Marmor on How Art Is Like Law @CornellLaw

Andrei Marmor, Cornell University Law School, has published How Art is Like Law as Cornell Legal Studies Research Paper No. 24-13. Here is the abstract.

What makes something a work of art? Can we answer this question in a philosophically satisfactory way? I think that we can, as long as we understand the question as one about metaphysical grounding. One of the main arguments of this paper is to show that any plausible metaphysical grounding of artworks is going to pull in the direction of an institutional theory of art: An artifact is a work of art in virtue of its being identified and engaged with as such by the relevant community. Now, to legal philosophers this should sound very familiar, and that is really the main point of this essay. In jurisprudence we call this view legal positivism, and the point is that from a metaphysical perspective, the views are basically the same: certain types of artifact are art, or law, respectively, solely in virtue of an intricate convergence of conduct and attitudes that obtain in a certain population. The argument proceeds in three main stages: First it aims to show that the question about what makes things works of art, just like the very similar question about law, is best understood in terms of metaphysical grounding. Second, it argues that from this philosophical perspective -- asking in virtue of what, metaphysically speaking, an object is a work of art -- the answer of the institutional theory is eminently plausible: The gist of it is that something is an artwork, when it is, in virtue of the fact that it is considered to be art by a certain population, an artworld community. Finally, the paper argues that the grounding account can help us to answer some of the objections to the institutional theory, both in art and at least indirectly, by analogy, in law as well. Eventually, I hope to show that thinking about ways in which art is like law tells us something interesting about the nature of both.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Kerr on Reckless Speech in the Shadow of the Constitution @PKUSTL @SHULawReview

Andrew Jensen Kerr, Peking University School of Transnational Law, is publishing Reckless Speech in the Shadow of the Constitution in volume 55 of the Seton Hall Law Review. Here is the abstract.

In this Article, I explore the question of whether and to what extent a seeming threat may be justified by its potential social utility. This past summer, in Counterman v. Colorado, the U.S. Supreme Court held for the first time that the First Amendment requires a threats statute to include at minimum a “recklessness” mental state. This clarification was long overdue. However, Justice Kagan’s majority opinion ignored an important sense of how and why people express themselves, so as to make art. In concurrence, Justice Sotomayor observes how rap (in constitutional terms, “art speech”) can be misinterpreted when a speaker does not share the same cultural background as her audience. I connect this art speech dilemma to an undertheorized aspect of criminal law: how to interpret the normative component of our recklessness mens rea test that evaluates whether an actor took an unjustified risk of causing harm. Missing from Counterman, and the broader literature, is an analysis of whether making provocative art, or attempting to make provocative art, is at all justified by the constitutional status of the speech act and how it may further the underlying value system of the First Amendment. The rub for the First Amendment is that one of its basic purposes is to protect speech that we don’t like very much. This creates a very complicated analysis for the juror who is tasked with resolving whether, in my terms, a superficial threat is not-so-unjustified so that the speaker does not merit punishment. Delegating this kind of loaded question to a lay juror invites legal process concerns, like those framed by constitutional fact doctrine. But, in the end, I suggest that these academic concerns may have negligible consequence. Jurors can still rely on their folk sense of criminal responsibility when making culpability evaluations in the shadow of the Constitution, where speech crimes like true threats reside.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Upcoming CLE Event at DePaul College of Law: Arts Law Colloquium: Art and Its Image: Perspective From Copyright, Trademark, and Cultural Property Law, October 9, 2024 @DePaulLaw

 Upcoming event: CLE - Arts Law Colloquium: Art and its Image: Perspectives from Copyright, Trademark, and Cultural Property Law, October 9, 2024, at Depaul College of Law:

Join CAMCHL and CIPLIT for “Arts Law Colloquium: Art and its Image: Perspectives from Copyright, Trademark, and Cultural Property Law” with Dr. Felicia Caponigri, Visiting Scholar, Chicago-Kent College of Law; Guest Scholar, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca. This event will be hybrid, both in person and online. Lunch will be provided for in-person guests. 1.0 hour CLE available for IL attendees.

More information available here.

Berge on Phersu, Prosōpon, Persona: On Legal Personhood, Roman Sculpture and the Art of Law @berge_lukas

Lukas van den Berge, Utrecht University Faculty of Law, has published Phersu, Prosōpon, Persona: On Legal Personhood, Roman Sculpture and the Art of Law. Here is the abstract.

