Women Lawyers on TV

Christine A. Corcos, Louisiana State University Law Center, has published "Damages: The Truth is Out There," forthcoming in Lawyers in Your Living Room, edited by Michael Asimow (ABA Press, 2008). Here is the abstract.

In this essay, part of Michael Asimow's forthcoming collection on lawyers on TV, I discuss the television show Damages and its portrayal of powerful lawyers, and whether their exercise of their power "damages" them. In particular, I examine the show's depiction of women lawyers, and whether their exercise of legal power transforms them. Do we as clients, as lawyers, and as an audience resist the vision of powerful women lawyers? Does the exercise of legal power damage women, or does it make them stronger?

Larry Friedman and Popular Culture

Jo J. Carrillo, Hastings College of the Law, has published "Links and Choices: Popular Legal Culture in the Work of Lawrence M. Friedman," in volume 17 of Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal (2007). Here is the abstract.

Based in part on James Willard Hurst's idea that markets create a social aggregate of behavior that shapes law, Lawrence M. Friedman made one of the earliest arguments for the use of popular culture in the study of law. This paper considers Friedman's social theory and places it into a broader context of scholarship on the same topic.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Copyright Issues at an Early Law School

Angela Fernandez, University of Toronto School of Law, has published "Copying and Copyright Issues at the Litchfield Law School," as University of Toronto Legal Studies Research Paper 08-13. Here is the abstract.

The notebook method of legal education used at the famous Litchfield Law School (1774-1833) has long been a subject of intense interest among Connecticut historians, legal historians, and those interested in legal education and the legal profession. The present article, Copying and Copyright Issues at the Litchfield Law School, forthcoming in the fall 2008 volume of Connecticut History, sets the notebook method used at the School in its copying context. More specifically, it explains how the copying of lectures used to create these notebooks gave rise to the problem of rampant unauthorized reproduction, a serious threat to an institution the raison d'etre of which was the production of a set of these notebooks. The article reports on and reproduces excerpts from an 1826 letter evidencing just how dire the situation had become and the lengths to which the School's surviving proprietor, James Gould, was willing to go in order to protect the lectures, as against the sense of the students that they were ripe for reproduction. Gould registered the lectures for copyright protection in 1827 and the question is, given how strongly he felt about the matter, why he did not do it sooner. It would seem that, like the students, Gould took some time to see these notes as a proper object of copyright protection.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Daytime TV Judges

Taunya Lovell Banks, University of Maryland School of Law, has published "Judging the Judges - Daytime Television's Integrated Reality Court Bench," in Lawyers in Your Living Room, edited by Michael Asimow, (ABA Books, 2008). Here is the abstract.

This essay looks at the integrated courtroom on daytime reality television court shows like "Judge Judy", the reasons for the persistent over representation of women and non-white male judges on these shows, why some shows are more popular than other shows, and how these shows may influence the real American legal system.

Keywords: daytime television court judges

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Call for Book Reviews: Women and the Law

Proposals Due September 25, 2008

The editors of Pace Law Review invite proposals from scholars, researchers, practitioners and professionals for contributions to a special book review issue to be published in Winter 2008. We seeks proposals for reviews of any book published in 2008, 2007 or 2006 that contributes to the understanding of women’s experiences with the law.

Pace Law School has a longstanding commitment to both the study of women and the law and the development of women as lawyers and leaders. The Pace Women’s Justice Center was founded in 1991 as the first academic legal center in the country devoted to training attorneys and others in the community about domestic violence issues. Pace is a vibrant and intellectual community that contains several nationally-recognized scholars of women’s, children’s and LGBT rights.

A law review volume devoted to books concerning women and the law promotes an ongoing discourse on women and the law, justice and feminist jurisprudence.

Please submit book review proposals of no more than 500 words by attachment to plr@law.pace.edu by September 25, 2008. Proposals should include (a) the intended reviewer’s name, title, institutional affiliation and contact information; (b) the title and publication date of the book proposed for review; (c) a description of the importance of the book to the general topic; and (d) any other information relevant to the book or proposed review (e.g., the proposed reviewer’s expertise or any relationship with the author). Authors are welcome, but not required, to submit a CV as well. We expect to make publication offers by October 1, 2008.

Complete manuscripts from authors of accepted proposals will be due November 1, 2008. Completed book reviews should not exceed 8,500 words.

Cybercrime in Fiction

David S. Wall, University of Leeds, has published, "Cybercrime and the Culture of Fear: Social Science Fiction(s) and the Production of Knowledge about Cybercrime," forthcoming in Information, Communication & Society. Here is the abstract.

This article builds upon my previous work (Wall, 2007 & 2008) to map out the conceptual origins of cybercrime in social science fiction and other faction genres to explore the relationship between rhetoric and reality in the production of knowledge about it. The article goes on to illustrate how the reporting of dystopic narratives about life in networked worlds shapes public reactions to technological change. Reactions which heighten the culture of fear about cybercrime, which in turn, shapes public expectations of online risk, the formation of law and the subsequent interpretation of justice. Finally, the article identifies and responds to the various mythologies that are currently circulating about cybercrime, before identifying the various tensions in the production of criminological knowledge about it that contribute to sustaining those mythologies.

Download the paper here.

Law and Literature in the Duke Curriculum

Robin L. West, Georgetown University Law Center, has published, "Literature, Culture, and Law - At Duke University," in Teaching Law and Literature, 2008. Here is the abstract.

The article compares programmatic questions from the Law and Literature movement from the 1970s to 1990s with more recent suggestions regarding the foundational questions for the Law and Culture movement. It argues that in both movements, but particularly the latter, scholars have focused on questions regarding the nature of law, culture, and interpretation, and neglected substantive jurisprudential claims regarding law sometimes found in literature and other cultural texts. It argues that this emphasis on theory over substance is unfortunate. To illustrate, the piece examines a false rape claim brought against some university athletes in Durham, North Carolina in the summer of 2006, and a novelistic depiction of sexual exploitation in Tom Wolfe's popular novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons. The novel was repeatedly invoked by commentators and bloggers when the charge was first made and widely believed, to make the case that the Duke campus was drenched in a culture tolerant of rape. The novel, then, might be sensibly understood as central to a cultural understanding of how this false rape charge was interpreted, and then came to be widely believed. Although true enough, the article argues that we miss something important, if we look at (and indict) Wolfe's novel only as a part of a cultural/legal explanation for a sex panic that resulted in a miscarriage of justice. We miss Wolfe's substantive, narrative account of sexual exploitation (not rape) and the harms, quite specific, that undesired, unwanted and unwelcome sex can occasion, on college campuses and elsewhere.

Download the paper here.

Film As Evidence

Jessica Silbey, Suffolk University Law School, has published "Cross-Examining Film," in volume 8 of the University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class (2008). Here is the abstract.

The Supreme Court decision in Scott v. Harris holds that a Georgia police officer did not violate a fleeing suspect's Fourth Amendment rights when he caused the suspect's car to crash. The court's decision relies almost entirely on the filmed version of the high-speed police chase taken from a "dash-cam," a video camera mounted on the dashboard of the pursuing police cruiser. The Supreme Court said that in light of the contrary stories told by the opposing parties to the lawsuit, the only story to be believed was that told by the video. In Scott v. Harris, the court fell into a dangerous and common trap of believing - to the point of enshrining in our law - that film captures reality. As Justice Breyer said in oral argument of the case seemingly flabbergasted by contrary findings below: "I see with my eyes ... what happened, what am I supposed to do?"

