Fernandez-Lopez on Turandot and the Exhaustion of Power: Ritual, Genealogy, Sacrifice, and the Twilight of Civilizations

Edgar A. Fernandez-Lopez has published Turandot and the Exhaustion of Power: Ritual, Genealogy, Sacrifice, and the Twilight of Civilizations.

This article reinterprets Puccini's Turandot not as a fairy tale of feminine cruelty overcome by erotic persistence, but as a twilight drama of exhausted civilizational power. Recovering the libretto's overlooked Tartar genealogy, it argues that Calaf belongs symbolically to the very lineage of the "King of the Tartars" implicated in Turandot's ancestral wound, so that his crossing of the riddle-threshold is recognition rather than conquest. Through textual and musical analysis, and through comparison with Gozzi's Adelma, the study reclaims Liù-not Calaf-as the opera's moral center: a figure of concealed sovereignty whose gratuitous sacrifice, a love detached from possession, dissolves the sacrificial economy sustaining the imperial order. Situating the work alongside Wagnerian twilight, Shakespearean tragedy, and the Girardian theory of sacred violence, the article reads Turandot as a meditation on how civilizations perish spiritually before they perish materially-on how ritual and law outlive the meaning they once served.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Papers: Law and the Humanities World (1 & 2 September, 2026, Lucerne)

 From Dr. Steven Howe, University of Lucerne:

CFP: Law and the Humanities World (1 & 2 September, Lucerne)

 

In Humanities Theory (2025, with Amanda Anderson), Simon During offers a suggestive mapping of a “humanities world” – a loosely linked “conglomeration of practices, interests, comportments, personae, offices, moods, purposes and values” that inhabit “various settings, disciplines and institutions”. The “humanities world” is plural and diverse; it has no essence or centre, even as it is threaded by shared – if contested – histories, understandings and commitments. It transcends disciplinary lines and geographical formations. Vitally, it also embraces a flourishing “extramural” humanities – of books, artworks, exhibitions, performances, films, TV shows, and podcasts – that bears only loose relation to the professional humanities ensconced in universities.

 

For this inaugural conference of the new Swiss Law and Humanities Hub, we take the idea of a ‘humanities world’ as a prompt to reflect again on the place(s) of the legal humanities. We call on contributors to give new and further thought to where law and humanities work is performed and pursued, and to the ways in which such work comes to be done in the ‘beyond’ of academia. What happens when we shift our purview away from universities to public spaces, cultural institutions and other locations of collective life? How might this reorientation reshape our understanding of theory, method and practice? More broadly, the conference aims to encourage reflection, collaboration and the sharing of creative approaches that (re-)think legal critique and critique of law through different forms of humanities work – public, popular, and vernacular.

 

Full call for papers here. Deadline: 12 June 2026.

 

Contact: steven.howe@unilu.ch

 

Link to the Institute for Interdisciplinary Legal Studies/Iucernaiuris here. 

 

The IJLC Special Issue In Celebration of Peter Fitzpatrick and His Scholarship: Volume 17, No. 1 (March 2021) @IJLC_CUP

From David Sugarman, Professor Emeritus, Law School, Lancaster University, Senior Associate Research Fellow, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London, Senior Associate, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford:

The International Journal of Law in Context has published a special issue in celebration of the late Peter Fitzpatrick and his scholarship. Professors Sugarman and Abdul Paliwala are the guest editors. 

 

 

PETER FITZPATRICK (1941–2020)

 

Peter Fitzpatrick (1941–2020) was a much-loved and inspirational scholar, and a wonderful friend and mentor. He contributed immeasurably to the intellectual, organisational and cultural life of post-colonial legal studies, critical legal studies, and law and the humanities – fields he helped to consolidate. His remarkable influence, however, extends well beyond his scholarship. He taught and supervised an incredible number of people, amounting to two or even three generations of students and colleagues. And they all admire and adore him.