Many legal scholars and philosophers have recently embraced the idea of granting legal personhood and rights to entities other than human beings or their collective organisations. In search for effective innovations, however, it is also important to rethink the notions of legal personhood and rights themselves. This article aims to contribute to such a process of rethinking by examining the intellectual history of legal personhood. Tracing down the modern concept of the legal person not only to Latin persona, but also to Greek prosōpon and Etruscan phersu, it supplements (and partly also corrects) leading analyses of that concept’s history such as those of Hannah Arendt. Concurringly, it will not only connect (as Arendt and others have done) Roman legal personhood to ancient drama, but also to ancient sculpture. Finally, it will be argued that a deeper and broader understanding of the concept’s intellectual history may serve as a surprising source for future renewal.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Stramignoni on Figuring Out Justice in Dark Times: On Law, History, and the Visual @law_humanities

Igor Stramignoni, LSE Law School, has published Figuring Out Justice in Dark Times: On Law, History and the Visual in Law and Humanities. Here is the abstract.

What happens when we approach certain objects heuristically as images? How is one to orient oneself through such images? Might those images challenge our existing knowledge of the history of modernisation and written rationalisation of law after the Middle Ages? In this essay, I begin with certain early modern European artworks - paintings, engravings, woodcuts, and drawings - as well as some other less obvious objects - a striking black background in the portrait of a little-known physician, a compelling account of a nocturnal attempt to figure out justice at critical times, the gripping intensity permeating Dürer’s allegories of justice, and so on - and investigate the force those objects may have as images. Overall, the intention is to go beyond treating such objects as impassive historical evidence of the particular effort to conceive law intellectually or, alternatively, as codes for certain preexisting messages to be subsequently decoded. On approaching them differently, we may discover that such objects can sometimes resist our analyses or interpretations forcing us to engage with them in unexpected ways.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Howe and Peterson on Law and Art In the Aftermath

Steven Howe, University of Lucerne, and Laura Petersen, University of Melbourne, have edited a special focus section of Pólemos: Journal of Law, Literature and Culture, on ‘Law and Art in the Aftermath’.

 

Aftermath is a “peculiar concept” (Frank Möller). Frequently invoked, in both popular and academic discourse, it is rarely theorised, or even explicitly considered. What is the aftermath? Where is it? When does it begin, when does it end? What comes after the aftermath – what endures and what passes, what is transformed and what emerges new? Does all life carry the “taint of aftermath” (Joseph O’Neill)? Are we ever not, in some sense, in the aftermath?

 

The contributions in this special focus section revisit the idea of aftermath as it relates to critical matters of law, justice and jurisprudence. They pose new questions of the concept, and look again at what it means to be in the aftermath – legally, politically and experientially. At the same time, they offer fresh takes on the resonances of law and art as they move alongside, through and against one another across distinct legal, political and critical aftermaths.

 

Featuring essays by: Eliza Garnsey, Paul Gough, Connal Parsley, Clotilde Pégorier and Lars Waldorf.

 

Access via the link above.

 

Junde on Protection of Traditional Art Forms under Geographical Indications Law: A Case Study of Madhubani and Sujini Art Forms of Bihar India @JIPLP

Akanksha Jumde, University of Tasmania Faculty of Law, is publishing Protection of Traditional Art Forms under Geographical Indications Law: A Case Study of Madhubani and Sujini Art Forms of Bihar, India in the Journal of Intellectual Property & Practice (2022). Here is the abstract.

Using case studies of two of the oldest art forms practiced in Bihar, India, this article analyses challenges relating to the implementation of the law on Geographical Indications (GIs) in India, to better protect the rights and the craft of its most important stakeholders: the artists. This article is also a critique on the application of the current Indian GI regulatory framework to its traditional handicraft sectors. The findings derived with reference to handicrafts are also relevant to the broader question of whether GIs can protect the traditional knowledge or indigenous knowledge of the stakeholders. This article finds that lack of provisions related to quality control and monitoring mechanisms, discrepancies in the definition of ‘Goods’ and ‘GI’, the anomalous concept of authorized users and difficulties in the application for registration requirements, impose serious limitations. We, therefore, suggest that the extant regulatory framework needs to be strengthened by adequate support by the government to help artists to promote and market their work, and establishment of adequate regulations for quality control, post-GI registration.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Papers: International Conference on Law and Art in the 19th Century: Power in Images, Verona, October 19-21, 2022

Call for Papers: International Conference on Law and Art in the 19th Century: Power in Images, Verona, October 19-21, 2022 

The Coronation of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David; the courthouse of the Court of Cassation in Rome; the statues of Justice or Liberty; the caricatures by the painter Honoré Daumier: these are just a few examples of the artistic representation of law, power, justice and rights in the 19th century.