The Supreme Court is not the first court to fall prey to the persuasive power of film. It is typical for courts and advocates to naively treat filmic evidence as a transparent window revealing the whole truth, as a presentation of unambiguous reality. But film has a history in art as a constructed medium. As filmmakers and critics have known since the beginning of cinema, film's appearance of reality is an illusion, an illusion based on conventions of representation.

How could Mr. Scott have countered the weight of the film and its persuasive power? When faced with prejudicial filmic evidence, how does an advocate undermine the assertive nature of film and its overwhelming appearance of exposure? The advocate must cross-examine the film the way she cross-examines witnesses. Because films are assertive in nature, an advocate faced with filmic evidence must treat it the way she treats other testimonial evidence, critically and with careful scrutiny. She must cross-examine the film. This article will set forth certain examination techniques using a piece of filmic evidence (linked to the article) from a recent case as an example. By doing so, it aspires to be a teaching tool for other courts and advocates in their treatment and consideration of filmic evidence.

Download the paper here.

Librarians Are Your Friends--Do Not MAKE THEM ANGRY!

MSNBC.com has this story about a Wisconsin woman who failed to return two books in a timely fashion to her local public library, and paid no attention to its sad entreaties about their overdue status. The result: the librarians flexed their muscle, called out local law enforcement, and had her arrested and booked for failure to pay fines and overdues. No joke: this little episode cost her and her family several hundred dollars. The books? They were appropriately law-related: Janet Fitch's White Oleander and Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. The moral? Spider Robinson puts it best.

"Librarians are the secret masters of the universe. They control information. Never piss one off."

Is There a "CSI Effect"?

Donald E. Shelton, Eastern Michigan University, has published "The 'CSI Effect': Does it Really Exist?" in volume 259 of the National Institute of Justice Journal (2008). Here is the abstract.

Many attorneys, judges, and journalists have claimed that watching television programs like CSI has caused jurors to wrongfully acquit guilty defendants when no scientific evidence has been presented. This so-called effect was promptly dubbed the "CSI effect," laying much of the blame on the popular television series and its progeny. This study of 1027 jurors found that 46 percent expected to see some kind of scientific evidence in every criminal case; 22 percent expected to see DNA evidence in every criminal case; 36 percent expected to see fingerprint evidence in every criminal case; and 32 percent expected to see ballistic or other firearms laboratory evidence in every criminal case. The findings also suggested that expectations for particular types of scientific evidence seemed to be rational based on the type of case.

For all categories of evidence CSI viewers generally had higher expectations than non-CSI viewers but the CSI viewers had higher expectations about scientific evidence that was more likely to be relevant. Interestingly, potential jurors' increased expectations of scientific evidence did not translate into a demand for this type of evidence as a prerequisite for finding someone guilty. Jurors were more likely to find a defendant guilty than not guilty even without scientific evidence if the victim or other witnesses testified, except in the case of rape. On the other hand, if the prosecutor relied on circumstantial evidence, the prospective jurors said they would demand some kind of scientific evidence before they would return a guilty verdict.

There was scant evidence in our survey results that CSI viewers were either more or less likely to acquit defendants without scientific evidence. Only 4 of 13 scenarios showed significant differences between viewers and non-viewers on this issue, and they were inconsistent. In the "every crime" scenario, CSI viewers were more likely to convict without scientific evidence if eyewitness testimony was available. In rape cases, CSI viewers were less likely to convict if DNA evidence was not presented.

In both the breaking-and-entering and theft scenarios, CSI viewers were more likely to convict if there was victim or other testimony, but no fingerprint evidence. Although CSI viewers had higher expectations for scientific evidence than non-CSI viewers, these expectations had little, if any, bearing on the respondents' propensity to convict.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Cross posted to the Seamless Web.

Why Lawyers Should Read Shakespeare

Michael P. Maslanka, the managing partner of Ford & Harrison in Dallas, has this article on Law.com about why lawyers should read Shakespeare. The article begins:

Why do students still read Shakespeare? A conspiracy of finger-wagging, we-know-what's-best-for-you high school English teachers? No. It's his empathetic powers, making people see ourselves as we are -- rationalizations not permitted.

Shakespeare has much to teach lawyers. Eschewing Judge Judy, his questions are penetrating: How should judges go about judging? Does the rule of law matter? Are mercy and justice mutually exclusive, or are they complementary?

The article goes on to discuss Shakespeare's play, Measure for Measure.

Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities Invites Applications for Dissertation Award

Julien Mezey Dissertation Award

The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities invites submissions for its 2009 Julien Mezey Dissertation Award. This annual prize is awarded to the dissertation that most promises to enrich and advance interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of law, culture and the humanities. The award will be presented at the Association's annual meeting in Boston, April 3-4, 2009, hosted by Suffolk University Law School.

The Association seeks the submission of outstanding work from a wide variety of perspectives, including but not limited to law and cultural studies, legal hermeneutics and rhetoric, law and literature, law and psychoanalysis, law and visual studies, legal history, and legal theory and jurisprudence. Scholars completing humanities-oriented dissertations in SJD and related programs, as well as those earning PhDs, are encouraged to submit their work. Applicants eligible for the 2009 award must have defended their dissertations successfully between September 1,
2007 and August 31, 2008. Each submission must be accompanied by a letter of support from a faculty member.

Deadline for nominations for the 2009 award: November 1, 2008. On or before that date, each member of the committee must receive by email the
following: 1) a letter of nomination that details the genesis, goal, and contribution of the dissertation; 2) a letter of support from a faculty member familiar with the work; 3) an abstract, outline, and the first chapter of the dissertation); 4) contact information for the nominee.

All materials should be sent to each of the following:

Professor Jodi Dean, jdean@hws.edu
Professor James Martel, jmartel@sfsu.edu Professor Martha Umphrey, mmumphrey@amherst.edu

Award finalists will be notified by December 1. At that point, they should be prepared to send a physical and electronic version of the entire dissertation to each of the committee members. The winner will be determined by early February and invited to the April meeting of the ASLCH. ASLCH will pay travel and lodging costs.

Questions should be addressed to Jodi Dean, jdean@hws.edu

The "Discourse of Madness"

Ian Ward, University of Newcastle, has published "The Rochester Wives," in Law & Humanities, v. 2 (2008). Here is the abstract.

During much of the nineteenth century England was gripped by periodic 'lunacy scares'. In large part, these scares addressed a more particular concern regarding 'wrongful confinement'. There was a narrower jurisprudential concern here; one which focussed on the relative lack of legal regulation in such circumstances. As the century progressed the demand for reform of this regulatory provision grew ever louder. There was also a rather larger, essentially cultural, concern; which framed the evolving shape of a distinctive 'discourse' of madness. The purpose of this article is to examine these two concerns, and perhaps most importantly their relation. It will do so moreover through a particular investigation of the Rochester 'case'; as it found literary expression in the novels of Charlotte Bronte and Jean Rhys.

The article is priced.

Film and Historical Narrative

Daphne Barazk-Erez, Tel Aviv University, has published "The Law of Historical Films: in the aftermath of Jenin Jenin," at 16 Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal, 495(2007). Here is the abstract.

