When Agencies Collide

If there's securities malfeasance, or should that be misfeasance--in a tv storyline should the SEC, the FTC, or the FCC be concerned? Or should we just pop some more popcorn, get out the soda pop (I'm not disclosing my favorite brand) and enjoy?

Elena Marty-Nelson, Nova Southeastern University Law Center, writes about Securities Laws in Soap Operas and Telenovelas: Are All My Children Engaged in Securities Fraud? at 18 Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal 329 (2009). Here is the abstract.

Securities law images are broadcast to millions worldwide through soap operas and telenovelas. Doctors, and professionals in other fields, have recognized the power of dramatic serials. They have generated a rich body of scholarship demonstrating how these mediums of popular culture impart health messages or effect social change. This author describes some of those empirical studies and suggests that legal scholars conduct similar empirical or ethnographic studies, particularly on the impact of portrayals of complex legal issues such as securities fraud in serials. The author explains differences and similarities between telenovelas and soap operas and compares portrayals of legal issues in those types of dramatic serials to portrayals in other type of popular culture mediums, such as films. Using content analysis, the author then examines in depth an insider trading story arc in the soap opera All My Children and a deceptive accounting story line in the telenovela La Fea Mas Bella. The author evaluates the images portrayed and in the process critiques some of those securities laws. The author submits that soap operas and telenovelas are both social educators and social mirrors and that the images depicted in these popular mediums about securities laws influence, for better or worse, society's perceptions.

Download the article from SSRN here.

"There Oughta Be a Law!" A Scholar Re-Examines Fairy Tale History

The Chronicle of Higher Education's Jennifer Howard writes about Ruth B. Bottigheimer, whose works on the origins of fairy tales have other scholars up in arms.

Gender, Copyright, and Filk Literature

Melissa L. Tatum, University of Arizona College of Law, Robert E. Spoo, University of Tulsa College of Law, and Benjamin Pope, University of Arizona, have published Does Gender Influence Attitudes toward Copyright in the Filk Community? as Arizona Legal Studies Discussion Paper No. 09-21. Here is the abstract.

Over the past few decades, the filk community has expanded from a small group of science fiction convention-goers who occupied unused convention rooms during the late night hours to a community large enough to organize several dedicated filk conventions each year, a Hall of Fame, and an annual awards ceremony. While many filk songs are original lyrics set to original music, many more filk songs consist of lyrics written to existing music and/or lyrics based on characters/worlds created by other people. These practices potentially create problems in light of existing intellectual property law. In this paper, we explore those issues and whether a filker's gender influences his or her attitude towards intellectual property law. After setting out a basic explanation of filk and the intellectual property issues, the article details the various statistical results generated from the databases we built (one objective and one subjective) and draws some conclusions about gender and filk.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

In the Journals

In the most current issue of Law, Culture, and the Humanities (volume 5, issue 2, 2009):

A number of Commentaries on the subject of "Critical Perspectives on Political Liberalism," including essays by Paul A. Passavant, Nomi Maya Stolzenberg, Jennet Kirkpatrick, Stewart Motha, and Richard A. Shweder; two articles, Jon Kertzer's Time's Desire: Literature and the Temporality of Justice and Melina Constantine Bell's Valuing All Families, and several book reviews, including one of the English translation of Alain Supiot's Homo Juridicus: On the Anthropological Function of Law (Verso, 2007) and Dana Rabin's Identity, Crime, and Legal Responsibility in Eighteenth-Century England (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).

Paul Ricoeur and Legal Hermeneutics

George H. Taylor, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, has published The Distinctiveness of Legal Hermeneutics, in Ricoeur Across the Disciplines (Scott Davidson ed.; The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009). Here is the abstract.

In the larger field of hermeneutics, legal hermeneutics is characteristically described as exemplary. While I detail ways in which legal hermeneutics is paradigmatic – particularly in its immersion in application to new cases – more generally I argue that its insights are more regional. I contend in particular that Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics offers much to refine the insights of legal hermeneutics, but the discreteness of the field of legal interpretation requires refinement of Ricoeur’s own theory.

The chapter proceeds in three steps. First, I briefly review the main themes of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics, particularly his emphasis on the semantic autonomy of the text, and draw upon examples from the American legal context that generally support and extend the significance of Ricoeur’s insight. Second, I turn to the limitations of Ricoeur’s general hermeneutics as applied to American legal interpretation. The author of the legal text does retain a significance in legal interpretation that is not required in other fields. Because a legal author – a legislature or court – requires obedience to the terms of a text it promulgates, its expression is limited to the range of its legitimate authority. Third, I show how the law can act as an exemplary form of hermeneutics in its attention to the application of meaning to particular circumstances. As Gadamer anticipated and as Ricoeur more expansively details, legal hermeneutics here does offer insights into a more general hermeneutics in its imaginative correlation between meaning and application.

Shakespeare on Today's Financial Crisis

Nate Oman writes about the current financial crisis and the Merchant of Venice over at Concurring Opinions. Professor Oman begins, "Over the weekend, I re-read A Merchant of Venice, and I was struck by the fact that Shakespeare manages to include in the play virtually every element of the current financial crisis." Good reading (in several senses of the phrase).

Building a Race Law Canon

Rachel F. Moran, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law; University of California, Irvine, Law School, and Devon W. Carbado, University of California, Los Angeles, Law School, have published Introduction: The Story of Law and American Racial Consciousness--Building a Canon One Case at a Time, in Race Law Stories (2008).

