Cultures of Legality in Weimar Germany: Next Series of Lectures at the University of Lucerne

From Dr. Stephen Howe, Senior Research and Lecturer, Associate Director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Legal Studies, Iucernaiuris, University of Lucerne

The next series of lectures in Cultures of Legality in Weimar Germany

Wednesday 12 November, 10.00-11.00

Visualising ‘Through Science to Justice’? Sexological Photographs during the Weimar Republic

Xiaojue Michelle Zhu (The Courtauld Institute of Art, London)

 

Tuesday 25 November, 16.00-17.00

Visualizing the Legal Subject in Weimar Film

Hannes Charen (Pratt Institute, Brooklyn)

 

Wednesday 10 December, 09.00-10.00

The Paragraph Film: Genre, Emotions and the Struggle for Law

Steven Howe (University of Lucerne)

 

All sessions are free and open to all, and we warmly invite you to join us. Further details, including registration info, available via the links.

 

Please note that listed start times are CET. Time zone converter here.

Call For Papers: Argumentation 2025--Games of Law, October 31-November 1, Faculty of Law, Masaryk University

Call for Papers:

Argumentation 2025 – Games of Law

October 31 – November 1

The Argumentation 2025 conference continues the project of creating space for alternative perspectives on law, fostering the emergence of critical jurisprudences that challenge legal orthodoxy. This year’s theme is Games of Law, an invitation to explore how legal practices can be viewed through the metaphor of games and the deeper implications this brings for understanding legal authority, fairness, and justice.

The metaphor of games has long been used to analyze social structures, with Johan Huizinga’s concept of homo ludens framing play as an essential aspect of human culture (Huizinga, 1980, 4). Law, too, can be seen as a form of structured play, where participants – judges, lawyers, litigants – operate within defined rules to achieve specific outcomes (Dybowski et al. 2022). Yet, just as in games, legal practices produce both winners and losers, with real-world consequences.

Moreover, law, as a system of structured conflict, reflects the inherent tensions and contradictions within human thinking and interaction. Legal practices, like games, are grounded in conflict – both internal and external – an unavoidable part of the human condition. Instead of attempting to eliminate conflict, legal systems strive to manage and transform it, utilizing discursive representations that foster resilience against its destructive forms. These mechanisms not only enable the resolution of disputes but also contribute to broader societal stability and justice.

This year’s conference will interrogate how law functions as a game and what this metaphor reveals about power, justice, and the nature of legal authority, while also exploring how the dynamics of conflict and resilience are embedded in legal thinking and practices. How can the game metaphor help us better understand law’s role in addressing societal tensions, managing conflicts, and strengthening communal resilience?

We invite papers that explore the following themes:

•           Language Games and Legal Practices

Drawing on Wittgenstein’s notion of language games, we explore how legal argumentation functions as a rule-bound process of strategic communication. Legal actors engage in performative acts, constructing meaning and positioning themselves within a framework of rules, much like players in a game. J.L. Austin’s theory of speech acts offers additional insight into how legal language not only describes but also performs actions—such as making promises, issuing judgments, or passing laws—producing real-world consequences through speech itself. Legal argumentation, however, is not merely about following rules or achieving outcomes; it also involves navigating conflicts that arise within legal discourse. These conflicts, inherent to human interaction, are shaped by competing interpretations and the strategic use of language to assert authority, resolve disputes, or challenge established norms. How can legal language help transform these conflicts into opportunities for resilience and justice? We welcome papers that explore how the concept of legal performativity intersects with the metaphor of law as a language game, examining how legal actors use speech to “move” through legal reasoning, define rules, and ultimately shape reality through their actions. Contributions might also consider how legal discourse manages conflict and contributes to societal resilience by framing, transforming, or resolving tensions within the legal field.

•           Legal Luck and the Game of Law

Just as games involve elements of unpredictability and chance, so too does law. The concept of legal luck – the unpredictable factors that can influence legal outcomes – raises critical questions about fairness and justice. Legal luck can manifest in various forms, such as the timing of a case, the assignment of a particular judge, or unforeseen procedural anomalies. These elements often fall outside the control of the participants yet can significantly impact the final decision, much like the roll of a dice in a game of chance. This theme invites contributors to examine how the element of luck shapes legal processes and outcomes, challenging the conventional view of law as a purely rational and objective system. How does the unpredictability inherent in legal systems affect our understanding of justice? Does the game metaphor help illuminate how chance plays a role in legal decision-making, or does it risk trivializing the real-life consequences of legal "losses"? We encourage papers that explore legal luck through the lenses of game theory, risk analysis, or critical theory debates about justice and fairness, and consider whether or not the concept of chance in law undermines or complements the legal system’s claims to impartiality and reason.

