Solove on Snoopers, Peepers, and Watchers: 20+ Depictions from Legend, Literature, and Film from the 1600s to Today

From Solove on Tech: Snoopers, Peepers, and Watchers: 20+ Depictions from Legend, Literature, and Film from the 1600s to Today.

Molina Bustos on Cultural Analysis of the Legend of the Alligator Man

Francisco Fabiany Molina Bustos, EDUKIVOTOS, has published Cultural Analysis of the Legend of the Alligator Man. Here is the abstract.

This academic work explores the multifaceted dimensions of the Colombian legend El Hombre Caimán, analyzing its social, ethical, emotional, territorial, and economic functions. Through interdisciplinary lenses—myth theory, semiotics, pedagogy, cultural transmission, and symbolic economy—the study examines how the legend adapts across generations, media formats, and cultural contexts. It highlights the role of the myth in community identity, emotional processing, moral teaching, and cultural tourism, while critically reflecting on the risks of commodification.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Molina Bustos on Cultural Analysis of the Legend of the Whistler

Francisco Fabiany Molina Bustos, EDUKIVOTOS, has published Cultural Analysis of the Legend of the Whistler. Here is the abstract.

This academic project explores the Colombian legend of El Silbón through multidisciplinary lenses, examining its role as a myth in shaping ethics, emotions, social norms, identity, and economic potential. Analyzed from theories by Durkheim, Aristotle, Plutchik, Moscovici, and Harvey, El Silbón is shown to function as a pedagogical, symbolic, and cultural resource. The study reveals its adaptability to modern media, its emotional and psychological depth, and its use in tourism, ritual, and intergenerational transmission. It argues that the legend is not only a vessel of fear but also of identity, memory, and community resilience.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Menard on The Legal Within Folktales: Embedded Law in Indigenous and French Canadian Oral Stories @xavierfm3 @NLawGlobal

Xavier Foccroulle Menard, Norton Rose Fulbright Canada LLP, is publishing The Legal within Folktales: Embedded Law in Indigenous and French Canadian Oral Stories in volume 7 of ANAMORPHOSIS: International Journal of Law and Literature (2021). Here is the abstract.

This essay pertains to the discovery of legal concepts and principles within Indigenous and French Canadian oral folk stories to develop greater dialogue across legal traditions. This is done in two parts. The first part focuses on the literary study of Indigenous and French Canadian folklore. It is argued that oral folk stories are legitimate and relevant object of law in literature study as they constitute dense and potent source of legal principles, concepts and notions. The second part directly engages an archetype of Indigenous and French Canadian folktales. It looks to find legal principles, concepts and notions through the supernatural characters of windigo and werewolf[.]

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Newly Published: Emily Zobel Marshall, American Trickster: Trauma, Tradition, and Brer Rabbit (Rowman & Littlefield: 2020) @EmilyZMarshall @LeedsBeckett @RLPGBooks

Emily Zobel Marshall, Leeds Beckett University, has published American Trickster: Trauma, Tradition and Brer Rabbit (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

Our fascination with the trickster figure, whose presence is global, stems from our desire to break free from the tightly regimented structures of our societies. Condemned to conform to laws and rules imposed by governments, communities, social groups and family bonds, we revel in the fantasy of the trickster whose energy and cunning knows no bounds and for whom nothing is sacred. One such trickster is Brer Rabbit, who was introduced to North America through the folktales of enslaved Africans. On the plantations, Brer Rabbit, like Anansi in the Caribbean, functioned as a resistance figure for the enslaved whose trickery was aimed at undermining and challenging the plantation regime. Yet as Brer Rabbit tales moved from the oral tradition to the printed page in the late nineteenth-century, the trickster was emptied of his potentially powerful symbolism by white American collectors, authors and folklorists in their attempt to create a nostalgic fantasy of the plantation past. American Trickster offers readers a unique insight into the cultural significance of the Brer Rabbit trickster figure, from his African roots and through to his influence on contemporary culture. Exploring the changing portrayals of the trickster figure through a wealth of cultural forms including folktales, advertising, fiction and films the book scrutinises the profound tensions between the perpetuation of damaging racial stereotypes and the need to keep African-American folk traditions alive. Emily Zobel Marshall argues that Brer Rabbit was eventually reclaimed by twentieth-century African-American novelists whose protagonists ‘trick’ their way out of limiting stereotypes, break down social and cultural boundaries and offer readers practical and psychological methods for challenging the traumatic legacies of slavery and racism.

