Call For Papers

From Nick Federico, Deans Fellow to Professor Anthony Varona, Professor of Law at the American University, Washington College of Law

CALL FOR PAPERS & PANELS

OUTSIDERS INSIDE: CRITICAL OUTSIDER THEORY AND PRAXIS
IN THE POLICYMAKING OF THE NEW AMERICAN REGIME

American University - Washington College of Law
Washington, D.C.
October 1 - 4, 2009


Please join us at LatCrit XIV, the Fourteenth Annual LatCrit (Latina and Latino
Critical Legal Theory, Inc.) Conference, which will take place in Washington, D.C.,
from Thursday, October 1 through Sunday, October 4, 2009.

LatCrit/SALT Junior Faculty Development Workshop

The Seventh Annual Junior Faculty Development Workshop, sponsored jointly with the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT), will begin at 9:00 am, Thursday, October 1st and continue through Friday morning.

LATCRIT XIV THEME

OUTSIDERS INSIDE: CRITICAL OUTSIDER THEORY AND PRAXIS IN THE POLICYMAKING OF THE NEW AMERICAN REGIME

In October 2009, LatCrit will meet inside the Beltway for the first time in its history amidst a tectonic shift in American government. With the January inauguration of President Barack H. Obama, the nation’s first “outsider” president, we also saw the ascendance of a new progressive governance philosophy in Washington. As a biracial former law professor with working class and immigrant roots and an international and multicultural upbringing, Mr. Obama ran a progressive campaign that echoed many core LatCritical values, including internationalism and global-mindedness, the valorization of human rights and multidimensional diversity, the centrality of antidiscrimination work, a commitment to rigorous interrogation of longstanding dominant assumptions and norms, and a preference for discourse and dialogue over militarism. Notably, President Obama’s Yes We Can! campaign slogan has its roots in the ¡Si Se Puede! rallying cry coined by Dolores Huerta of the United Farm Workers movement and invoked in more recent progressive and mostly Latino/a political actions.


The new Presidential administration and enlarged bicameral Democratic majority in Congress account only for part of the historic paradigmatic transition in American national government. The ongoing deterioration of the American and world economies also has catalyzed an aggressive reassessment by moderate and even some conservative thinkers of the wisdom of the Reagan Revolution’s uber alles dependency on the private marketplace for the realization of the public good – an antiregulatory disposition that dominated federal government through the last seven presidential administrations. In the United States, the failure of the government’s dominant antiregulatory disposition to prevent the ensuing economic meltdown has catalyzed a new, aggressive Federal response in the form of much more statist economic interventions, including the de facto nationalization of key economic components. To add irony, it was the administration of President George W. Bush – the loudest in exalting the power of unbridled private marketplaces to regulate themselves – that laid the foundation for the national takeover of large sectors of the financial services and banking industries.

These quantum changes in the leadership and driving philosophies of American government present unique and in some cases unprecedented opportunities for scholars engaged in critical outsider scholarship to influence and inform national policy and legislation. The new executive and legislative branch incumbents have telegraphed early receptivity to the instantiation of LatCritical and other progressive theories and principles in the tangible products of Federal government (i.e., legislation, regulation, presidential directives, and, of course, caselaw). As President Obama’s aspirational campaign continues to transition into the nouveau regime at the helm of the most powerful government on Earth, millions of Americans expect the vague Yes We Can promise to become the Yes We Are reality.

But with these openings come potential pitfalls. Although the ascendance of a putatively progressive president and likeminded Congressional majority indeed may open up new opportunities to bridge the theory/praxis chasm, it also may pose serious challenges to the independence and even legitimacy of progressive critical theory movements. Should the cooption or even distortion of conservative theory by militaristic, extremist partisan politicos serve as a cautionary tale in the formation of new relationships between the progressive government and outsider critical theorists? More specifically, what if the first year in office of the Yes We Can presidential candidate unfolds into more of a No We Won’t disappointment? What if the exigencies of governing to and from the middle – which many pundits insist is the sine qua non for reelection viability – result in the sacrificing of Obama’s progressive promise? What roles should outsider critical legal scholars and their scholarship assume then? More generally, what should the incarnation of progressive theory in the new American regime look like? And what prevents that theory from being co-opted and corrupted by the corroding influences of insider power?

The LatCrit XIV Host Committee invites the submission of proposals for panels and papers related to this open-textured theme and encompassing the fullest array of theoretical and doctrinal topics and approaches. Because we will be in Washington, DC, we encourage the submission of paper and panel proposals propounding prescriptive critiques of discrete areas of law, policy and regulation of specific relevance to outsider communities, including (but by no means limited to) economic justice, international and comparative law, criminal law and the death penalty, civil rights and constitutional law (including gender and LGBT equality, reproductive and disability rights), feminist legal theory, immigration, political and electoral (dis)enfranchisement, communications policy and intellectual property, healthcare, education, employment, tax policy, and the environment. We also, of course, welcome proposals for more theoretical panels and papers, particularly (but not exclusively) in areas linked to the challenges posed by progressive governance and the ascendance of outsiders to positions of ultimate authority.
Please submit your panel and paper proposals through the online process at the LatCrit website (www.law.du.edu/latcrit/index.htm) no later than MONDAY, APRIL 27, 2009. Please note that although paper proposals for work-in-progress sessions may be submitted now, we will continue to accept those proposals through mid-July (please refer to LatCrit website for forthcoming additional details).

Standing LatCrit Themes
LatCrit conferences seek to feature and balance four basic perspectives in organizing each annual conference’s substantive program. These four perspectives are listed as themes below. They have, thus far, served as useful lenses of LatCritical inquiry, enabling LatCrit scholars to develop an impressive body of work that increasingly links issues of identity to the substantive analysis of law, policy and process. This effort to link identity issues to substantive analyses has been particularly fruitful in revealing the way race and ethnicity are implicated precisely in those areas of law and policy that are ordinarily thought not to be about race and ethnicity: for example, in the operations and assumptions of international law and legal process, foreign affairs, liberal democracy, religion and sexuality, to name just a few areas of recent LatCrit attention.
To build on these accomplishments, everyone is encouraged to develop their proposals with a view to: (1) expanding our understanding of the impact of race and ethnicity in substantive areas of law and policy ordinarily thought to be about "something other than race" (e.g. issues of sovereignty, labor rights, globalization, intellectual property, antitrust law); and (2) deepening our analysis of the various ways in which identity issues intersect, conflate and conflict in our self-understandings and coalitional efforts. The following four themes are offered, therefore, as possible points of reference for thinking in new ways about familiar issues (like affirmative action and bilingual education), as well as for encouraging critical forays into new substantive areas (like communications or antitrust laws):
1) Papers or panels that focus on the multidimensionality of Latina/o identity and its relationship to current legal, political and cultural regimes or practices. The ideal is to explicate aspects of the Latina/o experience in legal discourse, both domestically and internationally. Nonetheless, you are free to address identity issues that do not specifically touch upon Latina/o identity or the law.
2) Papers or panels especially salient to this region (the East Coast). Regional emphasis ensures that the Conference's geographic rotation will illuminate local issues, helping us understand how local particularities produce (inter)national patterns of privilege and subordination.
3) Papers or panels that elucidate cross-group histories or experiences with law and power, such as those based on the intersections of class, gender, race, sexuality and religion. In this way, each Conference aims to both elucidate intra-Latina/o diversities and contextualize Latina/o experience within inter-group frameworks and Euro-Heteropatriarchy. Accordingly, we constantly ask how we can create progressive movements, communities and coalitions that meaningfully recognize difference.
4) Papers or panels that connect or contrast LatCrit theory to other genres of scholarship, both within and beyond law and legal theory, including but not limited to the various strands of critical outsider jurisprudence (critical race theory, feminist legal theory, queer legal theory) that critique class, gender, race, sexuality and other categories of social-legal identities and relations.

The Sponsoring Institution – American University Washington College of Law

Founded in 1898, the American University Washington College of Law is the first law school in the world founded by women, Ellen Spencer Mussey and Emma Gillett, who did so in part to combat the de facto exclusion of women from legal education and practice. WCL also was the first law school to have a woman dean and the first to graduate an all female law school class. The law school later expanded its mission to provide more generally opportunities for those historically outside the mainstream of the legal profession.

Today WCL is one of the most diverse law schools in the country, with 1,216 full-time JD students (40% identifying as minorities and 55% women), 160 students in two LLM degree programs and 25 SJD candidates. WCL’s student body includes native speakers of 92 languages and dialects, with almost all nations of the world represented. Its main building at 4801 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, occupies nearly 180,000 square feet over six stories, including the 54,000-square foot Pence Law Library.

WCL’s faculty consists of 61 tenured and tenure-track and over 100 active visiting and adjunct professors engaged in teaching, scholarship and service benefiting a myriad of professional and community institutions and social justice causes. Dr. Claudio Grossman, WCL dean and Raymond I. Geraldson Scholar for International and Humanitarian Law, is the longest serving Latino law school dean in the nation and an active practitioner of international and human rights law, currently serving as the unanimously elected chair of the United Nations Committee against Torture (UNCAT).

The Conference Sites

The LatCrit/SALT Junior Faculty Development Workshop (On Thursday, October 1) and the first full day of the LatCrit Conference (Friday, October 2) will take place in the Conference Center at the Hyatt Regency Bethesda Hotel in Bethesda, Maryland, which also will serve as the primary lodging site for conference attendees. A very accessible and comfortable hotel, the 390-room Hyatt Regency Bethesda offers two full-service restaurants, fully equipped fitness center, in-room broadband Internet access, and spacious conference facilities. The hotel is located at the heart of Downtown Bethesda, a diverse and lively urban center two miles northwest of the Washington, DC, border and three miles from American University. Over 200 restaurants, three live theaters, two cinemas, and several bookstores are within a short walk of the hotel, which sits directly above the Bethesda station on the Metro Red Line, offering rapid, low-cost and high-frequency rail service to Dupont Circle (15 minutes); the National Mall, White House, and Capitol Hill (20 minutes); and Reagan National Airport (30 minutes).