Here is the abstract.

This introduction explains the difficulties of consolidating a race law canon due to our nation’s general ambivalence about the significance of race. There is a tendency to treat racial injustice as an aberration or an accident in an otherwise democratic system. Transgressions are relegated to the past and sharply contrasted with the contemporary practice of rendering race a biological irrelevancy. These ideological commitments make it hard to conceive of race law in anything but an ephemeral way. That is, once upon a time, there was an anti-canon of race comprised of deplorable decisions like Dred Scott v. Sandford and Plessy v. Ferguson, then there were canonical cases like Brown v. Board of Education and Loving v. Virginia that countered these injustices, but now corrective justice has been done and these concerns are largely the stuff of history.

As the introduction makes clear, Race Law Cases rejects these assumptions and invites a dialogue about how to build a race law canon one case at a time. The process begins by recognizing that the collective narrative of law and American racial consciousness is decidedly multiracial, plays itself out across a number of doctrinal contexts, and reflects moments of both inequality and equality. This narrative is inextricably linked to the nation-building process as well as to the lives of individuals, many of whom were pushing back against racial injustices in particular historical moments. To understand these dynamics in the richly textured way necessary to build a canon, context is critical, the kind of context that comes from telling the stories behind both famous cases and hidden gems. The hope is that these stories will help in rethinking assumptions about the role of race in public and private conversations about equality, liberty, and national identity. At the same time, the accounts will pay homage to the contributions of individuals, whether lionized or little-known, who brought these issues to life by daring to question the conventional wisdom about America’s commitment to its most fundamental democratic values.

Download the chapter from SSRN here.

Choosing Words Carefully

Brian Bix, University of Minnesota Law School, has published Law and Language: How Words Mislead Us. Here is the abstract.

This talk was the Reappointment Lecture for the Frederick W. Thomas Chair in the Interdisciplinary Study of Law and Language at the University of Minnesota. The topic is the way that the words we use in legal doctrinal reasoning can - intentionally and unintentionally - mislead us regarding the proper outcomes of cases and the best development of the law. Connecting to the ideas of the American legal realists Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Felix Cohen, the talk uses examples from Contract Law (assent to terms in electronic contracting cases, waiver of the failure of conditions), Medical Decision-Making (deciding on behalf of incompetent patients), and Family Law (same-sex marriage, child custody, and alimony) to make general points about how we choose words to make our decisions more persuasive or more comfortable, when we should instead be using more transparent (more honest) terminology, in order better to confront the real underlying moral and policy questions.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

The Black Man as Hero in Film

Gretchen Bakke, Center for the Humanities, Wesleyan University, has published How the Black Guys Got to Kill All the White Guys and Still Be Good: An Essay on the Changing Dynamics of Race in American Action Cinema. Here is the abstract.

There was a time, not so long ago, when a black man - a good black man - killing a white man in an action movie was tentatively accomplished. Not the killing itself, which was as bold and as marked by "righteousness" as the killing of bad whites by good whites. The tentativeness was, rather, both formal and narrative meaning that it was most evident in the careful unfolding of story and character within the limited universe of the film itself. Whites were changed a little, at first, becoming evil, faceless, and generic in new ways and blacks, the good blacks charged with dispatching these new bad white were, at least in the beginning, always flanked by more heroic heroes - white men - wilder men willing to kill and killing more effectively than their darker skinned counterparts. But that was only the beginning. What began as tentative within the narrative structure and characterization of action films has since exploded into a new pattern of race relations evident in, if not governing, a good many of the action films of the new millennium. Black men now are not only buddies paying second fiddle to the rampages of their white counterparts (Pfeil 1995); they are not only expendable characters sent off by whites, like a canary in a cage, to test the efficacy of unseen adversaries, nor are they merely scenery, filling up streets or starships - a silent fluid and chromatic backdrop against which the action takes place (Wallace 1995). Black men now are also, and often, heroes in their own right. They are cast as vengeful and lively characters, both likable and utterly fantastic, and they kill, as all action heroes must, with indiscretion. Who they kill is the topic of this essay, and not only who they kill, but how that killing has come to form the very ground - the necessary premise - of both their heroism and their goodness. Or to put it another way, we know them to be heroes not despite the fact that they kill white characters but because of it.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Law, Language, and Scientific Rhetoric in Judicial Opinions

Colin P. Starger, New York University School of Law, has published The DNA of an Argument: A Case Study in Legal Logos, in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (Winter 2009). Here is the abstract.

This article develops an original rhetorical framework for analyzing the logic of legal arguments and then applies it to unpack a post-conviction DNA testing controversy currently before the Supreme Court. My framework extends Aristotle's concept of logos by specifying different logical types of proof in legal argument. The Osborne case now before the Court concerns how DNA proof intersects with legal process and the procedural barriers to prisoners' accessing DNA evidence after conviction. After parsing the persuasive dynamics in the federal litigation preceding Osborne, I make a prediction on what argument logic will prevail in the Court.

Drawing on the work of Aristotle, neo-Aristotelian argument scholars, and contemporary jurisprudence, I first construct an original taxonomy of logos that distinguishes between modes of proof in legal argument. This taxonomy characterizes prototypical differences in formal, empirical, narrative, and categorical arguments by reference to the logical and rhetorical roles of their constituent premises, inferences, and conclusions.