•           Critical Perspectives: Winners, Losers, and Power in the Game of Law

In both games and legal systems, there are clear winners and losers. However, unlike games, legal outcomes carry serious real-world consequences, often reflecting deeper societal inequalities. Legal rules and procedures, while appearing neutral, can privilege certain groups and disadvantage others, based on factors like socio-economic status, access to representation, or systemic biases. At the same time, legal systems are sites of conflict—inevitable struggles that stem from competing interests, values, and positions. Recognizing conflict as an inherent part of human experience, this theme invites exploration of how legal frameworks can transform destructive conflicts into opportunities for resilience and justice. We welcome papers that critically explore how the legal game reinforces power dynamics, producing outcomes that may not align with justice. How do existing legal structures favor certain “players,” and what are the ethical implications when legal success does not always mean moral rightness? Further, how can legal systems be designed to build resilience by managing conflicts more equitably? Contributions from critical legal studies, feminist, and postcolonial perspectives are encouraged, especially those that interrogate how the metaphor of games may mask inequalities and propose ways to make legal processes more just, resilient, and equitable for all participants.

•           Evidence as the Strategic Heart of the Legal Game

In the legal “game,” evidence is not simply factual material; it is a tool that legal actors use strategically. Lawyers, judges, and juries must navigate complex rules regarding the admissibility, relevance, and weight of evidence, with each party seeking to present or suppress information that strengthens their position. The rules governing evidence can sometimes be as decisive as the facts themselves. This theme invites papers exploring how the strategic use of evidence influences legal outcomes and whether the legal game metaphor helps us understand the dynamics of truth-finding. Additionally, evidence often serves as the focal point for conflicts within legal proceedings, reflecting deeper societal tensions and contradictions. How can legal systems manage these conflicts in ways that build resilience against their destructive potential? How do evidentiary rules and practices impact fairness and societal stability, and can they contribute to strengthening communal resilience while resolving disputes? We encourage contributions that critically analyze the role of evidence in adversarial legal systems and its implications for justice, impartiality, and the ethical conduct of legal proceedings, especially through the lens of conflict and resilience.

•           The Didactic Use of Games in Legal Education

Games are increasingly used in legal education to simulate the adversarial nature of legal practice, providing students with hands-on experience in navigating legal rules, strategies, and arguments. From visual activities to moot courts and role-playing exercises, these methods mirror real-life courtroom dynamics, allowing students to “play” the roles of lawyers, judges, or clients in a controlled environment. However, while these game-based learning approaches can effectively teach students the skills needed for practice, they also raise important questions. Beyond preparing students for legal competition, can such methods also cultivate resilience by helping students confront and manage the inherent conflicts of legal practice? How can educational games be designed to balance the adversarial nature of law with the need to develop a deeper understanding of justice, fairness, and conflict resolution? Does emphasizing resilience in legal training help future professionals navigate the moral and ethical dilemmas that arise in practice? Contributions might explore how game-based learning approaches address the conflicts embedded in legal education and practice, as well as how they equip students with tools to manage these challenges constructively.

With the Argumentation 2025 conference, we aim to bring together diverse perspectives from across law, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and related fields. We encourage contributions that interrogate the intersections between law and games, focusing on how legal authority, fairness, and justice are constructed and possibly contested through play-like processes.

We are pleased to announce our keynote speakers:

·       Peter Goodrich, Yeshiva University, New York

·       Thomas Giddens, University of Dundee

The Argumentation 2025 conference will take place in Brno, Czech Republic, and is hosted by the Faculty of Law, Masaryk University.

Abstracts of 300 words (max.) should be submitted to argumentation@law.muni.cz by July 31, 2025.

Conference participation fee is 150 EUR.

To learn more about Argumentation 2025, including registration, venue, and updates, please visit argumentation.law.muni.cz

 

Special Event: Release of Special Issue of World Records Journal, Just Evidence: May 8, 2025

 

On Thursday 8^th May, Goldsmiths MCCS and Visual Cultures are co-hosting an event to mark the release of a special issue of World Records Journal called Just Evidence.