 

In this Special Issue, ten friends, former colleagues and students of Peter’s contribute new insights into his personal and professional development, and celebrate his life and many achievements. We begin with an essay that adds to what we already knew about Peter’s personal and professional biography, and assesses and clarifies his key ideas and their intersection with his ethics and lived experiences (Sugarman, in this issue). It provides a backdrop and context for the subsequent papers that elucidate Peter’s significant contribution to scholarship, engage with his ideas and illuminate specific junctures in his life. The issue ends with an edited transcript of Peter’s final seminar in February 2020 and addresses a variety of themes in his work, including his critique of H.L.A. Hart, his notion of ‘slow reading’, the relationship between theory and grounded engagement with people, the idea of community and relationality, the role of the critic, self-criticism, the impossibility of law, decoloniality, occidentalism, mythologies and governmentality, and the significance of narratives (Paliwala, in this issue).

 

We hope these papers convey something of the special person that was Peter: the person whose support as a supervisor and friend regularly exceeded the norm; his tireless innovation; his community building; his empathy towards ‘outsiders’ and ‘others’; and his delightful individuality and sense of humour.

 

 

Editorial introduction

David Sugarman and Abdul Paliwala

 

Becoming Peter Fitzpatrick (1941–2020)

David Sugarman

 

Transformation

William Twining

 

Post-colonial attitudes and the relevance of incommensurability

Eve Darian-Smith

 

Not to save, but to encounter: Fitzpatrick as transnational jurisprudent

Sundhya Pahuja

 

Myth and concealment at colonial law’s foundations

George Pavlich

 

Deconstruction, dissipation and death, and the ‘casting-away of the law’?

Upendra Baxi

 

A concise note on Peter Fitzpatrick’s ‘Racism and the innocence of law’

Patricia Tuitt

 

Improvising with Peter

Sara Ramshaw

 

How to do things with Foucault (legally)

Ben Golder

 

Ultimate conversation: Fitzpatrick at Warwick, February 2020

Abdul Paliwala

Here is a link to the issue and its content.

See also this post at the Cambridge Core Blog.

Visions Not So Splendid: Art, Law, Justice: August 22, 2019 at the Australian National University

The ANU Centre for Law, Art and the Humanities presents Visions Not So Splendid: Art, Law, Justice on Thursday 22 August, 12:00-4:30PM at the Sir Ronald Wilson Building Lecture Theatre, Australian National University.

This event includes the following panels:

Law and Art in Transition

·          

§  Eliza Garnsey, ‘The Visual Jurisprudence of Transition’

§  Maya Broom, ‘Incursions of International Law: Representations in Cinema’

Representation and Justice

·          

§  Rachel Joy, ‘The Work of Art in Decolonising Occupied Australia’

§  Laura Petersen, ‘Sites of Restitution: Gerhard Richter and the Birkenau Cycle’

§  Lola Frost, ‘Dream Painting and the Deterritorialisation of Democratic Politics’

Click here to access the Visions Not So Splendid: Art Law, Justice Program which contains the full schedule and abstracts for this exciting event.

For more information:

Dale Mitchell, Vice-President (Web), Law, Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia

dmitchell@usc.edu.au | www.usc.edu.au

Cooking With the Legal Humanities, Via @dphourigan @thomgiddens

Via Thom Giddens's wonderful blog, Law, etc, a law and humanities related recipe. From the Land of Oz, it's Spaghetti Carbonara à la Hourigan. More here. Never let it be said that law and the humanities only nourishes the intellect.

Melbourne Doctoral Forum on Legal Theory: CFP

The Tenth Melbourne Doctoral Forum on Legal Theory will be held at Melbourne Law School, December 7-8, 2017. Here is a link to the Call for Papers.  Submit by June 11, 2017.
The Law, Literature, and Humanities Conference will take place immediately after the forum, also in Melbourne.

Call For Papers: AALS Section of Law and Humanities Panel on AI/Robots, Law, and the Humanities

Call for papers for an AALS Section of Law and the Humanities panel at the 2018 Annual Meeting, San Diego, January 3-January 6, 2018,  on the theme of the image of robots and AI in the humanities, communication, film, tv, art, commercials, philosophy, and related disciplines. Should robots and AI have rights? If so what rights? 

