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.

Life, Art, and Bernie Madoff

Patricia Allen notes that life seems to have imitated art, at least in the case of the current Bernie Madoff scandal. She seeks out the commentary of a number of critics and writers, who compare it to Harley Granville-Barker's The Voysey Inheritance, which David Mamet has lately adapted. Other analogies: Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now, various works of Charles Dickens, and Arthur Miller's All My Sons. BTW, here's more about Mr. Madoff's scheme, and the history of such schemes.

But, does life imitate art, or do artists take what they see in life and work with it, and do we simply then recognize the analogies, as indeed we should, since artists are working with the truth about human beings?

Some Recently Published Titles In Law and Literature

A round-up of selected titles published in law and literature in the past year or so.


Almog, Shulamit, The poetics of the legal system in the digital age: contemporary challenges to traditional concepts of justice (2007).

Atkinson, Logan, and Diana Majury, Law, mystery, and the humanities: collected essays (2008).

Bertini, Fabio, "Havere a la giustitia sodisfatto" : tragedie giudiziarie di Giovan Battista Giraldi Cinzio nel ventennio conciliare (2008).

Bishop, Stephen L., Legal oppositional narrative: a case study in Cameroon (2008).

Boboc, Andreea Delia, Justice on Trial: Abuse and acculturation in late medieval English literature, 1381-1481 (Dissertation, University of Michigan, 2006).

Caspar, Timothy W., Recovering the Ancient View of Founding: a commentary on Cicero's De legibus (Dissertation, Claremont Graduate School, 2006).

Chaplin, Susan, The gothic and the rule of the law, 1764-1820 (2007).

Cormack, Bradin, A Power To Do Justice: Jurisdiction, English Literature, and the Rise of Common Law, 1509-1625 (2007).

Danovi, Remo, Tra fantasia e diritto: List of Novels (2004).

Dolin, Kieran, A Critical Introduction To Law and Literature (2007).

Edelman, Bernard, Quand les juristes inventent le réel: la fabulation juridique (2007).

Eska, Joseph F., Law, literature and society (2008).

Everingham, Anthony Samuel, Form and function in legal adjudication: legal "meaning", hermeneutics and systems theory (Master’s thesis, Monash University, 2007).

Farenga, Vincent, Citizen and Self in Ancient Greece: Individuals Performing Justice and the Law (2006).

Ferk, Janko, Recht ist ein "Prozess": über Kafkas Rechtsphilosophie (2006).

Gaakeer, A. M. P., and François Ost, Crossing borders: law, language and literature (2007).

Geonget, Stéphan, Littérature et droit, du Moyen Âge à la période baroque: le process exemplaire : actes de la journée d'études du groupe de recherches Traditions antiques et modernités de Paris VII, 29 mars 2003 (2008).

Glover, Susan, Engendering Legitimacy: Law, Property, and Early Eighteenth-Century Fiction (2006).

González Echevarría, Roberto, Amor y ley en Cervantes (2008).

Hegel, Robert E., and Katherine Carlitz, Writing and Law in Late Imperial China (2007).

Hepburn, Allan, Troubled Legacies: Narrative and Inheritance (2007).

Hofmann, Gert, Figures of law : studies in the interference of law and literature (2007).

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

Jurasinski, Stefan, Ancient privileges: Beowulf, law and the making of Germanic antiquity (2006).

Kanarek, Jane, Let the story remain with us: Biblical narrative and the formation of rabbinic law (Dissertation, University of Chicago, 2007).

Kane, Baydallaye, La justice répressive dans la littérature africaine (2006).

Kezar, Dennis, Solon and Thespis: Law and Theater in the English Renaissance (2007).

Kaul, Suzanne, Poetik der Gerechtigkei : Shakespeare-Kleist (2008).

Latham, Sean, The art of scandal: modernism, libel law, and the roman à clef (2009).

Lemmens, Koen, François Jongen, Droit & littérature (2007).

Lin, Laifan, Fa lü yu ren wen=Law & humanism (2007).

Lockey, Brian, Law and Empire in English Renaissance Literature(2006).

Majeske, Andrew J., Equity in English Renaissance literature: Thomas More and Edmund Spenser(2006).

Mangham, Andrew, Violent Women and Sensation Fiction: Crime, Medicine and Victorian Popular Culture (2007).

Masson, Jean, Le droit dans la littérature française(2007).

Mathieu-Castellani, Gisèle, Le tribunal imaginaire: essai(2006).

Mautner, Menachem, Mishpat ve-tarbut (2008).

McGinnis, Reginald, Originality and Intellectual Property in the French and English Enlightenment(2008).

Méchoulan, Eric, Law and literature (2006).

Morawetz, Thomas, Literature and the law (2007).

Morgan, Brian James, Documentary culture and prophecy in Piers Plowman (Thesis (M. Litt.), University of Oxford, 2006).

Morgan, Edward M., The aesthetics of international law (2007).

Mueller-Dietz, Heinz, Recht und Kriminalität in literarischen Spiegelungen (2007).

Mukherji, Subha, Law and representation in early modern drama (2006).

Murphy, Stephen M., What if Holden Caulfield went to law school?: selected legal fiction and nonfiction (2007).

O’Brien, Ellen L., Crime in Verse: The Poetics of Murder in the Victorian Era (2008).

Oliveira, Mara Regina de, Shakespeare e a filosofia do direito: um diálogo com a tragédia Julio César (2006).

Olson, Greta, and Martin Kayman, Law, Literature, and Language (2007).

Osborough, W. N., Literature, Judges, and the Law (2008).

Pennsylvania Bar Institute, What literature tells us about lawyers & the practice of law (2008).