Filmmaking and the narration of history have been engaged in a complex relationship ever since the early days of filmmaking. Many films tell stories unfolding in previous times or about actual historical events, and their narration of history is often criticized as inaccurate, fictitious, or even intentionally misleading. When a highly publicized film suggests a controversial narrative of a certain chapter in history, a debate usually follows in the public arena, be it as part of the ongoing intellectual discourse or even in a political context. At times, however, the public debate is translated into legal terms. The article focuses on the difficulties confronting the attempt to apply legal regulation to historical films argued to be false—either by using private law causes of action, such as defamation and infringement of privacy, or by recourse to administrative censorship powers. The recent and highly controversial film Jenin, Jenin by the Israeli-Palestinian actor and filmmaker Muhammad Bakri, which professed to tell the story of residents of the Jenin refugee camp during an Israeli military operation, is used as a case study. In general, the courts insist on avoiding decisions on historical facts even when dealing with serious arguments about distortions in specific films. The article supports this judicial policy on the grounds that courts and governments should refrain from restraining freedom of speech based on arguments of truth and falsity. Yet, it also points to the inevitable disadvantages of this viewpoint given that the marketplace of ideas, particularly in the debate around realistic film making, is controlled by actors who have the power to shape collective memory.

Download the paper from bepress Legal Repository here.

Batman and George W. Bush

Andrew Klavan writes in the Wall Street Journal that Batman, at least as he is portrayed in the new film The Dark Knight, and George W. Bush have a lot in common. "There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past." This contention has caused comment in the blogosphere. See reaction at Slashfilm.com, Verum Serum, and Thompson on Hollywood, among other sites. Interesting.

Cross-posted to The Seamless Web.

The Uses of Narrative

Doron Menashe, University of Haifa, Research Authority, and Hamutal Esther Shamash, have published "Pass These Sirens By: Further Thoughts on Narrative and Admissibility Rules, " in International Commentary on Evidence, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2007.
Here is the abstract.

Fact finders assess the relative plausibility of stories presented by comparing them to narratives which have gained general acceptance, some of which are hegemonic narratives. In doing so, they run the risk of choosing a narrative that does not accurately represent the historic truth of events in suit, as a narrative with which to compare the stories offered by parties. Once fact finders choose an inappropriate narrative, they may commit the narrative fallacy and choose to grant increased weight to evidence that coheres with the inappropriate narrative, and to disregard evidence that does not, rather than discard the narrative when subsequent evidence tends to show that it is inappropriate. Admission of prejudicial evidence may trigger the use of inappropriate narratives that are hegemonic, or at least prejudicial, leading to inaccurate fact finding. Seen in that light, despite arguments to the contrary made by Robert Burns and by Ronald Allen, further relaxation of admissibility rules towards a free proof system would be undesirable.

Download the entire paper from SSRN here.

Law in Eighteenth Century English Literature

Rebecca Probert, University of Warwick School of Law, has published "Examining Law Through the Lens of Literature: The Formation of Marriage in Eighteenth-Century England," in the journal Law & Humanities (forthcoming). Here is the abstract.

This article examines what eighteenth-century novels and plays can tell us about the formation of marriage both before and after the Clandestine Marriages Act of 1753. It shows how the practices and, perhaps more crucially, the assumptions, of fictional characters were consistent with legal sources of the time, and that such primary sources fundamentally undermine many modern analyses of the making of marriage.

The entire text is available through subscription.

The Non-Autonomy of Law

James Boyd White, University of Michigan Law School, has published "Establishing Relations between Law and Other Forms of Thought and Language," forthcoming in 1 Erasmus Law Review (2008). Here is the abstract.

The law does not, and could not, exist in an intellectual or linguistic vacuum. No one believes that the law is or should be impervious to other languages, other bodies of knowledge. In this sense the argument about the 'autonomy' of law is an empty one: law cannot be, should not be, perfectly autonomous, unconnected with any other system of thought and expression; yet it plainly has it own identity as a discourse, it own intellectual and linguistic habits, which it is our task as lawyers to understand and develop. It follows that an essential topic of legal thought is the proper relation between law and other forms of thought and expression - a topic that is important, difficult and full of interest. In this paper, Professor White compares three ways in which the law is related to other fields: translation (as in the use of expert testimony), disciplinary imperialism (as in law and economics), and comparison of modes of thought and expression (as in law and literature).

Download the article from SSRN here.

Literature and Comparative Law

Barbara Pozzo, University of Insubria, Department of Law and Economics of Firms and Persons, has published "A Suitable Boy: The Abolition of Feudalism in India, in volume 1 of the Erasmus Law Review (2008). Here is the abstract.

This article focuses on law and literature as a challenging tool in teaching courses in comparative law. Certain representative novels may provide important analytical instruments, especially in approaching legal systems that do not belong to the Western legal tradition but that involve a set of values profoundly rooted in a specific conception of society. In these instances, literature is used as a key in understanding the social impact of particular legal institutions, the nature of which seems difficult for European scholars to comprehend. This is particularly true in cases such as those in India, where the legal system is composed of different layers: the traditional, the religious and that of the colonial period.

The article examines a concrete literary example offered by Vikram Seth in his novel A Suitable Boy, in which the author deals with the debate about peasants property in the form of land and about the abolition of the zamindari system, which had been introduced in India by the Mughals to collect land taxes from the peasants. It was continued by British rulers during the colonial period, but after independence in 1947 the system was abolished and the land was turned over to the peasants. To Westerners, the abolition of the zamindari system would seem to have been a sign of real independence and of the will to abolish feudalism. Nevertheless, the abrogation did not prevent the emergence of farm suicides in India, which have occurred since the middle of the 1990s.

Seth's novel allows us to witness firsthand the events that took place during the period when the law that put an end to the zamindari system was passed and to see with new eyes the genuine impact of such a reform.

Download the article from SSRN here.

Call For Papers

Call for Papers/Abstracts/Submissions (Re-posting)

7th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts & Humanities

January 9 - 12, 2009

Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort & Spa

Honolulu Hawaii, USA



Submission Deadline: August 22, 2008



Sponsored by:

University of Louisville - Center for Sustainable Urban Neighborhoods

The Baylor Journal of Theatre and Performance



Web address: http://www.hichumanities.org

Email address: humanities@hichumanities.org



The 7th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts & Humanities will be held from January 9 (Friday) to January 12 (Monday), 2009 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort & Spa, in Honolulu, Hawaii. The conference will provide many opportunities for academicians and professionals from arts and humanities related fields to interact with members inside and outside their own particular disciplines. Cross-disciplinary submissions with other fields are welcome.



Topic Areas (All Areas of Arts & Humanities are Invited):

*Anthropology

*American Studies

*Archeology

*Architecture

*Art

*Art History

*Dance

*English

*Ethnic Studies

*Film

*Folklore

*Geography

*Graphic Design

*History

*Landscape Architecture

*Languages

*Literature

*Linguistics

*Music

*Performing Arts

*Philosophy

*Postcolonial Identities

*Product Design

*Religion

*Second Language Studies

*Speech/Communication

*Theatre

*Visual Arts

*Other Areas of Arts and Humanities

*Cross-disciplinary areas of the above related to each other or other areas.



Submitting a Proposal:



You may now submit your paper/proposal by using our online submission system! To use the system, and for detailed information about submitting see: http://www.hichumanities.org/cfp_artshumanities.htm







To be removed from this list, please click the following link: http://www.hichumanities.org/remove/ or copy and paste the link into any web browser.



