McCaffrey and Dorobat on First Principles on the Final Frontier: Economic Foundations of Science Fiction

Matthew McCaffrey, University of Manchester, Manchester Business School, and Carmen-Elena Dorobat, Manchester Business School, Strategy Enterprise and Sustainbility, have published First Principles on the Final Frontier: Economic Foundations of Science Fiction Television. Here is the abstract.

Paul Cantor pioneered the use of Austrian economics in literary criticism, showing not only how sound economic reasoning can be used to interpret literary texts, but also how it helps us to appreciate such texts as celebrations of commercial culture. To honor Cantor's work, in this chapter we apply some fundamental economic principles to boldly go where no one has gone before: modern science fiction. We explore several ways in which sci-fi television shows spanning several decades—such as Battlestar Galactica and The Expanse, as well as Star Trek: The Next Generation, Firefly, and Andor—incorporate economic principles and use them as sources of dramatic tension. These principles include scarcity, division of labor and autarky, trade and prices, protectionism and war, and the role of international (or perhaps, interstellar) organizations in promoting peace and prosperity.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Rutherford on Racism, Segregation, Acceptance: American Economics and Black Issues, 1890-1945 @uvic

Malcolm Rutherford, University of Victoria, Department of Economics, has published Racism, Segregation, Acceptance: American Economics and Black Issues, 1890-1945. Here is the abstract.

The American economics profession has a tortured relationship with the study of issues relating to Black Americans. This paper traces that history from overt racism in the period up to about 1910, the rejection of Du Bois' attempts to work with the American Economic Association, a long period during which Black scholarship on Black issues was simply ignored, to the gradual acceptance of work dealing with Black issues after World War II.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Guerra-Pujol on Coase's Parable @PUCPR1

F. E. Guerra-Pujol, Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico, is publishing Coase's Parable in the Mercer Law Review. Here is the abstract.

Some stories have heroes and villains. Others involve a voyage, a quest, or a monster to be defeated. The law is no exception. Broadly speaking, most legal stories are generally about identifying wrongdoers and vindicating the rights of victims, but what if harms are “reciprocal” or jointly-caused? In other words, what if victims are just as responsible as wrongdoers for their plight? It was Ronald Coase who first proposed this novel counter-narrative to the standard victim-wrongdoer narrative in law. Researching and writing in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Professor Coase--an obscure, middle-aged English economist at the time--plucked a number of leading cases from the English Law Reports and other sources. Coase then used these old cases to create a compelling but controversial legal counter-narrative: compelling because Coase’s parable forever changed the way many economists, lawyers, and judges see the law; controversial because it was Coase who first conceived of harms as a “reciprocal” problem. Simply put, whenever one party accuses another party of harming them, it is almost always the case that both parties are responsible for the harm--that is the essence of Coase’s novel and unorthodox parable.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Guerra-Pujol on Love or Liberty? A Short History of Adam Smith in Love @lawscholar

F. E. Guerra-Pujol, University of Central Florida; Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico, is publishing Love or Liberty? A Short History of Adam Smith in Love in Econ Journal Watch. Here is the abstract.

Who were Adam Smith’s lost loves, and how does the enigma of Smith’s love life inform his defense of personal and economic liberty? With a view toward systematizing the available evidence and extending the work of previous scholars, I will re-assemble all the admissible amorous evidence, subject such facts to critical scrutiny, and draw reasonable inferences from these sundry proofs. First, I will present four pieces of primary evidence regarding Adam Smith’s lost loves. Secondly, I will make several new conjectures and revisit several intriguing hypotheses concerning Doctor Smith’s sexuality and romantic attachments. Thirdly, I speculate about Smith’s adamant desire to have his private papers and correspondence destroyed upon his death and about the possibility of a lost travel diary from his Grand Tour of France, and lastly, I will consider two additional clues that may shed light on this amorous enigma. Specifically, I will revisit Adam Smith’s analysis of love and lust in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and I will conclude this paper by exploring the geographical dimension of Adam Smith’s enigmatic love life: the strict ecclesiastical regulation of sex in the Scotland of Doctor Smith’s youth.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

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.

Buchanan and Dorf on A Tale of Two Formalisms: How Law and Economics Mirrors Originalism and Textualisms @NeilHBuchanan @dorfonlaw

Neil H. Buchanan, University of Florida College of Law, and Michael C. Dorf, Cornell Law School, are publishing A Tale of Two Formalisms: How Law and Economics Mirrors Originalism and Textualism in volume 106 of the Cornell Law Review. Here is the abstract.