Plesko, Forrest Vincent, “A little information about the law": Judgments, jurisprudence, and (in)justice in William Faulkner's Snopes trilogy (Master’s thesis, University of Southern Mississippi, 2006).

Rabell, Carmen, Ficciones legales: ensayos sobre ley, retórica y narración (2007).

Reichman, Ravit, The affective life of law: legal modernism and the literary imagination (2009).

Rielly, Edward J., Murder 101: essays on the teaching of detective fiction (2009).

Ritscher, Lee A., The semiotics of rape in Renaissance English literature (2007).

Scase, Wendy, Literature and Complaint in England, 1272-1553 (2007).

Sokol, B. J., Shakespeare, law, and marriage (2006) Reprint.

Stern, Simon, Law and literature (2007).

Suzack, Cheryl, Law, literature, location: contemporary aboriginal/indigenous women's writing and the politics of identity (Dissertation, University of Alberta, 2006).

Talavera, Pedro, Derecho y literatura: el reflejo de lo jurídico (2006).

Tomain, Joseph P., Creon's ghost: law, justice, and the humanities (2009).

Van Blerk, Nicolaas Johannes, The concept of law and justice in Ancient Egypt, with specific reference to The tale of the eloquent peasant (Master’s thesis, University of South Africa, 2006).

Visconsi, Elliott, Lines of Equity: Literature and the Origins of Law in Later Stuart England (2008).

Weber, Hermann, Literatur, Recht und Musik: Tagung im Nordkolleg Rendsburg vom 16. bis 18. September 2005 (2007).

White, James Boyd, When language meets the mind: three questions (2007).

Zurcher, Andrew, Spenser's legal language: law and poetry in early modern England (2007).

Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought

Lorie Graham and Stephen M. McJohn, Suffolk University Law School, have published "Cognition, Law, Stories," in Minnesota Journal of Law, Science, & Technology (Winter 2009). Here is the abstract.

This essay reviews Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought (Penguin 2007), which offers insights from cognitive science just where it overlaps the most with law - how we use basic cognitive categories like intent, space, time, events and causation. The Stuff of Thought might offer insights into a broad range of issues in legal theory. Legal theory could make more use of such cognitive science concepts as chunking, recursion, and the primary qualities of an object. Other topics likewise resonate in thinking about the law: The book suggests that metaphor is an important cognitive tool, but less constraining than might be thought. Linguistic analysis of verb classes and polysemy suggests that words have surprisingly determinate meaning. Our apparent innate sense of causation (drawn from an analysis of language) sheds light on the legal treatment of causation. Lastly, The Stuff of Thought describes the role of indirect speech, whereby people convey information without revealing their state of mind - which often allows social interaction to proceed smoothly. Default rules in the law, we suggest, often play an analogous role.

The essay then explores the cognitive aspects of stories (following literary theorists like Mark Turner who have linked cognitive science with narrative theory), suggesting a recursive definition of story, and another angle to the trolley problem. Looking at the cognitive role of stories permits a fuller view of legal reasoning, learning, and remembering. This fits well with recent scholarship, such as work on origin stories, and law and genre theory.

Download the essay from SSRN here.

Law and Linguistics

Andrei Marmor, USC Gould School of Law, has published "What Does the Law Say? Semantics and Pragmatics in Statutory Language," forthcoming in Analisi e Diritto. Here is the abstract.

The content of communication in a given speech situation often goes beyond what the speaker has explicitly said. The main purpose of this essay is to explore this aspect of linguistic communication in the legal context. The paper begins with a general outline of the dividing lines between semantics and pragmatics, laying out the main distinctions that need to be employed. Next, the paper suggests that the pragmatic aspects of statutory language differ in some important ways from the pragmatics of an ordinary conversation. The paper explains some of these differences which make the understanding of legal language somewhat problematic. Finally, the paper points toward some solutions, based on the distinction between content that is semantically implicated by an utterance and content that is implicated conversationally.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Law, Morality, and Television

MSNBC.com's Susan Young has this story about the interesting moral dilemmas that television dramas pose "for fun." But do viewers take them too seriously? What do adults and children learn from these dramatizations? Commentators trace the evolution of today's ethically complex hero, from Jim Rockford of the Rockford Files to "24"'s Jack Bauer here.

Some Personal Reflections On "To Kill a Mockingbird"

Sherrilyn Ifill, University of Maryland, School of Law, has published "To Kill a Mockingbird Perspectives," at 41 Maryland Bar Journal 54-59 (September/October 2008). Here is the abstract.

"To Kill a Mockingbird" is one of the most influential and widely acclaimed legal novels in American history. It tells the story of a small-town white lawyer who is appointed to defend a black man accused of raping a white woman in 1930s Alabama. The lawyer, Atticus Finch, is one of the great legal heroes of American fiction. The story, told from the perspective of Atticus' daughter Scout, explores race, class, gender, family and law. Most of all it is a both critical and loving account of the white South.

This article is a personal story about the influence of "To Kill a Mockingbird" on Professor Ifill, an African American civil rights lawyer and law professor. In the piece, she explores the implication of some of the fictional liberties taken by the book's author Harper Lee. Ifill also challenges her own previously uncritical view of the character of Atticus Finch. Ifill then presents the stories of some of the real-life lawyers in Maryland, black and white, who defended black men accused of violent crimes against whites in the 1930s. Professor Ifill learned of the work of these lawyers while researching her 2007 book, "On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century."

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Translation as Metaphor

Robert Leckey, McGill University Faculty of Law, has published "Filiation and the Translation of Legal Concepts," in Legal Engineering and Comparative Law (volume 2)(Geneva: Schulthess, 2009). Here is the abstract.