Hawaii International Conference on Arts & Humanities

P.O. Box 75036

Honolulu, HI 96836 USA

Telephone: (808) 542-4385

Fax: (808) 947-2420

E-mail: humanities@hichumanities.org

Website: http://www.hichumanities.org

Call For Papers

Israeli Law and Society Association, Annual Meeting

Global, Regional, and Local: Law, Politics, and Society in Comparative Perspectives

International Conference, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
December 24-26, 2008

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Program Committee of the International Annual Conference of the Israeli Law and Society Association (ILSA) invites scholars conducting research on any aspect of Law and Society to submit proposals for individual papers and organized panels. Panels and papers devoted to the main theme of the conference - "Global, Regional, and Local: Law, Politics, and Society in Comparative Perspectives" - are especially invited. Other topics relating to the field of law and society in its broader meaning are also welcome.

Proposals should be accompanied by an abstract of 300 words as Word email attachment (include title of paper, name and email address of author/s with the text of the abstract). Organizers of panels should collect abstracts from the panel participants and submit them together with a description of the panel. Graduate students should submit a letter from their thesis supervisor in support of the proposal, together with the abstract.

Proposals should be submitted by email to the Program Committee at:
gbarzil@u.washington.eduThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it by August 15th, 2008.
Selected papers will be integrated into a special volume of "Hamishpat" [translated as THE LAW] (published by the Law School, College of Management) after a process of peer-review evaluations. Call for articles will be sent by the journal in due time.

Program Committee

Chair:
Gad Barzilai--Jackson School, LSJ, Political Science, Law, University of Washington.
e-mail: gbarzil@u.washington.eduThis e-mail address is being protected
from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it web site:
http://faculty.washington.edu/gbarzil/

Members:
Michal Alberstein-- Law, Bar Ilan University
e-mail: malberst@mail.biu.ac.ilThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it web site: http://www.law.biu.ac.il/rashi.php?id=74

Daphne Barak-Erez-- Law, Tel Aviv University
e-mail: barakerz@post.tau.ac.ilThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it web site: http://www.law.tau.ac.il/Heb/?CategoryID=357&ArticleID=351
Guy Davidov--Law, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
e-mail: guy.davidov@huji.ac.ilThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
web site: http://law.huji.ac.il/segel.asp?staff_id=95&cat=409&in=409

Malcolm Feeley--Center for the Study of Law and Society, UC Berkeley.
e-mail: mmf@law,berkeley.edu
web site:
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/faculty/profiles/facultyProfile.php?facID=37

Khalid Ghanayim, Law, University of Haifa
e-mail: khalidg@law.haifa.ac.ilThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it web site:
http://law.haifa.ac.il/faculty/faculty_index.asp?a=1&pos=&fname=&fType=personal_page&lang=heb&lec_id=27&show=4

Yifat Holzman-Gazit-- Law, College of Management, Rizhon Le'Tzion.
e-mail: gazity@mail.biu.ac.ilThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
web-site: http://law.colman.ac.il/heb/Default.htm

Pnina Lahav--Law, Boston University
e-mail: plahav@bu.eduThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it web site: http://www.bu.edu/lawlibrary/facultypublications/lahav.html
http://www.bu.edu:80/law/faculty/profiles/bios/full-time/lahav_p.html

Assaf Meydani-- Political Science, The Academic College of Tel-Aviv-Yaffo
e-mail: asaf_mm@gbrener.org.ilThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it web site: http://works.bepress.com/assaf__meydani/

Benny Shmueli, Law, Shaarei Mishpat, Hod Ha'Sharon
e-mail: shmueli@mishpat.ac.ilThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
web-site: http://www.mishpat.ac.il/main.asp?lngCategoryID=2895

Dr. Amnon Reichman, Haifa University
e-mail: reichman@law.haifa.ac.ilThis e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

web-site: http://law.haifa.ac.il/faculty/heb/reichman.htm

Kafka's Knowledge of Law

Arnold Heidsieck, University of Southern California, has published "Fictional and Non-Fictional Uses of Administrative, Civil, and Criminal Law by Kafka and His Friends." Here is the abstract.

Kafka studied these three branches of law with several then-prominent academic teachers. But it was his extra-mural association with the legal philosopher Oskar Kraus that gave him a firm grasp of how modern liberal law emerged from the Aristotelian, Roman, and Judeo-Christian concepts of natural and rational law.

Download the entire essays from SSRN here.

Publication Opportunity

Joachim Linder, editor of the online journal IASL Online, invites those interested to submit titles for review in the journal, and to indicate whether they would be interested in reviewing those publications. Reviews in English are welcome. His contact information is email@joachim-linder.de.

Stella Rimington and Liz Carlyle

NPR has this essay about Stella Rimington, the first woman director of Britain's MI5, and her books featuring intelligence officer Liz Carlyle.

Life Meets TV

Colin Miller, of EvidenceProfBlog, has this interesting blogpost about Kathy Reichs as an expert witness, in the notorious Ohio nun killer case, State v. Robinson. Dr. Reichs is the author of the Temperance Brennan mystery stories and the inspiration for the Bones television series.

Reminds me of another recent life meets tv case: the one in which the prosecution's expert witness mentioned a Law & Order episode that Andrea Yates watched. The problem: no such episode. Eventually, Mrs. Yates's conviction was overturned. Along with the now-documented "CSI" effect, can we doubt that tv's dramatic riffs affect jurors?

Mystery Writer Julie Smith on NPR

Julie Smith, the author of a number of crime novels set in New Orleans (and in San Francisco) discusses the difficulty of taking up writing again after Hurricane Katrina in this interview with NPR.

Here's more about Smith's writing.

Louise Claire, De-Mythifying Julie Smith, 1(7) Bookcase 14-17 (October 1995).

Frederick Isaac, Investigator of Mean Rooms: A Profile of Julie Smith, 15 Clues: A Journal of Detection 1-11 (Spring/Summer 1994).

The Julie Smith interview is part of NPR's series on Crime in the City. Other mystery writers who contribute thoughts on their favorite cities are Sarah Graves, Robert B. Parker, Michael Connelly, Laura Lippmann, John Burdett, and Donna Leon. A book you might find interesting if you like to read mysteries about places you plan to visit is Nina King's Crimes of the Scene (St. Martin's Press, 1997), which lists mysteries by geographic location.

A Paper on British Film

Steve Greenfield and Guy Osborn of the University of Westminster, and Peter Robson of the University of St. Andrews have published "Genre, Iconography, and British Film," forthcoming in volume 36 of the University of Baltimore Law Review. Here's the abstract.

This article uses the categorization of 'Britishness' to identify both the canon of British law films and attempts that have been made to encourage and protect the British film industry. In addition the article reengages with thee genre debate utilizing the notion of iconography.

Download the article from SSRN here.

The Importance of Choosing Literary References Wisely

Over at WSJ blog, Dan Slater writes about a Fair Housing Act case involving a condo association that prohibited all objects in hallways. A Jewish resident challenged the rule under the Fair Housing Act because his mezuzah was removed, claiming the rule discriminated against his religion. The 7th Circuit held for the condo association, concluding that the rule was "neutral with respect to religion" since it applied to all objects.