 

Sometimes faithful reproductions of the legal values produced at the time, sometimes exaltation, transfiguration or denunciation of certain aspects of the legal system. Art, like law, is a human factor that is sometimes able to assert itself from below, from the society that produces it; at other times it comes from above, in tune with the designs of those who hold political power and who use art to put forward a certain image of power, as well as to disseminate a precise idea of the juridical. The importance of artistic images and, more specifically, of the iconographic representation of key themes and concepts of law in their various legal contexts, requires no lengthy demonstration. The evocative capacity and symbolic potential released by images has often been used in Western history to effectively express, and at the same time to reinforce, key ideas from the legal world through the strength and immediacy of an iconic message, so as to obtain the broadest possible understanding and adherence in the community of reference for the model of legal organisation in force at any given moment. 

The research team set up to further study the project Images, Law and Power in the Modern Age, within the framework of the Excellence Project of the Department of Legal Sciences of the University of Verona (2018-2022), is organising a conference on the theme of the artistic representation of law in the 19th century, from the French Revolution to the early twentieth century. The purpose is to investigate the ways in which, during the nineteenth century, the substantial change in the structural characteristics of the legal phenomenon, and the emergence of an alternative legal experience, corresponded to the replacement - or re-semantization - of the symbols and images traditionally expressed in the law, so that they were more suitable to convey the new concept of the juridical in society. By studying the painting, sculpture and architecture of a particular epoch, it is possible to understand and delve into the legal reality, observing law in its complexity, as well as its ability to reside within society and give it order and structure. In this sense, the nineteenth century is a complex century, which begins with the French Revolution and the great break with the social and legal order of the Ancien Régime, and with the simultaneous establishment of a new socio-political order, marked by the affirmation of bourgeois society. The century ends with the emergence of a plural and complex society, marked by the advent of positivism, Darwinism and an unprecedented technological and industrial order. The cultural, political and economic changes are intertwined - in a play of reciprocal influences - with the legal and institutional ones, and are also expressed in an extensive and coherent iconographic system, either new or repurposed, which not only serves to describe the new order but also aims to make it empathetically present to the minds and hearts of those who confront it. These were sometimes the result of a specific cultural policy expressed on an iconographic level with reference to the world of law, and sometimes the result of a series of progressive ‘adjustments’ of the iconic baggage of the past to the new situation of modernity. Art follows the movement of history and the needs of society. Taking up the simple forms of the past in neoclassicism, it at the same time felt the urgency to describe the new, perceiving a cultural and social restlessness capable of evolving rapidly at the turn of the century. Architecture, with its harmonious neoclassical geometric forms, clashed with the utilitarian architecture desired by governments and required by the prevailing era of industrialisation. Painting initially followed revolutionary suggestions, then adapted to the magniloquent exaltation of Napoleon's exploits and the monarchies during the Restoration period, before becoming a denunciation of social injustice in satirical caricatures in tandem with the rise of Impressionism and Realism. Partially different movements followed in sculpture, which asserted itself in the 19th century as a monumental representation of political power in statues of monarchs and emperors, but also as an exaltation of the rights of freedom to be made present and visible in the urban spaces of the new cities. The subjects connected with the theme of the conference are therefore multiple and concern the connection of the varied artistic world with law and thus with political power, justice, legislative power and the fundamental rights of the individual. It is also possible to question the influence of the legal phenomenon on art, exploring the relations between artists and jurists, as well as painters and rulers; or again, to analyse artistic works that oppose a given legal and political system, denouncing the abuses of power or the injustice of laws. From this point of view, the historical reconstruction of this evolution is essential to grasp its deep implications as well as to highlight caesuras and continuities with respect to previous legal experience. The contributions of the history of art, architecture, and culture in general can lead to a deeper and more conscious reading of the legal phenomenon, one which takes into account its irreducible specificity but also its vital connection with contemporary cultural and artistic manifestations. The conference, therefore, aims to analyse the theme of the artistic representation of law in the 19th century via a multidisciplinary and comparative approach, stimulating discussion and dialogue among the participants, so as to ensure the historical profundity and depth of interpretation of an topic pervasive but underestimated, that of the translation into images of the values and 'myths' of law and power. It will thus be possible, starting from the notion of the changes experienced by society and, therefore also by its law in the 19th century, to lay bare first of all the operation of the ideological configuration of the rule of law and bourgeois society, which certainly benefit significantly from recourse to images capable of constructing a shared ideal and which is also disseminated through artistic images.