 

Just Evidence @ Goldsmiths brings together scholars and practitioners from the fields of Cinema Studies, Cultural Studies, Political Theory, and Geography, to highlight particular cases and contexts in which targeted populations have located mechanisms of harm reductions within forensic authority, and through counterforensic practices. This special issue of World Records Journal interrogates how counterforensic practices offer provisional forms of protection that challenge and/or uphold the systems producing vulnerability, and it investigates strategies employed by artists and activists to navigate these double-binds.

 

Particular areas of focus include the forensic architecture investigation unit of Al-Haq, the oldest human rights organization in Palestine, the rise of the victims’ rights movement, and the cinematic practices of Languid Hands, Philip Scheffner, and Maxime Jean-Baptiste.

 

This event will take place at Goldsmiths in the RHB Cinema (Ground Floor, Richard Hoggart Building) from 2pm-4pm on Thursday 8^th May. It will feature a short introduction to the Just Evidence special issue by the editors (Sasha Crawford-Holland, Patrick Smith and LaCharles Ward), followed by reflections on three of its essays (see below) by Goldsmiths interlocutors. The remaining time will be reserved for free-flowing discussion and debate. 

 

Previews of the following three essays will be shared with registered participants ahead of the discussion:

 

They Are Shooting at Our Shadows The Al-Haq Forensic Architecture Investigative Unit and Rachel Nelson (Visualizing Abolition)

Laliv Melamed and Pooja Rangan

 

Countering Forensic Violence: Philip Scheffner’s Revision

Başak Ertür and Alisa Lebow

 

Tongueless Whispers and Recited Choreographies: Black Memory as Counterforensics

Yasmina Price

 

To register for the event, please RSVP via the Eventbrite page here. 

 

Aceves on Critical Constitutional Law and the Alito Palimpsest

William Aceves, California Western School of Law, is publishing Critical Constitutional Law and the Alito Palimpsest in volume 27 of the University of Pennsylvana Journal of Constitutional Law (2025). Here is the abstract.

This article uses an innovative metaphor—the palimpsest—and a provocative philosophical tradition—genealogy—to generate a new theory of critical constitutional law. It is a theory born from this unique moment in time. Originalism is now ascendant at the Supreme Court. Its search for essential origins in history as a method for grounding extant constitutional values was used in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to end recognition of the fundamental right to abortion. The Court’s conservative majority has made clear that Dobbs is only the beginning. Critical constitutional law uses the metaphor of the palimpsest to study law and the search for essential origins. In antiquity, a palimpsest was a document treated with chemicals or scrubbed to erase the original text. This allowed the document to be recycled and written anew. Yet, some documents still retained faint images of the original text. By exposing repeated erasures and inscriptions, palimpsestic inquiry reveals how the law is in a constant state of transition and transformation. It also reinforces the findings of genealogy, a critical theory that views history as a field of self-interested interpretations and moral prejudices with no true essential origin. Through palimpsestic inquiry, new insights can be gleaned from Dobbs, a legal decision that is simultaneously historical, ahistorical, and filled with history. It exposes the outdated and misogynist values that permeate Justice Alito’s majority opinion. It reveals how history was scraped clean and reinscribed to justify originalist values. But, palimpsestic inquiry also explains that vestiges of Roe and Casey—and the values they represent—still remain. In the Hegelian dialectic of abortion law—where jurisprudential theories struggle for primacy in the zero-sum world of a nine-member Court—the Alito Palimpsest is merely the current iteration. Palimpsestic inquiry confirms that essential origins are seldom what they seem. This article begins with Dobbs, but its contributions to legal theory extend far beyond this one case. If history has become the touchstone for constitutional interpretation, this article offers a more honest methodology for studying law in the modern era. In fact, it provides the “master metaphor” for the study of law—offering clarity to a range of constitutional rights.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

ICYMI: The Cabinet of Imaginary Laws (Routledge Publishing, 2021) @routledgebooks

ICYMI: The Cabinet of Imaginary Laws: (Peter Goodrich and Thanos Zartaloudis, eds., Routledge, 2021) (Discourses of Law). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