I then use my new vocabulary to frame an in-depth case study of federal-court litigation over post-conviction access to DNA evidence under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983. I describe the history of this discourse, and engage in close readings of two arguments – the concurring opinions of Judge Michael Luttig and Chief Judge Harvie Wilkinson in the Harvey II case – that represent the competing rhetorical poles of the debate. I classify Luttig's argument logos as formal, and Wilkinson's as narrative. After examining all published decisions that have considered the Section 1983 issue since Harvey II, I argue that Luttig's formal logos has successfully persuaded federal courts. I therefore predict that Luttig's logic on the procedural dispute in Osborne will prevail at the Supreme Court. By closely dissecting this argument over DNA, I bring fresh perspective on the rhetorical DNA of a legal argument.

Download the article from SSRN here.

Control, Alt, Delete: J. J. Abrams Reboots the Star Trek Franchise For a New Generation

Manohla Dargis reviews the new Star Trek film for the New York Times here.

Call For Papers

Call For Papers

International Annual Meeting of Israeli Law and Society Association, to be held in Tel Aviv on December 20-21, 2009.

The main theme of the meeting is: Secularism, Nationalism and Human Rights: Law and Politics in the Middle East and Europe

Proposals should be submitted to Michal Locker-Eshed, minerva@post.tau.ac.il, by September 1, 2009.


Israeli Law and Society Association
International Conference


Secularism, Nationalism and Human Rights: Law and Politics in the Middle East and Europe

December 20-21, 2009
Tel Aviv Law Faculty, ISRAEL


The Program Committee of the International Annual Conference of the Israeli Law and Society Association (ILSA) invites Law and Society scholars from all disciplines (including law, social sciences and the
humanities) to submit proposals for individual papers and organized panels.

Panels and papers devoted to the theme of the conference – "Secularism, Nationalism and Human Rights: Law and Politics in the Middle East and Europe" – are especially invited, though part of the sessions in the conference will be dedicated to general topics of law and society. We apologize in advance, that due to the limited number of presentations this year we will not be able to accept all submissions.


The Conference’s Theme:

Secularism understood as the separation between religion and State or politics, nationalism as the ethnic premise of the modern state, and human rights, are commonly identified as fundamental attributes of modern law and politics. And yet, these foundational ideals are neither global nor even "Western" in general. They have their origins in specific European traditions, and they continue to play diverse and multiple roles all over the globe. In an attempt to bring law and social inquiry closer to the region and its unique concerns, the conference seeks to examine the influence of these legacies on the formation of law and legal institutions in Europe and the Middle East and in the different contexts in which Europe and the Middle East intersect, including within Israeli and Palestinian societies.

The conference will primarily address the following questions:

• How have secularism, nationalism and human rights shaped law, legal
institutions and legal consciousness in Europe and the Middle East?
What are the different, conflicting and complimentary meanings given to these notions across and within legal jurisdictions? To what extent are these legacies distinctly European and how do they differ from other Western traditions, such as the United States, where secularism, nationalism, and human rights seem to have very different connotations.
• How and under what conditions have these traditions been
implemented, resisted, subverted, and transformed in Israel, Palestine, and more generally in the Middle East? Conversely, how has Europe's recent encounter with the Middle East, primarily through labor immigration, shaped and reshaped the formation of these ideals?
What roles have law and legal institutions played in the dissemination, transformation, and enforcement of these legacies?
• How have these legacies affected diverse groups within European and
non-European societies, including ethnic and religious minorities and other potentially disadvantaged groups? In what ways do these ideas mirror power relations and how do the legal institutions shape images and practices of gender, class and ethnicity?
• To what extent can and should the specifically European version of
these ideals, if indeed one version exists, be accepted outside of Europe? Can international human rights be the legal and moral grounds on which nationalism and secularism are evaluated, or does the category of international human rights itself suffer from euro-centrism? Do better models exist elsewhere and under what conditions do local traditions emerge?
• Finally, are nationalism, secularism and human rights at all
relevant categories for analyzing what has often been described as an increasingly post-nationalist, post-secularist and post-human world?


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

Proposals should be submitted to Michal Locker-Eshed, minerva@post.tau.ac.il, by September 1, 2009


Suitable full-length papers based on presentations made at the conference will be solicited for a dedicated issue of the Israel Law Review.

Participation in the conference will include conference fees and a sliding scale will be applied.


Program Committee

Daphna Hacker, Law Faculty and Women and Gender Studies Program, Tel Aviv University (co-chair)

Shai Lavi, Law Faculty, Tel Aviv University (co-chair)

Susanne Baer, Faculty of Law, Humboldt University, Berlin

Gad Barzilai, Jackson School of International Studies; Comparative Law and Society Studies Center, University of Washington

Marinos Diamantides, School of Law, Birkbeck University of London

Michael Karayanni, Law Faculty, Hebrew University, Jerusalem



Prof. Menachem Hofnung
Chair, Israeli Law and Society Association Department of Political Science The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Jerusalem 91905, Israel


Tel: Office :972-2-588-3164
Fax :972-2-5880281

Call For Papers: Critical Legal Conference 2009

Critical Legal Conference 2009
"Genealogies: Excavating Legal Modernity"
September 11-13, 2009
Leicester, UK
www.le.ac.uk/law/clc2009

Keynote Speaker: Marcela Iacub (EHESS/CNRS).
Plenary Panellists: Peter Fitzpatrick (Birkbeck), Colin Gordon (Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Trust) and Véronique Voruz (Leicester).