Two leading schools of thought among U.S. conservative legal elites — Law and Economics (L&E) and Originalism and Textualism (O&T) — both purport to use their formalist structures to guide analysis in ways that are objective, substantially determinate, and apolitical. Because they rest on very different theoretical underpinnings, L&E and O&T should only randomly reach similar policy or legal conclusions. After all, L&E implements neoclassical economics, a theory of utility maximization, whereas O&T is a theory of semantics. Yet as practiced, L&E and O&T rarely result in conflict. What explains the missing intra-conservative clash? Despite their respective pretenses to objectivity, determinacy, and political neutrality, neither theory delivers on its promises. Economic efficiency, the lynchpin of L&E, is incoherent because it relies on typically hidden but ultimately normative assumptions about preferences that would exist in an impossible world without law. O&T as it has been refined in response to devastating criticisms of earlier versions is indistinguishable from ostensibly less determinate rivals like Living Constitutionalism and purposivism. Accordingly, conservatives use L&E and O&T to obscure the role of normative priors, perhaps even from themselves. Liberals could use the same techniques for different results but heretofore generally have not, instead mostly settling for counterpunching against charges of result-orientation.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Witte and Latterell on The Little Commonwealth: The Family as Matrix of Markets and Morality in Early Protestantism

John Witte and Justin Latterell, both of Emory University School of Law, are publishing The Little Commonwealth: The Family as Matrix of Markets and Morality in Markets and Morality: Spirit and Capital in an Age of Inequality (Ted A. Smith and Robert P. Jones, eds., 2018). Here is the abstract.

Max Weber traced the rise of the modern economy back to the convergence of new Protestant teachings on vocation, predestination, and asceticism. It was especially the marital household, this Article argues, that served as an incubator of these Protestant teachings and a laboratory for their application to economic activity. The early modern Protestant family was structured and schooled to cultivate the critical habits of discipline and organization in the economic lives of its members. Early modern Protestant catechisms and household manuals set out in detail the moral and religious rules, rights, and responsibilities that husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants had to each other and to their neighbors in different stages of life. It is here, in the elementary ethics and intimate experiences of the Protestant household, that many of the basic norms and habits of modern economic life were slowly instilled and cultivated in each new generation. This chapter offers case studies of Heinrich Bullinger, Robert Cleaver, William Perkins, and Richard Baxter to illustrate how the early modern Protestant family was structured to support church, state, society, and economy alike.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Willison on Whether Banks Were Special: Contrasting Viewpoints in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain @bankofengland

Matthew Willison, Bank of England, has published Were Banks Special? Contrasting Viewpoints in Mid-Nineteenth Century Britain as Bank of England Working Paper No. 755. Here is the abstract.

In 1853 a Royal Commission was set up to investigate whether laws related to limited liability in Britain needed to be modified. As part of its evidence gathering the commission issued a questionnaire that included a number of questions on whether banks should be subject to the same liability laws as other types of commercial enterprises. This paper analyses the responses to the questions about banks to understand whether banks were seen as a special case. Support for modifying the law to make limited liability more easily available to banks was lower than for enterprises in general. Banks were seen as a special case because of the risk of bank runs and because their creditors were not able to assess accurately the riskiness of banks. But the special nature of banks caused others to favour limited liability because it made banks’ capital levels more transparent. These arguments echo wider debates during the nineteenth century and are similar to contemporary theories for why banks are regulated.

The full text should be available from SSRN at the link.

Bindsell on Some Pre-1800 French and German Central Bank Charters and Regulations

Ulrich Bindseil, European Central Bank, has published Some Pre-1800 French and German Central Bank Charters and Regulations. Here is the abstract.

In some recent studies, the question of the origins of central banking has been revisited, leading to the conclusion that beyond Swedish and British central banking, also a number of earlier European continental central banks would have played a more important role. However, it has been often difficult to access the charters and regulations of these early continental central banks – in particular in English – with Dunbar (1892) being the exception. This note contributes to close this gap in a limited sense by providing some translations of few charters and regulations of pre-1800 central banks from France and Germany, namely of the Hamburger Bank of 1619, the Leipziger Bank of 1698, the Banque Générale of John Law of 1716, the Prussian Royal Bank of 1766, and the Caisse d’Escompte of 1776. These early central banks were of heterogeneous success and duration, and actually some only partially or only temporarily deserved to be called a central bank. Moreover, they did not necessarily apply precisely their charters and regulations. Still, the texts provide important insights into the objectives and design of early continental central banks. This note does provide neither an interpretation, nor discussion, nor comparative review of the charters and regulations covered. However, it provides schematic introductions to each of the early central banks.