Returning to the map of the island of utopia, this book provides a contemporary, inventive, addition to the long history of legal fictions and juristic phantasms. Progressive legal and political thinking has for long lacked a positive, let alone a bold imaginary project, an account of what improved institutions and an ameliorated environment would look like. And where better to start than with the non-laws or imaginary legislations of a realm yet to come. The Cabinet of Imaginary Laws is a collection of fictive contributions to the theme of conceiving imaginary laws in the vivid vein of jurisliterary invention. Disparate in style and diverse in genres of writing and performative expression, the celebrated and unknown, venerable and youthful authors write new laws. Thirty-five dissolute scholars, impecunious authors and dyspeptic artists from a variety of fields including law, film, science, history, philosophy, political science, aesthetics, architecture and the classics become, for a brief and inspiring instance, legislators of impossible norms. The collection provides an extra-ordinary range of inspired imaginings of other laws. This momentary community of radial thought conceives of a wild variety of novel critical perspectives. The contributions aim to inspire reflection on the role of imagination in the study and writing of law. Verse, collage, artworks, short stories, harangues, lists, and other pleas, reports and pronouncements revivify the sense of law as the vehicle of poetic justice and as an art that instructs and constructs life. Aimed at an intellectual audience disgruntled with the negativity of critique and the narrowness of the disciplines, this book will appeal especially to theorists, lawyers, scholars and a general public concerned with the future of decaying laws and an increasingly derelict legal system.

Sprigman on The Jeffersonian Model of U.S. Cultural Property Law @CJSprigman @nyulaw

Christopher Jon Sprigman, NYU School of Law; NYU Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy, is publishing The Jeffersonian Model of U.S. Cultural Property Law Forthcoming 2024, in Tutela & Restauro (the annual journal of the Soprintendenza archeologia belle arti e paesaggio per la città metropolitana di Firenze e le province di Pistoia e Prato). Here is the abstract.

This article, the published version of a closing keynote talk given at a conference on Italian cultural heritage and cultural property law held in 2022 at the University of Florence, describes the loosely-constituted, largely uncodified "Jeffersonian" model of cultural heritage law that operates in the U.S. The Jeffersonian model understands cultural heritage not primarily as a thing to be protected, but as a thing to be used. This model is concerned primarily with the interests of the living – specifically, our collective interest in producing today’s culture, drawing on the past but also reworking it in ways that may preserve or may destabilize the past. This model is largely indifferent to and perhaps in practice even hostile to cultural particularism and to the stability of any particular culture. The role of IP rights, in this model, is not to preserve old culture. It is to encourage people to make new culture. The differences between the Jeffersonian model and the more protectionist cultural heritage and cultural property models that hold sway in Italy and across Europe grow out of deep differences in how different cultures understand what leads to human flourishing. The European model situates individuals within a particular culture; it is based on the notion that some well-defined group identity is central to an individual’s flourishing. On the other hand, the Jeffersonian model is both more cosmopolitan and more present-focused. The logic of these models rests on differing beliefs about the relative importance of individual autonomy versus group identity, and about the virtues of more rapid cultural change versus relative cultural stability.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Cultures of Legality in Weimar Germany, University of Lucerne (Imagining Justice: Law, Politics and Justice in Weimar Germany: SNSF Project)

From Laura Peterson, University of Lucerne:

We’re pleased to announce the next three talks in our online seminar series on Cultures of Legality in Weimar Germany:

 

Wednesday 30 October, 10am-11am (Switzerland) Javier Samper Vendrell (Pennsylvania), A Film for Children? Autonomy and Vulnerability in Emil and the Detectives (1931)

 

Wednesday 6 November, 10am-11am (Switzerland) Lucy Byford (Bremen), From Imperial Sanctum to Cradle of Democracy: Site and Semantics in Dada Interventions at the Berlin Cathedral and the National Assembly in Weimar (1918-1919)

 

Wednesday 20 November, 9am-10am (Switzerland) Nicole Schraner (Lucerne), Visual Representations of the 1924 Hitler-Ludendorff Trial in the Context of Law and Media NB.

 

Please note start times refer to Swiss local time: Time Zone Converter. The sessions are open to all and we warmly invite you to join us.

Capers on Afrofuturism and the Law: A Manifesto @BennettCapers @FordhamLawNYC @GeorgetownLaw

I. Bennett Capers, Fordham University School of Law, is publishing Afrofuturism and the Law: A Manifesto in volume 112 of the Georgetown Law Journal (2024). Here is the abstract.