 

The conference organisers invite all interested scholars to participate in the call by sending the title and abstract (minimum 300 words - maximum 500 words) of the proposed paper and also indicating name, surname and university of affiliation, together with a curriculum vitae (of no more than four pages). In addition, the organisers are also accepting proposals for panels, consisting of three speakers and a chair and possibly a discussant; in this case, a title and an abstract of the panel (minimum 300 and maximum 500 words) are required in addition to the abstracts of the individual papers and the curriculum vitae of each speaker, chair and discussant. The conference will be held in Italian, French and English, so proposals can be submitted in any of these languages.

 

Applications must be sent by 30 June 2022 to: immagini.diritto@ateneo.univr.it Proposals will be accepted by 31 July 2022. The conference will take place in Verona in October 2022, potentially in person, although we are also considering online transmission of the event (candidates who know already that they will not be able to travel to Italy are requested to indicate this, and to specify the time zone of their country).

 

The organisers will bear the cost of accommodation and meals for the conference participants. The conference papers will be published following successful peer review. A prerequisite for participation in the conference is the delivery of the text ready for publication (maximum limit: 60,000 characters including spaces and notes) on the date of the conference, in one of the languages used for the work.

 

For any further communication or information: immagini.diritto@ateneo.univr.it The Chairman of the Scientific Committee: Prof. Giovanni Rossi: giovanni.rossi@univr.it; The person in charge of the organisation: Dr Pietro Schirò: pietro.schiro@univr.it.

Call For Papers: Art/Law Network, Summer Seminar, HOMEing, June, July, August 2021 @ArtLawNetwork

 

The Art / Law Network is holding a Summer Seminar Series, HOMEing, in June, July and August. There are two themes

• Migrants in Art
• Art, Law and the Border

It has a call for papers/submissions open for art works and papers on the two themes: https://artlawnetwork.org/event/aln-homeing-summer-series-projects-and-call-for-submissions-14-june-2021/.

Mannoni on Legislation on the Heritage Protection and Restoration of Antiquity: The Case of the Acropolis of Athens in the Nineteenth Century @CaFoscari

Chiara Mannoni, Ca' Foscari University of Venice, has published Legislation on the Heritage Protection and Restoration of Antiquity. The Case of the Acropolis of Athens in the Nineteenth Century as Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory Research Paper Series No. 2021-08.

The analysis of the restoration carried out on the Acropolis of Athens between 1834 and 1875 offers the opportunity to evaluate the inferences of law and artistic taste on the reconstruction of one of the most famous monuments in the world. The ethical and aesthetic ambiguities of this early work are outlined through the study of Leo von Klenze’s memoranda on the refurbishment of the Acropolis temples, and the first laws on the protection of the Greek heritage issued by the Bavarian rulers in 1834 and 1837. In particular, the discussion will consider Klenze’s guidelines in relation to his conceptual inconsistencies about Romanticism and Neoclassicism, and within the implications – both juridical and aesthetic – of the edicts issued on the safeguard of antiquity in Greece. As will be argued, this early restoration not only would transform the Acropolis historical profile, but also affect the later refurbishment completed on the site in the twentieth century.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Adler on The Shifting Law of Sexual Speech: Rethinking Robert Mapplethorpe @nyulaw

Amy Adler, New York University of Law, is publishing The Shifting Law of Sexual Speech: Rethinking Robert Mapplethorpe in volume 2020 of the University of Chicago Legal Forum. Here is the abstract.

This Article explores the dramatic changes that have occurred over the last thirty years in the First Amendment doctrines governing sexual speech. As a prism through which to evaluate these changes, I consider the thirtieth anniversary of the landmark Robert Mapplethorpe trial, the first censorship prosecution against an art museum in the history of this country and the defining battle in the culture wars that roiled post-Reagan America. The target was the exhibition of formally beautiful, sexually hard-core photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe on view at a museum in Cincinnati. The controversy that erupted over those images—fueled by anxieties about AIDS, homosexuality, sadomasochism, race, government funding for the arts, and the vanishing boundary between art and pornography—spilled out of the courtroom into popular culture and into the halls of the United States Congress. I analyze the shifting trajectories over the years of the two legal doctrines that were at the center of the Mapplethorpe case—obscenity law and child pornography law—and I show the starkly divergent paths these two areas of law have taken. While obscenity law has receded in importance, and while the allegedly obscene photos from the trial have become prized in museums and in the art market, child pornography law has followed the opposite course. In contrast to the allegedly obscene pictures, which pose almost no legal risk today, the two photographs of children that were on trial have become more, not less, controversial over the past thirty years, to the point where curators are quietly reluctant to show these images at all. In my view, these photos now occupy a space of legal and moral uncertainty. What explains these differing legal and artistic trajectories? What happened to change the dynamics of showing these works? In tracing the divergent paths taken by these two doctrinal areas, I explore not only the stark changes in the law of sexual speech, but ultimately the mutually productive relationship between censorship law and culture. Free speech law governed this chapter in the culture wars, yet in surprising ways, the changing social norms unleashed by the culture wars have also governed free speech law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Newly Published: ART LAW AND CULTURAL HERITAGE LAW / DIREITO DA ARTE E DO PATRIMÔNIO CULTURAL (v. 17, 2020) @franca_marcilio