The paper argues for the use of the metaphor of translation of legal concepts in comparative law by exploring recent reforms to the law of assisted reproduction by the legislature of Quebec. It argues that lawmakers and comparative lawyers may learn from the cautions advanced for literary and legal translators by the translation literature. It argues that the Quebec instance of legislated changes in order to facilitate assisted procreation by lesbian couples shows an excessive literalism in the translation of rules applicable to "natural" procreation to assisted procreation. The legislature might constructively have looked to other parts of the existing private law, as well as to sociological accounts of intentional lesbian reproduction. Translation-as-metaphor also speaks fruitfully to comparatists: it may alert them to the losses of functionalist comparison. Specifically, the treatment of legal rules as "solutions" to a common problem elides distinctive institutional, rhetorical, and discursive differences.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

21 Grams

Bruce L. Hay, Harvard Law School, has published "The Earth Turned to Bring Us Closer," in volume 29 of Cardozo Law Review (2008). Here is the abstract.

This paper is part of a symposium issue entitled "Law and Event," whose subject is the work of the contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou. The paper offers a reading of "21 Grams," a film that treats in narrative terms some of the central problems addressed in Badiou's work, notably the connections between love, fate, and mathematics, and the mysterious nature of the "event" in history. The paper emphasizes the film's effort to blend Greek myth and philosophy, Christian theology, and modern chaos theory.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Religious Words, Secular Argument

Jack Lee Sammons, Mercer University School of Law, has published "A Rhetorician's View of Religious Speech in Civic Argument," at 32 Seattle University Law Review 367 (2008).

This paper examines the role of religious speech in democratic civic argument by challenging liberal methods of addressing the issue of religious speech with a more rhetorical view of civic argument. The primary issue, from this perspective, is whether or not rhetoric's own constitutive restraints are adequate to address the risks of religious speech. After a brief analysis of liberal methods, the rhetorical nature of civic argument is described, and both the risks of religious speech and the constitutive restraints are examined.

Download the article from SSRN here.

Upcoming Symposium: Women and the Law

From Suzanne Kim, Rutgers School of Law, Newark
Rutgers School of Law-Newark is pleased to be celebrating its centennial this year. To honor the law school's tradition of contributing to social justice, we are hosting a day-long symposium on Feb. 13, 2009 entitled "Rutgers School of Law-Newark Celebrates Women Reshaping American Law."

The event gathers major figures in the development of women's rights law and highlights the connections between Rutgers and that history. United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will deliver the keynote address. Professor Catharine MacKinnon will deliver closing remarks.

Speakers also include Professor Sarah Burns of NYU School of Law, Professor Sally Goldfarb of Rutgers School of Law-Camden, Professor Victoria Nourse of University of Wisconsin Law School, Professor Susan Deller Ross of Georgetown University Law Center, and Professor Wendy Webster Williams of Georgetown University Law Center. Yale College Professor Fred Strebeigh, author of the forthcoming book Equal: Women Reshape American Law (Norton 2009), will deliver opening remarks.

Information about scheduling and registration to come by January. In the meantime, please save the date!

Call For Papers

Reinforcing and Resisting Feminist Representations: Spaces, Voices and Identities
The 12th Annual Louisiana State University Women's and Gender Studies Conference
March 5 - 6, 2009
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Call for Proposals

The theme of this year’s conference, Reinforcing and Resisting Feminist Representations: Spaces, Voices and Identities, addresses the role that women’s and gender studies scholarship has played in challenging, rethinking and expanding repressive and limiting understandings of feminism, gender expression, and identity in the traditional disciplines and society. We invite proposals that broadly address issues of representations of women and gender in innovative and interdisciplinary ways. Possible topics include: representations of gender in popular culture; gender, sexuality, activism and politics; intersections of queer theory, transgender studies and feminisms; global feminisms; women’s autobiography; feminist research methods; the role of interdisciplinary research and pedagogy; and feminist articulations of intersectionality. We also welcome proposals that do not directly address the theme, but which are relevant to WGS scholarship as well as alternative formats such as academic or documentary films and performances. Pre-formed panels are especially encouraged.

Abstracts of 250 words (for individual papers) and 750 words (for pre-formed panels) are due Tuesday January 20th to wgsconference@gmail.com. All submissions should include the following information: Name; Department/Program; University; Title of Presentation; Required Technology
More information can be found here: http://www.lsu.edu/wgs/conference.html
Keynote Speaker
Janet L. Miller, Professor of English Education (Teachers College, Columbia University) and 2008 American Educational Research Association Curriculum Studies Lifetime Achievement Award recipient will present this year’s keynote address. Dr. Miller’s research focuses on feminist curriculum theorizing, constructions of teachers' identities in collaboration and school reform efforts, and issues of representation, especially in autobiographical and biographical forms. Dr. Miller served as Vice-President (1997-1999) and Secretary (1990-1992) for AERA Division B (Curriculum Studies). She was Managing Editor of The Journal of Curriculum Theorizing (JCT) from 1978 through 1998 and was Chair of JCT’s Bergamo Curriculum Theorizing Conferences during that time frame. She also was elected President of the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (AAACS) for two consecutive terms (2001- 2007). Dr. Miller is the author of Creating Spaces and Finding Voices: Teachers Collaborating for Empowerment (SUNY Press), Sounds of Silence Breaking: Women, Autobiography, Curriculum (Peter Lang), and Co-Editor, with William C. Ayers, of A Light in Dark Times: Maxine Greene and the Unfinished Conversation.

Intellectual Property and Rhetoric

Patricia Louise Loughlan, University of Sydney Faculty of Law, has published "'You Wouldn't Steal a Car': Intellectual Property and the Language of Theft," at 29 European Intellectual Property Review 401 (2007). Here is the abstract.

It is actually quite easy to tell a good guy from a bad guy when one of the guys is being called a thief. He is the bad guy. It is in fact quite hard to think of a thief as any sort of good guy at all once you have begun thinking about him, even just impressionistically, as a thief.