The LatCrit XIV planning committee selected the Hyatt Regency Bethesda in June 2008 after a lengthy and exacting search, and was able to lock in a significantly discounted guestroom rate for LatCrit attendees, comparable to previous LatCrit conference rates, in what is one of the most expensive hotel markets in the nation. Hotel reservation information will be made available, together with conference registration information, in early summer.

Most of the conference events on Saturday, October 3, including several rounds of panels, all work-in-progress workshops, and a community lunch, will take place at the American University Washington College of Law. Free shuttle bus transportation will be available between the hotel and the law school.

Shakespeare and Political Legitimacy

Eric Heinze, Queen Mary, University of London School of Law, has published "Heir, Celebrity, Martyr, Monster: Legal and Political Legitimacy in Shakespeare and Beyond," in volume 20 of Law and Critique (2009). Here is the abstract.

The Seventeenth Century places Western political thought on a path increasingly concerned with ascertaining the legitimacy of a determinate individual, parliamentary or popular sovereign. Beginning with Shakespeare, however, a parallel literary tradition serves not to systematise, but to problematise the discourses used to assert the legitimacy with which control over law and government is exercised. This article examines discourses of legal and political legitimacy spawned in early modernity. It is argued that basic notions of 'right', 'duty', 'justice' and 'power' (corresponding, in their more vivid manifestations, to categories of 'heir', 'celebrity', 'martyr' and 'monster') combine in discrete, but always encumbered ways, to generate a variety of legitimating discourses. Whilst transcendentalist versions of those discourses begin to wane, their secular counterparts acquire steadily greater force. In addition to the Shakespearean histories, works of John Milton, Pierre Corneille, Jean Racine, Friedrich Schiller and Richard Wagner are examined, along with some more contemporary or ironic renderings.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

White House Law

Keith A. Rowley, UNLV Law School, has published "In There a Lawyer in the (White) House?: Portraying Lawyers on The West Wing," in Lawyers in Your Living Room!: Law on Television (Michael Asimow ed.; ABA, 2009). Here is the abstract.

Ever since "L.A. Law" burst triumphantly onto the small screen in 1986 and the "Law & Order" franchise was born four years later, shows featuring lawyers have become a staple of American prime time network television. Sadly, many of the shows in which lawyers were or are the central characters -- "Ally McBeal," "The Practice," "Boston Legal," "Shark," "Damages," and, most recently, "Raising the Bar," to name a few -- have depicted lawyers as characatures who appear to be wholly unfamiliar with (and fairly unconcerned about) legal ethics and to view the law as a game to be won or a puzzle to be solved -- sometimes coincidentally for their client's benefit, but mostly for personal satisfaction. Standing in stark contrast to these cynical, self-indulgent, melodrama-prone, pomo-lawyers are those we meet from the White House Counsel's office of fictional President Jed Bartlet during the historic seven-year run of "The West Wing." While several of the show's more central characters -- Chief of Staff Leo McGarry, Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman, Communications Director Toby Ziegler, and Deputy Communications Director Sam Seaborn -- had law degrees, and some had substantial private-practice experience before entering politics, we saw them as policy advisors and political operatives. By contrast, the White House Counsel's office lawyers generally offered advice about matters of law, rather than policy or politics. As such, they are free to check their personal politics -- two of the lawyers featured during the series (Ainsley Hayes and Joe Quincy) were Republicans in a Democractic White House and a third (Lionel Tribbey) was substantially more liberal than the president on a number of issues -- at the door, to serve the president and his senior advisers and to represent the Office of the President.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Carolyn Grose, William Mitchell College of Law, has published 'Once Upon a Time, in a Land Far, Far Away': Lawyers and Clients Telling Stories About Ethics (and Everything Else) , in volume 20 of the Hastings Women's Law Journal (2009). Here is the abstract.

Framed by an analysis of two particular ethical rules and their application to specific situations, this piece uses the metaphor of storytelling to explore the lawyer's role as an effective and ethical client representative. Drawing from the experiences of two sets of clients and their lawyers, the piece proposes an approach to ethical regulation (as one component of the lawyer-client relationship) that requires the lawyer to engage in a deeply contextual analysis of the specific and particular ethical conflicts presented to him in any particular case; and work with his client to determine how to resolve those conflicts.

The first part of the article introduces the stories of these clients as the lawyers came to know them and as the ethical dilemmas unfolded. This section sets the stage for further analysis both of the Rules of Professional Conduct and of the process lawyers undertake to understand and apply those rules. The second part of the paper shifts the focus to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct themselves and tells the stories again, this time in the context of those rules. This second telling reveals that the rules that make up the system of ethical regulation are interpreted to apply to generic, abstract clients in generic, abstract situations.

Drawing on critical lawyering and narrative theory, the third part of the paper proposes an alternative approach to interpreting and resolving ethical conflicts. The article suggests that the system of regulation should be interpreted to allow room for the attorney to consider and incorporate the client's narrative context. Such an approach places the client in the center of the inquiry and requires the lawyer and client to engage actively in dialogue and problem-solving. It allows the lawyer and client together to arrive at solutions that both respond to the particular client's needs, and attend to the moral and ethical concerns the lawyer and society might have. By using a critically reflective, intentional process of inquiry around ethical (and other) concerns, the lawyer must focus on this particular client in the context of his life and his legal/non-legal needs in this particular situation. Such an inquiry results in a widening of the frame of the client's case such that what appear to be intractable and prominent ethical (and other) issues at the outset actually fade into the background as the lawyer and client together either resolve or preempt them completely.

Download the article from SSRN here.

Annual Reports: They're For Research Now

Gaetan Breton, University du Quebec (Montreal), has published "Semiotic Analysis of Storytelling in the Annual Report." Here is the abstract.

This paper wants to explore the use of semiotics analysis to better understand the annual report. We start with the idea that the annual report is telling stories to the reader. As a form of novel, we can analyse it with the same instrument.

Our purpose here is methodological. We want to propose an organized body of techniques that will allow anybody to conduct analysis from it. Therefore we use uniquely one example, to illustrate the method.

The advantages of semiotics over content analysis are numerous. Content analysis remains quite trivial (counting words) while semiotics analysis take into account the structure of the story at many levels.

Framed by the categories of the Aristotle's rhetoric, we develop a method that is replicable with a limited background in the source disciplines. Our results suggest that the annual report is clearly telling stories and respond quite positively to this kind of approach.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

What Not To Bare

Erik Jensen of Case Western Reserve Law School makes the case for judicial sartorial minimalism. But what, I ask, does this say about judicial conservatism?

Erik M. Jensen, CWRU Law School, "Under the Robes: A Judicial Right to Bare Arms (and Legs and...)?" in volume 12 of the Green Bag. Here is the abstract.

This essay considers a time-dishonored question: What, if anything, do judges have on under their robes? After serious research and thought, the author concludes that judges are-or, in an economically rational world, should be-minimalists.

Download the article from SSRN here.

Law and Art

Alfred L. Brophy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, School of Law, has published "Property and Progress: Antebellum Landscape Art and Property Law." Here is the abstract.

Landscape art in the antebellum era (the period before the American Civil War, 1861-1865), often depicts the role of humans on the landscape. Humans appear as hunters, settlers, and travelers and human structures appear as well, from rude paths, cabins, mills, bridges, and canals to railroads and telegraph wires. Those images parallel cases, treatises, orations, essays, and fictional literature that discuss property's role in fostering economic and moral development. The images also parallel developments in property doctrine, particularly related to adverse possession, mistaken improvers, nuisance, and eminent domain.

Some of the conflicts in property rights that gripped antebellum thought also appear in paintings, including ambivalence about progress, concern over development of land, and fear of the excesses of commerce. The concerns about wealth, as well as the concerns about the lack of control through law, appear at various points. Other paintings celebrate intellectual, moral, technological, and economic progress. The paintings thus remind us of how antebellum Americans understood property, as they struggled with the changes in the role of property from protection of individual autonomy of the eighteenth century to the promotion of economic growth in the nineteenth century.

Download the paper from SSRN here.
Here's a related post by Professor Brophy.

Summer Study in Osnabrück

From Professor Matt LeMieux, University of Osnabrück, comes news of this summer school program:

Convergences: Law, Language and Culture
First International Osnabrück Summer School on the Cultural Study of the Law


Invitation

The inaugural International Summer School on the Cultural Study of the Law will be held from August 2nd to August 16th in Osnabrück, Germany. Hosted by the Institute of English and American Studies, in collaboration with the University of Copenhagen, the University of Toronto, and the European Legal Studies Institute at Osnabrück University, the summer school seeks to bring together graduate students from around the world to promote and examine the interdisciplinary study and research of law and culture.

Graduate students pursuing a PhD in the humanities and advanced students of the law who are interested in the interdependence and interaction between law and culture are invited to apply. During the two week program, students will partake in a unique experience of scholarly collaboration and exchange through workshops, public lectures, panel discussions, excursions and a final symposium.

The Summer School will offer four workshops clustered into two broad areas of study. The first cluster of workshops addresses questions of cultural representation, literary aesthetics, and linguistic translation, areas in which interdisciplinary approaches to studying the law have been at the forefront of scholarly discourse over the last three decades. The second group, “Law and Culture: Convergence and Conflict,” explores related issues of human rights, property, and copyright that have gained increasing importance with the rise of globalization.