The full text is not available from SSRN.

Hulsebosch on Protecting Foreign Expectations in the Early United States @nyulaw

Daniel J. Hulsebosch, New York University School of Law, is publishing From Imperial to International Law: Protecting Foreign Expectations in the Early United States in volume 65 of the the UCLA Law Review Discourse (2018). Here is the abstract.

This Essay argues that several principles associated with modern international investment law and dispute resolution arose in the wake of the American Revolution, as the revolutionaries and Britons sought to restructure trade relations, previously regulated by imperial law, under new treaties and the law of nations. They negotiated such problems as the currency in which international debts would be paid; the ability of foreign creditors pursue domestic collection remedies; whether creditors had to exhaust those remedies before their nation could resort to international arbitration; and the form of state-state arbitration of private disputes. The specific setting of these negotiations — the aftermath of a colonial settler revolution — narrowed the compass of disagreement, compared to many later postcolonial negotiations. In addition, the negotiations assumed that the exhaustion of national remedies remained the standard method of resolving private debt disputes. Notwithstanding these important differences, the principles and institutions developed after an imperial civil war influenced the development of international investment law.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Rimmer on The Maker Movement: Copyright Law, Remix Culture, and 3D Printing @DrRimmer

Matthew Rimmer, Queensland University of Technology, has published The Maker Movement: Copyright Law, Remix Culture and 3D Printing at 41 The University of Western Australia Law Review 51 (2017). Here is the abstract.

3D printing is a process of making physical objects from three-dimensional digital models. 3D printing is a form of additive manufacturing – rather than a traditional form of subtractive manufacturing. 3D printing is a disruptive technology, which promises to transform art and design, science and manufacturing, and the digital economy. The Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, the Hon. Christopher Pyne, has highlighted the key role of 3D printing for manufacturing and material science in Australia: ‘Manufacturing remains a key driver in our economy, but as the industrial landscape changes, the sector needs to transition to more innovative and economically viable technology.’ Pyne stressed: ‘Emerging technologies such as metal 3D printing offer huge productivity gains and have the potential to turn Australia’s manufacturing industry on its head.’ Likewise, the Australian Labor Party’s Tim Watts and Jim Chalmers have discussed the role of 3D printing in respect of intellectual property, innovation, and trade. There have been a number of early cultural texts on the topic of 3D printing. Cory Doctorow’s 2009 fictional story Makers was significant in promoting the culture of the maker community. Chris Anderson’s 2012 non-fiction work Makers considered the history of the industrial revolution, the rise of 3D printing, and the long tail of things. His work also reflects upon the development of open licensing and open hardware, and the financing of maker businesses. This rather evangelical work helped inspire wider public interest in the field. In The Maker Movement Manifesto, Mark Hatch, the CEO of TechShop, provides a practical guide to the applications of 3D printing, and the development of communities of practice. He is particularly interested in the development of distributed and flexible manufacturing, and the acceleration of innovation. The engaging 2014 Lopez and Tweel documentary Print the Legend provided a portrait of the emergence of 3D printing start-up companies in the United States. In 2014, the Australian journalist and cultural critic Guy Rundle also undertook fieldwork in his study on 3D printing and robotics, visiting key hubs of 3D printing in the United States. In his work upon the robotics revolution, Martin Ford has explored the intersection between 3D printing and automation. Futurist Jeremy Rifkin has been interested in the intersections between 3D printing, the Internet of Things, and collaborative capitalism. Likewise, Robin Chase has been concerned about how 3D printing fits into a larger model of the sharing economy. In terms of legal writing in respect of 3D printing, a number of works have sought to address the relationship between intellectual property and 3D printing. As a public policy expert at Public Knowledge, and as a lawyer working for Shapeways, Michael Weinberg (2010, 2013) has written a number of significant treatises on intellectual property and 3D Printing. Associate Professor Dinusha Mendis and her colleagues have undertaken legal and empirical research on intellectual property and 3D printing for the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office. In 2015, Professor Mark Lemley from Stanford Law School observes, ‘A world in which sophisticated 3D printers are widely available would change the economics of things in a fundamental way.’ Amongst other things, he says that 3D Printing provides challenges and opportunities for intellectual property in ‘an age without scarcity’. John Hornick has examined the topic of intellectual property and 3D printing from the perspective of a legal practitioner. From Australia, Dr Angela Daly has written on the socio-legal aspects of 3D printing in 2016. The World Intellectual Property Organization in 2015 has sought to investigate 3D printing as a breakthrough technology in terms of emerging developments in respect of intellectual property law, practice, and policy. There has been much interest in how intellectual property law, policy, and practice will adapt to the emergence of 3D printing and the maker movement. Intellectual property lawyers will have to grapple with the impact of additive manufacturing upon a variety of forms of intellectual property – including copyright law, trade mark law, designs law, patent law, and trade secrets. The disruptive technology of 3D printing will both pose opportunities and challenges for legal practitioners and policy-makers. Rather than try to survey this expanding field, this article considers a number of early conflicts and skirmishes in respect of copyright law and 3D printing. There has been significant interest in the impact of 3D printing on copyright law and the creative industries. There have been classic issues raised about copyright subsistence, and the overlap between copyright law and designs. There has also been a moral panic about 3D printing facilitating copyright infringement – like peer to peer networks such as Napster in the past. There has been a use of open licensing models such as Creative Commons licensing to facilitate the sharing of 3D printing files. Such battles highlight a conflict between the open culture of the Maker Movement, and the closed culture of copyright industries. In many ways, such conflicts touch upon classic issues involved in ‘information environmentalism’. Part II looks at the controversy over Left Shark. In particular, it examines the copyright claims of Katy Perry in respect of the Left Shark figure. Part III considers questions about scanning. Augustana College tried to assert copyright against a maker, Jerry Fisher, who was scanning statues of Michelangelo (although copyright had long since expired in such work). Part IV focuses upon copyright law, 3D printing and readymades. The Estate of Marcel Duchamp lodged a copyright protest over a 3D printed set of chess, based on the work of Marcel Duchamp. Part V examines the intervention of a number of 3D printing companies in a Supreme Court of the United States dispute in Star Athletic v. Varsity Brands. Part VI considers copyright law and intermediary liability. Part VII examines the operation of technological protection measures in the context of copyright law and 3D Printing.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Simard on the Birth of a Legal Economy: Lawyers and the Development of American Commerce @baldycenter