This paper will scrutinise and consider the legitimacy of the pervasive rhetorical use of the language of 'theft' in intellectual property discourse. That language, comprised of words like 'theft', 'thief', 'stealing' 'burglar's tools' and occasionally even 'robbery,' is increasingly employed to describe the unauthorised use of intellectual property, so that new social meanings become attached to acts such as the digital transfer of a musical file or a film:

YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A CAR
YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A HANDBAG
YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A TELEVISION
YOU WOULDN'T STEAL A DVD
DOWNLOADING PIRATED FILMS IS STEALING
STEALING IS AGAINST THE LAW

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Rhetoric and Reparations

Lolita Buckner Inniss, Cleveland-Marshall School of Law, has published "A Critical Legal Rhetoric Approach to 'In Re African-American Slave Descendants Litigation'," as Cleveland-Marshall Legal Studies Paper No. 8-155. Here is the abstract.

In this paper I apply critical legal rhetoric to the judicial opinion rendered in response to the Defendants' Motion to Dismiss Plaintiffs' Second Amended and Consolidated Complaint in 'In Re African American Slave Descendants', a case concerning the efforts of a group of modern-day descendants of enslaved African-Americans to obtain redress for the harms of slavery. The chief methodological framework for performing critical legal rhetorical analysis comes from the work of Marouf Hasian, Jr. particularly his schema for analysis which he calls substantive units in critical legal rhetoric. Critical legal rhetoric is a potent tool for exposing the way in which the public ideologies of society and the private ideologies of jurists, legislators and other legal actors are manifested in legal and law-like pronouncements. After introducing this case, I briefly tracing the evolution and meaning of the term rhetoric and examine the relationship between rhetoric and law. I next explore the connection between rhetoric and ideology, which is crystallized in the form of the ideograph and its use as a tool of what is known as critical rhetoric. Finally, I show how critical legal rhetoric is achieved by bringing critical rhetoric to law, and thereafter apply critical legal rhetoric to the case of 'In Re African American Slave Descendants'.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Patricia Cornwell's "Scarpetta"

CNN.com has this lengthy interview with Patricia Cornwell, author of the Kay Scarpetta novels.

Some Gift Suggestions For the Non-Denominational Holidays

Don't know what to give for the holidays? Pierre Bayard's Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles, newly translated into English by Charlotte Mandell, is now available. In this "revisionist view" of the classic Conan Doyle novel, French critic argues that the iconic detective didn't know what he was doing half the time. Monsieur Bayard is the author of How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read, and Who Killed Roger Ackroyd: The Mystery Behind the Agatha Christie Mystery.

Now available on DVD: Perry Mason: Season 3, volume 2; The Sopranos: The Complete Series; volume 1 of cult hit Pushing Daises, and both seasons of a little known series Dead Like Me, which came and went quickly, but starred Mandy Patinkin, who heads up a group of "reapers" in charge of leading the recently dead across the line that separates the living from those who have departed this life. I highly recommend Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies, which has a similar theme (crossing the line between life and death), for their wit and thoughtful consideration of the issues that touch us all. Pushing Daisies is, however, more explicitly law-related, since it's about solving crime.

The Unemployed Philosopher's Guild offers a number of interesting and amusing items, including a disappearing civil liberties mug (pour in hot liquid and watch parts of the Bill of Rights vanish) and a Democratic Dream mug (same instructions; all of the U.S. turns a Democratic blue). The site also offers religious items, but be warned--you'll need to bring your sense of humor with you.

Language, Literature, and Constitutional Theories

Ian C. Bartrum, Yale Law School & Vermont Law School, has published "Metaphors and Modalities: Meditations on Bobbitt's Theory of the Constitution," in 17 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal (2008). Here is the abstract.

This article builds on Philip Bobbitt's remarkable work in constitutional theory, which posits a practice-based constitution based in six accepted "modalities" of argument. I attempt to supplement Bobbitt's theory - which has a static and exclusive quality to it - with an account of interpretive evolution based in Max Black's interaction theory of metaphors. I suggest that we can (and do) create constitutional metaphors by deliberately overlapping Bobbitt's modalities of argument, and that through these creative acts we can grow the practice of American constitutionalism. I then present case studies of this metaphoric process at work in three fields of constitutional practice: from constitutional theory I take Akhil Reed Amar's theory of "intratextualism"; from constitutional advocacy I select Louis Brandeis brief in Muller v. Oregon; and from constitutional judging I look to the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education. I conclude that the concept of modal metaphors offers practitioners a principled and grammatical way to create new constitutional meanings and resolve constitutional dilemmas.

Download the article from SSRN here.

Rhetoric in Child Custody Decision Making

Linda L. Berger, Mercer University School of Law, has published "How Embedded Knowledge Structures Affect Judicial Decision Making: An Analysis of Metaphor, Narrative, and Imagination in Child Custody Disputes." Here is the abstract.

We live in a time of radically changing conceptions of family and of the relationships possible between children and parents. Though undergoing "a sea-change," family law remains tethered to culturally embedded stories and symbols. While so bound, family law will fail to serve individual families and a society whose family structures diverge sharply by education, race, class, and income.

This article advances a critical rhetorical analysis of the interaction of metaphor and narrative within the specific context of child custody disputes. Its goal is to begin to examine how these embedded knowledge structures affect judicial decision making generally; more specifically, the article's aim is to help advocates make room for difference and diversity in the lives of families.