Please send expressions of interest, your affiliation, and a short description (100-250 words) of the proposed paper by May 15, 2017 to

Christine Corcos (christine.corcos@law.lsu.edu)

Thank you.

The 2013 Law and the Senses Symposium, University of Westminster @seanmulcahy @critlegthinking

ICYMI: Reflections on the 2013 Law and the Senses Symposium at the University of Westminster, from Cedric Gilson.
Via @seanmulcahy

Joe Sacco at Queen Mary University, March 21, 2017, To Discuss Law and the Humanities

Via @maksdelmar:

Inaugural Queen Mary Conversation in Law and the Humanities: Joe Sacco

21 March 2017

 

Time: 6:30 - 9:00pm 
 
Venue: Peston Lecture Theatre, the Graduate Centre, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road E1 4NS United Kingdom

The Department of Law is delighted to welcome renowned graphic novelist Joe Sacco for the inaugural Queen Mary Conversation in Law and the Humanities.
An on-stage interview with Joe Sacco will be conducted by Dr Maks Del Mar and Professor Penny Green. The aim of the new flagship series is to invite scholars and practitioners working in the arts and humanities to discuss the role of law in their work, and to thereby showcase the most cutting edge practice and research in law and the humanities.

More information at the website here.

Brooks on the Use of Narrative in the Interplay of Law and the Humanities

Peter Brooks, Center for Human Values, Princeton University, is publishing Clues, Evidence, Detection: Law Stories in volume 25 of Narrative (January 2017). Here is the abstract.

This essay raises questions about ways in which law and the interpretive humanities might intersect in such manner as to offer real insight one to another. Specifically, it addresses the use of narrative in the law, and its analytic study. Stories, I argue, are not events in the world, but the way we tell events, a crucial distinction sometimes unrecognized in legal opinions. Examples analyzed include the doctrine of “inevitable discovery” articulated by the Supreme Court in Nix v. Williams, juxtaposed to the creation of a seeming inevitability in the stories of Sherlock Holmes. These issues are further clarified through a discussion of historian Carlo Ginzburg’s reflections on the “huntsman’s paradigm” and the workings of “retrospective prophecy.” The essay then turns more closely to the analysis of narrative, particularly the end-determined nature of narrative meaning, and to the one Supreme Court case I am aware of that discusses narrative in an analytic way: Justice Souter’s opinion in Old Chief v. U.S. Further examples are drawn from rape adjudication (Rusk v. Maryland) and post-conviction petitions for relief (Mickens v. Taylor). If narrative, telling the facts, plays so important a role in law, shouldn’t the law arm itself with more tools in the analysis of narrative? The notion of law as language, including its grammar and its rhetoric, deserves a place in legal study.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

University of Kent Law School @UniKent Announces New LLM in Law and the Humanities

From the mailbox, news of a new LLM in Law and the Humanities:

The Kent LLM is a one-year program that offers a chance to study law from a critical perspective. The Law and the Humanities pathway is taught at Kent’s Canterbury campus, with two intensive modules in Paris. You can learn more about the pathway in the notice attached to this email, and at https://www.kent.ac.uk/law/postgraduate/taught/lawandhumanities.html. We also offer a LLM by research, with supervision available from a wide range of law and the humanities specialists. KLS is an exciting critical law school, with research centres such as the Centre for Critical Thought, the Centre for Critical International Law, and the Kent Interdisciplinary Centre for Spatial Studies, as well as research clusters like Social Critiques of Law and Clio (the Law and History group). KLS also hosts the Kent Summer School in Critical Theory, held each year in Paris. This exciting initiative draws graduate and early career researchers from around the world to work intensively for two weeks with leading scholars from across all disciplines. You can learn more at http://kssct.org. There are some LLM scholarships (for taught and research programmes) available both for UK/EU and overseas applicants. More information is available on the KLS website, at https://www.kent.ac.uk/law/postgraduate/taught/Taught_pg_funding.htmlhttps://www.kent.ac.uk/law/postgraduate/research/PGR_LLM_Scholarships.html We would be most grateful if you would forward this email, together with the attachment, to:

• Your academic networks

• Law students who may appreciate a master’s level entry to humanities and cultural approaches to law

• Students from other disciplines who are curious about law, ethics and justice

• Students who may enjoy the chance to study in the UK and Paris, and who are looking for a way to experience European life and culture whilst studying for a year.