Hashemipour on Reinventing a Folk Hero in Yashar Kemal's Epic Novel "Memed, My Hawk"

Saman Hashemipour, Girne American University, has published Reinventing a Folk Hero in Yashar Kemal's Epic Novel, 'Memed, My Hawk' at 7 International Journal of Engineering & Technology 342 (2018). Here is the abstract.

A millennium after the Day of Ashura, Yashar Kemal's folk hero, Memed, rises against another atrocious dynastic ruler. Husayn Ibn Ali, the grandson of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, was killed and beheaded in the Battle of Karbala in 680 AD to end a caliphate, taking full account of claiming his life. Annually, Shiite and Alevi Muslims hold funeral ceremonies worldwide for his martyrdom on certain days to remember their liberty, as Memed's compatriots, the villagers of Değirmenoluk in Yashar Kemal's epic masterpiece, Memed, My Hawk do. Heroes do not accept injustice, but right all wrongs at all costs. Die or live as a hero, people compose ballads of protagonist's heroism and consider their liberators as holy figures.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Meyer on Hearing the Constitutional Infirmity of the Modern American Death Penalty in the Bygone Songs of Ozark Folklore @NSULawCollege

Chance Meyer, Nova Southeastern University, Shepard Board College of Law, is publishing Twas the Devil: Hearing the Constitutional Infirmity of the Modern American Death Penalty in the Bygone Songs of Ozark Folklore in volume 87 of the Mississippi Law Journal (2017). Here is the abstract.

In the midcentury Ozark Highlands, folklorist Mary Celestia Parler collected over 4,500 reel-to-reel recordings of hillfolk singing the songs and spinning the tales of their ancestors. The Ozark Folksong Collection was recently digitized in a preservation effort at the University of Arkansas Libraries, providing new access to the deeply rooted folk knowledge of the region. Murder ballads reveal that murderers were consistently portrayed to generations of Ozarkers as inhuman monsters, purely evil, with an inevitable deservingness of the death penalty uncomplicated by complex behavioral drives or moral vagaries. News reports, commentary, rhetoric, and prosecutorial arguments surrounding twenty-first century executions of capital defendants tried in Ozark counties of Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma reflect that Ozarkers still rely on folkloric attributes to understand murderers. As a result, folk knowledge supplants Eighth Amendment principles that require capital sentencing jurors to view defendants as complexly, multidimensionally human and subject to biopsychosocial influences. Because there are regional folk traditions across the country, the folklore-based constitutional infirmity of the modern American death penalty apparent in the Ozarks is sure to occur beyond the hilltops.

The full text is not available for download.

Kaye on Why Pornography Is Not Prostitution @tjsl

Anders Kaye, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, has published Why Pornography is Not Prostitution: Folk Theories of Sexuality in the Law of Vice at 60 St. Louis Law Journal 243 (2016). Here is the abstract.

This Article dissects an anomaly in the law regarding pornography and prostitution: under that law, people who have sex with other people for money are normally guilty of prostitution, but not when they are acting in pornography. Since the prostitute and the pornographic actor both engage in the same physical activities and both do so for money, it is natural to wonder why the prostitute is guilty of a crime, but the pornographic actor (normally) is not. In recent years, commentators and courts have offered a jumbled potpourri of rationales and justifications for this anomaly, most of which are either analytically inadequate or implausible in light of present social attitudes. Skeptical that there is a plausible justification for this anomaly, this Article instead offers an explanation – an account that helps us understand why the law makes this anomalous distinction between prostitution and pornographic acting even if the distinction cannot be justified. The explanation points to folk theories about sex – unrefined stories and narratives about sex that persist in and pervade our popular culture. On this folk-theory explanation, the divergence at issue springs from the interplay between a cultural commitment to sating ostensibly voracious male sexual desire and a cultural anxiety about the ways that direct sexual involvement with the female may corrupt or contaminate the male, not just physically, but morally and socially. From the perspective of these folk theories, prostitution and pornography both have the virtue that they sate male desire, but prostitution, involving direct sexual involvement with the female, threatens to taint or corrupt the male consumer (physically, morally, and socially) in a way that pornography does not. Pornography, then, strikes a more “favorable” balance between sating male desire and protecting men from potential corruption than prostitution does. As a result, it is privileged over prostitution in the law. Of course, this cultural mythology about sex does not supply a defensible justification for the state of the law. On the contrary, these folk theories seem almost childishly superstitious, and they resonate with atavistic and ugly ideologies about gender and sex. Nevertheless, this folk-theory account should help explain why the criminalization of prostitution persists so stubbornly today, despite the increasingly pervasive acceptance of feminist, libertarian, and sex-positive insights that might lead to decriminalization, and why the law treats prostitution differently than it treats pornographic acting. In this sense, the explanation offered here does not so much harmonize the law as diagnose in it a persisting pathology. Diagnosing this pathology in the law of prostitution and pornography should, in turn, cast new light on broader issues in the law of vice.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Bunikowski on Sámi Reindeer Husbandry and Its Legal, Philosophical, and Cultural-Anthropological Dimensions