Newly published: ART LAW AND CULTURAL HERITAGE LAW / DIREITO DA ARTE E DO PATRIMÔNIO CULTURAL, volume 17, no. 3 (2020). Edited by Marcilio Toscano Franca Filho and Ardyllis Alves Soares. 

Here is a link to the website, which has links to PDFs of the articles.

Newly Published: Painting Constitutional Law: Xavier Cortada's Images of Constitutional Rights, edited by M. C. Mirow and Howard W. Wasserman @BrillPublishing

Newly published: Painting Constitutional Law: Xavier Cortada’s Images of Constitutional Rights (M. C. Mirow and Howard W. Wasserman, eds., Brill, 2021) (Legal History Library; 46). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

In May It Please the Court, artist Xavier Cortada portrays ten significant decisions by the Supreme Court of the United States that originated from people, places, and events in Florida. These cases cover the rights of criminal defendants, the rights of free speech and free exercise of religion, and the powers of states. In Painting Constitutional Law, scholars of constitutional law analyse the paintings and cases, describing the law surrounding the cases and discussing how Cortada captures these foundational decisions, their people, and their events on canvas. This book explores new connections between contemporary art and constitutional law. Contributors are: Renée Ater, Mary Sue Backus, Kathleen A. Brady, Jenny E. Carroll, Erwin Chemerinsky, Xavier Cortada, Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Leslie Kendrick, Corinna Barrett Lain, Paul Marcus, Linda C. McClain, M.C. Mirow, James E. Pfander, Laura S. Underkuffler, and Howard M. Wasserman.

CFP: Special Issue, Art Law and Cultural Heritage Law, Brazilian Journal of International Law @franca_marcilio

CALL FOR PAPERS

BRAZILIAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

SPECIAL ISSUE – Art Law and Cultural Heritage Law

The Brazilian Journal of International Law, review indexed on Scopus and Qualis A1, invites submissions for a special issue on Art Law and Cultural Heritage Law to be published in December 2020. The issue will be edited by Professors Marcílio Toscano Franca Filho (Universidade Federal da Paraíba – UFPB, João Pessoa, Brazil) and Ardyllis Alves Soares (Centro Universitário de Brasília, Brasília, Brazil).

Submissions on all international aspects of Art Law and Cultural Heritage Law are welcomed.
Conscious of the undoubted significance of culture for peaceful international relations, for economic and social development, for the well-being of humanity and for the progress of civilization; and convinced of the worldwide relevance of culture as a source of remembrance, understanding, identity, dialogue and cohesion; the guest editors look forward to receiving innovative contributions that analyze the internationalization of Art Law and Cultural Heritage Law.

Suggested topics:
– 25th Anniversary of the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects;
– 50th Anniversary of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property;
– Due Diligence in Art Law and Cultural Heritage Law;
– Concept of Artist and Artwork under International Law;
– Archaeological and Underwater Cultural Heritages;
– International Museum Law and Codes of Conduct;
– Cooperation, Restitution and Repatriation of Cultural Property;
– Climate Change, Sea Level Rise and Cultural Heritage
– International Arbitration and Artworks;
– The Role of Trusts and Freeports in Cultural Heritage Law;
– Protection of the Cultural Heritage of Indigenous Peoples;
– Digital Art, its Definition And Preservation;
– Restitution of Holocaust-era Assets;
– Looted Art and Cultural Heritage in times of War;
– Succession of States and Cultural Heritage;
– Organised Crime, Terrorism and Cultural Heritage;
– Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Measures in the Art Market;
– International Circulation of Cultural Property;
– International Tax & Customs Law;
– Auction Houses under International Law;
– Monuments and Memorials as Reparations of Human Rights Violation
– Monument-Toppling

THE JOURNAL

The Brazilian Journal of International Law is a double-blind peer-reviewed journal which publishes three issues per year.