Call for Papers

The Critical Legal Conference 2009 will be held in Leicester, UK. The main theme of the conference, "Genealogies: Excavating Legal Modernity", seeks to assess and review the significance of the work of Michel Foucault for the study of law, especially in light of the ongoing publication of his lectures at the Collège de France.

Proposals for papers addressing the main theme of the conference should be sent by email directly to the conference organisers (clc2009@le.ac.uk) no later than Friday, 26 June 2009. Potential presenters are invited to interpret the main theme in the broadest possible sense.

* Genealogies: Excavating Legal Modernity

Individual paper proposals for streams should be sent directly to stream coordinators no later than Friday, 26 June 2009.

* Revolutions in Natural Law
* Critical Property Theory: The Powers of Property
* Labour, Work and Equality
* Tragic Jurisprudence
* Laws of Empire
* Virtual Worlds, Virtual Law?
* Mapping the Terrain of WTO Law
* Genealogy of Human Rights from a Third-World Perspective

The organisers are also happy to consider further papers that may not address the main theme or the theme of an individual stream but are otherwise significant for the development of critical legal scholarship.

Further information on how to submit proposals, registration fees, research student bursaries, travel and accommodation is available on the conference website www.le.ac.uk/law/clc2009.

When the Fans Take Over: Star Trek and Fan Fiction

From Newsweek's latest issue, a discussion of Star Trek's fan fiction, referred to as "slash fiction," here.

Marilyn French Dies

Marilyn French, author of the 1977 bestseller The Women's Room has died at the age of 79. Her last novel will be published this fall. Read more here in a BBC article.

Gender and Stereotypes in Literature

Asha S. [sic], MEASS College, has published Reading Lolita in Tehran: Rehashing Orientalist Stereotypes, at 4 The Icfai University Journal of English Studies 47(March 2009). Here is the abstract.

Popular narratives produced from the west, particularly since 9/11, perpetuate negative stereotypes about Middle Eastern Muslim women. Native writers settled in the west also dish out heart-rending tales of women's oppression in fundamentalist Islamic societies, targeting a western audience long fed on tales of Islam's intolerance towards women. These 'New Orientalist' narratives, portraying Muslim women as hapless victims of Islamic fundamentalism, only serve to reinforce the stereotypes entrenched in popular western imagination. With Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran as a case in point, this paper seeks to examine how new orientalist narratives misrepresent the position of women in Islamic societies. The paper concludes that bestsellers, produced by native as well as western writers and touted as authentic representations of life in the Middle East, mostly draw a black and white distinction between western and Middle Eastern societies, depict violence and discrimination against women as characteristic of Islamic culture, and under-represent indigenous struggles for women's rights, thereby covertly suggesting that western mediation is inevitable in order to improve the condition of women in Middle Eastern societies.

En Garde! Van Gogh, Gauguin, and That Missing Ear

Did Van Gogh really slice off his ear? More than 120 years later, a new book claims to set the record straight, and inform us that the famous earlessness was really the result of battery inflicted by fellow artist Paul Gauguin, a noted swordsman. Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans set forth their theory in a new tome called In Van Gogh's Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence,
Read more here and here.

Publication information: Kaufmann, Hans, and Rita Wildegans, Van Goghs Ohr: Paul Gauguin und der Pakt des Schweigens (Osburg Verlag, 2008).

Teaching Law and Literature: Various Approaches Across the Curriculum

Simon Stern, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, has published Literary Evidence and Legal Aesthetics, in Teaching Literature and Law (Austin Sara, Matthew Anderson & Cathrine Frank eds., NY: MLA, 2010)(MLA Approaches To Teaching Series). Here is the abstract.

This short essay considers the different ways in which law professors and English professors teach courses in Law and Literature -- particularly the differences in the course materials and the analytic approaches used in understanding those materials. Courses taught on law faculties generally include fewer readings drawn from case law and legal theory. On the other hand, courses taught in English departments are more likely to emphasize similarities between the legal readings and works of fiction or drama. I discuss some of the disciplinary habits that make it difficult for faculty members in each area to come to terms with materials taken from another discipline, but I end by arguing that these barriers are not insurmountable and can even be addressed, to some extent, by focusing on analytical habits already available in the home discipline.

Download the essay from SSRN here.

The Art of Pun-ditry

Too good to overlook, and because I disagree with those who think puns are a lower form of intellectual life; I think good puns require esprit. Check out Joseph Tartakovsky's Pun For the Ages, in the New York Times (March 28, 2009). Mr. Tartakovsky is a law student. Of course.

More On the "CSI Effect"

Here's more on the "CSI Effect." Tamara Francita Lawson, St. Thomas University School of Law, has published Before the Verdict and Beyond the Verdict: The 'CSI Infection' within Modern Criminal Jury Trials. Here is the abstract.

In criminal law, the term CSI Effect commonly refers to the perceived impact that the CSI television show has on juror expectation and unexpected jury verdicts. This article coins a new phrase, CSI Infection, by focusing on the significant legal impact that the fear of CSI Infected Jurors has made upon the criminal justice system. The CSI Infection is the ubiquitous It factor that scholars cannot conclusively prove nor effectively explain away. Yet, practitioners overwhelmingly confirm Its impact in criminal jury trials; Its existence, Its true or perceived impact on acquittals and convictions, and how to define It permeates criminal trials. For example, litigators base their motions on It, and build their trial strategies around It, and the legal arguments of trial lawyers on both sides of the case have transformed. Specifically voir dire questions, jury instructions, as well as opening statements and closing arguments have been modified and correspondingly challenged on appeal - all because of the CSI Effect.