Dawid Bunikowski, University of Eastern Finland Law School; Cardiff University, Centre for Law and Religion; and University of the Arctice, has published Sámi Reindeer Husbandry - Legal-Philosophical and Cultural-Anthropological Dimensions. Here is the abstract.

In this short statement, I claim that it is impossible to understand what reindeer husbandry means for the Sámi people without good understanding of the Sámi laws, culture, philosophy, and cosmology. The aim is to shed some light on Sámi reindeer husbandry from the point of view of philosophy, anthropology, culture, and law. However, my point of view is Western and legal-philosophical-anthropological. As a non-Sámi but Western scholar, the philosopher of law, I may only try to understand them, their culture, and their understandings. Thus, as much as possible, Western scholars should follow narratives and language of some chosen Sámi scholars and herders in this respect. However, in this paper I also follow my reason, which is deeply rooted in Western traditions and intellectual heritage, and this kind of way of interpretation of facts.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Telling Stories

Irene Watson, University of South Australia School of Law, has published First Nations Stories, Grandmother's Law: Too Many Stories Too (sic) Tell. Here is the abstract.

Where to begin? From the beginning, the sisters were running and running away from the man Ngurrunderi: they ran past our country at the edgy of the Coorong, the end of Tangane country, towards a placed called Thangul, the land of the Tanganekald. They are First Nations Peoples and to whom I belong. The sisters ran away from Ngurrunderi who was chasing his 'claimed women', his two wives.

Then Ngurrunderi came along to that same place and he was stopped by our ancestor Paramapari; Ngurrunderi and Paramapari fought right on the beach, where the Coorong lands end. Now this is a place where the old rocks come up out of the sea, the place where the grandmothers sit. Ngurrunderi fought Paramapari because he would not tell Ngurrunderi if he had seen the sisters and what direction they were heading in.

Download the paper from SSRN at the link.

Updated Fairy Tales In Popular Culture

The Guardian's Film Blog discusses fairy tale films, their popularity, and their meaning here. Compare with this 2011 discussion of fairy tale tv on US networks from Reuters.

Swinish Behavior?

Robert Krulwich ponders law, journalism, ethics, and the three little pigs in this essay for National Public Radio. I would say he hams up it, but...

The Protection of Folklore

Ayoyemi Lawal Arowolo, Babcock University School of Law and Security Studies, has published Copyright Law and the Recognition of 'Folkloric Creations' and 'Folk Medicine' in Africa, at 5 Journal of Black and African Arts and Civilization 33 (2011). Here is the abstract.

Creations in traditional African societies are often categorized as folklore which is protectable under copyright law as expressions of folklore. They are indeed precious jewels which bear eloquent testimony to the wonderful civilisation and culture flourishing in traditional communities in Africa. The rich cultural heritage of Africa is a sign of the creative activities of the past. The present has not given enough recognition to the role and protection of works based on folklore thus compounding the misappropriation of folkloric works and folk medicine. The controversy on the protection of folklore is an issue African countries face and need to resolve. The invaluable role of folklore in African societies and the deficiencies in protecting creative works within traditional parameters to encourage intellectual creations is examined in this paper.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.