The rhetorical analysis indicates that the best interests of the child standard fails to explain child custody outcomes, and it suggests that the cognitive setting for custody disputes - cluttered with outmoded metaphors, simplistic images, and unexamined narratives - interferes with the ability of judges to attend to complex and radical transformations of parent and child relationships. The article proposes that practicing lawyers and scholars use rhetorical analysis first to uncover the symbols and stories that affect judicial decision making and then to construct arguments that may overcome deeply rooted constraints, help individual clients, and persuade policy makers.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Legal Language

Andre Marmor, USC Gould School of Law, has published "The Pragmatics of Legal Language," as USC Law Legal Studies Paper No. 08-11. Here is the abstract.

In most standard cases, the content of the law is tantamount to the content that is communicated by the relevant legal authority. It has been long noticed by linguists and philosophers of language, however, that the content of linguistic communication is not always fully determined by the meaning of the words and sentences uttered. Semantics and syntax are essential vehicles for conveying communicative content, but the content conveyed is very often pragmatically enriched by other factors. My purpose in this essay is to explore some of the pragmatic aspects of understanding what the law communicates. I argue that in some respects the pragmatics of legal language is unique, sometimes uniquely problematic. Exploring those problems forms one of the aims of this essay. But I suggest that we can do more than that: by drawing on the distinctions between the various pragmatic aspects of language use, we should be able to offer some generalizations about types of pragmatic enrichment that could be taken to form, or not to form, part of what is actually determined by legal expressions.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Law, Philosophy, and the Rhetorical Tradition

Francis Joseph Mootz III, UNLV School of Law, has published "The Irrelevance of Contemporary Academic Philosophy for Law: Recovering the Rhetorical Tradition," in On Philosophy in American Law (F. J. Mootz III, ed.; Cambridge University Press, 2009). Here is the abstract.

This short paper will appear in a volume of original essays, On Philosophy in American Law (Francis J. Mootz III ed., Cambridge Univ. Press forthcoming 2009). I argue that the undeniable rift between philosophy and law is more than a simple dichotomy of theory and practice. Instead, the sharp distinction between philosophy and law occurred when both disciplines built insular guilds that employed distinctive vocabularies to distinguish themselves from rhetoric, and it is by returning to their roots in rhetoric that philosophy and law might find their common ground in the elucidation of rhetorical knowledge.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

James Boyd White On the Links Among Law, Thought, and Language

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

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

Download the article from SSRN here.

Call For Papers

American University Washington College of Law

IP/Gender: Mapping the Connections

6th Annual Symposium

April 24, 2009

Special Theme: Female Fan Cultures and Intellectual Property

Sponsored by
American University Washington College of Law’s

Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property

Women and the Law Program

Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

In collaboration with

American University’s Center for Social Media

The Organization for Transformative Works

Rebecca Tushnet, Georgetown University

Francesca Coppa, Muhlenberg College

Deadline for submission of abstracts: December 19, 2008


The 6th Annual Symposium on “IP/Gender: Mapping the Connections” seeks papers on female subcultures and their relationship to intellectual property and copyright regimes, with a particular emphasis on fan works and culture. Appropriate topics include: fan arts, including fan fiction, arts, music, filk, crafts, and vids; and fan communities: including clubs, forums, lists, websites, wikis, discussion groups, rec sites, and other creative, celebratory, or analytical communities.

Introduction & Context

Historically, the study of subcultures has been biased toward male groups and activities: first, because male activities (e.g. punk rock, motorcycling, football hooliganism) tend to be public, and therefore visible; second, because many male groups have been seen as overtly resistant to mainstream norms. In contrast, many female subcultural activities took place in private, in the domestic realm or in other less visible spaces, and those that were visible tended, in the words of Sarah Thornton, to be "relegated to the realm of a passive and feminized 'mainstream' (a colloquial term against which scholars have all too often defined their subcultures)"; in other words, the things women did and do have often been framed as mainstream, passive, commodified, and derivative; consuming (in the negative sense of passive product consumption), rather than consuming in the sense of a passionate obsession or devotion to art or criticism.



This has changed significantly in the last twenty years, not only due to a rising feminist interest in subculture studies but also with the rise of fan and audience studies. In their pioneering "Girls and Subcultures" (1975), Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber presciently suggested that scholars turn their attention "toward more immediately recognizable teenage and pre-teenage female spheres like those forming around teenybop stars and the pop-music industry." Even they had trouble seeing what girls do as interesting and importing, noting that "[b]oys tended to have a more participative and a more technically-informed relationship with pop, where girls in contrast became fans and readers of pop-influenced love comics." McRobbie and Garber don't associate being "fans" with participation, and they see girls as "readers" only. In fact, as we know from fifteen years of fan and audience studies, fandom is a highly participatory culture, and female fans also write, edit, draw, paint, "manip," design, code, and otherwise make things.

However, even within this brave new world of mashup, remix, and fan cultures, what boys do (fan films, machinima, music mash-ups, DJing) is often seen by outsiders and critics as better--more interesting, more original, more clearly transformative-- than what girls do (fan fiction, fan art, vidding, coding fan sites, social networking). This normative judgment risks legal consequences.

We are seeking projects (including papers, installations, artwork, video and multimedia presentations) that investigate the ways in which issues of originality and ownership as related to copyright and other issues of intellectual property intersect with this gendered understanding of cultural productions and engagement, especially since these historically female subcultural activities and practices have increasingly become culture.

IP/Gender Mapping the Connections Organizational Details
· DEADLINE for submission of abstracts is DECEMBER 19 at 5:00pm.
· To submit an abstract or project description for consideration, fill in the web-based form at https://www.wcl.american.edu/pijip/ipgender/proposals.cfm . Participants will be notified if their project has been accepted for presentation by January 15. Selected presentations will be eligible for travel scholarships to attend the conference.

· The symposium will begin at 6:00 Thursday, April 23, 2009 at the American University Washington College of Law in Washington, D.C. The symposium will convene from 9:00 am until 4:00 pm on Friday, April 24, 2009.