Moreover, the phenomenon has forced trial courts to address the evidentiary, procedural, and constitutional issues raised by prosecutors and defense attorneys who fear the perceived dangers that CSI Infected Jurors have upon the ultimate fairness of the jury trial process. Because of the CSI Effect, judges now issue rulings directed at Its operation in cases and give special jury instructions regarding Its role in jurors' decision making. Undoubtedly, the CSI Infection is creating a juridical migraine for trial courts around previously ordinary trial issues and there is no panacea to eradicate It. Notwithstanding Its presence, mandatory due process requirements remain. This article explores the cases, the experiences of litigators, the commentary of jurors, and, most significantly, the trial and appellate court rulings on important constitutional and procedural issues. Scrutinizing these legal issues before the verdict and beyond the verdict attempts to ensure that justice and fairness prevail over any improper prejudice or bias that may have infiltrated the American criminal justice system.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

The Many Meanings of Elvis

Sharon Cowan has published The Elvis We Deserve: The Social Regulation of Sex/Gender and Sexuality Through Cultural Representations of 'the King' as a Working Paper. Here is the abstract.

This paper analyses the way in which the image, masculinity and sexual identity of Elvis Presley have been recently culturally deployed by particular social groups. It explores the way in which the image of Elvis is used by lesbian drag king performers who try to queer the cultural stereotypes which form the basis of the social regulation of gender roles; and the use of Elvis's image by the U.K. fathers' rights campaign group 'Fathers 4 Justice' as a sign of unthreatening familiarity to support traditional heteronormative ideas of masculinity and gender roles. These cultural re-appropriations of Elvis raises questions for contemporary understandings of sex/gender and sexuality; as the motto of the San Francisco based Elvis impersonator 'Extreme Elvis' suggests, "Every generation gets the Elvis it deserves".

Download the paper from SSRN here.

On the American Trial

Robert P. Burns, Northwestern University School of Law, has published The Death of the American Trial (University of Chicago Press, 2009). Here's an abstract from SSRN.

This short essay is a summary of my assessment of the meaning of the "vanishing trial" phenomenon. It addresses the obvious question: "So what?" It first briefly reviews the evidence of the trial's decline. It then sets out the steps necessary to understand the political and social significance of our vastly reducing the trial's importance among our modes of social ordering. The essay serves as the Introduction to a book, The Death of the American Trial, soon to be published by the University of Chicago Press.

Fan Fiction and the RDR Books Decision

Megan L. Richardson, University of Melbourne Law School, and David Tan have published The Art of Retelling: Harry Potter and Copyright in a Fan-Literature Era as 14 Media & Arts Law Review 31 (2009). Here is the abstract.

Simple assertions that fans are harmless may be belied by the copyright cases threatened and launched by authors of popular fictional works, against fans who write secondary works based on distinctive elements of the original stories. On the other hand, it may be that authors are too possessive of their creations, seeking to control their imaginary afterlives. The story of Warner Bros v RDR Books - the Harry Potter Lexicon case - provides a vehicle to examine the conundrum. The decision of Patterson J in the US District Court seeks to navigate a fine line between original authorial control and literary activities of fans, in suggesting that, in the main, fan literature should be encouraged and protected as fair use for copyright law purposes. However, the judge faced an uphill battle in countering Rowling's insistence that she was entitled to exercise control over all products derived from her 'nominative genius'. In the decision's aftermath, Rowling has elected to support rather than challenge a new version of the Lexicon, which seeks to incorporate substantially more commentary than the original version. However, we wonder what breathing space will be left for fan fiction.

Download the article from SSRN here.

Happy Birthday, Bill

On April 23, discover your inner Shakespeare. CNN suggests these websites for further inspiration: Talk Like Shakespeare and The Shakespeare Insults Generator.

A Small Texas Town, A Big Screen Film, and a Hard American Truth

NPR has this story about the truth behind the film American Violet, premiering this month. American Violet dramatizes an ill-conceived raid on some black residents of the town of Hearne, Texas (name changed in the movie), and the aftermath of the raid. When the moviemakers screened the film for some of Hearne's residents, reports surfaced that some local officials were less than pleased, demonstrating that it's still difficult to speak truth to power.

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick Dies

Eve Sedgwick, the literary theorist, has died. Here is an article from the New York Times discussing her life and legacy.

Symposium In Honor of J. Allen Smith at Rutgers School of Law (Newark)

From Jessica Silbey:

The Law & Humanities Institute is pleased to sponsor a symposium celebrating the memory of J. Allen Smith, outstanding property professor and Law and Humanities visionary who created the Institute over 30 years ago. The event, hosted by Rutgers School of Law – Newark in conjunction with its 100th birthday celebration, will begin with a welcome dinner and reception on Thursday, April 23rd and run through Saturday, April 25th. Panels will begin Friday and Saturday at 9:30 am and conclude at 4:30 pm each day. LHI has invited many of its officers past and present, as well as a host of distinguished scholars, to discuss the past, present and future of its interdisciplinary projects. Richard Weisberg, LHI's founding and current president, will be the keynoter at the dinner reception Friday evening, and scholars Peter Brooks, Martha Grace Duncan, David Haber, Judith Koffler, Anna Krakus, Saul Mendlovitz, William Page, Julie Stone Peters, Theresa Phelps, Justin Richland, Mark Sanders, Eric Craig Sapp, Daniel Tritter, Cristina Vatulescu, and Jay Watson will speak at the event.