Justin L. Simard, The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy, is publishing The Birth of a Legal Economy: Lawyers and the Development of American Commerce in volume 64 of the Buffalo Law Review (2016). Here is the abstract.

American lawyers helped lay the foundation for capitalism in the nineteenth century, playing a basic economic role in their legal practices earlier than other historians have documented. At a time when the U.S. state was relatively powerless, the work of the profession was essential. Lawyers helped generate liquidity before the federal government printed money, built legal institutions on the frontier, and made markets secure enough for their clients to participate. In short, they provided the private bureaucracy that capitalism needed to function. Until now, the foundational role of lawyers in early nineteenth-century economic life has largely remained hidden, partly because legal historians have depended on court documents and published works. This article uses legal account books to uncover the day-to-day work of the legal profession. Through studies of lawyers on the Ohio frontier and in New York City, it reveals that lawyers embraced the routine commercial work that allowed the market to function; they encouraged economic growth and cemented the profession’s place in American commercial life. Taking the routine work of lawyers seriously reveals that scholars have vastly understated the importance of the profession to economic development. Lawyers provided the constraints and built the institutions that economists and economic historians believe are key to growth. The profession must therefore be understood alongside the law as a defining part of the American economy.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Weingast on War, Trade, and Mercantilism: Reconciling Adam Smith's Three Theories of the British Empire

Barry R. Weingast, Stanford University Department of Political Science, has published War, Trade, and Mercantilism: Reconciling Adam Smith's Three Theories of the British Empire. Here is the abstract.