· To view programs from prior IP/Gender: Mapping the Connections symposia, please visit www.wcl.american.edu/pijip/go/events/ip/gender/ip/gender-mapping-the-connection

· Papers may be published in the American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law.

· If you are interested in attending the event, but not presenting work, please contact Angie McCarthy, Women and the Law Program Coordinator at angiem@wcl.american.edu for details.

A Blog On Crime Fiction and Writing

If you like, or are interested in trying to write crime fiction, check out the blog Hey There's a Dead Guy in the Living Room, written by a writer, a publisher, an agent, a book reviewer, a bookshop owner, an editor, and a p.r. person. They're all alive, and in your (virtual) living room, and in your conservatory, and in your library....

A Draft Syllabus For a Course in Law and Literature

Simon Stern, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, has published "Law and Literature Seminar, Draft Syllabus." Here is the abstract.

This is a draft syllabus for an introductory seminar on law and literature. Courses in this area tend to focus primarily (often exclusively) on literary texts. My view is that literature can be more productively studied in a law school setting when literary and legal materials are placed next to each other. This approach does not treat law as the taken-for-granted backdrop that students already know, but instead makes explicit the similarities and differences between the two areas. Among other things, this approach may help to remind law students of what they know but easily forget - that what they have already learned about the law in their other classes is not inevitably alien to the qualities of literary writing and analysis. In that way, the course is not an effort to re-educate law students by illustrating passions and qualities that are presumptively absent from the rest of law school, but is instead designed to show how legal modes of thought are sometimes already present in literary texts and vice versa. To that end, my syllabus combines literary readings, literary criticism, judicial opinions, and legal scholarship.

These materials are a work in progress, and I welcome suggestions concerning new readings and new juxtapositions of literary and legal texts and scholarship.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Call For Papers

Call for Papers: Special Issue of Utopian Studies on Law and Utopia
Guest Editor: Peter Sands, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Utopias are prescriptive, normative alternatives to already existing societies. Thomas More, himself a lawyer, envisioned a society free from lawyers and with few positive laws, and that trope has since made frequent appearance in utopias and dystopias. But, like all societies, utopias depend on rules and rule-making—they are societies of laws.

Law itself, too, is a utopian expression, an attempt to shape a particular vision of society. Such visions enact conflicts between and among competing views of rights, duties, punishment, redemption, distribution, and nearly every other aspect of human life. Zoning laws describe someone’s desired organization of space and industry. Constitutions write into being a normative alternative to the society that exists before the constitution takes effect. Positive law presents a normatively different belief system from natural law, carrying implications for societal organization.

In fiction and film, utopian and dystopian expression addresses fundamental jurisprudential issues of good and evil, of right and wrong, of rights proper, of economics, criminality, state power and more. A Handmaid’s Tale dramatizes, for example, conflicts over reproductive rights; The Dispossessed juxtaposes anarchist, capitalist, and socialist societies. Soylent Green and Zardoz imagine wholly alternate legal structures and their consequences.

For this special issue of Utopian Studies we invite papers on any aspect of law and utopia.

Deadline: complete drafts by 31 May 2009.

Guidelines: http://www.utoronto.ca/utopia/journal/guidelines.html.

All submissions should be sent to:

Utopian Studies
Department of English
University of Alaska Anchorage
3211 Providence Drive
Anchorage, AK 99508
e-mail: utopia@uaa.alaska.edu
Inquiries about the special issue to: Peter Sands

Lawyer Ethics In Popular Culture

Michael Asimow, University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, and Richard Weisberg, Yeshiva University, Cardozo School of Law, have published "When the Lawyer Knows the Client is Guilty: Client Confessions in Legal Ethics, Popular Culture, and Literature," forthcoming in the Southern University Interdisciplinary Law Journal. Here is the abstract.

This article concerns a classic puzzle in legal ethics: what should a criminal defense lawyer do when the lawyer is certain that the client is factually guilty (usually because the client confessed to the lawyer), but the client insists on an all-out defense? Legal ethicists have struggled with this problem since the Courvoisier case in 1840, but it remains unresolved. This article draws a distinction between strong and weak adversarialism and explains how these two normative positions guide a lawyer's tactical decisionmaking. The article suggests that lawyers should have discretion to choose between the strong and weak positions, depending on context and their personal conscience. Both popular culture and great literature provide interesting perspectives on the strong vs. weak adversarialism dilemma. According to numerous films, television shows and novels, the right answer to the lawyer's dilemma is no adversarialism at all. The good lawyer should betray evil clients to insure that the truth is discovered. Pop culture's no-adversarialism model is a universe few lawyers would care to inhabit but which reflects popular views on the relationship of lawyering to truth. Literature casts doubt on whether a lawyer can know with certainty whether a client is telling the truth. It presents numerous models of successful strong adversarialists and unsuccessful weak adversarialists. Few literary lawyers manage to be both skilled advocates and decent human beings.

Download the article from SSRN here.

Call For Papers

Posted on behalf of Ruth Ann Robbins, Rutgers-Camden School of Law

Once Upon a Legal Time, Chapter Two: Applied Storytelling in Law

Lewis & Clark Law School; Portland, Oregon July 22-24, 2009

Introduction

We are pleased to issue this Call for Proposals for the second biennial

international Applied Storytelling Conference. The deadline is December 8,

2008. Building on the success of the first conference, held in London in 2007,

this conference seeks to foster collaboration and dialogue about the skill of

storytelling in law and about teaching storytelling and other skills to law

students and practitioners. This conference will bring together academics,

judges, and practitioners to explore the role of narrative in legal practice and

curricular strategies that will prepare students to use story and narrative as

they enter the practice of law.