The event is free and open to the public, although the dinners on Friday and Saturday require an RSVP and payment. Additionally, on Friday and Saturday, catered lunches will also be available at a reasonable cost for attendees.

Finally, Rutgers has secured a special rate at the Robert Treat Hotel in Newark for attendees who wish to book lodgings to attend the event.

Information including registration and lodging information is available through Mr. Randle DeFalco at randman@pegasus.rutgers.edu

Here's a link to more information.

Marcus Garvey and Legal Narrative

Justin Hansford, Georgetown University Law Center, has published Jailing a Rainbow: Death by Narrative and the Marcus Garvey Case , in volume 2 of Georgetown Journal of Modern Critical Race Perspectives (2009). Here is the abstract.

The relevance of narrative in the law continues to reemerge in legal scholarship. This article uses concepts from both Critical Race Theory and Law and Economics to reassess the conviction of Marcus Garvey, the Harlem Renaissance era civil rights activist. In this case, newly discovered evidence suggests that the manipulation of Garvey's legal narrative by his opponents played a larger role in his conviction than first thought; a role decisive enough to raise concerns of unethical judicial bias and warrant possible exoneration hearings.

This paper argues that not only was Garvey unjustly convicted of mail fraud in 1923, but this injustice was also the culmination of an unholy alliance between Garvey's political rivals and Jim Crow era government officials. Together, the legal narrative they crafted contributed to Garvey's untimely death, tainted his legacy for decades, and helped to misshape the future of the 20th century struggle for racial justice.

Many scholars have noted that legal narratives often subordinate the voices of people of color. However, this study goes further, exploring how unjust legal narratives have served to warp our collective cultural and historical narrative. This larger result has had a powerful impact on the course of political events in our country. In this case, Garvey's conviction and deportation facilitated the marginalization and silencing of his philosophy of racial justice, a strategy that focused primarily on economic empowerment for people of African descent throughout the world. As a result of the silencing of this voice, nearly a century later Blacks have obtained the political and social rights favored by Garvey's rivals, but as a whole still suffer from grave economic disparities worldwide.

The federal judiciary has a storied legacy, being peopled by men and women who have defended and fought for our highest values as a nation. This case appears to be one of the sad exceptions to that rule. But most of all, it should serve as a cautionary tale to practitioners who must learn how to identify and fight the destructive use of legal narrative in contemporary contexts.

Download the article from SSRN here.

Call For Papers

Call for Contributions



Law, Language and Discourse



Editors: Anne Wagner (Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale), Jixian Pang (Zhejiang University) & Le Cheng (City University of Hong Kong) - Publisher: Zhejiang University Press



Submission guidelines and timeline

Expression of interest should be addressed by e-mail both to valwagnerfr@yahoo.com and chengle163@hotmail.com





SUBMISSION TIMELINE

Date of submission: Abstracts of 2 pages to be submitted by 15 May 2009

Decision for authors: 15 June 2009

Full paper submission: Full papers to be submitted by 15 November 2009

Final version of selected papers: Revised and final version of paper to be submitted by 31 January 2010

Length of chapters: between 7,500 words and 10,000 words



All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis



There is a growing interest in the theme “law, language & discourse” in the academic field, government policy formulation and legal requirements. The appeal of this book will show the actionable knowledge it could bring to this field of research and practice. This book will explore the various disciplines of law and linguistics - both oral and written.


The book will reflect the interdisciplinary nature of language and discourse study in legal settings. The themes include:

- Theories and conceptualization of legal discourse

- Legislation, Language, and Discourse,

- Linguistic issues in courtroom,

- Language issues in legal settings,

- Semiotic analysis of legal phenomena including legal terms, legal genres.



Some of the people that have accepted to participate to this important project are, just to name a few:

- Prof Angel Alonso-Cortés (Universidad Complutense)

- Prof Maurizio Gotti (University of Bergamo)

- Prof King Kui Sin (City University of Hong Kong)

- Prof Lijin Sha (China University of Political Sciences and Law)


Anne Wagner, Ph. D., Université du Littoral Côte d'Opale (France)

http://www.semioticon.com/semiotix/semiotix13/sem-13-05-01.html



Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - http://www.springer.com/law/journal/11196

Editor-in-Chief of the Legal Semiotics Monographs (Deborah Charles Publication)

Founder of the forum Semiotics of law - http://www.semioticsoflaw.com/


President of the International Roundtables for the Semiotics of Law

International collaborator, International Commercial Arbitration Practices - http://144.214.44.26/arbitration/arbitration/index.html


Consultative Board member of the Journal of Legal Cultures - http://www.legalcultures.com

Shakespeare's Historical Plays

Eric Heinze, Queen Mary, University of London School of Law, has published "Power Politics and the Rule of Law: Shakespeare's First Historical Tetralogy and Law's Foundations," at 29 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 139-168 (2009). Here is the abstract.