The 2009 Osnabrück Summer School is meant to be the first of a series of collaborative efforts to establish an international network of younger and established scholars for the interdisciplinary study of law and culture. Students interested in taking part in the Summer School should submit applications no later than May 15, 2009.

Participant Eligibility

Doctoral candidates in literature, the law, the arts, the humanities, and the related social sciences are invited to apply, as are advanced students pursuing a J.D. or its equivalent (such as the L.L.B). Young scholars or junior faculty members who have received a Ph.D. or corresponding degree in the last five years are also eligible. There are openings for approximately 30 students to participate in the summer school.

Application Process

Applicants should complete:

- An application form, indicating preferred workshop cluster, that can be found at: http://www.blogs.uni-osnabrueck.de/lawandculture/application/
- A statement of purpose no more than two pages long, describing current scholarly interests, previous research, and plans for how the Summer School would specifically further these interests and plans.
- An up-to-date curriculum vitae.

Detailed information about the school, the workshops, international faculty, admission and fees can be found at:

www.blogs.uni-osnabrueck.de/lawandculture

Questions

Questions about the First Osnabrück Summer School on the Cultural Study of the Law may be directed to either one of the Summer School Coordinators:

Devin Zuber, Coordinator for the Humanities, Faculty Contact and Institutional Cooperation.

Matt Lemieux, Coordinator for Legal Studies.

Law, Language and Culture Summer School
Institute for English and American Studies (IfAA)
University of Osnabrück
Neuer Graben 40
49069 Osnabrück / Germany.

lawandculture@uos.de

New Publication: Diversity and Tolerance in Socio-Legal Contexts: Explorations in the Semiotics of Law

DIVERSITY AND TOLERANCE IN SOCIO-LEGAL CONTEXTS: EXPLORATIONS IN THE SEMIOTICS OF LAW, Wagner, Anne and Bhatia, Vijay K., eds., Ashgate, 2009

Here is the abstract.

Why is there so much resistance to recent issues of tolerance and diversity? Despite efforts of the international community to encourage open-mindedness, recent attempts at international, political and economic integration have shown that religious, cultural and ethnic tolerance and diversity remain under threat. The contributions in the volume reflect the growing importance of these issues and why resistance is so widespread. Part I addresses the relationship between the language of law and its power, whilst Part II explores the interplay of tolerance and diversity under visual, legislative and interpretative perspectives. This collection as a whole offers a combination of varied perspectives on the analysis, application and exploitation of laws and will be a valuable source of information for those interested in the general area of language and the law.

Contents: Foreword, Sophie Cacciaguidi-Fahy; Introduction: the international dual nature of law: tolerance and diversity, Anne Wagner and Vijay K. Bhatia; Part I The Semiotic Foundation of Diversity and Tolerance: Tolerance, pluralism and 'fighting faiths': seeking the sources of US constitutional meaning, Frederick P. Lewis; 'When the law speaks': acts of intolerance, threats to group-identity, and confidence in law and rights, Ira L. Strauber; Mediated semiosis in the courtroom: non-verbal communicators and the usefulness of audio video technology as a tool by which to oversee justice, Isabell Petrinic; The Roma way, Istven H. Szilegyi; 'Une certaine ide de l'homme, une certaine ide de la France': the rhetorical construction of tolerance in French political discourse, Pamela Hobbs; Shifts in the concept of war: new war terminology and its legal consequences, Hanneke van Schooten. Part II Case Analyses of Diversity and Tolerance: Branding Barcelona: semiotic considerations in contemporary sovereignty, John Brigham; Legality beyond the scope of policy, Sarah Marusek; On sight/on site: visuality in native title claims: can we even speak?, Tracey Summerfield and Alec McHoul; Race, class and the Supreme Court: Rodriguez v. San Antonio School Independent School District (1973), William Pencak; Legal terms across communities: divergence behind convergence in law, Le Cheng and King Kui Sin; Women as legal subjects and objects in contemporary China, Deborah Cao; Conclusion: researching exploration in the semiotics of the law, Christopher N. Candlin; Bibliography; Index

Picket Fences

Lance McMillian, John Marshall Law School (Atlanta), has published "All Roads Lead to Rome, Wisconsin: Judge Henry Bone, Douglas Wambaugh, and the Strange World of Picket Fences," in Lawyers in Your Living Room! Law on Television (Michael Asimow, ed. ABA, 2009). Here is the abstract.

This is a book chapter appearing in LAWYERS IN YOUR LIVING ROOM! LAW ON TELEVISION (Michael Asimov ed. 2009). The book is published by the ABA, which retains the copyright. This chapter analyzes the lawyers on the television drama Picket Fences, which won two Emmys for Best Drama in the early 1990s. The chapter compares and contrasts the approaches toward the law and lawyering of Judge Henry Bone and Douglas Wambaugh. Set in the small town of Rome, Wisconsin, Bone and Wambaugh face off on the great issues of the day: euthanasia, polygamy, transsexuality, gay adoption, separation of church and state, racial busing, animal abuse, the rights of dentists with the HIV virus, the presence of sex offenders in the community, temporary insanity by reason of menopause, and all manner of bizarre fetishes (to name one, sexual arousal through bath toys). Along the way, they confront colorful characters such as the Tin Man, the Frog Man, the Potato Man, an elephant-stealing circus dwarf, a transsexual set to play the Virgin Mary in the town's Christmas play, and many others. The success of Picket Fences can be attributed to its ability to show us the best and worst parts of ourselves. The portrayals of Bone and Wambaugh play prominent parts in revealing this glimpse of humanity.

Download the chapter at SSRN here.

Montesquieu and the Supreme Court

Nelson Lund, George Mason University School of Law, has published "Montesquieu, Judicial Degeneracy, and the United States Supreme Court," as George Mason Law & Economic Research Paper 09-12. Here is the abstract.

This essay, which is aimed primarily but not exclusively at audiences in the field of philosophy, originated in a lecture prepared for a series on "Natural Moral Law and Contemporary Society" at the School of Philosophy of the Catholic University of America. Using the Supreme Court's sodomy and abortion decisions as introductory examples, the essay briefly discusses the roots of judicial hubris in American constitutional law. The essay then looks more deeply into an institutional transformation rooted in Montesquieu's insight that it is both necessary and impossible to de-politicize the judicial function. The politically moderating role performed by judges in Montesquieu's English constitution does not translate easily into the American system of written constitutions with judicial review. The essay argues that the U.S. Supreme Court is not qualified to correct written human law through appeals to higher laws, including the natural moral law, and that this conclusion is consistent with the understanding of law both in our Constitution and in St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Law and Popular Culture

From the New York Times's Brent Staples, a survey of "The Ape in American Bigotry, From Thomas Jefferson to 2009." Provocative reading in the wake of the controversy over the publication of that cartoon in the New York Post.

Affect and Effect: Theories of Law and Film

Ruth Buchanan, Osgoode Hall Law School, and Rebecca Johnson, University of Victoria Faculty of Law, have published "Strange Encounters: Exploring Law and Film in the Affective Register," in 46 Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, 33 (2009). Here is the abstract.

This paper argues that taking seriously the embodied and affective dimensions of thought is important in relation both to the critical and transformative possibilities of Law-and-Film scholarship. In it, the authors begin the work of revealing the ways that film works to produce what Raymond Williams called the 'structures of feeling' that help to cohere contemporary legal and political institutions. In its first section, it seeks to develop a more robust vocabulary for discussing how films work on their viewers. Building on the insights of William Connolly regarding the multilayered nature of thought, it discusses how the non-cognitive registers for thinking of technique, perception and affect are brought together in film. In the second section, the paper explores how these effects might be understood through a close reading of three short scenes drawn from the films The Piano (1993), Minority Report (2002) and Dead Man (1994). In the powerful contrast of 'affect' produced by each of these scenes (the latter two containing minimal narrative content), the authors make an argument for the significance of attending not only to the (fixed) representative or ideological dimension of film, but also to its movement, its flux and possibility as energy.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Authoring Opinions

Ryan Benjamin Witte, Columbia University Law School and Florida State University College of Law, has published "The Judge as an Author/The Author as a Judge." Here is the abstract.

For Federal judges, a life-tenure also comes with a life-long publishing deal. While some judges remain faithful to the rigid framework of judicial opinion writing that dominates the shelves of law libraries throughout the country, others utilize certain cases to summon their inner novelist or poet to add life to the pages of the Federal Register.

The use of humor, poetry, and popular culture in judicial opinions is not without its criticism. This paper is divided into two main topics; the first discusses the judge as an author. The section will begin with an examination of the audience of judicial opinions and an outline of the different styles of judicial opinion writing. The section will also examine the advantages and disadvantages of using literary tools to advance the law.

The second section addresses the role of the artist as a judge. This section will study a small segment of judges who, in addition to the law, maintain an outside career as an author or artist. Judges who fit into this group include authors of books, operas, and magazine articles, and their opinions are often written in a manner which reflects their experience. This section will also discuss the advantages (and potential drawbacks) of having these unique judges deciding cases dealing with a wide range of author's issues, including copyright and free speech, both substantively and stylistically.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Analyzing the Image of the Lawyer in "The Sweet Hereafter"

Timothy P. O'Neill, John Marshall Law School (Chicago), has published "There Will Be Blame: Misfortune and Injustice in 'The Sweet Hereafter'," in volume 5 of the University of Denver Sports and Entertainment Law Journal (Fall 2008). Here is the abstract.