Potential topics on the role of narrative in the practice of law may include

(but please, feel free to be creative):

-using storytelling in litigation or transactional work or in legislative

processes;

-the process of creating compelling legal stories as part of best practices;

-examining current models used to teach storytelling skills in education

and/or practice;

-narrative and negotiation;

-the place of storytelling in legal reasoning;

-differentiating between stories and narratives and the uses of each;

-comparative storytelling in legal systems;

-the ethical limits of storytelling, whether with clients lawyers or judges;



Selected papers from the 2007 conference were published in two journals: 43

The Law Teacher (Thomson, 2007); and 14 Legal Writing: The Journal of the

Legal Writing Institute (LexisNexis, 2008). Volume 14 of Legal Writing is

available on-line at http://www.journallegalwritinginstitute.org/



Format

The conference will include 45-60 minute presentations as well as roundtable

discussions. Proposals may indicate a preference for format. We also

encourage people to present works in progress for feedback.



Proposal Submissions

The deadline for submissions is December 8, 2008. Submissions should be

made on the attached Submission Form and should be sent, preferably

electronically, to:

Prof. Steve Johansen, Lewis & Clark Law School, tvj@lclark.edu

10015 SW Terwilliger Blvd., Portland, OR 97219



Logistical Details

Proposal Format: Please include a cover sheet, the form of which appears at

the end of this document, plus a description or narrative. Proposal narratives

can be as short as a few paragraphs but please do not exceed 2-3 pages of text

including whatever partial or full bibliography you attach.

Please make sure that your contact email address is included in the body of

the proposal. That is how we will be communicating with you.



Selection Process: After all proposals are received, the Conference Program

Committee will review all proposals. Submitters of successful proposals will

be notified of acceptances by January 15, 2009.



When and Where: The conference will take place from Wednesday, July 22

(opening reception) to Friday, July 24, 2009(closing dinner) at Lewis and

Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon. The School is a short ride from

downtown Portland, nestled on the edge of Tryon Creek State Park.

Transportation to and from the conference hotel will be provided.



Costs to Participants: Final conference costs have not been finalized. We

anticipate the conference fee to be approximately $350.



Housing: We have reserved blocks of rooms at the Heathman Hotel

($179/night), and the Downtown Marriott Hotel ($149/night). Both hotels are

in the heart of pedestrian-friendly downtown Portland. For more details on

the hotels, please visit their websites: http://portland.heathmanhotel.com/

http://marriottportland.com/

This conference is made possible through the generous support of the Legal

Writing Institute and Lewis and Clark Law School.



Proposal for the 2nd Applied Storytelling conference

Please include the following information as part of a one-page cover sheet

submitted with the proposal. You don’t have to submit this page of the call for

proposals (i.e. we know that you are seeing it in pdf and we aren’t asking you

to reproduce the page borders, etc.). Using your letterhead or a plain

document is fine.



Title of Proposed Program:



Name of Presenter (contact person for panel presentation):



Affiliated organization:



Contact info including E-mail

(Email is how we will mostly communicate)



Additional presenters, if applicable:



Program Summary:

[Please include on your cover sheet your short summary of the presentation

for the conference brochure. Summaries are generally 2-3 sentences].



Proposal Narrative:

[please limit this to no more than 2 pages, single spaced].

Call For Papers

From the Stetson Law Review

In December 2009 the Stetson Law Review will publish a symposium issue on law, literature, and film. Articles may focus on literature, film, or both; short fiction and poetry will also be considered. Regarding proposed submissions, please contact Robert Batey, the faculty coordinator of the symposium issue, at batey@law.stetson.edu or (after December 1st) at 727-562-7852. Final submissions must be received by June 2009.

Lyrics and Law

Camille Nelson, Saint Louis University School of Law, has published "Lyrical Assault: Dancehall Versus the Cultural Imperialism of the North-West," at 17 Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal 231 (2008). Here is the abstract.

This article examines Jamaican Dancehall music's implications and international perceptions and explores a possible legal remedy for what has been dubbed "Murder Music." The impact of Jamaican Dancehall, the equivalent of American Hip-Hop, its lyrics and history upon Jamaica and the North-West are put into context and interrogated through the lens of cultural studies. Homophobic lyrics have triggered international boycotts and bans of this music and its artists. Despite the fact that Dancehall lyrics are perceived as violent, anti gay, anti-women, and very masculinist, international condemnation is based exclusively upon the homophobic lyrics. This article analyzes the implications of this ban and situates the international response within a masculinist colonial context. Specifics issues discussed include whether the colonization of Jamaica and the codification of its "Offenses against the Person Act" play a role in the propagation of homophobic lyrics, and why it is that Jamaica was criticized as one of the "most homophobic places on earth," given the anti-same sex marriage backlash in the United States and the fact of extreme instances of homophobia in many countries. While this article condemns homophobic lyrics and suggests the discontinuation of their use, it situates Jamaican homophobia as a vestige of colonial prerogatives and urges the abandonment of homophobia as the right thing to do and as a post-colonial move towards true independence.

Download the article from SSRN here.

Shakespeare and Sovereignty

P. G. Monateri, University of Turin, 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.

Download the paper from SSRN here.

Robert Tsai's Eloquence and Reason

Professor Robert Tsai (American University, Washington College of Law), who previously guest blogged here in January 2006, has just published Eloquence and Reason: Creating a First Amendment Culture (Yale University Press, Nov. 2008). According to the back cover blurb:

This provocative book presents a theory of the First Amendment’s development. During the twentieth century, Americans gained trust in its commitments, turned the First Amendment into an instrument for social progress, and exercised their rhetorical freedom to create a common language of rights. Robert L. Tsai explains that the guarantees of the First Amendment have become part of a governing culture and nationwide priority. Examining the rhetorical tactics of activists, presidents, and lawyers, he illustrates how committed citizens seek to promote or destabilize a convergence in constitutional ideas. Eloquence and Reason reveals the social and institutional processes through which foundational ideas are generated and defends a cultural role for the courts.