Afrofuturism seems to be everywhere these days. In music, film, dance, literature. And in this special symposium issue of the Georgetown Law Journal, “Afrofuturism and the Law.” This prompts a foundational question. What is “Afrofuturism and the Law”? More specifically, as a practice, as a discipline, and a legal movement, what should Afrofuturism and the Law be. Indeed, given Afrofuturism’s seeming staying power, and its incursion into law, is it time for a manifesto to set parameters? Hence, this proposed manifesto. To be sure, I am troubled by the word manifesto, especially given its connection to the word manifest, which conjures the journey of my ancestors, captured and sold into slavery, becoming cargo, part of a ship’s manifest. But perhaps I can use the latter term to think of the inventory or cargo for another journey. A journey into the future. Perhaps on Parliament Funkadelic’s Mothership. Or Octavia Butler’s Earthseed ship. Or Sun Ra’s jazz spaceship. And maybe that’s the connection between manifest and manifesto. It’s not just the things we should carry. It’s also the things we should hold true. So, a manifesto then.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Ballakrishen on Kanoon's Sarange: Goodrich and the Non-Minor Jurisprudences of Law and Love @ssballakrishnen @UCILaw @Law_Cult_Huma

Swethaa Ballakrishnen, University of California, Irvine, School of Law; Harvard University, Center on the Legala Profession, is publishing Kanoon’s Sarange: Goodrich and the Non-Minor Jurisprudences of Law and Love in Law, Culture and the Humanities (2024). Here is the abstract.

This article uses three main global visual sites—the popular Korean drama Hometown Cha Cha Cha (2021), the Hindi-English movie, The Lunchbox (2013), and the British-American television series Ted Lasso (2020–2023) to engage with two main strains of Peter Goodrich's scholarship: the interconnectedness between law, justice, and love; and the role of minor jurisprudences. Heeding Goodrich's advice to consider media as an important node for legal analysis, it traces the course of aromantic amity and asexual kinship across these sites to deliberate new ways of considering the law's liberal commitments to conjugality and dyadic partnership. By focusing on popular scripts seemingly unrelated to the law, I seek to both contemplate on new pulses in contemporary cultures and the tools they might offer to consider the literature on law and love. Kanoon is the word in Hindi for law and Sarange is the word in Korean for love. Translated loosely—and, intentionally with flaws and gaps in logic—as Law's Love. To the extent we can reparatively imagine law from the perspective of these cultural prompts, I suggest that they offer new alterities from heteropatriarchy and utopic possibilities beyond the liberal queer rights regime.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Papers: Cultural Contours of Justice: Law and Crime Narratives in Popular Imagination

Call For Papers from Dr. Dimitris Akrivos, University of Surrey, and Dr. Alexandros Antoniou, University of Essex:

I am delighted to invite contributions to our interdisciplinary Special Issue Cultural Contours of Justice: Law and Crime Narratives in Popular Imagination for Laws, a high impact factor MDPI journal.

 

🛑All articles will be Open Access so everyone can join the conversation.

🛑There is a 100% article processing fee waiver for all contributions to this Special Issue.

 

For all the fine print and submission specifics, make your way to our special issue’s exclusive page here: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/laws/special_issues/GZQ60XH7QX.

 

Should further enlightenment be required, please drop a line to Dr Dimitris Akrivos at d.akrivos@surrey.ac.uk and Dr Alexandros Antoniou at a.antoniou@essex.ac.uk.

Feigenson on Saying It With Pictures: Image and Text in Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts v. Goldsmith

Neal Feigenson, Ouinnipiac University School of Law, has published Say It With Pictures: Image and Text in Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith. Here is the abstract.

The majority and dissenting opinions in the Supreme Court’s recent case on fair use, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith, feature an unprecedented number of pictures: seventeen separate illustrations, almost all color photographs, and all but one embedded in the opinions instead of being relegated to an appendix. Images have appeared in SCOTUS opinions before, but never like this. This paper explores the functions and deeper significance of this outburst of visuality. In the two opinions, Justice Sotomayor’s for the majority and Justice Kagan’s dissent, the selections and sequences of the images tell very different stories of the dispute. The Justices also use their pictures to present their divergent theories of the case. No SCOTUS opinions have come close to using pictures this purposefully before, so it’s worth examining how the Justices did it here. Those pictures, of course, are surrounded by words. The pervasive picturing invites us, as no previous SCOTUS cases have, to think about the relationships between images and text in judicial opinions. Justices Sotomayor and Kagan verbally frame our viewing in contrasting ways. Not surprisingly, the words they use to refer to and describe the pictures they show underscore their opposing narratives and arguments. More than that, their words conceive of looking at pictures differently. Justice Sotomayor implies that we should regard her pictures simply as visual support for and authentication of her verbal claims. Justice Kagan, in contrast, exhorts us to really look at the pictures, a more active engagement that may make us more responsive to what pictures, perhaps especially pictures like Warhol’s, can do. Relatedly, their opinions reflect different ideas about pictorial meaning in general. For Justice Sotomayor, pictures just are (or, in this case, who what) they depict. This is characteristic of a naïve realist stance toward pictures. For Justice Kagan, pictorial meaning is a more complicated matter, emerging not only from what can be seen in the picture but also from the picture’s contexts, including expert commentary and other pictures. This matters for two reasons. First, while the Justices’ contrasting stances on pictorial meaning may follow from their opposing interpretations of the first fair use factor, the converse may also be true: They may approach fair use as they do in part because they have different ideas about pictorial meaning. Second, and more broadly, as pictures of all kinds play an ever greater role in legal proof and legal argument, getting decisions right depends on getting pictures right. What judges think pictures mean, and when it should even be part of their job to figure out what they mean, become increasingly important. Andy Warhol Foundation tells us something about this.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Papers: University of Lucerne: In the Thick of Images: Law, History, and the Visual