This paper compares the two versions of "The Sweet Hereafter": Russell Banks' novel and Atom Egoyan's film. It contends that commentators have been too quick to criticize the lawyer who comes to town offering to represent the parents' interests. It argues that as good as the film is, the novel provides a more nuanced view of the human necessity to assign blame when injustices occur. It draws on the work of Charles Tilly to examine issues of credit and blame that run through both the novel and the film.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Lincoln and Popular Culture

The American Bar Association is presenting a program on Lincoln in pop culture: The Lincoln Myth: How Pop Culture Defines America's Great Lawyer/President on February 24. Here's more. David Hundley, of Cinema Mishmash, and I are speaking. Henry White, Executive Director of the ABA is introducing the program, and Edward Adams, editor of the ABA Journal is moderating the program.

World Congress On Law and Literature and CFP

The Italian Society for Law and Literature, headquartered at the University of Bologna, is organizing the 24th IVR World Congress on Law and Literature, which will take place in Beijing from the 15th to the 20th of September. Here's a link to more information on the Society's website, including the CFP.

Rumpole of the Bailey

Paul B. Bergman, University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, has published "Rumpole and the Bowl of Comfort Food," in Lawyers in Your Living Room (Michael Asimow ed.; ABA Press, 2009). Here is the abstract.

Rumpole of the Bailey was a delightful British television series based on the life and courtroom exploits of John Mortimer's fictional curmudgeonly barrister, Horace Rumpole. Rumpole was a zealous if eccentric criminal defense lawyer. He was equally skilled in the arts of cross examining police officers and plucking appropriate quotes from the Oxford Book of English Verse. The stories' gentle satires of British traditions and justice make viewers feel as comfortable as Rumpole usually was as he sat in Pommeroy's Pub after a hard day in the Old Bailey, drinking a glass of the cheap house wine that he affectionately called Chateau Thames Embankment or Chateau Fleet Street. Chambers Meetings were a regular feature of the Rumpole shows.

This essay creates a transcript of a mock Chambers Meeting to explore Rumpole's character, his courtroom strategies, and the judges and other barristers whose idiosyncrasies were never-ending sources of conflict and amusement for Rumpole.

Tontines, Not Tocsins

Remember the inheritance device behind the death in Agatha Christie's mystery 4:50 From Paddington? (That novel is also known as What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw). Or Thomas Costain's novel The Tontine? Kent McKeever of Columbia Law School investigates tontines further.

Kent McKeever, Columbia Law School, A Short History of Tontines.

The tontine, with its underlying premise that the living participants benefit from the death of their fellows, does not deserve its shadowy reputation. It had some success in its original purpose, as a means of government fund raising. It was most successful as a means of private development and investment from around 1780 through the 1850's. However, it was used as a gimmick in the selling of life insurance and as a cover for outright fraud in the latter part of the 19th Century. It was also subject to attack from writers who found the notion of gambling on other people's deaths unseemly. The tontine developed an aura of shadiness, and was eventually abandoned. If re-developed as a form of insurance for the long-lived, it may be worth rehabilitation as an investment tool.

Download the abstract from SSRN here.

Law and Pornography

John M. Kang, St. Thomas University School of Law, has published "Taking Safety Seriously: Using Liberalism to Fight Pornography," in volume 15 of Michigan Journal of Gender & Law (2008). Here is the abstract.

In the law review literature on pornography, there is sometimes the depressing story that either liberalism is limply unhelpful to combat pornography or, in its role as philosophical handmaiden, liberalism happily does pornography's bidding. Liberalism as referred to here is not meant as shorthand for the political ideals of the Democratic Party. Rather, it is meant to serve as an emblem for a loose collection of commitments to free speech, legal equality, toleration, and limited government. But the description of liberalism that pervades the law review literature on pornography seems exaggerated and far from inevitable. Liberalism, as a jurisprudential principle, need not be pornography's indifferent observer or spineless sycophant; liberalism can be used to fight pornography. In this Article, I propose to illuminate what appears to me the most essential aspect of liberalism in its inviolable dedication to peace and safety. By drawing upon the work of the early liberals, I argue that liberalism's most basic ethos is conceptually incompatible with pornography, as the latter celebrates an unjustified form of violence as its own end.

Civility, Constitutionalism, and the Image of Men

John M. Kang, St. Thomas University School of Law, has published "Manliness and the Constitution," at 32 Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 261 (2009). Here is the abstract.

Much of the legal scholarship regarding gender focuses justifiably on discrimination against women; accordingly, if such scholarship does discuss men, it does so chiefly to illuminate the ways in which women have been oppressed by them.

My article seeks to explore men's identity as its own topic, specifically in its relation to the Constitution. I begin my exploration with early modern England, for the American colonists would have to grapple with the ideas that arose during this time. My argument proceeds as follows. Prominent conceptions of male identity in early modern England made constitutional democracy, as the eighteenth century Americans understood it, philosophically unrealistic. Thomas Hobbes represented one view, Robert Filmer the other. Hobbes argued that men's violent hypermasculinity made them ineligible for the disciplined and mature enterprise of self-government; he believed that only an absolute monarch could control men for purposes of collective peace. Filmer also argued that men were generally incompetent for self-government. But unlike Hobbes, he argued that men were psychologically infantile and thus insufficiently manly for self-government. Filmer insisted that only the king had the requisite manliness of a powerful father and that men required the former's love and guidance while they owed him complete obedience.

The American colonists constructed a new understanding of male identity, one that was compatible with the logic of self-government in their constitution. Against Hobbes, the colonists pressed American men to embrace civility rather than being driven by a violent hypermasculinity. Against Filmer, the colonists urged American men to evince their manly independence by deliberating political truths instead of deferring to social betters. I then explain how these views by the colonists were manifested in the federal Constitution.

Download the article from SSRN here.

Spiritualists and Copyright

Christine A. Corcos, Louisiana State University Law Center, has published 'Ghostwriters': Spiritualists, Copyright Infringement, and Rights of Publicity, in Law and Magic: A Collection of Essays (Christine A. Corcos, ed.: Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2009). Here is the abstract.

In 1917, British-born editor and publisher Mitchell Kennerley (1878-1950) offered for sale Jap Herron, a new novel which he implied was written by the eminent Mark Twain. There was no author's name on the title page, but the frontispiece was a portrait of Mark Twain. This book included an introduction by St. Louis journalist and author Emily Grant Hutchings explaining the odd origins of the novel. Indeed, they were odd - Mark Twain, whose real name was Samuel Clemens, had been dead for six years, and the manuscript of Jap Herron was not some old piece of fiction he had left behind in a desk to be discovered after his demise. In her preface, Mrs. Hutchings claimed that Twain, to whom she referred familiarly as Mark, and whom she had met during his life, had dictated the book, as well as two short stories, to her through a Ouija Board, that is, through spirit communication via a board labeled with the alphabet, and with the assistance of a spirit medium, Mrs. Lola V. Hays.

Testimony in Literature

Pramod K. Nayar, University of Hyderabad, Department of English, has published "Human Rights and Testimonial Fiction: Alicia Partnoy and the Case of Argentina's Disappeared," at 1 Icfai University Journal of Commonwealth Literature 61-78 (2009). Here is the abstract.

This essay explores a particular genre in postcolonial literature: the literature of human rights. It uses a semi-fictional, semi-autobiographical narrative, the Argentinian Alicia Partnoy's account of her incarceration. The essay begins by proposing, following contemporary theorists of human rights, that a narrative tradition of human rights exists. It then moves on to discuss the 'literature of trauma'. Partnoy's work, it argues, demonstrates two strategies - the enumerative narrative of witnessing and self-witnessing. Partnoy produces a 'fiction of trauma', or 'testimonial fiction'. This fiction, the essay concludes, works at the level of a 'moral imagination', where the act of imagination is a performative through which the subject is formed, but also one that allows Partnoy to speak of the victims who did not survive the camp. This becomes the 'fiction of human rights' because it constructs the subjectivity - which includes agency - of Partnoy. If the focus of human rights discourses is the protection of the subject's agency, then the construction of subjectivity in The Little School makes it a narrative of human rights. It concludes by proposing, via Ashis Nandy's argument that the (postcolonial) Third World can become the 'collective representation of man-made suffering', that such narratives fit into a global history of trauma and human rights.

Download the article from SSRN here.

Law and Cultural Heritage

From the Lawyers' Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation (LCCHP):
Three Important Announcements

LCCHP 2009 Student Writing Competition in Cultural Heritage Preservation Law
Database of Internship/Externship/Job Opportunities in Cultural Heritage Law
Students & New Professionals Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation being formed

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Student Writing Competition in Cultural Heritage Preservation Law

The Lawyers' Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation announces the 2009 LCCHP Annual Student Writing Competition in Cultural Heritage Preservation Law. Due to the generosity of our competition sponsor - the law firm Andrews Kurth LLP - the awards for the 2009 competition are $1000 for first place and $500 for second place. The deadline for submissions is June 12, 2009, but papers may be submitted at any time before that date. We encourage those of you teaching seminars or with other student papers this semester to ask your students to submit papers now. Only current law students are eligible to enter the competition. Instructions for submission of papers and of faculty supporting nominations may be found at:

www.culturalheritagelaw.org/education/competition2009

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Database of Internship / Externship / Job Opportunities in Cultural Heritage Law

LCCHP is pleased to announce that its database of internship and externship opportunities in cultural heritage law is now available on our website at:

www.culturalheritagelaw.org/members-only

We know that this listing will be in great demand by law students and other students studying cultural heritage. If you know of any opportunities in this field that you think should be listed, we invite you to send us a short description with a web link. Please forward this request to government agencies and nonprofit organizations that may be interested in posting an announcement, and feel free to post this message to other relevant listserves and blogs. The listing is available only to LCCHP members, but we offer an attractive student rate.