In dissent, Judge Wood noted a very unwise use of a Shakespearian reference in the Defendants' brief:

Indeed, especially given the fact that the question in this case is whether a trier of fact could conclude that the defendants were intentionally discriminating against the Blochs, it was shocking to read at the end of their supplemental brief that “[t]hroughout this matter, Plaintiffs have been trying to get their ‘pound of flesh’ from Defendants due to personal animosity between Lynne and Frischholz.” Perhaps the defendants have not read Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice lately and thus failed to recall that the play is about a bitter Jewish moneylender, Shylock, who agreed to loan funds to a man he loathed (Antonio—who spit on him because he was Jewish) only upon a promise that if the loan was not paid in time, Shylock would be entitled to carve a pound of flesh from Antonio. At the end of the play, after the disguised Portia defeats the contract by pointing out that Shylock is not entitled to shed any blood while he takes his pound of flesh, Shylock is punished by losing half of his lands and being forced to convert to Christianity. This is hardly the reference someone should choose who is trying to show that the stand-off about Hallway Rule 1 was not because of the Blochs’ religion, but rather in spite of it.

Cross-posted at Concurring Opinions

The Engaged Lawyer On Film

Lance McMillian, John Marshall Law School, Atlanta, has published "Tortured Souls: Unhappy Lawyers Viewed Through the Medium of Film." Here is the abstract.

Lawyers are unhappy. So bad is the situation that scholars have even asked, "Can one be a lawyer and a happy human being at the same time?" Culturally, the existence of unhappy lawyers is not an unknown phenomenon. Case in point: the portrayal of tortured attorneys through the medium of film. This Article focuses on nine such lawyers: Ned Racine, Michael Clayton, Frank Galvin, Reggie Love, Paul Biegler, Sam Bowden, Arthur Kirkland, Jan Schlichtmann, and Atticus Finch. Similarities between lawyers in reel life and real life quickly emerge.

The legal profession should pay attention to these common struggles. Attorneys in film have much to teach. Their most lasting lessons point the way for the modern lawyer to reclaim a satisfying and fulfilling legal career. Through the movies, lawyers old and new can freshly discover the secrets for lasting success: doing what one loves, devoting oneself to a noble end, and refusing to compromise ethically. That great cinema contains enduring truths and insights should not be surprising. The best films help us to learn something more about ourselves. Learning without action, however, soon melts away. When trapped in unhappiness, it is the individual who must act and make choices consistent with that person's core values. Movies can rekindle our ideals. But only we can make those ideals a reality.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

"The worst day in the art studio is still better than the best day in the law firm"

Here's more about Nathan Sawaya, former attorney turned LEGO artist. CNN features him in this story.

New British Legal Drama Causes Comment

A new British legal drama is causing a whirlwind of commentary among barristers. Peter Moffat's Criminal Justice debuted Monday, and immediately caused debate for what some members of the bar consider its indictment of the legal system. An article in the Guardian documents the reactions that some lawyers have to the week-long series. In particular, the head of the Bar Council, "Timothy Dutton QC, has taken a dim view of the way barristers in the programme, particularly in the second episode, are portrayed as underhand, unprincipled and overly aggressive." Mr. Moffat, who also wrote the wonderful series Kavanagh QC for John Thaw (Morse), replied, "It is about time the Bar faced the fact that like every other profession it has brilliant and fair-minded practitioners, those of average ability, and the violent, dishonest and stupid all working within it." Ouch. Seriously.


Read more reviews and discussion in The Independent, The Times, and the Mirror.

Here's a clip.

I certainly hope the BBC exports Criminal Justice to the US soon, or else makes it available on VHS or DVDs. Yes, I still buy tapes, when I can get them. I continue to be unhappy with what I consider to be the relatively high rate of defective DVDs that I encounter: they're unplayable ("disc error"); or the disc skips or stalls, or the images are distorted from time to time. These discs are EXPENSIVE, and store return policies can be difficult.

Call For Papers

Call for Papers and Witness

The University of Toledo College of Law is pleased to announce a universal and interdisciplinary conference on Saturday, October 25, 2008 in Toledo, Ohio on the subject of: 1808: Fighting for the Right to Dream


Scholars are invited to come to Toledo and bear witness and discuss 1808.

1808 was the year of the abolition of the importing of slaves into the United States. In this bicentennial year, how should we think about 1808? What does 1808 say to us? What will be said about 1808 in 2108?

The papers and witness being invited in this call for papers are about the meanings of 1808. Those meanings might be found in the life of a slave in the United States at that time such as Barbary. Born in 1787 in Africa and sold into slavery in 1800 in North Carolina to the Harrison family (of Founders and Presidents fame), Barbary was enslaved, black and twenty-one in 1808. How do we keep slave stories such as her story alive?

Those meanings might be found in 1847 in the founding of Liberia and Liberia’s history. Or in the Civil War. Or in Reconstruction. Or in Jim Crow. Or in 1908, year of birth of the late Justice Thurgood
Marshall whose life was dedicated to fighting for the right to dream.
Or in a picture in a courtroom in Norman, Oklahoma in 1948 of Ada Sipuel dreaming of being a lawyer. Or in the mass movements of the civil rights and human rights movements. Or in 1968 with the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and other momentous events. Or in a more recent rededication of efforts to achieve, protect and preserve civil and human rights for all.

Those meanings might be found in Africa and the Middle East, Asia, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Australia and the Pacific.
What does 1808 mean to the world?

This call for papers is interdisciplinary and universal. Scholars from around the world interested in presenting are invited to submit one to two page abstracts for papers on the conference theme on or before August 15, 2008 to ben.davis@utoledo.edu.

Scholars from around the world who may have difficulty getting visas to the United States or attending should advise of their interest on or before August 15, 2008 to ben.davis@utoledo.edu. Overseas scholars and those unable to attend may provide a video witness of up to 10 minutes in length.

Toledo is located in Northwestern Ohio about 50 minutes by car south of Detroit, Michigan. Participants may find the easiest connections through Detroit though planes do fly also into Toledo airport. October 25, 2008 will be a particularly interesting time to visit as Toledo is the center of the universe during most recent U.S. Presidential elections because of the crucial role that Ohio plays as a swing state.

Organizing Committee:
· Anthony Baker, Professor, American Legal History, Norman
Adrian Wiggins School of Law, Campbell University, Buies Creek, North Carolina
· Pamela Bridgewater, Professor of Law, American University,
Washington College of Law, Washington, D.C.
· Benjamin Davis, Associate Professor of Law, University of
Toledo College of Law, Toledo, Ohio
· Roy Finkenbine, Professor of History and Director of the Black
Abolitionist Archives, University of Detroit – Mercy, Detroit, Michigan
· Chrisarla Houston, Director of the Legal Writing Program and
Assistant Professor of Law, Florida A & M University College of Law, Orlando, Florida
· Vernellia R. Randall, Professor of Law, University of Dayton
School of Law, Dayton, Ohio

New Publications in Law and the Humanities

Some new and newer law and humanities titles.



Boulhosa, Patricia Pires, Icelanders and the Kings of Norway: Mediaeval Sagas and Legal Texts (Boston: Brill, 2005).

Chaplin, Susan, The Gothic and the Rule of Law, 1764-1820 (NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

Clary, Amy, Textual Terrain: Wilderness in American Literature, Law, and Culture (Dissertation, University of Louisiana, Lafayette, 2005).

Cormack, Bradin, A Power To Do Justice: Jurisdiction, English Literature, and the Rise of Common Law, 1509-1625 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
Eighteenth-Century Fiction (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2006).

