Anat Rosenberg on Consumer Finance and "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

Anat Rosenberg, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliyah-Radzyner School of Law, has published The Realism of the Balance Sheet: Value Assessments between the Debtors Act and the Picture of Dorian Gray at 2 Critical Analysis of Law 363 (2015). Here is the abstract.

This essay examines English parliamentary debates about consumers’ financial means in the context of the 1869 Debtors Act, which oversaw working-class imprisonment for debt. Debates reveal a shift in the financial epistemology favored by participants, from a view of means based on what I term social credit, to a view of means based on a balance sheet paradigm. The rise and naturalization of the balance-sheet paradigm was both interrogated and challenged by one of the era’s most controversial texts, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. I rely on the novel to examine the deep implications of the shift for the history of consumption, and to recall the drama it involved.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

The Windmills In His Mind: Moot Court Proceeding Examines Don Quixote's Competency

Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Ruth Bader Ginsburg presided (as Chief Justice) over the Supreme Court of La Mancha in a moot court proceeding at the Shakespeare Theatre Company on May 11. Other justices and judges involved included Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, Chief Judge Merrick Garland and Judge Patricia Millett of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the U.S. District Court of Appeals. Thomas Goldstein (Goldstein Russell) represented Don Quixote; Carter Phillips (Sidley Austin) argued for the interests of the Family Court of La Mancha and Don Quixote's niece Antonia, who wished to be named his guardian.

The parties advocated for and against the competency of one Don Quixote de la Mancha. The issue: is he so out of touch with reality that he needs a court-appointed guardian? Justice Ginsburg ultimately decided "no," because dreamers like him allow civilization to progress. Prior moot courts put on by the Shakespeare Theatre Company's Bard Association have included events inspired by Shakespeare's Henry V and Measure for Measure, and Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband. More here.

More about May 11th's event here from Tony Mauro at the Blog of Legal Times.

Hoaxes and Frauds and Swindles, Oh, My

Some really entertaining law-related articles in the current issue (titled "Swindle and Fraud") of Lapham's Quarterly (Spring, 2015). Check out Lewis H. Lapham's "Paper Moons," David Samuels' "A Fish Tale," (about Herman Melville's literary hoax), a map of "Land Grabs" (questionable real estate), "Life Imitates Life," (a little something from Oscar Wilde), a column on Harry Houdini and more. Link to the whole fascinating issue here.

Prosecuting Dorian Gray

Simon Stern, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, is publishing The Trial of Dorian Gray in Dorian Gray in the Twenty-First Century (Richard Kaye, ed.; Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

Wilde’s three trials in 1895 served, in effect, as an obscenity prosecution of The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890/91). Though the novel was not formally charged with obscenity, Dorian Gray’s first reviewers suggested that it was obscene, and the book remained unavailable in England for nearly two decades after Wilde’s trials. The novel's relation to Wilde's trials thus raises a number of questions about the use of fiction as legal evidence and about the ways in which a criminal prosecution might be taken to reveal the meaning of the defendant's writings. This essay discusses the late Victorian campaign against obscene literature and the victims of that campaign; the reviews of the original version of Dorian Gray (in Lippincott's Magazine, 1890); the oblique manner in which the innuendo about its obscenity functioned during Wilde's three trials (1895); Wilde's own ironic engagement, at several key points in the novel, with the conception of influence at work in the legal test governing the evaluation of obscenity (R. v. Hicklin, 1868); the relation of the painting itself, and of the notorious French novel that Dorian borrows from Lord Henry, to that conception of influence; and Wilde's reenactment of his ironic perspective at the narrative level.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link. 

Oscar Wilde and the Narrative of Sexual Identity

Laura I. Appleman, Willamette University College of Law, has published Oscar Wilde's Long Tail: Framing Sexual Identity in the Law at 70 Maryland Law Review 985 (2011). Here is the abstract.

This article argues that narrative has been the hidden link in the intersection between law and sexual identity, shaping and structuring the relationship between the two. The power of the hidden narrative continues to influence legal decisions today, most recently including the national debate on same-sex marriage. I contend that the basis for this complicated relationship began with a few critical 19th-century events, in particular the widely publicized trials of Oscar Wilde for the crime of sodomy. I aim to restore the camouflaged work of narrative to its rightful place in our understanding of sexual identity in the law. In so doing, I hope to not only dissect and expose the complex interrelationships between law, narrative, and sexuality, but also clarify the shifting dynamics of legal sexual identity. This Article asserts that only through recognizing the role of narrative in structuring our legal definition of sexual identity will we ever be able to understand how and why courts are deciding gay rights cases in the way they do.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.