From Steven Howe, University of Lucerne:

In the Thick of Images: Law, History, and the Visual 

Monday 10 & Tuesday 11 June 2024 
University of Lucerne 

CALL FOR PAPERS 

“Suppose that whatever we’ve done, felt, and thought has always happened in the thick of images.” (Anand Pandian, Reel Word: An Anthropology of Creation) 

The ‘visual turn’ has long been turning in critical and cultural studies of law (see Douzinas & Nead 1999). In the past twenty-five years, a growing body of scholarship has evolved that emphasises law’s “constitutive imbrication” (Crawley 2020) with an array of visual forms, and elaborates on the ways in which images “shape and transform legal life” (Sarat et al. 2005). Weaving together an eclectic set of theories, concepts, methods and materials, such studies refuse thin readings of images as merely illustrative of law, and invite us to think more deeply about their ideological and visual operations – about the meanings they carry and make available, about their material presence and affective effects, and about the cultural-political and cultural-legal work they perform across their multiple contexts of production, circulation and reception.

Much of this scholarship focuses on the contemporary conjuncture of law and visuality. Yet law’s imbrication with the visual is not exclusive to the present; law has always lived, happened and mattered “in the thick of images”. This is the starting point for our two-day conference, which seeks to explicitly foreground historical and historicist work on law and the visual. Situated at the disciplinary crossroads of law, history, visual cultural studies, art history, film and photography studies, In the Thick of Images invites multiple viewpoints and approaches to converge on ways of negotiating the entanglements of law, history and the visual – in various contexts, scales and timeframes.

Link to the full Call for Papers and other information

* Keynote speakers to be announced shortly

Proposals due by 19 January 2024 to laura.petersen@unilu.ch 

Convenors

Steven Howe (steven.howe@unilu.ch)
Laura Petersen (laura.petersen@unilu.ch)
Nicole Schraner (nicole.schraner@unilu.ch)

 

The conference forms part of the SNSF research project: Imagining Justice: Law, Politics and Popular Visual Culture in Weimar Germany

 

Murray on The People of California vs. Juan de Dios Ramirez Villa @LoyolaLawSchool

Yxta Maya Murray, Loyola Law School, is publishing The People of California vs. Juan de Dios Ramirez Villa in the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities. Here is the abstract.

James Boyd White’s 1972 book The Legal Imagination announced that law and literature share imaginative and intellectual practices. White also presented them as good, if quarrelsome, partners in legal education and the development of a humane legal system. Inspired by his vision and audacity, I set forth on an extended literary analysis of a 1997 California death penalty case. This exercise contemplates the relationship between the legal opinion and the essay, considering them not only cousins but also antagonists whose differences consist in their relative abilities to wander. The rules that limit the legal opinion do not fetter the essayist, and here I take that opportunity to more fully imagine the scenes and arrogations that led to the murder of a seventeen-year-old boy in the mid-1990s, and to contemplate that killing’s presence in a larger political and ecological landscape. The most pressing and literally questing inquiries this essay divulges concern the roles that the oil and pesticides industries played in a young man’s death, another man’s life sentence, and the criminal justice system generally.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Tsai and Ziegler on Abortion Politics and the Rise of Movement Jurists @robertltsai @BU_Law @maryrziegler @UCDavisLaw

Robert L. Tsai, Boston University School of Law, and Mary Ziegler, University of California, Davis, School of Law, are publishing Abortion Politics and the Rise of Movement Jurists in volume 57 of the UC Davis Law Review. Here is the abstract.