Freeman, Micahel D. A., Law and Popular Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

Glover, Susan, Engendering Legitimacy: Law, Property, and Early
González Echevarría, Roberto, Love and the Law in Cervantes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).

Haglin, Adam Reid, Russia, Dostoevsky, and Judicial Reform (Master’s thesis, Minnesota State University, Makato, 2005).

Harris, Sharon M., Executing Race: Early American Women’s Narratives of Race, Society, and the Law (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005).

Hegel, Robert E., and Katherine Carlitz, Writing and Law in Late Imperial China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007).

Hepburn, Allan, Troubled Legacies: Narrative and Inheritance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007).

Hutson, Lorna, The Invention of Suspicion: Law and Mimesis in Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama (NY: Oxford University Press, 2007).

Kezar, Dennis, Solon and Thespis: Law and Theater in the English Renaissance (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007).

King, Lovalerie, Race, Theft, and Ethics: Property Matters in African American Literature (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007).

Klotz, Lisa-Jane, Suspicion Is No Proof: Legal Proof and Probability in Practice and Fiction in Early Modern England (Dissertation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2006).

Lockey, Brian, Law and Empire in English Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Macpherson, Heidi Slettedahl, Courting Failure: Women and the Law in Twentieth-Century Literature (Akron, OH: University of Akron Press, 2007).

Mukherji, Subha, Law and Representation in Early Modern Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Rosenshield, Gary, Western Law, Russian Justice: Dostoevsky, the Jury Trial, and the Law (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005).

Scase, Wendy, Literature and Complaint in England, 1272-1553 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

Sheen, Erica, and Lorna Hutson, Literature, Politics, and Law in Renaissance England (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

Travis, Jennifer, Wounded Hearts: Masculinity, Law, and Literature in American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005).

Warren, Joyce W., Women, Money, and the Law: Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Gender, and the Courts (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2005).

Robert Johnson and Copyright

Olufunmilayo Arewa, Northwestern University Law School, has published "Borrowing the Blues: Context and the Copyright of Robert Johnson," as Northwestern Public Law Research Paper No. 08-19. Here is the abstract.

In 2004, Eric Clapton released the DVD-CD Sessions for Robert J and the CD Me and Mr. Johnson, which paid homage to Robert Johnson, one of Clapton's greatest musical influences. Clapton is not alone in his reverence of Robert Johnson. The ascension of Robert Johnson to the status of preeminent representative of early recorded blues traditions reflects broader trends in the creation and reception of blues music in the twentieth century. Johnson's position decades after his death is a startling contrast to the circumstances of his short life and the contexts within with he lived and performed.

Robert Johnson was a poor African American itinerant blues musician who died in obscurity under mysterious circumstances in 1938 at a country crossroads near Greenwood, Mississippi. Johnson was one of a number of musicians who made their way through the Mississippi Delta during the time period of his life and death. The legend of Robert Johnson, however, surpasses that of his musical contemporaries: Robert Johnson is the most well known bluesman of his era today. From his humble beginning and obscure death, Robert Johnson later emerged to become one of the biggest influences on rock and roll music, particularly through musicians in Great Britain, many of whom like Eric Clapton, count Robert Johnson as one of their greatest influences. Robert Johnson was one of the first 12 members inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Robert Johnson is far more famous in death than he could ever have envisaged during his lifetime. The story of Robert Johnson is thus an important one for the history of music, particularly in relation to the development of blues music traditions and the rock and roll traditions that emerged from blues.

The story of Robert Johnson is also an important one for copyright. Treatment of many blues musicians of Robert Johnson's era represent an early example of continuing tensions in the application of copyright to a broad range of living musical traditions. Copyright treatment of blues musicians also reflects the difficulties inherent in the application of copyright as a property rule to musical forms, including blues, which are characterized by pervasive borrowing. The reality of musical borrowing is often insufficiently acknowledged in discussions of copyright and music. The intersection of copyright, Robert Johnson's music and blues more generally can reveal something of how copyright law treats creative processes that reflect significant amounts of borrowing. Further, the contexts of application of copyright law to blues, as well as more generally, reflect the continuing influence of hierarchies of culture and power that have long shaped copyright law and its application.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

A Walking Tour of the Naked City

The New York Times features a walking tour of the city as seen through the eyes of Weegee (Arthur Fellig), the legendary photographer, who provided many notable pix, including crime scene photos. See also this article in today's issue. A new book devoted to his work, Weegee and the Naked City, is available from the University of California Press.

Call For Papers: Catholic Social Thought and the Law

CALL FOR PAPERS

SYMPOSIUM ON CATHOLIC SOCIAL THOUGHT AND THE LAW

CATHOLIC SOCIAL THOUGHT AND CITIZENSHIP

Villanova University School of Law
October 11, 2008


On the eve of the 2008 election, Villanova University
School of Law's sixth annual symposium on Catholic social
thought will take up the question of citizenship and
political participation. Every four years, the U.S.
Conference of Catholic Bishops releases a document entitled
"Faithful Citizenship," and the media engage in speculation
about the "Catholic vote." The Bishops assert that
"responsible citizenship is a virtue, and participation in
public life is a moral obligation." After visiting America,
Alexis de Tocqueville worried that Christianity neglected
the duty of citizenship while also arguing that religion
was the first of America's political institutions.

But Catholic social thought arguably lacks a coherent
account of citizenship. As John Coleman, S.J., complained
in the pages of Commonweal over 20 years ago, "Christianity
has not adequately adumbrated or embodied the moral ideal
of the citizen in its social ethics or popular preaching."
Among the questions to be addressed by the symposium are
the responsibilities of citizenship in Catholic social
teaching, the relationship between faithful citizenship and
voting, the role of the American Catholic Church in public
life, the duties of public officials, and the historical
development of citizenship in Catholic social thought. The
Symposium will bring together legal scholars, political
scientists, theologians, and philosophers to explore the
implications of citizenship for Catholic legal theory.


PAPER SUBMISSION PROCEDURE:

Articles presented at the Conference will be considered for
publication in the Journal of Catholic Social Thought, a
peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal published by
Villanova University. Please submit paper proposals by
July 1, 2008, or requests for more information to:

CONTACT: Dean Mark A. Sargent
Email: MAILTO:sargent@law.villanova.edu
or
CONTACT: Professor Michael Moreland
Email: MAILTO:moreland@law.villanova.edu

Call For Papers: Feminist Legal History

From Professor Tracy Thomas, University of Akron


The editors of a proposed book, Feminist Legal History: New Perspectives on Law seek submissions for contributing chapters to the book. This book is an edited collection of essays by leading scholars in law and history that offers new historical and feminist perspectives on law and applies these insights to the legal and social policy issues of today. The collection takes as its primary goal an exploration of women’s historical use of the law to advocate and achieve equality. Contributing authors employ this core theme in a variety of historical contexts to reframe and illuminate such topics as women’s rights in the area of family law, women’s participation in the U.S. military, women’s legal activism and participation in social justice movements, judicial roles played by women, and women’s status in constitutional law. Feminist Legal History was inspired by a symposium held in October 2007 sponsored by the Center for Constitutional Law at The University of Akron School of Law, one of four such national centers established by Congress.