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Students & New Professionals Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation is being formed

LCCHP is creating a special Student and New Professional Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation. This Committee will give students and recent graduates an opportunity to network and share information, while they also participate in several LCCHP activities, such as overseeing our soon-to-be launched blog in cultural heritage law and planning cultural heritage related events on their school campuses. You may want to bring this group to the attention of your students. For more information, contact Board Member Donald Craib at:

http://www.culturalheritagelaw.org/members-only


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About LCCHP

The Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation is an organization of lawyers, professors, law students, and like-minded friends who have joined together to promote the preservation and protection of cultural heritage resources in the United States and internationally through education and advocacy. Cultural heritage law is a growing legal field, as our society comes to appreciate the important symbolic, historical, and emotional role that cultural heritage plays in our lives. Cultural heritage law encompasses several disparate areas, including the protection of archaeological sites, preservation of historic structures and the built environment, preservation of and respect for both tangible and intangible indigenous cultures, international market in art works and antiquities, and recovery of stolen art works.


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Lawyers' Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation (LCCHP)
428 Hume Ave, 2nd floor, Alexandria, VA 22301
tel: 703-549-1110 | fax: 703-995-4890
web: www.culturalheritagelaw.org | email: info@culturalheritagelaw.org

Justice in "Measure For Measure"

John V. Orth, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, School of Law, has published "'The Golden Metwand': The Measure of Justice in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure," in the Adelaide Law Review. Here is the abstract.

Measure for Measure, one of Shakespeare's problem plays, is a dark comedy depicting Duke Vincentio's effort to restore respect for the law after a period of lax enforcement. Peopled with a wide variety of law-enforcers and law-breakers, the play implicates numerous legal issues and has consequently attracted the attention of lawyers and judges. In the eighteenth century Sir William Blackstone contributed notes on the play, while in the twentieth century judges have quoted from it in their judicial opinions. Like all good legal dramas, Measure for Measure ends with a trial scene, but - as we would expect from Shakespeare - one with an unusual twist. When charges of corruption are brought against Angelo, the deputy appointed to enforce the law, the Duke orders an immediate trial: Come, cousin Angelo / In this I'll be impartial; be you judge / Of your own cause. When the deputy's guilt is disclosed, the Duke commands that he suffer the punishment he intended for others - measure for measure, putting the Bible-conscious play-goer in mind of the passage: Judge not, that ye be not judged. / For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged, and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you againe. By ordering Angelo to be the judge of his own cause, the Duke is inviting the deputy to measure out his own punishment. And Shakespeare is forcing us all to confront the difficulty of doing earthly justice.

Download the article from SSRN here.

Law and Semiotics

Here is the table of contents for volume 22 of the International Journal of the Semiotics of Law (no. 1, 2009--Special Issue: Lawyers Making Meaning - the Roberta Kevelson Seminar on Law and Semiotics.

The contents of the Special Issue: Lawyers Making Meaning - The Roberta Kevelson Seminar on Law and Semiotics, Guest Editors: Jan Broekman and William Pencak is as follows:

Jan M. Broekman, William Pencak / Lawyers Making Meaning

Francis J. Mootz III / Vico and Imagination: An Ingenious Approach to Educating Lawyers with Semiotic Sensibility

Denis J. Brion / Trial Argumentation: The Creation of Meaning

Jan M. Broekman / Face to Face

Philip Grier / Gustav Shpet and the Semiotics of 'Living Discourse'

William Pencak / The Lawyer, the Judge, and the Historian: Shaping the Meaning of the Boston Massacre, American Revolution, and Popular Opinion from 1770 to the Present Day

Michelle L. Wirth / Who's You Daddy? -- Or: Using Semiotic Tools to Deconstruct Legal Determinations of Who Holds Parenthood Obligations and Privileges

Jeffrey A. Ellsworth / Michael H. v. Gerald D.': A Case Study of Political Ideology Disguised in Legal Thought


Book review/Paper reviews

Paper Review: Etat (Postmoderne) de droit, Logique textuelle et theorie micropolitique du droit: sur un exemple de pensee juridique "Soft" (Guillaume Tusseau)

Review Paper: Derrida and legal scholarship: A Certain Step Beyond (by Jacques de Ville).

Culbert, Jennifer. L. Dead Certainty: The Death Penalty and the Problem of Judgment, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008. 235 pages (index). (by George Pavlich).

Legal Narrative and Street Law

Elizabeth L. MacDowell, Chapman University School of Law, has published "Law on the Street: Legal Narrative and the Street Law Classroom," in volume 9 of Rutgers Race and the Law Review (2008). Here is the abstract.

This Article argues that the failure of anti-discrimination law to address the problems of subordination reflects the hegemonic perspective in legal narratives. For the lawyer concerned with social change, it is imperative to identify these narratives and the ways in which they not only inhibit deep social change, but may perpetuate the conditions of subordination. Yet, law school polices against the consciousness necessary for the lawyer to identify the hegemonic narrative in the law, and often instills attitudes which are antithetical to the project of social change. In this context, Street Law - a practical law course taught by law students to high school students in inner city neighborhoods and juvenile facilities - is an arena for the development of counter-hegemonic consciousness in the lawyer and in subordinated communities.

Literature on narrative from the legal and social science communities informs this analysis. Part I is the Introduction. Part II conceptualizes the classroom as a narrative moment in which legal text, interpretation and experience come together, and then establishes a framework for analyzing these elements. First, the Castlemont community in Oakland, California where the author taught Street Law is characterized as illustrating conditions of social marginalization and subordination. Next, the concept of narrative is defined in greater detail, and Ewick and Silbey's theory of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic narrative is introduced. Lastly, this Part analyzes the narrative of discrimination offered by anti-discrimination law as hegemonic.

Part III explores how legal education thwarts development of the consciousness and skills a lawyer needs to work for social change. First, the conditions associated with counter-hegemonic consciousness are discussed. Next, this Part argues that the objective viewpoint of the law is hegemonic in nature. The manifestation of this viewpoint in law school hinders the development of counter-hegemonic consciousness in persons of the law, instills attitudes which thwart the project of social change, and leads to widespread alienation - particularly among students with viewpoints that are marginalized within law school.

Finally, Part IV returns to the Street Law classroom, and the nature of the opportunity Street Law presents for a person of the law and her students. This Part suggests that Street Law is an opportunity to develop the consciousness and other qualities necessary for social justice lawyering. This Part also suggests that subjectivity is an appropriate methodology to employ in developing a pedagogy which encourages counter-hegemonic consciousness in the Street Law classroom.

Download the article from SSRN here.

Call For Papers

CALL FOR ROUNDTABLE PARTICIPANTS

CRN No. 9 (Gender and Legal Education)

LAW AND SOCIETY ASSOCIATION ANNUAL MEETING



May 28-31, 2009

Denver, CO


DEADLINE FOR PROPOSAL: FEBRUARY 25, 2009





Roundtable: Teaching Gender Inequality in Law Schools



Conversations about gender and sexuality in core law school courses are often focused on equality—constitutional doctrines of formal equality meted out by high courts – rather than underlying causes, effects and forms of inequality. Law students are rarely asked to consider if inequality itself is undesirable, and whether law has a role in perpetuating, creating, resisting or eliminating it. While these concepts are foundational in most sociology or anthropology programs, they are not central to the law school curriculum, especially in the first year.

While there is no doubt that court cases eliminating legal barriers to gender and sexual equality are important for all law students to learn, the conversation is impoverished if they are the only vehicle used to examine gender, sexuality and other intersecting forms of inequality in a typical course of law school study. Teachers of today’s generation of students also must grapple with the fact that gender inequality looks different to students than it did even fifteen years ago. The generation of women entering law school—the beneficiaries of equal opportunity to education under Title IX and employment under Title VII – are members of a community in which young women have excelled. Many of them do not perceive gendered inequality operating in their lives. This creates a displacement where students who are interested in women’s rights are more comfortable examining the inequality of women in exotic foreign locales (such as inequalities suffered by Muslim women, victims of sex trafficking or of mass sexual violence). At the same time, however, they are slow to recognize the structural nature of gendered inequalities that persist closer to home. They may be quick to dismiss their own anxieties as problems that can be overcome by making perfect individual choices. Students interested in eliminating the inequality of the LGBTQ community might perceive that inequality more starkly, but still often lack the vocabulary to discuss questions of law, power and sexuality outside of the bounds of formal equality.

In the climate of change created by recent critiques of legal education, roundtable participants will take up the question of how social scientists and law teachers can become allies in the creation of materials, techniques and strategies to teach law students about the gender, sexual, and intersectional inequalities in the U.S. legal system and culture. Possible topics might include: innovations in legal pedagogy; strategies for exploring gender and sexual inequality in core law school courses (e.g., contracts, torts, criminal law); whether the training of lawyers should include an apprenticeship of identity and purpose that has at its core a commitment to reducing inequality; teaching techniques for reinvigorating courses on discrimination with more nuanced and sophisticated understandings of how structural inequalities play out in the lives of lawyers and their clients; exploring the role of experiential and clinical education in both fighting inequality and teaching students about its nature; incorporating questions of how law enables corporations and consumer culture to create and perpetuate gender inequality into law school teaching; and addressing inequality created or sustained by culture and religion in U.S. domestic as well as international settings.



If you would like to join the roundtable, please email Daniela Kraiem, CRN No. 9 Organizer and Associate Director, Women and the Law Program, American University Washington College of Law at kraiem@wcl.american.edu with a brief paragraph describing your interest in participating in the roundtable by February 25, 2009.



LSA roundtables are generally informal discussions, guided by the questions and themes raised by the panelists. Panelists should be prepared to offer 7-10 minutes of remarks, followed by discussion of roundtable themes. If you are already on two panels at the LSA, I can’t add you as a formal participant, but would love to have you join us as an active member of the roundtable.

Call For Papers

SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS



8th International Roundtable for the Semiotics of Law (IRSL 2009)

(2-5 December 2009)



TRANSPARENCY, CONTROL AND POWER:

ISSUES IN LEGAL SEMIOTICS

Convenor: Vijay K. Bhatia

Conference Venue: Department of English, City University of Hong Kong .



