities, especially race. On the other hand, there is still strong opposition to the view that race and racism continue to plague U.S. society, which has resulted in recent legislation that restricts the teaching of Critical Race Theory in public education settings. The paper’s next sections discuss post-modernism, critical race theory, and the emergence of conservative post-modernism. How has post-modern and neoliberal culture, refracted into social media forms, revamped how we engaged with “the truth.” After our forty-fifth President won and held office, we live in a world where a post-modern aphorism “truth is not truth” emanates from public figures on the right.5 Because this study raises two important foundational items––conspiracy theories and post-modern modes of thought––this essay delineates an intellectual history that includes post-modernism, neoliberalism, the rise of “conservative post-modernism,” and relevant social-science literature on conspiracy theories. In conclusion, the essay identifies common threads and lessons from the intellectual history. Ultimately, there is some overlap in these folk thought forms, whether they come from the right or the left. If we look at the underlying subtext within conspiracy theories, there are bridges that can be built, particularly in rethinking how we level scapegoating and shame as a form of social control, how people might legitimately feel marginalized, and how unchecked elitism sows seeds of resentment and mistrust.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

William Shakespeare: Genius or Stand-In

Do filmgoers care about a movie's historical accuracy? Does an audience take the plot of a docudrama "based on historical events" literally? The Guardian has asked its readers just this question in the case of the new film Anonymous, which takes the position that someone other than William Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare.

Candidates and alternative theories abound. Did Francis Bacon actually write the plays and poems? Christopher Marlowe? The Earl of Essex? Sir Walter Raleigh? The Earl of Derby? Steven Dutch surveys some of the candidates and theories here; James Shapiro in his recent book Contested Will discusses the issue at length.  Schools and institutions have sponsored symposia on the subject. Frontline presented a program on the authorship of the plays. Even Justice Stevens offers an opinion.  His pick is the Earl of Oxford.

If you can't decide, you can take a fallback position on the question of who wrote Shakespeare's works. William Shakespeare.

Bibliography:

James Shapiro, Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare (Simon and Shuster, 2010).

Symposium: Who Wrote Shakespeare: An Evidentiary Puzzle  72 Tenn. L. Rev 1 (Fall 2004).

The "Original" Thirteenth Amendment and Titles of Nobility

Gideon M. Hart has published The 'Original' Thirteenth Amendment: The Misunderstood Titles of Nobility Amendment at 94 Marquette Law Review 311 (2010). Here is the abstract.

This Article provides one of the first truly comprehensive accounts of the “Titles of Nobility Amendment.” The Titles of Nobility Amendment is one of only a handful of proposed amendments to the Constitution that were passed by Congress, but then not ratified by a sufficient number of states. The Amendment would have revoked the citizenship of any individual who accepted a "title of nobility or honor" or who accepted any "present, pension, office, or emolument" from any foreign state without congressional permission.

Despite its failure during the ratification process, the Amendment was printed in the 1815 version of the Statutes at Large as the Thirteenth Amendment, and the Amendment was widely believed to be part of the Constitution well into the late nineteenth century. In recent years, right-wing radicals have seized upon the Amendment, claiming that it was ratified and suppressed in a wide-ranging conspiracy and that it would bar lawyers from citizenship due to their use of the term "esquire." Although a handful of recent articles have addressed these patently false claims, these articles have also misunderstood the Amendment, dismissing it as the product of xenophobia and petty politics.

This Article sets out to address these misconceptions by closely studying the Amendment’s historical context. In reality, the Amendment is an interesting hybrid of the rising fears during the decade preceding the War of 1812 that the United States would be recaptured and marginalized by European powers and of the long tradition of opposition to hereditary privilege in the United States. During the first decade of the nineteenth century, the United States was increasingly buffeted and threatened by the major European powers, particularly by Britain and France. Under great foreign pressure, individuals on both sides of the political spectrum became increasingly suspicious of each other’s loyalties and both parties regularly accused the other of secret collusion and cooperation with foreign states. A response to this perceived foreign threat, the Amendment was intended to prevent the recruitment of American officials and citizens by foreign states with titles, such as the Legion of Honor, or other attractive presents and offices. Today these fears seem far-fetched, but at the time there was a very real worry that the American experiment would be rotted from the inside-out through secret conspiracy and subversion by European powers itching to reestablish their dominance in the Americas. Although long misunderstood, the Amendment is an interesting piece of history and is one of the most intriguing near-Amendments to our Constitution.

Download the article here.