SUBMISSION PROCESS

Manuscripts may be submitted in English, French, Portuguese, Italian or Spanish. Submitting articles in English is strongly recommended. Manuscript revisions will be in the language of submission. Non-native speakers are strongly encouraged to have their paper read by a native speaker. The Journal will reject articles if the level of chosen language is insufficient.
The Journal has a double-blind peer-review policy. The response from the reviewers will normally be provided within 30 days from the submission. Authors are expected to correct and return proofs of accepted articles within 15 days.
Authors should preferably hold a PhD and/or have a strong professional/academic background in Art Law and Cultural Heritage Law at the time of submission. The editors reserve the right to scrutinize and provide feedback on manuscripts before review with regard to their suitability for the journal, including concerning analytical consistency, non-compliance with the applicable submission guidelines, and linguistic and stylistic matters.
The deadline for submission is August 15th. 2020.

COPYRIGHT

All content published by the Journal, except where identified, is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution-type BY-NC. This will ensure the widest dissemination and protection against copyright infringement of articles. The “article” is defined as comprising the final, definitive, and citable Version of Scholarly Record, and includes: (a) the accepted manuscript in its final and revised form, including the text, abstract, and all accompanying tables, illustrations, data; and (b) any supplemental material. As an author, you are required to secure permission to reproduce any proprietary text, illustration, table, or other material, including data, audio, video, film stills, and screenshots, and any supplemental material you propose to submit. This applies to direct reproduction as well as “derivative reproduction” (where you have created a new figure or table that derives substantially from a copyrighted source). The reproduction of short extracts of text, excluding poetry and song lyrics, for the purposes of criticism may be possible without formal permission on the basis that the quotation is reproduced accurately and full attribution is given.MANUSCRIPT STRUCTUREGuidelines for preparing and submitting your manuscript to this journal are provided below. The Journal considers all manuscripts on the strict condition that they have not been submitted elsewhere, that they have not been published already, nor are they under consideration for publication or in press elsewhere. Contributions must report original research and will be subjected to review by referees at the discretion of the Editorial Committee.GENERAL GUIDELINES Manuscripts should be written in Times New Roman, size 12, space between lines 1.5 throughout the manuscript (including all quotations, endnotes and references). Pages should be numbered consecutively. Notes should be listed consecutively at the end of the article (endnotes), and clearly marked in the text at the point of punctuation by superior numbers. Endnotes should be used for clarification purposes only. Manuscripts must be submitted in Word format (.doc). PDF files will not be accepted. All the authors of a paper must attach their short curriculum vitae (CV), which must consist of a single one paragraph-text of 100-120 words in length, each. This is to be done online during the submission process. The affiliations of all named co-authors should be the affiliation where the research was conducted. If any of the named co-authors moves affiliation during the peer review process, the new affiliation can be given as a footnote. Please note that no changes to affiliation can be made after the article is accepted. All manuscripts submitted should be free from jargon and be written as clearly and concisely as possible. Non-discriminatory language is mandatory. Sexist or racist terms must not be used. All submissions should be made online via http://www.publicacoesacademicas.uniceub.br/index.php/rdi/user/register FORMAT Articles should be based on original research and develop an original argument falling within the scope of the journal. The articles are subjected to a blind-peer review and must include: Title Abstract of up to 200 words 5-7 keywords Main text References (at the end of the article) Footnotes Acknowledgements (if appropriate) Table(s) and Figure(s) with caption(s) (on individual files) (if appropriate) FURTHER INFORMATION For questions regarding the content of this special issue, please contact: Professor NitishMonebhurrun — Editor of the Brazilian Journal of International law (nitish.monebhurrun@gmail.com)

ISSN 2236-997X (impresso) – ISSN 2237-1036 (on-line)

Now Available: di Micco, Filho, and Magri, Circolazione, cessione, riciclaggio. Alcuni profili giuridici dell’arte e del suo mercato (Università degli Studi di Torino, 2020)

Newly published:

Domenico di Micco, Marcilio Franca Filho, e Geo Magri, Circolazione, cessione, riciclaggio. Alcuni profili giuridici dell’arte e del suo mercato (Università degli Studi di Torino, 2020) (Quaderni del Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza) Here is a description of the contents (in Italian).

Nella fluidità dello spazio globale, venuti meno i tratti classici delle dinamiche economiche, oggi più che mai l’arte si riscopre oggetto e soggetto del mercato. Così, i problemi legati alla peculiarità della sua circolazione, al suo essere un potenziale strumento nelle complesse dinamiche del riciclaggio internazionale nonché la previsione di specifici strumenti legislativi per incoraggiare la sua acquisizione da parte dei soggetti pubblici senza ricorrere alla mediazione del mercato, costituiscono di fatto un interessante “banco di prova” per il diritto e uno stimolante campo d’indagine per il giurista.

