Penelope Pether on Australian Law and Literature

Penelope Pether, Villanova University School of Law, has published "The Prose and the Passion," as 66(3) On Crime and the Law of 2007. It is also Villanova/Public Policy Research Paper 07-20. Here is the abstract.

This essay takes the late Robert Cover's insight that “No set of legal institutions or prescriptions exists apart from the narratives that locate it and give it meaning,” and thus that “For every constitution there is an epic” as the starting point for a reading of Australian legal and literary texts about the relationship of the nation and “outsiders,” as between constitutional subjects and texts. Ranging from “legal faction” texts Evil Angels (about the “Dingo Baby” case) and Dark Victory (about the Tampa incident) and The Castle, Rob Sitch's filmic satire on the Australian takings clause and the landmark Native Title Decision Mabo v. Queensland, No 2, to the recent High Court cases Al Kateb, Behrooz, Re Woolley, and Ruhan, it offers a critical account of recent Australian constitutional jurisprudence regarding asylum seekers and “sexually violent predators.” The essay argues that this recent High Court jurisprudence offers a radically circumscribed reading of Chapter III judicial power (analogous to Article III judicial power in the U.S. Constitutional context), and offers comparative constitutional law perspectives on problems in U.S. Constitutional hermeneutics.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

The Miller Girls: Daisy and Judith

Penelope Pether, Villanova University School of Law, has published "Regarding the Miller Girls: Daisy, Judith, and the Seeming Paradox of in re Grand Jury Subpoena, Judith Miller," in 19 Law and Literature: The New Exceptionalism: Law and Literature Since 9/11 Symposium 187 (2007). Here is the abstract.

“Daisy Miller” is a story about American Exceptionalism; about the banal and tawdry tragedy that comes of having faith in it; about Daisy's (the lawyer Giovanelli's “new found land”) tragic flaw - that she is unaware of how others perceive her, or she doesn't care; or about ambiguities, or seeing things. It can be made to speak volumes about the power of perception, as about what Tayyab Mahmoud has called “[a]doption and deployment of identity.” Or about the seductive power of fictions of specifically national identity: for James critic Leslie Fiedler, “the American Girl is innocent by definition, mythically innocent; and her purity depends upon nothing she says or does....”

A contemporary American anti/heroine, Judith Miller, is likewise figured as interpretable: did she need a “freely given” “personal” waiver of confidentiality to identify her source, and when did she get one; was she a “good, honorable principled reporter” or “A Woman of Mass Destruction”; and what did New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller's accusation of an “entanglement” with “Scooter” Libby connote?

This essay takes the intrigues generated around “the Miller Girls” as a guide to reading the stories told by, surrounding, excised from, and immanent in the 2005 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in In re Grand Jury Subpoena, Judith Miller, and explores some fictions of American Exceptionalism cultivated both by “common law constitutionalism,” and by a Federal judiciary laying down the law in the shadows cast by the “War on Terror” and the jurisdictions of expatriation.

Download the entire article from SSRN here.

SSRN Announces Two New Journals

From an announcement by the SSRN

The Social Science Research Network is pleased to announce two new SSRN abstracting journals, Law & Literature and Law & Culture.

Law & Culture is edited by Reva Siegel, Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law and Professor of American Studies, Yale Law School along with Bruce L. Hay, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School.

Law & Culture distributes abstracts of papers and articles concerning the connections or relations between culture and law. The journal welcomes work from within any of the numerous disciplines associated with the study of culture, both in the humanities and in the social sciences, as well as legal scholarship.

The URL below will let you browse all abstracts and papers in this
journal:

http://www.ssrn.com/link/Law-Culture.html

Law & Literature is edited by Penelope Pether, Professor of Law, Villanova University School of Law.

Law & Literature abstracts distributes abstracts of working papers, forthcoming articles, and recently published articles on interdisciplinary topics or using interdisciplinary methods in Law and Literature. The journal welcomes interdisciplinary work in both the critical theoretical and humanist traditions, and scholarship on law drawing not only on English and Literary Studies, but also on Linguistics, Cultural Studies, Literary Theory, Rhetoric and Composition, Narrative Jurisprudence, and Hermeneutics.

The URL below will let you browse all abstracts and papers in
thislsnjournal:

http://www.ssrn.com/link/Law-Literature.html

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