Husa on Exploring Imaginative Legal History: The Legalism of the House Stark in Game of Thrones @HusaJaakko

ICYMI: Via @DroitetFiction:

Jaakko Husa, University of Lapland Faculty of Law, has published Exploring Imaginative Legal History: The Legalism of the House Stark in the Game of Thrones at 20 Media & Arts Law Review 181 (2015). Here is the abstract.

This article examines George R R Martin’s imaginative historical narrative in his book series A Song of Ice and Fire. The first book of the series (A Game of Thrones) is highlighted and discussed from the points of view of legal history and applied legal theory. The article concentrates on the legal mentality of one of the noble Houses in A Game of Thrones and discusses Martin’s rich narrative in its relation to the real feudal legal history and jurisprudential frameworks it displays. Analysis focuses on the rules of succession. It will be argued that even though the House Stark’s attitude and mentality can be labelled as legalistic and surprisingly modern it can be seen as a natural part of the imaginative feudal world of A Game of Thrones. The article concludes that, by studying the legalistic attitude and mentality of the House Stark, we can also learn about the legal theoretical nature of modern legalism. Paradoxically, it is also suggested that the study of imaginative legal history deepens our understanding of ‘real’ legal history. Moreover, the author argues that analysis of imaginative legal history expands our legal mind and immerses us in alternative horizons of law.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Call For Papers: The 2017 ELLAK International Conference, Seoul National University, South Korea, December 13-15, 2017

From the mailbox, via Dr. Mikyung Park,  Kyonggi University

The 2017 ELLAK International Conference Seoul National University, South Korea

December 13th–15th, 2017

“Narrating Rights: Literary Texts and Human, Nonhuman, and Inhuman Demands”

Unpacking and dispersing rights of various kinds formerly enjoyed by a selected few has been the constant motivation behind the democratization and modernization of human society. Human rights and later civil rights have continuously been constituted and reconstituted in response to the demands of the laboring class, slaves, women, subalterns, animals, and things, expanding beyond the boundaries of class, race, nation, sexuality, gender, species and organism. Calling attention to the ways in which literary texts have narrated rights so as to inscribe these human, nonhuman, and inhuman demands, “Narrating Rights” offers opportunities to interrogate literature’s lasting contributions to questioning, reforming and practicing rights.

The interrogation is particularly pertinent in this age in which revised and dispersed rights are creating new conflicts, requiring them to be narrated differently and imaginatively so as to allow all the parties in conflict to participate in working out the conflicts. “Narrating Rights” is a double-edged task that, on one hand, reflects the singular life conditions or contexts of a human, inhuman or nonhuman being and, on the other hand, aspires to the perpetual process of rights’ universal application. In order to open a forum for literary scholars to discuss how this task has been and will be performed, and thus aims to renew the close, interactive relationship between literature and rights, ELLAK (English Language and Literature Association of Korea) invites submissions to its 2017 International Conference, which will be held in Seoul, South Korea, December 13^th – 15^th. Please submit your proposal (250 words) and brief CV to Dongshin Yi at ellak2017@gmail.com by May 31, 2017.

 Topics may include the following subjects but are not limited to them:

 1.   Rights discourse and narrative/ counter-narrative

2.   Animal rights and Biopolitics/ bioethics

3.   Natural rights/civil rights

4.   Gender, sexuality and rights

5.   Cultural rights and identity

6.   Rhetoric and narratology of rights

7.   Rights, (in)justice, and sovereignty

8.   Rights and mobility

9.   Border crisis and refugee rights

10.  Ecological/Posthuman rights

11.    Rights and (post)colonialism/cosmopolitanism

12.   Racial discourses and rights

13.   Rights and generational differences

14.   Rights and community

15.    Rights in cyberspace

16.   Rights and education

17.    Censorship and freedom of speech/writing

The Quick Death of a Popular Crime Show Genre

Mark Lawson discusses the "death" of Scandinavian tv noir, tracing it to too many cross-border productions, oversaturation of the market, and (maybe) overfamiliarity with the product and a corresponding lack of ongoing creativity. Here, from the Guardian.

Adrian Vermeule's New Book on Law's Abnegation: From Law's Empire To Administrative State @avermeule

ICYMI: Adrian Vermeule, Professor of Law, Harvard University, has published Law’s Abnegation: From Law’s Empire to the Administrative State (Harvard University Press, 2016). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

Ronald Dworkin once imagined law as an empire and judges as its princes. But over time, the arc of law has bent steadily toward deference to the administrative state. Adrian Vermeule argues that law has freely abandoned its imperial pretensions, and has done so for internal legal reasons.freely abandoned its imperial pretensions, and has done so for internal legal reasons. In area after area, judges and lawyers, working out the logical implications of legal principles, have come to believe that administrators should be granted broad leeway to set policy, determine facts, interpret ambiguous statutes, and even define the boundaries of their own jurisdiction. Agencies have greater democratic legitimacy and technical competence to confront many issues than lawyers and judges do. And as the questions confronting the state involving climate change, terrorism, and biotechnology (to name a few) have become ever more complex, legal logic increasingly indicates that abnegation is the wisest course of action. As Law’s Abnegation makes clear, the state did not shove law out of the way. The judiciary voluntarily relegated itself to the margins of power. The last and greatest triumph of legalism was to depose itself.

Fun Facts About "My Cousin Vinny"

Mental Floss lists 29 "Fun Facts" about the film My Cousin Vinny, and indeed they are fun to read. I would point out, with regard to number 23, that the film has made it into more than one textbook. Along with several other films, it's included and discussed at length in the "Witnesses" chapter of Law and Popular Culture: Text, Notes, and Questions (2d ed., Lexis/Nexis & Carolina Academic Press, 2012).