 For administrative and application enquiries, please contact Kent Law School’s postgraduate office, klspgoffice@kent.ac.uk. For academic enquiries, please contact the Pathway Specialists, Maria Drakopoulou m.drakopoulou@kent.ac.uk or Connal Parsley c.parsley@kent.ac.uk. 

TIlburg University Establishes Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities

From the mailbox:

Tilburg University has established the annual Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities in order to commemorate the life and work of Willem Witteveen. The fellowship aims to enable a junior scholar (PhD or postdoc level) to further develop his or her research in the area of ‘Law and Humanities’ during a visit to Tilburg. Professor Willem Witteveen was an early representative of the interdisciplinary and contextual approach to legal scholarship in The Netherlands and Tilburg Law School. Whereas the emphasis often is on social sciences, Willem’s focus was on law and humanities. Rhetoric, literature, political philosophy and (intellectual and cultural) history in particular were breeding grounds for Willem’s many contributions to academia, politics and society. Willem attached a lot of importance to student formation in the sense of the classic Bildungsideal to which expression (rhetoric, language) and contact with classical texts are central. As progressive as much of his work is, as strong was his attachment to traditional forms of academic life, with their opportunities for direct exchange of ideas.   What the Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities offers:

The Witteveen Memorial Fellow will have office space and facilities at the Department of Public Law, Jurisprudence and Legal History of Tilburg Law School, as well as full library access.

 We offer reimbursement of travel expenses and accommodation expenses (max. 5250 Euro). The Witteveen Memorial Fellowship does not constitute an employment relationship. For this reason, Tilburg Law School will not make social insurance contributions or contributions to pension or unemployment insurance. In principle the Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities is for a duration of three months in the Spring following the application deadline. Candidates are welcome to propose a different period. In case the fellowship is awarded for less than three month the maximum amount to be reimbursed will be proportionately lower. If the fellowship is awarded for longer than three months, the total amount to be reimbursed, travel or commuting costs included, remains 5250 euro. What is expected of the Witteveen Memorial Fellow:

During the period of the fellowship the scholar will be present in Tilburg, participate in the academic life of both Tilburg Law School and the Tilburg School of Humanities and deliver a guest lecture to students. Any publications resulting from the fellowship should mention the Witteveen Memorial Fellowship in Law and Humanities explicitly. Application procedure

Scholars who are currently working on a PhD dissertation or who defended one not longer than five years ago are eligible. Candidates are requested to submit their application before 15-11-2016. Applications can only be submitted online (www.tilburguniversity.edu/about-tilburg-university/working-at/wp/). Candidates must submit a cover letter, a CV including publications, a statement of intent (‘what do you plan to do during the fellowship?’, ‘what is the end product?’) and one reference letter.In principle, the selection committee will decide on the basis of the written application only. The extent to which a candidate’s background is in law and humanities as well as evidence of interaction between both disciplines in the candidate’s work is an important selection criterion For questions, please contact Jacoba Floor (J.W.Floor@uvt.nl). 

Edwards on The Humanities in the Law School Curriculum

Linda H. Edwards, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, School of Law, is publishing The Humanities in the Law School Curriculum: Courtship and Consummation in volume 21 of the Wake Forest Law Review (2016). Here is the abstract.

Today the humanities occupy a small corner of the law school curriculum. Might they instead become a more vibrant partner in legal education? Might law and humanities scholarship escape the pages of law reviews and teach us something important about how to read and understand the law? Despite the long theoretical dominance of legal realism in scholarly circles, much of legal education as we know it has remained mired in Langdell's formalist vision of the law — a vision of a narrow, abstract, impersonal system bereft of human meaning and value. But we can do better. We can approach law, and teach our students to approach law, not as a set of rules but as a form of life. If we decide to take up this life-giving journey, it is the humanities that can show us the way.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities Annual Conference Website Is Now Available

The new website for the Association of Law, Culture, and the Humanities is up. Visit it here.