Adam Smith proposed two contradictory theories of the British Empire in the "Wealth of Nations" and hinted at a third. The first view holds that the empire was created for merchants eager to establish monopolies on the colonial trade. Smith concludes that "Great Britain derives nothing but loss" from the colonies. In the second view, Smith celebrates the European discovery of the new world, opening up non-incremental increases in division of labor, specialization and exchange. The empire thus fostered the economic growth of both sides of the British Atlantic, net of the costs of monopoly. Smith's third argument is the least developed. It holds that many mercantile restrictions had a direct purpose in improving Britain's security given its more than century-long military conflict with France. How do we reconcile the incompatibility of Smith's three views of the British Empire? Smith provides too little guidance. I argue that, to understand the British Empire, we must view it from the perspective of a long-term military rivalry with France. Many of the navigation regulations were designed to advantage Britain vis-a-vis France. Smith argues, for example, that the harm to France from prohibiting trade in military stores more than compensated for the loss in wealth due to the restrictions. I demonstrate the logic of these claims using tools from modern political science.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Liebowitz on the Payment of British Authors in 19th Century America

Stan J. Liebowitz, University of Texas, Dallas, School of Management, Department of Finance & Managerial Economics, has published Paradise Lost or Fantasy Island? The Payment of British Authors in 19th Century America. Here is the abstract.

The payments to British authors by American publishers during the mid-19th century, when the works of British authors lacked American copyright protection, has been presented as evidence that copyright might have little benefit to authors. This paper reexamines the evidence that has been used to support this claim and then presents previously unexamined information on payments to British authors by leading American publishers of the period. The main finding is that payments to British authors were minimal or non-existent prior to the establishment of a no-compete agreement among leading American publishers. Even after implementation of this agreement, many British authors were not paid, and those who were paid received considerably less than they would have received under copyright. Because antitrust disallows such agreements, this 19th natural experiment indicates that the removal of copyright in modern economies would likely eviscerate payments to authors.

The full article is not available for download.

Norris on Constitutional Economics: Lochner, Labor, and the Battle for Liberty

Luke Norris, Columbia University Law School, is publishing Constitutional Economics: Lochner, Labor, and the Battle for Liberty in the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities. Here is the abstract.

This Article argues that the conventional narrative about the decline of Lochnerism and the rise of mid-century substantive due process jurisprudence is incomplete. That narrative focuses initially on how the premises underlying Lochner’s conception of economic freedom were rejected. The Article instead focuses on how the labor movement articulated an alternative conception of freedom that was adopted by Congress, the Executive, and the Supreme Court. While Lochnerism was premised on a negative view of freedom, the labor movement articulated a positive view of freedom and analogized it to republican freedom of association in the political sphere. By reframing the terms of the Lochner-labor debate, the Article shows how strands of labor’s conception of associational freedom in one nominally private sphere — the workplace — are transported into modern substantive due process jurisprudence in the post-Griswold era as the doctrine protects association in another — the intimate sphere. The Article traces similarities between the rise of labor’s freedom and the rise of sexual and intimate freedoms and explores the ways in which they have transformed American constitutional law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Articles of Interest In the April Issue of Journal of British Studies

A number of very interesting articles in the April 2016 issue of the Journal of British Studies.

David Coast, Rumor and “Common Fame”: The Impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham and Public Opinion in Early Stuart England, at pp. 241-267.

William Farrell, Smuggling Silks into Eighteenth-Century Britain: Geography, Perpetrators, and Consumers, at pp. 268-294.

Desmond Fitz-Gibbon, The London Auction Mart and the Marketability of Real Estate in England, 1808–1864, at pp. 295-319.

Kate Imy, Fascist Yogis: Martial Bodies and Imperial Impotence, at pp. 320-343.

Emily Curtis Walters, Between Entertainment and Elegy: The Unexpected Success of R. C. Sherriff's Journey's End (1928), at pp. 320-373.

Gavin Schaffer, Fighting Thatcher with Comedy: What to Do When There Is No Alternative, at pp. 374-397.

Via Simon Stern @ArsScripta.

Kadens on the Medieval Law Merchant

Emily Kadens, Northwestern University School of Law, has published The Medieval Law Merchant: The Tyranny of a Construct at 7 Journal of Legal Analysis 251 (2015). Here is the abstract.