Legal scholars interest in Shakespeare has often focused on conventional legal rules and procedures, such as those of The Merchant of Venice or Measure for Measure. Those plays certainly reveal systemic injustice, but within stable, prosperous societies, which enjoy a generally well-functioning legal order. In contrast, Shakespeare's first historical tetralogy explores the conditions for the very possibility of a legal system, in terms not unlike those described by Hobbes a half-century later. The first tetralogy's deeply collapsed, quasi-anarchic society lacks any functioning legal regime. Its power politics are not, as in many of Shakespeare's other plays, merely latent, lurking beneath the patina of an otherwise functioning legal order. They pervade all of society. Dissenting from a long critical tradition, this article suggests that the figure of Henry VI does not merely represent antiquated medievalism or inept rule. Through Henry's constant recourse to legal process, arbitration and anti-militarism, the first tetralogy goes beyond questions about how to establish a functioning legal order. It examines the possibility, and meaning, of a just one.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Call For Participation

Global Harmony and the Rule of Law
24th IVR World Congress
Special Workshop no. 28:
Law and Literature
Coordinator:
Enrico Pattaro
Honorary President of ISLL – Italian Society for Law and Literature
E-mail: cirsfid.lawandliterature@unibo.it
In collaboration with:
Carla Faralli, ISLL President
M. Paola Mittica, ISLL Coordinator
The topic chosen for this 24rd IVR Congress—global harmony and the
rule of law—is one that we think lends itself to being effectively
investigated on the interdisciplinary approach that has recently been
emerging out of the field of study known as Law and Literature.
The growing interest that Law and Literature has been drawing beyond
the United States, not only in Europe but also in the East and in Latin
America, has recently prompted us to establish an association—the
Italian Society for Law and Literature (ISLL), on the Web at
www.lawandliterature.org—whose first objective is to promote reflection
on law by looking at it in connection with literature, taking also into
account the contribution that may come from the broader realm of Law
and the Humanities.
The initiative immediately got off to a good international start, with
many scholars joining who represent the philosophy, sociology, and
history of law, as well as a range of legal and literary disciplines; and
there are also in this group a number of jurists and of men and women of
letters. Indeed, from many quarters a need is being expressed to observe
the law and the different systems of law from a more comprehensive
perspective capable of affording a greater understanding of the legal
system in relation to its factual reality and to its possible functions.
Law and Literature became the subject of a special workshop in the last
IVR congress, held in Krakow in 2007 under the excellent stewardship of
François Ost and Jeanne Gaaker.
This year’s workshop is meant to proceed in continuity with last year’s as
concerns those activities and objectives that are more specifically
connected with Law and Literature, but this is done in such a way as to
contribute to the overall topic the congress is devoted to.
As is known, Law and Literature has developed around three core areas,
these being law in literature, law as literature, and the regulation of
literature by law. While this last area has not gained universal
recognition, the first two (law in literature and law as literature) have
flourished with a wealth of approaches and subjects of study, and these
(at their current stage of development) call for a deep epistemological
and methodological reflection as a way to bring to fruition the
experiences of the past and to open new avenues for the future.
In addition to the subjects more closely connected with Law and
Literature, we also have the use of Law and Literature in teaching: This
further development is valued for its ability to expand our knowledge of
law as well as the jurist’s understanding of ethics. And this is taken up
with a view to making Law and Literature a subject of academic study, as
is already happening at law schools across the United States.
For these reasons it seems important that, in taking up the specific issues
covered under the convention’s overall heading of global harmony and
the rule of law, the possibility should emerge of also exploring the new
directions just briefly outlined.
By way of a final note, it will also be possible to find a wide audience for
the work emerging out of the workshop, this by publishing the work in
international journals in legal philosophy and the general theory of law.
Two leading journals, in particular, have said the papers presented at the
workshop may be submitted to them for possible publication. They are

Law and Literature
online at www.ucpressjournals.com/journal.asp?j=lal

The International Journal for the Semiotics of Law
online at www.springer.com/law/journal/11196?detailsPage=description

Click here for more information about the China Law Society.

How To Get Published--Or Not

Via Electratig, and then on little cat feet to Legal History Blog, I came across this gem: Brian Morton's L'Isle de Gilligan. Mr. Morton was then Dissent's book review editor, and the piece appeared in Dissent in 1990 with the title "How Not to Write for Dissent."

Conference Of Interest At Cardozo

Cardozo Law School is hosting a program called "In Flagrante Depicto: A Program on Film In/On Trial." It runs May 7-8. PRAWFSBLAWG provides a link to the program here.

Television and Torture

Bev Clucas, University of Hull School of Law, has published "24 and Torture," in Torture: Moral Absolutes and Ambiguities (B. Clucas, G. Johnstone and T Ward eds.; Nomos: Baden-Baden, 2009). Here is the abstract.

In this chapter, I explore and reflect on the underlying themes concerning torture and legitimate action in 24. I begin with a short introduction to the TV show itself, highlighting the many different instances of torture, as well as some of the general criticisms leveled at it. I then proceed to consider some of the moral issues associated with the dissemination of information about torture in general, first in relation to factual instances of torture, and then fictional. This discussion informs a more detailed analysis of the depiction of torture in 24. Having considered the express intentions of the program makers, I apply a scheme of analysis on 'speech acts' devised by J.L.Austin, and developed by Langton, to argue that the real intention of the program makers is better understood as pro-torture propaganda: an instance of double immorality, as not only does the show push a pro-torture message, but also, it does so under the pretense of pure entertainment.

Download the essay from SSRN here.

What's In a Name? Maybe a Judgeship

Bentley Coffey, Clemson University, and Patrick A. McLaughlin, George Mason University, Mercatus Center, have published, "From Lawyer to Judge: Advancement, Sex, and Name-Calling." Here is the abstract.