The overall aim of a State is to protect the social order in which the individual liberty of the citizen is a major concern. As a consequence the State should guarantee simultaneously and paradoxically a high level of individual freedom and an order in which such freedom is made possible and guaranteed.

The 8th International Roundtables for the Semiotics of Law invites contributors to reflect on the growing importance of Transparency, Control and Power in our international community and how these main ideas have been examined over the years. Contributors may choose to explore semiotic, rhetorical, pragmatic, sociolinguistic, psychological, philosophical and/or visual perspectives on Transparency, Control and Power.

Papers which examine the ways ‘actors’ in our society (legislators, politicians, activists, movie producers, singers, painters, graffiti artists, photographers etc.) have provoked public discourse to confront Transparency, Control and Power are particularly welcome.

The Roundtable will provide an opportunity for a general discussion of issues in the semiotics of law as well as open discussions to increase our knowledge about our Transparency, Control and Power with respect to Legal Semiotics.

In the interest of a cohesive roundtable, prospective participants are requested to adhere to the theme as outlined in the call for papers.

Proposals in either English or French (max 300 words) should be sent by e-mail by the 1st of May 2009 to Vijay K. Bhatia at enbhatia@cityu.edu.hk and to Anne Wagner at valwagnerfr@yahoo.com

Selected papers will be published in a special annual issue of the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law (http://www.springer.com/law/journal/11196).

Matlock From Across the Pond

Steve Greenfield and Guy Osborn, University of Westminster School of Law, and Peter Robson, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, School of Law, have published "Matlock - America's Greatest Lawyer - Case Closed: A Transatlantic Perspective," in Lawyers in Your Living Room (Michael Asimow, ed.; ABA Press, 2009). Here is the abstract.

Matlock for people in Britain is an almost entirely unknown series, and the eponymous hero is remembered very vaguely as a slimmer, rather more handsome successor to private eye Frank Cannon. We are interested in writing about Matlock from a British perspective because he seems to us to exemplify American cultural hegemony, curiously, at both its strongest and weakest. We are aware that Matlock contains many cultural references that will pass over the heads of the British audience, but that will have been appreciated by an American audience. We hope that our restricted understanding of the nuances in this portrayal of the Southern American lawyer will not limit our remarks too much. Indeed, L.A. Law has been on British TV screens for the past 20 years almost continuously and the characters and situations have been appreciated and understood on this side of the Atlantic. Despite our suggestion that Ben Matlock is, for British audiences, largely forgotten or misremembered, we in Britain may be about to take him to our hearts at the end of the first decade of the 21st century in a way undreamt of when he first came to the small screen. Perhaps he even has the potential to overtake L.A. Law in the public imagination. To explain why this might happen, a little bit of the context on screen lawyers needs to be provided.

The Visual, French History, and Virtual Memory

Daniel Maxwell Sussner has published "Projections: The visual structure of French history," a dissertation in partial completion of the requirements for the PhD at Harvard University. Here is the abstract.

How do visual media structure historical thinking? In the context of collective memory, this essay argues that engraving, the daguerreotype and film organize how historians make sense of the past. Specifically, analogizing from the digital technique of "virtual memory," the simulation of contiguous accessible digital memory available to efficiently manage computer programs, this essay shifts direction away from studies employing visual material to illustrate arguments or demonstrate historical meaning. Instead, virtual memory explains how visual media (re)organize memory, staging a collective dreaming of the past. "History," Tocqueville reminds us, "indeed, is like a picture gallery in which there are few originals and many copies."

Three hypotheses underscore this applied mechanics of thinking visually: (1) visual media displace aspects of human memory; (2) copyright law politically empowers visual media; and (3) visual media virtualize collective memory. Each chapter advances a case study elaborating a visual medium's organization of collective memory in techniques specific to its mode of reproduction Chapter One, in detailing the decline of the ancíen regime, explains the emergence of a public visual space for engraving as the collective mediation of political representation. Chapters Two, Three and Four consider Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the French Revolution together, not simply in terms of direct or retrospective impact, but as the fruition of commemorative practices indelibly linked to Rousseau's obsession with the communication of visual memory. Rousseau's "memory project" engaging the engraving medium to organize key moments of his complete works, provided readers with the mnemonic tools to virtualize Rousseau's collective memory. Chapter Five frames the emergence of the daguerreotype, emphasizing the transition from engraving to new historical modes of virtual memory. The focus here will be a now-forgotten trial involving French plagiarisms of Edgar Allen Poe. Finally. Chapter Six explores the medium of film. From the internal struggle between content and medium to the ineluctable complicity between moviegoers and historians in ascribing objectivity to fictional films about the past, cinema has much to teach us. In particular. Alain Resnais changes the rules of the game: if earlier visual media structure collective memory, the point of film is to smash it.

His advisor is Patrice Higonnet.

Update: For those interested in obtaining dissertations, they are generally available from University Microfilms International.

Call For Papers

“LAW, LITERATURE & RELIGION”
ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS
FIRST ANNUAL VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW AND DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
LAW AND LITERATURE SYMPOSIUM
OCTOBER 1 – 3, 2009

Villanova’s Law School and Department of English will hold a law and literature symposium, the first in a projected annual series, beginning Thursday evening, October 1, 2009, and ending Saturday afternoon, October 3, 2009. The symposium has also been supported by a grant from the Law and Humanities Institute.

We invite interested scholars to submit abstracts of proposed papers. Peter Goodrich (Professor of Law and Director of Law and Humanities, Cardozo School of Law), Steven Mailloux (Professor of English and Chancellor’s Professor of Rhetoric, Department of English, University of California – Irvine), and Robin West (Associate Dean, Research and Academic Programs, and Frederick J. Haas Professor of Law and Philosophy, Georgetown University Law Center), will be keynote speakers.

The conference theme for 2009, “Law, Literature, and Religion”, is broadly conceived. Papers may include but are not limited to papers on any literary, rhetorical, narrative, or textual aspects of law and religion; the exegesis and hermeneutics of legal texts or topics; interpretation in law, literature, and religion; shared languages and histories of law and religion; discursive intersections of civil and canon law; ethics and justice explored in religious and secular literature; the comparative poetics or rhetoric of legality and religion; legal priesthoods; political theology; orthodoxies and/or heterodoxies; humanisms; Pauline studies; religious images in law; literary works about religion in/and/as law; and law as a civil religion. Papers will be 20-25 minutes long to permit time for discussion.

Abstracts of proposed papers should be sent to Professor Penelope Pether (pether at law.villanova.edu), to whom inquires may also be addressed. Abstracts should be no longer than 300 words, and should arrive before March 15, 2009. Invitees will be notified by April 30, 2009, and will receive room and board at (but not transportation to and from) the symposium, provided by Villanova University School of Law.

It is anticipated that a limited number of places will be available for attendees who are not presenting papers. The symposium is being convened by Professor David S. Caudill, Arthur M. Goldberg Family Chair in Law, and Professor Penelope J. Pether of Villanova University School of Law; and Professors Evan Radcliffe (Departmental Chair) and Cristina Maria Cervone of the Department of English at Villanova University.

The Law and Literature of Basil Montagu

David Graham and John Paul Tribe, Kingston University Law School, have published "Basil Montagu QC (1770-1851): A Portrait of an Early 19th Century Life in Literature and the Law." Here is the abstract.

In 1814 Basil Montagu, by now an extremely busy member of the Chancery bar took up residence at 25 Bedford Square in fashionable Bloomsbury. Together with his wife, large family and servants he continued to live at this address for the next 20 years or so. On Sundays Mrs Montagu often reigned over a salon that attracted prominent literary figures amongst whom were several long-standing friends of her husband. At the time of their marriage in 1808 Montagu had already been married twice before; his wife had been a widow for about six years and was bringing up her daughter who would one day as Mrs Proctor have her own salon frequented by a new generation of poets and authors. Montagu's chambers were at 10 New Square; his practice was mainly concerned with insolvency matters, serving as a Commissioner in Bankruptcy at the Guildhall. He was a prolific writer on commercial law but is best remembered, if at all, for his many books on bankruptcy and for a lengthy series of law reports. He also wrote numerous pamphlets on contemporary topics such as Catholic and Jewish emancipation. Additionally he published a book of essays one of which dealt with the general principles of law reform and a best selling philosophical anthology. If Bedford Square reflects Montagu's commitment to literature, then New Square represents his professional dedication; sometimes these two segments of his life came together; he acted as junior counsel for Shelley in the proceedings brought by the poet after his wife's death to obtain custody of their children; on at least one occasion Coleridge arrived at chambers to discuss Montagu's Francis Bacon project; urgent steps were taken by him and Bryan Waller Proctor, his step-son in law, to rescue Hazlitt from imprisonment for debt. In this article little attention is given to Montagu's legal career, his role as founder of the Legal & General Insurance Company, or to his work after 1836 as the first Accountant-General in Bankruptcy. Instead it concentrates on his literary activities and private life so often clouded by tragedy. It is suggested that when Montagu died at Boulogne in 1851 he was living there in exile fearful of arrest for debt at home resulting from involvement with the financial disaster of his principal publisher, William Pickering. His death does not end the story that must continue with the hunt, still in progress, for his voluminous papers, manuscripts and other documents together with reminiscences about him. Our research indicates that notwithstanding a belief that much of this material is lost this is by no means the case.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Witnessing in The Accused

Jessica A. Silbey, Suffolk University Law School, has published "A Witness to Justice," in Studies in Law, Politics, and Society: A Special Symposium Issue on Law and Film (Austin Sara, ed. 2009), pp. 61-91. Here is the abstract.