Full text available at the link.

Murray on The Art of Yoko Ono and the Law of Rape @murrayyxta @LoyolaLawSchool

Yxta Maya Murray, Loyola (Los Angeles) Law School, is publishing Cut Piece: The Art of Yoko Ono and the Law of Rape in the United States in the Law & Literature Journal. Here is the abstract.

In 1964, Yoko Ono performed Cut Piece in New York’s Carnegie Hall. This performance art involved Ono sitting on a bare wood stage wearing dark stockings, a dress, and a cardigan. She sat still while largely white male and female members of the audience approached her and one by one cut off a piece of her clothing with a pair of scissors. In the years since Cut Piece was performed, it has attained a nearly mythic quality among feminist art historians; while Ono herself has not always embraced Cut Piece's illumination of sexual and racial violence, many art critics have recognized its capacity to express important aspects of sexual and racial violation that go unrecognized in legal and civil discourse. In this paper, I limn Cut Piece's relevance to a gendered and raced problem that law often confronts when a woman has experienced a sexual violation, but did not resist, did not complain during or afterwards, appears to have "invited it," and otherwise does not conform to the stereotype of what Susan Estrich has described as a "real rape" victim. I study Cut Piece in relationship to mainstream legal responses to sexual violation that occurs in this context, as well as feminist and intersectional and anti-essentialist approaches. I also examine the important relationship that exists between law, art, and feminist legal theory. In the end, I conclude that Cut Piece is resonant with intersectional, anti-essentialist, and radical feminist approaches to sexual violations that exhibit Cut Piece's complex dynamics: While the law does not now recognize these violations as illegal, these theories and Cut Piece together offer a new pathway toward understanding the connections between race and sexual violation.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Mirow on Legal Iconography and Painting Constitutional Law @fiulaw

M. C. Mirow, Florida International University College of Law, is publishing Legal Iconography and Painting Constitutional Law in Painting Constitutional Law: Xavier Cortada's Images of Constitutional Rights (M.C. Mirow & Howard M. Wasserman, eds., Leiden: Brill, Forthcoming). Here is the abstract. Predominantly a European phenomenon, the study of legal iconography has expanded to the common law world and informed approaches to Anglo-American legal development. European painting, sculptures, and other artwork were used in forensic settings to channel behavior of judges, lawyers, and litigants. Such artwork often combined religious perspectives, such as depictions of the Last Judgement, but might also reflect more secular notions such as Justice. Cultural historians and theorists have supplemented these more traditional approaches by expanding the scope of the analysis of the relationship between image and law. This study illustrates the potential for legal iconography to offer deeper insights into law, legal institutions, justice, injustice, and legal change in modern society. Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Rub on Owning Nothingness: Between the Legal and the Social Norms of the Art World @Guy_A_Rub

Guy A. Rub, Ohio State University College of Law, is publishing Owning Nothingness: Between the Legal and the Social Norms of the Art World in the Brigham Young University Law Review. Here is the abstract.

Almost $8 million — that is what the Crystal Bridges Museum paid for one work of contemporary art in November 2015. What did that museum get for that hefty sum? From a legal perspective, absolutely nothing. The work it purchased was just an idea, and ideas of this kind escape legal protection. The reason that large, sophisticated, experienced, and legally-represented institutes are willing to pay millions of dollars for something that the law does not recognize has to do with the social norms of the art world. This Article is one of the first in legal scholarship to examine at depth those norms in this multibillion-dollar industry. It does so by, inter alia, reporting on interviews the author conducted with industry insiders concerning their practices. The Article suggests that those norms create property-like rights in all artworks, whether or not they are legally protected, as well as an ongoing right of artists to partly control the use of their works. Those social norms fill a gap between the ways in which the contemporary art world understands creativity and ways in which our legal system actually incentivizes creative endeavors. The Article analyzes the normative implications of these social norms and the gap they fill. First, it explains how those norms incentivize certain forms of creativity in a way that is more effective and efficient than property rights. Second, going beyond the art world, the Article shows how the social norms expose certain hidden assumptions in copyright authorship and their shortcomings. It suggests how the law can be improved to account for the richer description of creativity this Article provides. Third, the Article contributes to the ongoing debate concerning private-property ownership. The art world provides sellers with significant post-sale control over their works in a way that the law commonly finds undesirable. That tension might justify rethinking of the current legal rules that disincentivize post-sale control.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Jewel and Campbell, Death in the Shadows @ljewel

Lucy A. Jewel , University of Tennessee College of Law, and Mary Campbell are publishing Death in the Shadows in Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal (2019). Here is the abstract.