I've read a few chapters of this book earlier on, and I highly recommend it. Robert Tsai's work is always interesting and thought-provoking. He writes beautifully, and he demonstrates with great insight how rhetoric influences constitutional law.

From a blurb on the back cover by Professor Mark Tushnet (Harvard Law School): "A provocative meditation on the ways the metaphors used in constitutional doctrine empower, limit, create, and recreate the public over which the written Constitution is said to assert authority. Intriguing case studies arise from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, the Christian Right of the 1980s, and the attacks on Jehovah's Witnesses in the 1940s."

Michael Crichton Dies

Author Michael Crichton has died. The physician and author (Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, Coma) was 66.

The CSI Effect

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

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

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

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

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

Download the article from SSRN here.

Other scholars and commentators have written about the "CSI Effect." Here are some citations.

Stefan Lovgren, CSI Effect Is Mixed Blessing
Kit D. Roane, The CSI Effect
Jeffrey Toobin, The CSI Effect

A New Edition of Frankenstein

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Charles Robinson, Professor of English at the University of Delaware, has prepared an edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, stripped of Percy Shelley's improvements. We can now see what Mary Shelley actually wrote, and compare it to what we've been reading all these years. The two Shelleys' collaboration, says Robinson, took him years to take apart. Such is the result of the marriage of two minds.

Tony Hillerman, Author of Mysteries Featuring Native American Sleuths, Dies

Tony Hillerman, the author of numerous bestselling mysteries featuring Navajo sleuths Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, has died of pulmonary failure. Here's more from the International Herald Tribune.

Mr. Hillerman's first Joe Leaphorn novel was The Blessing Way. For more about Mr. Hillerman's writing, check out the following websites (not a comprehensive list)

Tony Hillerman at mysterynet.com
Tony Hillerman at dancingbadger.com
Susan Mueller's Tony Hillerman Page

For more about Mr. Hillerman's work, try

Balassi, William Victor and John F. Crawford, This Is About Vision: Interviews With Southwestern Writers (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990).

Balibar, Renee, Philosophies du roman policier (Fontenay aux Roses: E.N.S., 1995).

Bargainnier, Earl F., Cops and Constables: American and British Fictional Policemen (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1986).

Bauer, Joyce M., The West Is Not God’s New Garden of Paradise: Demythologizing the American West in the Hardboiled Detective Fiction of Tony Hillerman, Bernard Schopen, and James Crumley (Dissertation, University of Nevada, Reno, 1998).

Carter, Catherine Anne, A Critical Analysis of the Detective Fiction of Tony Hillerman (Master’s thesis, Radford University, 1993).

Coale, Samuel, The Mystery of Mysteries: Cultural Differences and Designs (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 2000).

Erisman, Fred, Tony Hillerman (Boise: Boise State University Press, 1989).

Fischer-Hornung, Dorothea, and Monika Mueller, Sleuthing Ethnicity: The Detective in Multiethnic Crime Fiction (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2003).

Freese, Peter, The Ethnic Detective: Chester Himes, Harry Kemelman, Tony Hillerman (Essen: Verlag Die Blaue Eule, 1993).

Glassman, Steve, and Maurice O’Sullivan, Crime Fiction and Film in the Southwest: Bad Boys and Bad Girls of the Badlands (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 2001).

Hamm, Ron, The Navajo Detective Novels of Tony Hillerman: A Bridge Between Two Cultures (Master’s thesis, Texas A&M University, 1989).

Heiss, Gwen Garnsey, Walking in Beauty: Tony Hillerman’s Indian Detective Fiction (Master’s thesis, San Diego State University, 1994).

Heite, Donna, Tony Hillerman: Mystery Novelist With a Southwestern Slant (Master’s thesis, Western New Mexico University, 1991).

Herbert, Rosemary, The Fatal Art of Entertainment: Interviews With Mystery Writers (NY: G.K. Hall, 1994).

Kaminsky, Stuart M., Behind the Mystery: Top Mystery Writers (Cohasset, MA: Hot House Press, 2005).

Kelleghan, Fiona, 100 Masters of Mystery and Detective Fiction (Pasadena: Salem Press, 2001).

Klein, Kathleen Gregory, Critical Companions to Popular Contemporary Writers (Westport, CT: Greenwood Electronic Media, 2001--).

Quirk, Tom, Nothing Abstract: Investigations in the American Literary Imagination (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001).

Reilly, John M., Tony Hillerman: A Critical Companion (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996).

Six, Beverly G., Slaying the Monsters: Native American Spirituality in the Works of Tony Hillerman (Dissertation, Texas Tech University, 1998).

Timmons, Janice, The Elevation Theme and Disjoint Themes in the Detective Fiction of Tony Hillerman (Master’s thesis, California State University, Dominguez Hills, 1996).

Winks, Robin W., Colloquium On Crime: Eleven Renowned Mystery Writers Discuss Their Work (NY: Scribner, 1986).

I'll be mentioning some articles about Mr. Hillerman's work in a future post.

Anti-Semitism and Religion in Kafka

Arnold Heidsieck, University of Southern California, has published "On Judaism, Christianity, Anti-Semitism in Kafka's the Castle, His Letters and Diaries." Here is the abstract.

In his writings Kafka scrutinized, encouraged by his friend Max Brod, the early 20th-century German-speaking disputes on the ancient Jewish origins of Christianity and attempted an explication of the Christian-Germanic ideology of anti-Semitism.

Download the paper from SSRN here.