In the 1988 film The Accused, a young woman named Sarah Tobias is gang raped on a pinball machine by three men while a crowded bar watches. The rapists cut a deal with the prosecutor. Sarah's outrage at the deal convinces the assistant district attorney to prosecute members of the crowd that cheered on and encouraged the rape. This film shows how Sarah Tobias, a woman with little means and less experience, intuits that according to the law rape victims are incredible witnesses to their own victimization. The film goes on to critique what the right kind of witness would be. This article explains how the film The Accused is therefore about the relationship between witnessing and testimony, between seeing and the representation of that which was seen. The article elaborates the relationship between the power and responsibility of being a witness in law - one who sees and credibly attests to the truth of her vision - as well as it unpacks the significance of bearing witness to film - what can we know from watching movies.

Download the essay from SSRN here.

British Advisory Group Says British TV Stereotypes Women

The National Skills Forum, an independent British group, has slammed British television, saying it presents a stereotyped view of women. Somehow, I'm not surprised. In a report to be released tomorrow, the group says
"No major British broadcaster has made any commitment to challenging gender stereotypes at work. This should change."

According to the Guardian, "The report does not name the unsympathetic portrayals it refers to, but they might include Jane Tennison, the police detective played by Helen Mirren in ITV's Prime Suspect. Tennison became an alcoholic who found it difficult to maintain a stable relationship. However, the report praises the BBC's Silent Witness, which starred Amanda Burton and Emilia Fox as pathologists, for producing a "huge increase" in the number of women training to be forensic scientists."

Read more here.

Gender stereotyping on tv and in film is nothing new. Whether it's because those who make films and tv think it's what the viewers demand, or it's because those who make films and tv really do think men and women fit into such roles is an interesting question. But the fact remains that we rarely see women tv lawyers, for example, in happy marriages and pursuing successful careers. Much more often, they're manipulating harpies who can't attract and keep nice guys.

It's not just true on legal dramas. I just finished watching a marathon of that hit, House (on opposite the Super Bowl for those of us who couldn't stomach another football game, no matter how hyped). The character is abrasive, and unethical, and selfish. Yet we are supposed to love him because he's a brilliant diagnostician. Actually he's not--I started to count the number of mistakes he makes per show. If he were female, would ANYONE put up with him, no matter how brilliant?

Even "nice" women are treated badly, and tv can show them as unsuccessful, measured against male norms of success, although this might actually be more true than we wish. Look at what happens to House's colleague, Cameron, when she objects to Foreman's "theft" of her idea for an article ("Sleeping Dogs Lie"). She's told to "suck it up." Unless she can adjust to male norms, she's not going to succeed. When she tries to patch up the quarrel with him, he refuses, saying, "I haven't done anything to apologize for," and "We're not friends. We're colleagues." It's a classic example of male-speak and a lack of ability to understand what she is saying. Further, it's a classic refusal on the part of a man to make an attempt to understand. Why doesn't Foreman reciprocate and apologize as well? Because he doesn't have to, and he knows it. Like House, he'll succeed because his gender makes the rules. The best advice, in a sense, Cameron gets is from the uber-boss, a woman, who tells her to write another article, and to wait until Foreman is "up for department chair" somewhere, and then needs her recommendation. The unspoken suggestion is that she can then give a poor recommendation, based on her inside knowledge. But would Cameron do that? Probably not. She's not mean-spirited. Her poor recommendation would in any case sound like sour grapes, and be dismissed as just that. She is in a classic "no-win" situation.

Treatise on Legal Visual Semiotics: Call For Papers

The original call for papers specified a closing date of January 15. This call for papers extends the date to February 15th.

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS, TREATISE ON LEGAL VISUAL SEMIOTICS
Editors: Anne Wagner, Sophie Cacciaguidi-Fahy and Richard Sherwin
Publisher: Springer SBM

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES AND TIMELINE:
Expression of interest should be addressed by e-mail to valwagnerfr@yahoo.com
Please make sure that the document clearly indicates on a separate page your name, affiliation, and contact information.
Date of submission: Abstracts of 2 pages to be submitted by 15 February 2009
Decision for authors: 15 March 2009
Full paper submission: Full papers to be submitted by 15 December 2009
Final version of selected papers: Revised and final version of paper to be submitted by 15 March 2010
Length of chapters: Between 7,500 words and 10,000 words
All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis.

OVERVIEW:
The visual is above all a means of communicating and understanding. In general terms, symbols, images and gestures have the potential to convey multiple levels of meaning and often represent concepts that are challenging to articulate explicitly due to their complexity, novelty or lack of specificity. When we have recourse to the visual, the subtleties and possibilities of communication increase exponentially.

The overall aim of the proposed two volumes is to fill the gap between law, semiotics and visuality. As an original project, its aim is to provide a comprehensive analytical overview of legal visual semiotics. The two volumes will endeavor to adopt a comparative perspective with a view to identifying a common ground for semiotics analyses of the converging and/or merging aspects of law and the visual.

The project seeks to harness the diverse and innovative work to date in the fields of visuality and semiotics, anchoring them in the legal context. It will seek to bring together the cumulative research traditions of these related areas as a prelude to identifying fertile avenues for research going forward.

TOPICS:
Contributions should reflect the interdisciplinary nature of legal semiotics research. They should focus on:
- Theories and conceptualization of legal visual semiotics
- Pictorial semiotics and law
- Visuality of legal language
- Media and the law

These might include but are not limited to analyses on:
- Interface between text, images and oral signs
- Globalisation, time, space and place and its impact on media and law
- Law and architecture, specifically architecture and criminology
- Law and landscapes
- Cartoons and the law
- Gesture and the law
- Dress codes and the law
- Religion and law: e.g. images, icons, representation of the sacred, etc.
- Legal construction, interpretation of legal subjects and objects through the mediation of images e.g. cultural objects and the law; the body as a legal object etc.
- Aesthetics and the law: e.g. aesthetics and psychoanalytic jurisprudence; Deleuze, art and law; painting and the law; murals and the law; aesthetics and indigenous representation of customary law, specifically native American and African
- Digital technologies and law: e.g. surveillance and law, specifically use of images for forensic evidence; law, advertising and the production of meaning etc.
- Digital media, law and culture: e.g. technology in the courtroom and the law classroom; digital images and law, internet and the law, including pornography
- Media, culture and the law: e.g. cinema, popular culture and law; representation of law and/or legal events in media, specifically the representation of human rights, criminal trials in films and/or historical documentaries; representation of victims, perpetrators etc.

Law, Literature, and Political Thought

P. G. Monateri, University of Torino School of Law, has published "Sovereign Ambiguity - From Hamlet to Benjamin via Eliot and Schmitt." Here is the abstract.

The Author examines how Romantic Ambiguity lies at the heart of the legal notion of Sovereignty, applying a law and literature approach to notions developed by Benjamin and Carl Schmitt. Moving from a sophisticated analysis of literary texts, the inquiry intends to unveil the subtle strategies that lay behind the construction of Modernity and of its representational canon. The research perspective intentionally discloses the inherent dialectic between aesthetics and law. On this ground this paper rethinks the theory of the 'state of exception' as a pivotal concept for a deep understanding of Law and Politics (and their proper untraced boundaries), offering an alternative interpretation with respect to Giorgio Agamben's thought. The Author's lecture comes to rewrite even the centrality of representation as a fundamental notion both in literary and in political terms.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

I Like To Slog/Among the Blogs

From Mental Floss Blog: Stacy Conradt entertains with 10 Stories Behind Dr. Seuss Stories. They include the little known fact that "If I Ran the Zoo, published in 1950, is the first recorded instance of the word “nerd.” On the human rights front:

Horton Hears a Who! Somehow, Geisel’s books find themselves in the middle of controversy. The line from the book, “A person’s a person, no matter how small,” has been used as a slogan for pro-life organizations for years. It’s often questioned whether that was Seuss’ intent in the first place, but I would say not: when he was still alive, he threatened to sue a pro-life group unless they removed his words from their letterhead. Karl ZoBell, the attorney for Dr. Seuss’ interests and for his widow, Audrey Geisel, says that she doesn’t like people to “hijack Dr. Seuss characters or material to front their own points of view.”

References To Homer in Australian Judicial Opinions

Leslie Katz has published "Homer in Australian Reasons for Judgment or Decision." Here is the abstract.

The paper discusses various allusions to Homer or his works in the reasons for judgment of Australian courts or the reasons for decision of Australian tribunals.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Hip Hop, Criminal Law, and Legal Critique

Nick J. Sciullo has published "Conversations with the Law: Irony, Hyperbole and Identity Politics or Sake Pase? Wyclef Jean, Shottas, and Haitian Jack - A Hip-Hop Creole Fusion of Rhetorical Resistance to the Law," in volume 34 of Oklahoma City University Law Review (2009). Here is the abstract.

This article sets out to prove why the law must be investigated in an interdisciplinary fashion which invites an intersection between law, popular culture, and identity politics. First, this article describes how Wyclef Jean, a hip-hop artist, is an active voice of legal criticism and why his criticism is important to a larger discussion of the law. Second, this paper develops a conception of Creole/Haitian legal studies and its importance as an analytical lens through which to perceive the law and legal institutions. Third, this piece formulates a rhetorical criticism of the law through the rhetorical terrain of Wyclef's hip-hop music and cultural aesthetic to critique criminal law and legal institutions. The fusion of hip-hop, Haitian/Creole cultural identity, and rhetorical criticism, opens a new area for legal analysis and understanding. This article concludes by suggesting that rhetorical criticism, hip-hop, and other rhetorical acts (among them irony and hyperbole) provide new terrain from which to understand the law, and further, that the Haitian/Creole cultural identity is an important and underrepresented facet of legal culture, which further compliments current critical race theory.