The story of a medieval law merchant has a strong hold on scholars interested in private ordering. Despite numerous historical works demonstrating the falsity of the myth, it continues to be discussed regularly in scholarship as if it were an accurate portrayal of the past. This article tests the law merchant story against evidence about the mechanisms of medieval trade. It suggests that medieval commerce had little space for a specialized law, and that merchants had little need for it because of both the well-developed trading infrastructure and the actions of local governments to ensure the protection of legal rights.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Rossi on Insurance in Elizabethan England: A New Book from Cambridge University Press

Guido Rossi, University of Edinburgh, is publishing Insurance in Elizabethan England: The London Code (Cambridge University Press, 2016)(Cambridge Studies in English Legal History). Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

English insurance came into being almost entirely during the Elizabethan period. However, the Great Fire of 1666 consumed most of London's mercantile document, and therefore little is known about early English insurance. Using new archival material, this study provides the first in-depth analysis of early English insurance. It focuses on a crucial yet little-known text, the London Insurance Code of the early 1580s, and shows how London insurance customs were first imported from Italy, then influenced by the Dutch, and finally shaped in a systematic fashion in that Insurance Code. The London Insurance Code was in turn heavily influenced by coeval continental codes. This deep influence attests the strong links between English and European insurance, and questions the common/civil law divide on the history of commercial law. In-depth research of early English insurance fills a significant gap in our understanding of the formation and development of insurance in England. Provides a meticulous analysis of the London Insurance Code of the late sixteenth century, and its continental origins. Comparative overview of early modern insurance highlights the deep links between England and the Continent on insurance.

New from Routledge: Cultural Studies and the "Juridical Turn": Culture, Law, and Legitimacy in the Era of Neoliberal Capitalism

Forthcoming from Routledge in March 2016: Cultural Studies and the 'Juridical Turn': Culture, Law, and Legitimacy in the Era of Neoliberal Capitalism (Jaafar Aksikas and Sean Johnson Andrews, eds.). Here is a description of the contents from the publisher's website.

The relationship between culture and the law has become an emergent concern within contemporary Cultural Studies as a field, but the recent focus has been largely limited to the role played by cultural representations and identity politics in the legitimation of legal discourse and policies. While continuing this emphasis, this collection also looks at the law itself as a cultural production, tracing some of the specific contours of its function in the last three decades. It argues that, with the onset of neoliberal or late capitalism, the law has taken on a new specificity and power, leading to what we are calling the ‘juridical turn’, where the presumed legitimacy of the law makes other forms of hegemonic struggle secondary. The collection not only charts the law and cultural policy as they exert their powerful—if often overlooked—influence on every aspect of society and culture, but it also seeks to define this important field of study and demonstrate the substantial role law plays in the production of our social and cultural worlds. In this trailblazing collection of contributions by leading and emerging figures in the field of cultural legal studies, chapters examine various ways in which this process is manifested, such as U.S. legislation and Supreme Court Decisions on gay marriage, immigration, consumer finance, welfare, copyright, and so-called victim’s rights, along with international comparisons from Europe and Latin America. It promises to be a pathbreaking analysis of our juridically-determined conjuncture. This book was originally published as a special issue of Cultural Studies.

More here from the website.

Andreas Kulick on Narratives of International Investment Law

Andreas Kulick, University of Tuebingen, is publishing Narrating Narratives of International Investment Law: History and Epistemic Forces in International Investment Law and History (Rainer Hofmann, Christian Tams, and Stephan W. Schill, eds., Edward Elgar, 2016). Here is the abstract.

Telling the history of something requires choosing a perspective. This perspective, or narrative, is the lens through which we look at a specific topic or field. The picture that thereupon emerges is necessarily shaped by the perspective chosen. Strictly speaking, we cannot tell the ‘history of X’, only attempt to approach a historical account of one or several aspects of X by way of the perspective or perspectives we employ to look at X. Discussing, thus, the history of international investment law equally and inevitably requires choice of perspectives/narratives; and by choosing such narrative(s) the ‘narrator’ influences the audience’s grasp of the field whose ‘history’ he or she presents. In this contribution I will seek to illustrate how the investment community presents certain narratives of the history of international investment law, asserting – sometimes deliberately, sometimes inadvertently – their objectivity and thereby shaping certain perceptions of the history according to its view on the present and future of the field. Hence, my task is primarily to present, by way of examples, how certain epistemic communities (see II.) employ such narratives and thereby enhance investment law scholars’ and practitioners’ awareness vis-à-vis the constructive character of these narratives (III.). However, as I will further develop in the conclusion (IV.), this is not at all to say that the study of history and telling certain narratives is a futile exercise for international investment law to undertake. What is central, is making transparent the constructive nature of the narrative in order for the audience that is told this specific historical account to be aware that this is just one of many possible perspectives the authority of which hinges exclusively on its plausibility.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.