This article employs the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and litigation in its wake as the jumping off point to reconsider the connections between judges, the Constitution, and social movements. That movements influence constitutional law, and that judicial pronouncements in turn are reshaped by politics, is well-established. But, while these accounts of legal change depend upon judges to embrace movement ideas, less has been written about the conditions under which judicial entrenchment can be expected to take place. There may, in fact, be different types of judicial dispositions towards external political phenomena. In this article, we focus on one type of judge that is ascendant in the current constitutional moment: the movement jurist. Although movement judges are not new, they are more visible and influential today than in recent years. In fact, identifying this kind of figure—who is already shaped by movement beliefs or shares social experiences making such a person open to non-establishment constitutional perspectives—has emerged as a visible supplement to older methods of entrenching mobilized legal knowledge and political beliefs. By peering behind the Dobbs decision and offering fresh context, we present a new set of analytical terminology for understanding the touchpoints between law, institutions, and politics. Along the way, we offer a corrective to what are often uncritical calls for more movement jurists. Judging involves its own institutional imperatives and purposes, many of which are at odds with social activism. There are reasons why we might want judges under certain circumstances to pay attention to movements, and we discuss what some of those institution-enhancing and constitution-interpreting reasons might be. But there are risks as well. Movement judges need not be committed to any particular vision of justice or democracy or even interpretive methodology—as Dobbs plainly shows, it is more accurate to identify movement judges by their constitutional politics and social networks rather than by ideology or party loyalty. We describe the characteristics of movement judges so their legal output can be evaluated with this crucial context in mind. Adopting a historical and institutional perspective, we point to some benefits that can come from having the occasional movement figure join the judiciary. But we also offer some words of caution about corresponding tradeoffs when too many movement figures appear within a single organization like the Supreme Court.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Jewel on Dark Connections @ljewel @CreightonLawRev @UTKLaw

Lucy A. Jewel, University of Tennessee College of Law, is publishing Dark Connections in volume 56 of the Creighton Law Review (2023). Here is the abstract.

This paper explores the troubling cultural connections between plantation management relations and the patriarchy, pugilism, and privilege that run through contemporary U.S. business culture. First, the Comment will briefly describe some theoretical concepts that explain why an interdisciplinary study of legal history and culture provides value for scholars interested in stopping the same old hierarchical patterns from recurring. Second, the Comment will summarize the plantation owner's and overseer's dichotomous social identities, as McMurtry-Chubb expertly describes them. Third, this paper undertakes a deep reading of United States v. Hazelwood, a recent United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit case that grapples with heinous racist behavior in a business milieu. The Hazelwood case illustrates the dark connections between the plantation and modern business and plots the course lines for an accurate reckoning.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Grajzl and Murrell on A Macroscope of English Print Culture, 1530-1700, Applied to the Coevolution of Ideas on Religion, Science, and Institutions @CESifoNetwork

Peter Grajzl, Washington and Lee University, Department of Economics; CESifo, and Peter Murrell, Department of Economics, have published A Macroscope of English Print Culture, 1530-1700, Applied to the Coevolution of Ideas on Religion, Science, and Institutions. Here is the abstract.

We combine unsupervised machine-learning and econometric methods to examine cultural change in 16th- and 17th-century England. A machine-learning digest synthesizes the content of 57,863 texts comprising 83 million words into 110 topics. The topics include the expected, such as Natural Philosophy, and the unexpected, such as Baconian Theology. Using the data generated via machine-learning we then study facets of England's cultural history. Timelines suggest that religious and political discourse gradually became more scholarly over time and economic topics more prominent. The epistemology associated with Bacon was present in theological debates already in the 16th century. Estimating a VAR, we explore the coevolution of ideas on religion, science, and institutions. Innovations in religious ideas induced strong responses in the other two domains. Revolutions did not spur debates on institutions nor did the founding of the Royal Society markedly elevate attention to science.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Forthcoming: Workshop on the Theme of Fantasy Legal Exhibitions, July 18-19, 2023 @SLSA_UK @aperrykessaris @KentLawSchool @BrunelLaw

A workshop on the theme of Fantasy Legal Exhibitions will be held on Tuesday 18 and Wednesday 19 July, 2023 in central London.

Organisers: Victoria Barnes and Amanda Perry-Kessaris

Funded by: Socio-Legal Studies Association and Kent Law School

Exhibitions range widely in form, including from spontaneous pop-up to enduring archive, material to digital, and localised to roving. They vary in purpose, including from documentation to deconstruction, resolution to disruption, inclusion to resistance, and query to explanation. They can include artefacts as varied as objects, records, images, sounds, statutes and specimens.