Download the article from SSRN here.

John Mortimer Dies

John Mortimer, author of the "Rumpole of the Bailey" stories, as well as numerous other books, has died at the age of 85. Read more here.

McGoohan, Montalban Die

Patrick McGoohan, known for a number of law-related roles: as "Number 6" in the cult series "The Prisoner," as "John Drake", the hero of the series "Danger Man" and "Secret Agent," and as various villains in several "Columbo" movies, as well as a number of well-received films, has died at the age of 80. The announcement of his death follows that of the news of the death of accomplished actor Ricardo Montalban, who most famously played the Nietzchean character Khan in an episode of Star Trek and reprised the role in the second big screen Star Trek film.

Read more about law in The Prisoner and Star Trek in some of the selected references below.
The Prisoner

Christine A. Corcos, Narratives of Imprisonment: "I Am Not a Number! I Am a Free Man!": Physical and Psychological Imprisonment in Science Fiction, 25 Legal Stud. Forum 471 (2001).

Star Trek

Christine Corcos, Isabel Corcos, and Brian Stockhoff, Double-Take: A Second Look at Cloning, Science Fiction, and Law, 59 Louisiana Law Review 1041 (1999).

Paul Joseph and Sharon Carton, The Law of the Federation: Images of Law, Lawyers, and the Legal System in “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” 24 University of Toledo Law Review 43 (1992).

Richard J. Peltz, On a Wagon Train to Afghanistan: Limitations on Star Trek’s Prime Directive, 25 University of Ar-kansas (Little Rock) Law Review 635 (2003).


Michael P. Scharf and Lawrence D. Robert, The Interstellar Relations of the Federation: International Law and “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” 25 University of Toledo Law Review 577 (1994).

Methods of Teaching Native American Literature and Law

Cristine Soliz, Colorado State University, Pueblo, and Harold Joseph have published "Native American Literature, Ceremony, and Law," in MLA Options for Teaching Literature and Law (Austin Sarat, Cathrine Frank & Matthew Anderson, eds., 2009). Here is the abstract.

The joint study of law and literature offers a platform for Indigenous Studies and other programs to explore divergent philosophies and systems of law that have marked the Americas since 1492: Native American Ceremony and Euro-U.S. Law. Although law and literary culture are seen as inextricable and thus seemingly preclusive of Native American ceremony, our essay suggests a rationale and approaches for exploring, in a classroom, the theme of Native American ceremony in its relation to law.

Native American ceremony, as fundamentally anomalous to Old World or Eurasian ceremony and law, interrogates, in the relation, the collective imaginary and ethos or internal logic that enters into creating and even needing law. This relation can be explored using imaginative literature and contrasted to networks that legitimate our practices, as well as to changing definitions of law, such as St. Augustine's Natural Law, and Jeremy Bentham's early definition that tied law to monarchy. Euro-U.S. law in America since 1492, for example, has relied on punitive force as its normative power, but what are the consent mechanisms in Native American ceremony and how does it differ from normative domains described by Euro-U.S. practices, such as religion and even literature? An exploration of this theme through interactive readings of literature and law would focus on what the relationship between law and Native American ceremony might be, based on the continuing presence of Indian ceremony against the force of the U.S. system of law as it increasingly exercises control over Native Americans on tribal lands. Despite the legalities of Euro-U.S. past and present control over Indians, Native American ceremony continues to play a strong part in the psychological processes of the Native American imaginary.

James Welch's Fools Crow is an exemplary fiction that raises these issues, which are made clearer through legal texts. The plight of a small village of Blackfeets and the implied historical events that follow receive a fuller reading through the Indian Removal Act of 1830, Andrew Jackson's Report to Congress in 1829 and 1835, including congressional rhetoric and Acts contemporary to the 1870s, the temporal setting of Fools Crow. These texts give access to divergent cultural practices both through the experience of imagination and through grounding the fictive in the reality of the political setting, setting being an important element of fiction. A reading through the lens of the legal texts motivates questions about why, in the last chapter, Fools Crow and the people observe a 7-day ceremony, even though they realize they are being overwhelmed by invasions of U.S. soldiers and settlers. This locus in the text creates an interpretive opening to the conflict between U.S. and Indian law, to divergent views of law itself and the collective imaginary that goes into its formulation and enactment. Law, as seen in Indian ceremony across America, is strongly tied to harmonious interaction with what the land offers.

Classroom approaches can be organized around major time periods addressing three kinds of legal texts: ceremony, Indian treaties, and federal law with corresponding texts in themes important for the 21st century because of environmental, humanitarian, and sustainability concerns and because of pressures for development of natural resources, many of which can be found on what remains of Indian land. Much of the conflict between Native Americans and Non-Indians, from the Makah whale hunt to more recent Hopi and Navajo opposition to creating artificial snow on San Francisco Peaks in Arizona, has been because of a lack of understanding of Indian Ceremony as valid law in the Americas.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Some New Books Of Interest

New books of interest

Lisa Surwillo, The Stages of Property: Copyrighting Theatre in Spain (University of Toronto Press, 2008).

David Thomas et al., Theatre Censorship From Walpole To Wilson (Oxford University Press, 2008).

Rhetoric, Law, and Religion: Jefferson's "Letter to the Danbury Baptists"

Ian C. Bartrum, Yale Law School & Vermont Law School, has published "Of Historiography and Constitutional Principle: Jefferson's Reply to the Danbury Baptists," in volume 51 of the Journal of Church & State. Here is the abstract.

This article examines the ways that the Supreme Court has used Thomas Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists ("a wall of separation between church and state") as a rhetorical symbol. It finds the letter at the heart of the Court's debate over competing theories of religious neutrality. The article then explores the treatment the letter has received in several leading academic histories, and concludes that professional historians have largely tailored their arguments to match the Supreme Court's ideological divide. The article concludes that, because the goals of historical argument and legal argument are fundamentally different, this "incestuous" kind of relationship between historiography and constitutional principle is potentially destructive.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Legal TV

As with nearly every new tv season, new legal series are in development. David E. Kelley has one in the wings, Legally Mad, which will star Charity Wakefield. Now, NBC has agreed to develop Rob Morrow's Barely Legal, based on the true story of Kathleen Holtz, who at 18 passed the California Bar.

Harry Potter the Anglo-Saxon

Susan Liemer, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale School of Law, has published "Bot and Gemots: Anglo-Saxon Legal References in Harry Potter," forthcoming in Harry Potter and the Law (Carolina Academic Press). Here is the abstract.

In the popular Harry Potter book series, author J.K. Rowling obliquely references the legal world of the old Anglo-Saxon tribes. This article explains how she does so and offers explanations to help readers understand the parallels between legal institutions of the Anglo-Saxon world and the legal institutions in Harry's wizard world. This understanding may deepen readers' appreciation of the dynamics in each trial scene in the series.

Download the essay from SSRN here.

English Common Lawyers and Tradition

Cristina Costantini, University of Bergamo, has published "The Keepers of Traditions: The English Common Lawyers and the Presence of Law." Here is the abstract.

This paper looks into the subtle frame of the legal traditions, exploring the structural relationship that indissolubly binds history, law and narrative. The core of the Author's thought is that the ontological and epistemological views on the nature of historical past decide the fate of legal discourse and juridical arguments. Rediscovering the centrality of T.S. Eliot's notion of pastness as a meaningful concept that claims to be investigated when cultural heritage is at stake, this paper inquires into the active role played by English Legal Profession in the formulation of a foundational narrative with the structure of a legal tradition. Common Lawyers were the skilful selectors of the means of expression of political power and authority of Law. It is in the common lawyers' narrative and aesthetics that we meet a conscious paradigm of political theology.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Law, Literature, and Doctor Faustus

Shaina Kovalsky has published "Legally Speaking: State as Community in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus." Here is the abstract.

Marlowe's Doctor Faustus appears to have largely neglected by scholars in law and literature, despite its seeming promise in that arena. The paper first reads the play through the lens of a debate between Robin West and Richard Posner about autonomy and consent in Kafka, dredging up the bits and pieces of law and literature-type scholarship along the way. The paper then argues that it is important to remember that, at the time of the play's publication, there were actual laws outlawing pacts with the devil, and so Faustus can be read both as a metaphor and as the product of actual contemporary fears.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Law, Literature and the Holocaust

Richard Weisberg, Cardozo School of Law, has published "Law and Literature as Survivor" as Cardozo Legal Studies Research Paper No. 221. Here is the abstract.

While human rights lawyers from Nuremberg on tried to respond to the evils of Hitler's Europe with cautious directness, humanistic theorists in the post-modernist modes of the post-war period resisted all generalizations, including the establishment of legal norms through international codes of law. Addressing with some admiration the Holocaust-related later works of Geoffrey H. Hartman and (with less reverence) the anti-code and largely antinomian writings of Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida, this essay places in opposition the code-identifying and code-evaluating work of Law and Literature to that of the always equivocated writings of these deconstructionists for whom every grand narrative and every attempt to base act and choice on precedent was anathema. Although Hartman's aversion to all generalization is ethically sound considering the damage caused by Hitler's blunt and conclusory rhetoric, this essay relies on work about legal discourse during the Holocaust to indicate that this aversion emerges from a mis-placed logic about how institutions managed to adjust their ingrained beliefs and practices to such grotesque pronouncements.

More skeptical perhaps of complexity for its own sake, Law and Literature studies tend to locate codes (public or private, written or unwritten) within the great stories of the law and then unabashedly to value those codes in the Nietzschean sense as good or bad, justice-serving or reactionary. Discourse confronts ethical dilemmas - including those still unresolved six decades after the Holocaust - and to speak of them through a direct language of choice that often informs the canonical narratives we study.

Download the paper from SSRN here.