Editors

Tracey Jean Boisseau, Ph.D., The University of Akron, Department of History

Tracy A. Thomas, J.D., M.P.A., The University of Akron School of Law



Contributors

Felice Batlan, J.D., Ph.D., Chicago-Kent College of Law

Eileen Boris, Ph.D., University of California Santa Barbara, Women’s Studies Program

Mary L. Clark, J.D., American University Washington College of Law

Jill Elaine Hasday, J.D., University of Minnesota Law School

Gwen Jordan, J.D., Ph.D., Fellow in Legal History, University of Wisconsin School of Law

Jennifer Klein, Ph.D., Yale University, Department of History

Jean H. Quataert, Ph.D., Binghamton University, Department of History

Mae C. Quinn, J.D., L.L.M., University of Tennessee School of Law

Leigh Ann Wheeler, Ph.D., Bowling Green State University, Department of History



If interested, please submit an abstract and CV by July 1 to Professor Tracy Thomas at thomast@uakron.edu. Final manuscripts of 20-25 pages should be submitted by September 15, 2008.



For questions, contact:

Tracy A. Thomas

Professor and Director of Faculty Research

University of Akron School of Law

Akron, OH 44325

(330) 972-6617

thomast@uakron.edu

ALCH Call For Papers

The Association for Law, Culture, and the Humanities has posted its annual Call for papers. Here's the link to the website. Here's the link to the CFP.

A Taste For the Law

Chris Colin, who writes for the San Francisco Chronicle, sent me a link to his piece on his friend Jose Klein, a newly minted Harvard Law grad, who is also an artist: he captures the essence of famous cases and legal issues on dinner plates. Read up on Mr. Klein's unique way of interpreting the law here. Early holiday shopper? Check out his website, where his plates are for sale. I think I may stop by.

For more about the intersection of law and art, see this post about Lego artist Nathan Sawaya from my Law and Magic Blog. And check out some of the work of Tulane Law grad and artist Alan Gerson here. I have some of his pieces and they never fail to make me smile.

Ripped From the Headlines

Here's an ABA article discussing lawyer-writers who pen scripts for popular legal dramas.

Another Interpretation of Captain Vere

Rob Atkinson, Jr., Florida State University College of Law, has published "Averting the Captain Vere 'Veer': Billy Budd as Melville's Republican Response to Plato" as FSU College of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 311. Here is the abstract.

This article shows how Melville's Billy Budd, rightly one of law and literature's most widely studied canonical texts, answers Plato's challenge in Book X of the Republic: Show how poets create better citizens, especially better rulers, or banish them from the commonwealth of reasoned law. Captain Vere is a flawed but instructive version of the Republic's philosopher-king, even as his story is precisely the sort of poetry that Plato should willing allow, by his own republican principles, into the ideal polity. Not surprisingly, the novella shows how law's agents must be wise, even as their law must be philosophical, if they are to do justice. Paradoxically, the novella also shows how poetry can save law's agents, particularly the more Platonic, from Captain Vere's veer, a dangerous turn from fully legal justice to false and fatal severity.

Captain Vere has a tragic flaw all too common among leaders otherwise completely conscientious and competent: When faced with a range of courses - all legal, moral, and practicable - Vere invariably charts the most personally painful. Part of his no pain, no gain course steers him into fastidious studies that exclude both mere fiction and pure theory, ironically banishing Plato himself along with his poets. But Vere's own story, with its narrator's frequent theoretical interruptions and occasional allusions to Plato, demonstrates that the reading of just such stories may deliver leaders like him from over-harsh treatment of themselves and their most vulnerable charges. The novella, then, not only reveals Captain Vere's veer; it also shows a way to avert that ever dangerous, often fatal tack. If the studious captain had been prepared to study stories like his own, his readings might have made him a vastly better guardian of his symbolic flock, particularly of Billy Budd, his most innocent sheep; had Starry Vere been more a philosopher-king and less a surrogate father-god, he need never have made his excruciating mistake, sacrificing his most beloved foster son to save their microcosmic world.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

A Jury of Her Peers, Domestic Abuse and Animal Abuse

Caroline Anne Forell, University of Oregon School of Law, has published "Using a Jury of Her Peers to Teach About the Connection Between Domestic Abuse and Animal Abuse," in volume 15 of Animal Law Review (2008). Here is the abstract.

In this essay I examine Susan Glaspell's short story A Jury of Her Peers in the context of teaching about the connection between domestic violence and animal abuse in an Animal Law course. I discuss how Glaspell's story, in which the motive for a woman killing her husband is his killing of her pet bird, enables students to better understand the perspective of battered women who behave in certain ways because they have pets. I pose several questions concerning how the law would and should respond when a battered woman reacts with violence to the killing or serious injury of her pet. I also review the legal options that may be available today to battered women who have companion animals in contrast to the past.

Download the article from SSRN here.

Call For Papers

Call for Papers/Abstracts/Submissions

7th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts & Humanities

January 9 - 12, 2009

Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort & Spa

Honolulu Hawaii, USA



Submission Deadline: August 22, 2008



Sponsored by:

University of Louisville - Center for Sustainable Urban Neighborhoods

The Baylor Journal of Theatre and Performance



Web address: http://www.hichumanities.org

Email address: humanities@hichumanities.org



The 7th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts & Humanities will be held from January 9 (Friday) to January 12 (Monday), 2009 at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Beach Resort & Spa, in Honolulu, Hawaii. The conference will provide many opportunities for academicians and professionals from arts and humanities related fields to interact with members inside and outside their own particular disciplines. Cross-disciplinary submissions with other fields are welcome.



Topic Areas (All Areas of Arts & Humanities are Invited):

*Anthropology

*American Studies

*Archeology

*Architecture

*Art

*Art History

*Dance

*English

*Ethnic Studies

*Film

*Folklore

*Geography

*Graphic Design

*History

*Landscape Architecture

*Languages

*Literature

*Linguistics

*Music

*Performing Arts

*Philosophy

*Postcolonial Identities

*Product Design

*Religion

*Second Language Studies

*Speech/Communication

*Theatre

*Visual Arts

*Other Areas of Arts and Humanities

*Cross-disciplinary areas of the above related to each other or other areas.



Submitting a Proposal:



You may now submit your paper/proposal by using our online submission system! To use the system, and for detailed information about submitting see the website.

Humor and the Law

Laura E. Little, Temple University School of Law, has published "Regulating Funny: Humor and the Law," to appear in volume 94 of the Cornell Law Review (2009). Here is the abstract.

When humor hurts people, they may press claims in court, ascribing blame and demanding redress. Courts respond by matching injuries with legal rules, and choose to insulate, tolerate, encourage, condemn or suppress the humor. Patterns emerge from this humor regulation, with courts systematically preferring some types of humor over others.

Explicit analysis of the law's regulatory effect on different types of humor is conspicuously absent in case law and legal scholarship. Non-legal theorists have, however, for centuries devoted considerable effort to defining and cataloguing humor. Philosophers, literary theorists, natural scientists, and social scientists have created a rich literature explaining how humor affects individual and group well-being. This article analyzes legal regulation of humor through the lens of that literature.

Using tools developed by humor theorists, the article explores how the law regulates humor in three doctrinal areas: contract, trademark, and employment discrimination. Across this diverse array of legal categories, the article identifies remarkable consistency in the types of humor that courts choose to regulate and the types that courts instead allow to flourish unimpeded by legal rules. The cases in all three areas regulate two types of humor with particular vigor: superiority humor and release humor. Superiority humor seeks amusement through a communication that makes one person feel successful at the expense of others. Release humor taps into repressed sources of pleasure, pressure, or anxiety, focusing on taboo or difficult topics such as sex, excretion, or death.