This hands-on workshop is an opportunity to explore exhibition as a legal research practice, and in particular to consider: What might you achieve, for scholarship and the wider world, through the practice of exhibition that cannot be achieved through other research activities? 

By engaging with expert curators, and completing a series of structured tasks in a range of exhibition contexts, participants will be prompted and facilitated to consider exhibition as part of the wider social, political, economic and cultural context of collection and curation; how they might ‘exhibit’ their legal research; and how in so doing they might enhance the quality of their research, as well as its potential impact, within academia and beyond.

Outputs from the event will include a Pop-up Museum of Fantasy Legal Exhibitions. 

For further details, including how to apply, click here.

Details also available here.

Deadline: 28 April 2023

Newly Published: Pierre Schlag, Twilight of the American State (University of Michigan Press, 2023) @ColoLaw @UofMPress

Pierre Schlag, University of Colorado Law, has published Twilight of the American State (University of Michigan Press, 2023). Here from the publisher's website, is a description of the book's contents.

The sudden emergence of the Trump nation surprised nearly everyone, including journalists, pundits, political consultants, and academics. When Trump won in 2016, his ascendancy was widely viewed as a fluke. Yet time showed it was instead the rise of a movement—angry, militant, revanchist, and unabashedly authoritarian.

How did this happen? Twilight of the American State offers a sweeping exploration of how law and legal institutions helped prepare the grounds for this rebellious movement. The controversial argument is that, viewed as a legal matter, the American state is not just a liberal democracy, as most Americans believe. Rather, the American state is composed of an uneasy and unstable combination of different versions of the state—liberal democratic, administered, neoliberal, and dissociative. Each of these versions arose through its own law and legal institutions. Each emerged at different times historically. Each was prompted by deficits in the prior versions. Each has survived displacement by succeeding versions. All remain active in the contemporary moment—creating the political-legal dysfunction America confronts today.

Pierre Schlag maps out a big picture view of the tribulations of the American state. The book abjures conventional academic frameworks, sets aside prescriptions for quick fixes, dispenses with lamentations about polarization, and bypasses historical celebrations of the American Spirit.

 

UM Press has made the book available for reading online or downloading here. Excellent!

 

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.

 

Robbins on Explaining Florida Man @AUWCL @fsulawreview

Ira P. Robbins, American University College of Law, is publishing Explaining Florida Man in the Florida State University Law Review. Here is the abstract.

“Florida Man” is a popular cultural phenomenon in which journalists report on Floridians’ unusual (and often criminal) behavior, and readers relish in and share the stories, largely on social media. A meme based on Florida Man news stories emerged in 2013 and continues to capture people’s attention nationwide. Florida Man is one of the latest unique trends to come from the Sunshine State and contributes to Florida’s reputation as a quirky place. Explanations for Florida Man center on Florida’s Public Records Law, which is known as one of the most expansive open records laws in the country. All states and the District of Columbia have open records laws that establish procedures for individuals to obtain access to public records in the spirit of government transparency. Because many Florida Man stories are based on arrest records and incident reports and incorporate mugshots, those who have written about Florida Man claim that the Florida Public Records Law, which allows reporters to access those records, is behind the trend. The problem with this theory is that it incorrectly implies that Florida’s Public Records Law offers journalists advantages in writing stories that other states’ laws do not. Despite the broad grant of access to police documents that Florida’s open records law provides, other states’ open records laws similarly provide the public with access to arrest records, incident reports, and, although to a lesser extent, mugshots. Other provisions of Florida’s Public Records Law that contribute to the ease of access to Florida’s public records compared with other states’ equivalent laws are largely irrelevant to Florida Man’s existence. Even coupled with the characteristics of Florida and its residents that many people claim are unique, the open records law-based theory for Florida Man’s existence falls short of explaining the phenomenon. This Article posits that the primary reasons for Florida Man’s popularity are preexisting popular culture trends and the venue in which Florida Man rose to fame: the internet. Internet platforms allow a wide audience—which may already have been receptive to jokes about Florida due to its reputation for being a newsworthy state—to easily consume, share, and re-share Florida Man content, inspiring journalists to continue to write Florida Man stories. This cycle of generation and consumption of Florida Man stories has allowed Florida Man to become one of the longest-living memes in internet history. While the Florida Public Records Law and characteristics of Florida and its people work together to provide raw material for Florida Man articles, the heretofore unmentioned popular culture and internet trend factors of the phenomenon complete the story behind Florida Man’s existence.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.