This paper is about the law and visual culture. Its centerpiece is Parson Weems’ Fable (1939), a painting by the American artist Grant Wood (1891-1942) that depicts the apocryphal story of George Washington and the cherry tree. At first glance, Wood’s image appears to celebrate an enduring myth of American virtue, namely Washington’s precocious inability to tell a lie. Studying the picture more closely, however, one finds a pair of black figures, presumably two of the Washingtons’ slaves. Stationed beneath dark storm clouds and harvesting cherries from a second tree, these slaves invoke yet another national myth, that of the domestic serenity that supposedly reigned on Virginia’s colonial plantations. In the process, they quietly invoke the country’s grievous history of racial oppression, coercion, and brutality.

This isn’t the only place where Woods’ painting speaks of racial violence. To the contrary, Parson Weems’ Fable also raises the specter of lynching. Examining the shadows directly beneath the Washingtons and their fabled tree, one discovers a hanging black body. Intentional or not, this dangling corpse conjures the spectacular acts of theatrical violence that mobs of Euro-Americans inflicted on African Americans during the late nineteenth century and well into the twentieth. By the 1930s, heated protests emerged against lynching—in popular songs, magazines, and art exhibitions, as well as more traditional political arenas. Unlike the painters most closely associated with him, Wood didn’t participate directly in such moments of artistic protest. Nonetheless, he would have been exposed to them as he painted Parson Weems’ Fable in the winter of 1939.

Regardless of Wood’s intentions, the work he created persistently connects the country’s origin myths to the murderous violence the U.S. has repeatedly inflicted on persons of color. Moreover, as the painting itself seems to realize, the law and culture forged by colonial Virginia planters like George Washington eventually morphed into a collective white psychopathy that found vicious expression in the practice of spectacle lynching. This colonial legal regime was deeply visual—a fact that accounts for not only its power, but also for the fundamental influence it continues to exert on current American conceptions of race.

A deep reading of Parson Weems’ Fable in the context of both its time (1939) and its setting (1736) reveals the extent to which the law is visual and the visual is legal. Indeed, the painting gives us a valuable lens for perceiving the pervasive connections that run between the two. Our thesis is that the profoundly visuo-legal nature of the country’s racial foundations helps explain the lack of progress the nation has made in dismantling the color line. As a result, the impulse to join the seemingly unrelated disciplines of legal study and art history isn’t an academic gimmick, but rather a necessity. For centuries, images have worked in tandem with statutes, judicial decisions, and various forms of legal (and illegal) punishment to indelibly imprint a logic of racial violence in our collective mindset. In order to fully excavate this logic, we need scholars who can analyze pictures as well as the law.

In terms of structure, we begin by introducing the painting and our analytical framework and method. After that, we explain the theoretical foundations for studying law and culture in this context. Finally, we connect colonial Virginia’s legal and cultural landscape to the traumatic racial violence that continues to haunt our national mythology.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Launch of Visible Justice: The Exhibition

An announcement from Max Houghton regarding the launch of Visible Justice, the Exhibition:

David Birkin and I have been working since January with LCC post grad students, ngos Reprieve, PlanB and Refugee Journalism, artists Poulomi Basu and David Blandy & Larry Achiampong … to create Visible Justice, the exhibition. The students have responded to briefs and created self initiated work on such themes as the death penalty, torture and rendition, climate change, knife crime, surveillance and the experience of migration. Their work forms the public programme for LCC’s School of Media 2019.

The show also features work by aforementioned artists plus LCC’s Syrian Artist Protection Fund Fellow in Residence Abd Doumany, Corinne Silva, Edmund Clark and Nathaniel White, who have each supported the collaborations, and whose work resonates with the themes.

It would be wonderful to see you at our associated events. See links for info on brilliant speakers.

Visible Justice launch 16 April - with performance, music and poetry readings:

https://www.arts.ac.uk/whats-on/visible-justice-launch-night

30 April: Young Blood: A Round Table Discussion on Knife Crime and Restorative Justice:

https://www.arts.ac.uk/whats-on/young-blood-knife-crime-and-restorative-justice-discussion-and-film-screening

03 May: the second symposium of our research collective, also called Visible Justice - looking at the injured body - Visible Justice: Embodied Activism

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/visible-justice-embodied-activism-symposium-tickets-59523729076

It’s all free, but booking is essential via the links above.

We are working on the build this week and it’s all looking very exciting indeed.

Best wishes

Max

visible-justice.org