Courts' imposition of liability for superiority and release humor is consistent with civil law's corrective justice goals and with the specific cause of action requirements for contract, trademark, and employment discrimination. What is more surprising, however, is courts' tendency to privilege another type of humor: incongruity humor. Incongruity humor arises from the juxtaposition of two inconsistent or unrelated phenomena. Where the humor in a suit has incongruous qualities, courts tend to avoid liability, thereby placing incongruous humor beyond the law's grip.

Documenting patterns in humor regulation provides important guidance for courts, attorneys, and humorists seeking to understand and predict legal regulation. The article nevertheless seeks to accomplish more than that positive mission, and thus assesses the beneficial and potentially detrimental consequences of current humor regulation. Concluding that the law closely integrates social norms about appropriate humor, the article finds cause for both celebration and concern. The article ends by identifying three bodies of literature to assist with improving humor regulation: law and social norm theory, First Amendment literature, and the current interdisciplinary work of humor theorists.

Download the entire article from SSRN here.

Understanding Privacy

I am very happy to announce the publication of my new book, UNDERSTANDING PRIVACY (Harvard University Press, May 2008). There has been a longstanding struggle to understand what "privacy" means and why it is valuable. Professor Arthur Miller once wrote that privacy is "exasperatingly vague and evanescent." In this book, I aim to develop a clear and accessible theory of privacy, one that will provide useful guidance for law and policy. From the book jacket:

Privacy is one of the most important concepts of our time, yet it is also one of the most elusive. As rapidly changing technology makes information more and more available, scholars, activists, and policymakers have struggled to define privacy, with many conceding that the task is virtually impossible.

In this concise and lucid book, Daniel J. Solove offers a comprehensive overview of the difficulties involved in discussions of privacy and ultimately provides a provocative resolution. He argues that no single definition can be workable, but rather that there are multiple forms of privacy, related to one another by family resemblances. His theory bridges cultural differences and addresses historical changes in views on privacy. Drawing on a broad array of interdisciplinary sources, Solove sets forth a framework for understanding privacy that provides clear, practical guidance for engaging with relevant issues.

Understanding Privacy will be an essential introduction to long-standing debates and an invaluable resource for crafting laws and policies about surveillance, data mining, identity theft, state involvement in reproductive and marital decisions, and other pressing contemporary matters concerning privacy.

Here's a brief summary of Understanding Privacy. Chapter 1 (available on SSRN) introduces the basic ideas of the book. Chapter 2 builds upon my article Conceptualizing Privacy, 90 Cal. L. Rev. 1087 (2002), surveying and critiquing existing theories of privacy. Chapter 3 contains an extensive discussion (mostly new material) explaining why I chose the approach toward theorizing privacy that I did, and why I rejected many other potential alternatives. It examines how a theory of privacy should account for cultural and historical variation yet avoid being too local in perspective. This chapter also explores why a theory of privacy should avoid being too general or too contextual. I draw significantly from historical examples to illustrate my points. I also discuss why a theory of privacy shouldn't focus on the nature of the information, the individual's preferences, or reasonable expectations of privacy. Chapter 4 consists of new material discussing the value of privacy. Chapter 5 builds on my article, A Taxonomy of Privacy, 154 U. Pa. L.. Rev. 477 (2006). I've updated the taxonomy in the book, and I've added a lot of new material about how my theory of privacy interfaces not only with US law, but with the privacy law of many other countries. Finally, Chapter 6 consists of new material exploring the consequences and applications of my theory and examining the nature of privacy harms.

Understanding Privacy is much broader than The Digital Person and The Future of Reputation. Whereas these other two books examined specific privacy problems, Understanding Privacy is a general theory of privacy, and I hope it will be relevant and useful in a wide range of issues and debates.

For more information about the book, please visit its website.

Law and Gender in Shakespeare's Hamlet

New on SSRN: Carla Spivack, The Woman Will be Out: A New Look at the Law in Shakespeare's Hamlet, forthcoming from Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities. From the abstract:

Many readers have noted the abundant references to law in Shakespeare's Hamlet. Indeed, a whole sub-genre of criticism has developed around the question of whether Shakespeare's knowledge of law, as reflected in this play and others, is detailed and extensive enough to indicate legal training. These critics, however, have so far lacked scholarly backgrounds in Early Modern English literature and culture, and thus fail to connect the legal language and themes of the play to its other concerns about gender and rule. By the same token, literature scholars writing about the play have lacked backgrounds in English legal history. Bringing both perspectives to bear, I show that the play's legal allusions are closely related to its other concerns about gender, and that these themes in turn partake of changes in the broader culture, namely, the end of the forty-year reign of Elizabeth, a woman ruler, and an ensuing backlash against female political power. In sum, I will show that placing the play's legal references in context reveals that they are part of a process of ejecting the feminine from the political realm.

Joseph W. Dellapenna, Villanova University School of Law, has published "Peasants, Tanners, and Psychiatrists: Using Films To Teach Comparative Law," in International Journal of Legal Information, Vol. 36, No. 1, Spring 2008. Here is the abstract.

Films have proven to be a useful teaching tool for a course on Comparative Law. The films serve to introduce the class to the look and feel of legal proceedings from selected foreign legal systems and to illustrate particular aspects of how these legal proceedings differ from our own. The article summarizes the results of more than 10 years of experience in using films. It will be of interest to others who teach Comparative Law and also to lawyers, judges, and students who want a video means of oriented themselves to foreign legal traditions. The article discusses the limitations of such films as teaching (or orientation) tools, both in general and with regard to each particular film.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

The Amistad in Music

Today's New York Times has this feature article on Anthony Davis's opera Amistad. For more about interpretations about the Amistad, or the Amistad in the arts, see the following selected resources.

Research Guide to the Amistad Affair

Doug Linder's Famous American Trials: Amistad Page

Amistad Research Center

CBS Cancels "Shark"

The Hollywood Reporter notes that CBS has cancelled a number of shows, including the lawyer drama Shark, which stars James Woods. Read more here. Never mind: the first season is already out on DVDs.

Science, Poetry, and Law

Anita L. Allen, University of Pennsylvania Law School, has published "The Poetry of Genetics: On the Pitfalls of Popularizing Science," in Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy (2009). Here is the abstract.

The role genetic inheritance plays in the way human beings look and behave is a question about the biology of human sexual reproduction, one that scientists connected with the Human Genome Project dashed to answer before the close of the 20th century. This is also a question about politics, and, it turns out poetry, because, as the example of Lucretius shows, poetry is an ancient tool for the popularization of science. "Popularization" is a good word for successful efforts to communicate elite science to non-scientists in non-technical languages and media. According to prominent sociobiologist E.O. Wilson, "sexual dominance is a human universal." He meant, of course that men dominate women. Like sociobiology, gene science is freighted with politics, including gender politics. Scientists have gender perspectives that may color what they "see" in nature. As the late Susan Okin Miller suggested in an unpublished paper tracing the detrimental impact of Aristotle's teleology on western thought, scientists accustomed to thinking that men naturally dominate women, might interpret genetic discoveries accordingly. Biologists have good, scientific reasons to fight the effects of bias. One must be critical of how scientists and popularizers of science, like Genome author Matt Ridley, frame truth and theory. Ridley's "battle of the sexes" metaphor and others have a doubtful place in serious explanations of science.

Download the paper from SSRN here.