The 2017 meeting will be held at Stanford School of Law, March 31-April 1, 2017.

Mootz on Law as a Liberal Art

Francis Joseph Mootz, III, University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law, has published Law as a Liberal Art, presented at the Rhetoric Society of America Bi-Annual Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia, May 29, 2016. Here is the abstract.

Law is a liberal art. Today, this lesson is forgotten by legal educators, legal practitioners, and citizens. This amnesia is not just a problem of proper academic categorization; it has profound effects on the full realization of the rule of law in contemporary constitutional democracies. The essence of law is captured by the ancient Trivium: grammar, logic (really, dialectic) and rhetoric.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

Law, Literature, and the Humanities Association of Australasia Conference 2016: Call for Papers

From Scott Veitch, Paul KC Chung Professor in Jurisprudence Faculty of Law University of Hong Kong HKSAR

 SPECTACULAR LAW

 Law, Literature and the Humanities Association of Australasia Conference 2016 The Faculty of Law, The University of Hong Kong, 8-10 December 2016
Preceded by a half-day Graduate Research Student Workshop  CALL FOR PAPERS The LLH Association of Australasia invites researchers working at the intersection of law and the humanities to Hong Kong in 2016 to explore the complex relations between law, theory, culture and visuality. This conference invites participants to re-affirm the enduring capacity of interdisciplinary, creative and critical legal scholarship to allow us to see the law otherwise. The theme of ‘spectacular law’ invites reflection on the performance and dramaturgy of political and legal power, the affective lures of sovereignty and the technologies that reveal – and conceal – legality, dissent, (dis)obedience, and different modalities of regulation. This conference will examine the various ways in which we can see, and be seen by, law, politics and power. The location of this year’s conference prompts its theme. Hong Kong is a visually striking city: fading tower blocks, gleaming edifices, remnants of a colonial past, and canopies of neon suspended over street corners, all enframed by lushly forested hills and the increasingly contested waters of the South China Sea. The powerful visual affect, as much a result of the city’s geography as it is of its legal and political orderings, inspires an exploration of the spectacle. We invite either individual paper proposals or pre-arranged panels of 3-4 papers. Participants may present in the form of a traditional academic paper, panel discussion, or innovative presentational forms that engage video, performance or other media. We will consider proposals in any area of law, literature and the humanities. However in addressing the conference theme papers might wish to reflect on the following questions:·         What are the techniques through which law’s operative power is made (in)visible today?
·         How do the various methodologies of ‘law and humanities’ allow us to approach questions of speech, surveillance, censorship, and freedom?
·         How are the spatial, aural, textual and haptic dimensions of law and power refracted through – or obscured by – a focus on the law’s visuality, its spectacles and spectaculars?
·         In what ways might we think about the performance of law in a plurality of settings: on the stage, the screen, in literature or in the courtroom?
·         Does the development of new technologies necessitate the re-examination of how justice is seen to be done?
 PLENARY SPEAKERS Laurent de Sutter, Professor of Legal Theory at Vrije Universiteit Brussels Christine Black, Senior Research Fellow at the Northern Institute, Charles Darwin University 
 FURTHER INFORMATION Paper submission DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS AND PANEL PROPOSALS        15 MAY
 Paper and panel proposals should be submitted through the conference webpage.Accepted participants will be notified of the registration and payment details in June. Conference Fees Standard rate                                                                    1,300 HKDStudent rate                                                                      600 HKDConference dinner                                                          500 HKD Graduate bursaries 10 bursaries of 2,000 HKD will be available to support graduate students from outside Hong Kong attending the Graduate Workshop and presenting a paper at the conference. For full details and how to apply, see the Conference website. Dates & Times The Graduate Workshop will be held on the morning of the 8 December. The Conference will begin in the afternoon of 8 December and end at 5pm on the 10 December. The Conference Dinner will be on the evening of 9 December. Practicalities Information about registration, accommodation, plenaries and panels, updates and all other matters will be available through the Conference website. Conference website                       http://www.law.hku.hk/lawandhumanities/Email address                                    lawandhumanities@hku.hk 

Oloka Onyango On the Development of Ugandan Law

Oloka Onyango, Makerere University, has published Ghosts and the Law: An Inaugural Lecture. Here is the abstract.

