Moustaira on Who Needs Comparative Law @emoustai

Elina Moustaira, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Law, is publishing Who Needs Comparative Law?! What a Question! in Comparazione e Diritto Civile (2017). Here is the abstract.

It is argued that in a world of steadily increasing contacts and mutual influences, we need to understand the other people, the other laws. It does not suffice to cite descriptions of law’s function or of various states’ attitudes towards the law. Thus, the comparative perspective is used in order to approach and comprehend a legal culture.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Manko on Fantasies of Selfhood in Legal Texts

Rafał Mańko, University of Amsterdam, Centre for the Study of European Contract law (CSECL); European Parliamentary Research Service, has published 'Reality is for Those Who Cannot Sustain the Dream': Fantasies of Selfhood in Legal Texts as 5 Wroclaw Review of Law, Administration, and Economics 24 (2015). Here is the abstract.

Confronting the law as a form of ideology is not an easy task, especially for lawyers very strongly attached to the internal point of view as part of their professional habitus. Despite this difficulty, the present paper aims at contributing to the ideological demistification of law by proposing to apply Slavoj Žižek’s critique of ideology to the legal field. In particular, the paper elaborates a specific methodology of subjecting legal texts to a critique of ideology by way of identifying the symptoms, i.e. points of breakdown of the ideological field which are simultaneously necessary for that field to achieve its closure. The paradox of symptoms is that they are inevitable for the ideological field, yet at the same time they undermine it, opening up a space for its critique. In this context, the aim of this paper is to confront the fundamental fantasies conveyed by legal ideology. The paper approaches ideological fantasies in strict connection with ideological interpellation, i.e. the process in which a human individual is transformed into a subject of ideology. Ideological interpellation of individuals into subjects is one of the chief operations of the law, which, in its current form, is based on the fundamental assumption that human beings are subjects of rights and duties. Directing the critique of ideology at legal texts aims at undermining the efficacy of the ideological grip held by the Symbolic order upon individuals by insisting on the classical Lacanian thesis that ‘the big Other does not exist’. On a practical level, critique of legal ideology performed by lawyers themselves can help to bring about a more reflexive approach to their participation in the principal practices of legal culture and can help to raise lawyers’ awareness regarding their role in society.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Law and the Modern Mind

Concurring Opinions features discussion of a recent symposium centered on Susanna Blumenthal's Law and the Modern Mind: Consciousness and Responsibility in American Legal Culture (Harvard 2016).

Post here.

Hertogh and Kurkchiyan on the Existence of a Common European Legal Culture

Marc Hertogh, University of Groningen, Faculty of Law, and Marina Kurkchiyan, University of Oxford, Wolfson College, are publishing 'When Politics Comes into Play, Law is No Longer Law': Images of Collective Legal Consciousness in the UK, Poland and Bulgaria in volume 12 of International Journal of Law in Context (2016).

This paper examines the idea of a common European legal culture by exploring its foundational component, ‘collective legal consciousness’, in three EU states: the UK, Poland, and Bulgaria. Using a comparative research design and a variety of methods of data collection, it suggests that underneath the thin layer of EU consensus there are some fundamental differences in perceptions of law. The evidence shows that legal ideas are infused with perceptions of the political system. This finding suggests that the creation of a shared European legal culture depends on the prior formation of a common transnational polity right across the EU, together with a sense of political identity and of trust in the legitimacy of the European political authorities. The paper also demonstrates the multi-layered character of collective legal consciousness, allowing different images of law to coexist, underpinned by the perception of the source with which each image is associated.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.