This paper provides the first empirical test of the Portia Hypothesis: females with masculine monikers are more successful in legal careers. Utilizing South Carolina microdata, we look for correlation between an individual's advancement to a judgeship and his/her name's masculinity, which we construct from the joint empirical distribution of names and gender in the state's entire population of registered voters. We find robust evidence that nominally masculine females are favored over other females. Hence, our results support the Portia Hypothesis.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Announcement of Faculty Development Initiative

From Ileana Porras, Brown University

International Affairs at Brown University is proud to announce the launch of an exciting new faculty development initiative, the Brown International Advanced Research Institutes (BIARI). The objective of the program is to provide a platform for promising young faculty from the Global South and emerging economies to engage in a high level and sustained intellectual and policy dialogue with leading scholars in their fields, and to foster scholarly networks among young faculty, while providing them with an opportunity to develop their scholarship agendas. This ambitious new program is designed to provide needed professional development opportunities for young scholars embarking on lives in research and teaching. The Brown International Advanced Research Institutes, under the guidance of International Affairs aims to make a significant contribution to global research through transnational academic collaboration, promoting Brown University's vision of the global university.



In June 2009 BIARI will convene the following four Institutes:



(1)Towards a Global Humanities: Critical Traditions from the Global South

This Institute will focus on critical intellectual traditions from the Global South. Discussion and debate will be configured around four main thematic clusters:
Theories from the Global South: sub-altern, post-colonial and black radical thought.
Theorizing Violence
Opening Up Epistemes
Trauma, History, Memory, and Democracy

(2) Law, Social Thought and Global Governance This institute will examine specific areas of law (international economic law; labor; property and land reform; human rights; etc.) from a critical perspective, as well as exploring new approaches to institutional and regulatory structures at the global level.

(3) Technology, Entrepreneurship and Management This Institute will focus on the scholarly field of entrepreneurship and its potential application to business and academic context in the developing world, focusing on technology entrepreneurship and its intersection with both technology innovation and development economics.

(4) Development and Inequality in the Global South This Institute will focus on cutting-edge research and innovative methodologies used to explore, quantify and account for inequality, and promote new thinking about development.



The Institutes will be held at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Each Institute is designed as a residential, intensive two-week long workshop, organized as mix of lectures, round tables, group work, field trips and social interactions. Each will be led by a team of recognized scholars in the field, who have invited world renowned lecturers and speakers to join and participate in the Institute's formal and informal activities. During the Institute participants will be given the opportunity to share and present their work and will have access to Brown University's world class research facilities. (Details of the faculty leaders and the specific program for each Institute are available on the BIARI website at www.Brown.edu/BIARI .)



The Brown International Advanced Research Institutes program has been generously funded by Brown University and Santander Universities. Successful applicants will be hosted in University residential housing and all meals will be catered. The program may also be able to provide successful applicants with travel assistance.



The application process for participation in the June 2009 BIARIs is now open through the BIARI website. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis beginning on March 15th, 2009. We are seeking your assistance in identifying promising young scholars who you believe would most benefit from this innovative new program. While there are no specific qualifications required, BIARI will give particular consideration to the applicant's track record in terms of scholarship and teaching. Given the objective of the program, we are particularly interested in your help in identifying promising scholars from the Global South and emerging economies who are in the early stages of their academic careers. In special cases we may also consider mid-career academics whose work is poised to make a significant contribution to the field.

Conference Announcement

Sixth Annual IP/Gender: Mapping the Connections
Female Fan Culture and Intellectual Property

American University Washington College of Law’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, Women and the Law Program, and Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law in collaboration with American University's Center for Social Media and The Organization for Transformative Works. Featuring projects and multimedia works reflecting on gender, copyright, fair use, freedom of expression and fan culture.

Here's a link to more information.

New Book On Human Rights, the Novel, and International Law From Fordham University Press

Fordham University Press announces the publication of the 2008 ACLA René Wellek Prize Winner

Joseph R. Slaughter, Human Rights, Inc.: The World Novel, Narrative Form, and International Law (2008).
Here are some reviews.

"Human Rights, Inc. is a book of huge erudition that effortlessly
and elegantly combines history, literary theory and political philosophy. Slaughter compellingly argues that human rights operate according to the protocols of the market, turning human suffering and poverty into commodities and preparing their subjects for normalised and disciplined life. In a period when human rights and humanitarianism are used as pretexts for war and imperialism, this is an important book that brilliantly challenges the ruling illusions of the era. "-Costas Douzinas, Birkbeck, University of London, author of Human Rights and Empire

" . . . Seamlessly moves between discussions of philosophy, history, literary criticism, politics, and policy to support an original and compelling argument."
-Journal of Human Rights

436 pages
978-0-8232-2818-8, Paper, $28.00
978-0-8232-2817-1, Cloth, $85.00

Law and Language

Peter Tiersma, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, has published What is Language and Law? And Does Anyone Care? in Law and Language: Theory and Society (Frances Olsen, Alexander Lorz & Dieter Stein, eds.; 2008). Here is the abstract.

There has been growing attention paid recently to the interdisciplinary study of language and law. This article explores the nature and parameters of this relatively new discipline, including its relationship to related areas such as law and semiotics, literature, and forensic linguistics. Although the study of language and law has been advancing, it nonetheless remains a relatively marginal and underappreciated field. The article concludes with some suggestions for making the field more prominent.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

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.