Ugandan law has long been haunted by ghosts. They come in many varied shapes and sizes — as the Common Law itself, as the Doctrine of Precedent and even in the manner, dress, deportment and language of our courts. All these are the ‘Ghosts of History Past, Present and Future.’ In the arena of Constitutional Law and governance the ghost appears in the form of the Political Question Doctrine (PQD), a concept most associated with the 1966 High Court decision, Uganda v. Commissioner of Prisons, ex parte Matovu. But as with all spiritual beings — such as the Roman God, Janus — there are two sides to the case. In other words, there are not just one but (at least) two ghosts of ex parte Matovu. There is the backward-looking one which supported the extra-constitutional overthrow of government in 1966 and paved the way for military dictatorship, judicial restraint and conservatism. And in the same case, there is its reverse which “jettisoned formalism” to the winds, overruled legal “technicalities,” and underlined the need for the protection of fundamental human rights. The jettisoning formalism decision eventually opened the way to a robust and growing industry of Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in Uganda. As we celebrate 20 years of the 1995 Constitution and approach the 50th anniversary of the decision in the case, it is the most appropriate time to look back and consider which of the ghosts of ex parte Matovu has been most successful in influencing the Ugandan body politic. What does the future portend for the life of these fraternal twins?

Download the lecture from SSRN at the link.

A Workshop on Law and the Humanities at the University of Warwick

The University of Warwick is sponsoring a Workshop on Law and Humanities on October 14, 2015. The workshop will consider how the various ‘law and…’ methodologies (law and literature, film, theatre studies, etc.) can help us think through the scenes of unrest, the staging of protest, and the writing of injustice and discontent.

It aims to address the following questions: How might Law and Humanities enable us to make sense of a setting of popular dissensus, of widespread economic, political and environmental chaos and inequity? What does it mean to choose the disciplinary apparatus of Law and Humanities in the quintessential political setting – the moment of popular dissensus and disagreement? What are the possibilities of an aesthetic engagement with law, protest and dissent? Lunch will be provided. The workshop is free but pre-registration is required.

Here is a list of confirmed participants.

Nadine El-​Enany (Birkbeck)

Julen Etxabe (Helsinki)

Adam Gearey (Birkbeck)

Silvija Jestrovic (Warwick)

Daniel Matthews (Hong Kong)

Rashmi Varma (Warwick)

Scott Veitch (Hong Kong)

Marco Wan (Hong Kong)

Gary Watt (Warwick)

Andrew Williams (Warwick)


 More here from the blog Critical Legal Thinking.

Sexuality, Criminal Law, the Internet, and the First Amendment

Thea Johnson and Andrew Gilden, both of Stanford Law School, have published Common Sense and the Cannibal Cop at 11 Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties 313 (2015). Here is the abstract.

The Internet has created unprecedented opportunities for individuals to explore a wide range of unfamiliar and often-marginalized desires, and in doing so has also created unprecedented opportunities for the criminal justice system to monitor and punish these sexual desires. An important example of this dynamic is the recent trial of Gilberto Valle, New York City’s so-called “Cannibal Cop.” Valle, an NYPD officer, was convicted for conspiracy to kidnap several women based on a series of highly fictionalized conversations on a “dark fetish” fantasy website. Although these conversations revealed Valle’s fantasies involving kidnapping, torturing, and cannibalizing women, he had made no effort to kidnap, kill, or eat anyone, and there was no evidence that his online discussions went beyond graphic exchanges and digital role-playing. The “Cannibal Cop” case provides a useful template for examining the ethical boundaries of applying criminal laws to the precarious realm of Internet-mediated sexuality. This Essay highlights some of the important questions raised by the prosecution of the Cannibal Cop, and it emphasizes the need to carefully approach the important, yet inherently blurry line between “fantasy” and “reality.” We caution against overreliance on "common sense" in cases like this, given the incomplete lay understandings of how people use the Internet to explore sexual desires and the risk that legal decisions will be driven by disapproval of these desires.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.