MCV has recently been quite the film of interest, because of a DC Circuit ruling, U.S. v. Bronstein, issued this month. 

Turning to the facts here, a person of ordinary intelligence could read this law and understand that, as a member of the Supreme Court’s oral argument audience, making disruptive public speeches is clearly proscribed behavior—even in staccato bursts, seriatim. And yet, in a coordinated fashion, each Appellee is alleged to have directed a variation of the same message to the Justices of the Supreme Court and the assembled audience. Their coordinated standing, facing the bench, and messaging indicate the Appellees were addressing the Court and gallery. Cf. MY COUSIN VINNY (20th Century Fox 1992) (Judge Chamberlain Haller: “Don’t talk to me sitting in that chair! . . . When you’re addressing this court, you’ll rise and speak to me in a clear, intelligible voice.”). Viewed objectively, these alleged acts could easily be considered speeches to a public assembly that tended to disrupt the Court’s operations—conduct covered by § 6134’s prohibition of “make a harangue or oration.” 

More about this ruling from the National Law Journal here and from the Wall Street Journal here. 

Human Rights and Personal Self-Defense in International Law: A New Book by Jan Arno Hessbruegge @JanHessbruegge @OUP

Jan Arno Hessbruegge, New York Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, has published Human Rights and Personal Self-Defense in International Law (Oxford University Press, 2017). Here from the publisher's website is a description of the book's contents.

While an abundance of literature covers the right of states to defend themselves against external aggression, this is the first book dedicated to the right to personal self-defense in international law. Drawing on his extensive experience as a human rights practitioner and scholar, Dr. Hessbruegge sets out in careful detail the strict requirements that human rights impose on defensive force by law enforcement authorities, especially police killings in self-defense. The book also discusses the exceptional application of the right to personal self-defense in military-led operations, notably to contain violent civilians who do not directly participate in hostilities. Human rights also establish parameters on how broad or narrow the laws can be drawn on self-defense between private persons. Setting out the prevailing international standards, the book critically examines the ongoing trend to excessively broaden self-defense laws. It also refutes the claim that there is a human right to possess firearms for self-defense purposes. In extraordinary circumstances, the right to personal self-defence sharpens human rights and allows people to defend themselves against the state. Here the author establishes that international law gives individuals the right to forcibly resist human rights violations that pose a serious risk of significant and irreparable harm. At the same time, he calls into question prevailing state practice, which fails to recognize any collective right to organized armed resistance even when it constitutes the last resort to defend against genocide or other mass atrocities.

A New Book By Jeffrey Lipshaw: Beyond Legal Reasoning: A Critique of Pure Lawyering @Suffolk_Law @routledgebooks

Jeffrey Lipshaw, Suffolk University Law School, has published Beyond Legal Reasoning: A Critique of Pure Lawyering (Routledge, 2017). Here, from the publisher's website, is a description of the book's contents.

The concept of learning to ‘think like a lawyer’ is one of the cornerstones of legal education in the United States and beyond. In this book, Jeffrey Lipshaw provides a critique of the traditional views of ‘thinking like a lawyer’ or ‘pure lawyering’ aimed at lawyers, law professors, and students who want to understand lawyering beyond the traditional warrior metaphor. Drawing on his extensive experience at the intersection of real world law and business issues, Professor Lipshaw presents a sophisticated philosophical argument that the "pure lawyering" of traditional legal education is agnostic to either truth or moral value of outcomes. He demonstrates pure lawyering’s potential both for illusions of certainty and cynical instrumentalism, and the consequences of both when lawyers are called on as dealmakers, policymakers, and counsellors. This book offers an avenue for getting beyond (or unlearning) merely how to think like a lawyer. It combines legal theory, philosophy of knowledge, and doctrine with an appreciation of real-life judgment calls that multi-disciplinary lawyers are called upon to make. The book will be of great interest to scholars of legal education, legal language and reasoning as well as professors who teach both doctrine and thinking and writing skills in the first year law school curriculum; and for anyone who is interested in seeking a perspective on ‘thinking like a lawyer’ beyond the litigation arena.

TV and Social Issues Over the Years

From Variety: a look at how television has covered civil rights and other social issues over the years, from the legal drama The Defenders to today.

Schneiderman on Canadian Constitutional Culture: A Genealogical Account

David Schneiderman, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, is publishing Canadian Constitutional Culture: A Genealogical Account in the Oxford Handbook of the Canadian Constitution (Nathalie Des Rosiers, Patrick Macklem, and Peter Oliver eds., forthcoming).

How might one explain Canadian constitutional practices that have produced outcomes that are, within limits, heterogeneous and pluralistic? The chapter inquires into this question by tapping into constitutional culture, referring to dominant understandings of the fundamental norms that guide relations between citizens and states and between institutions of the state. Contemporary constitutional culture, it is argued, is partly the product of choices made in the past by imperial and early Canadian authorities. Taking a genealogical approach to Canadian constitutional culture, the chapter examines three episodes in Canada’s constitutional past that help to frame discussions about the constitutional present. Each illustrates the difficulty of governing those who are different; of aspiring to homogeneity while necessitating some heterogeneity in practice. They are representative samples of the waves of accommodation and assimilation that have been recurring features in Canada’s constitutional story and illustrative of the basic elements that make up Canadian constitutional culture.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link. 

Bilder on the Relevance of Colonial Appeals to the Privy Council

Mary Sarah Bilder, Boston College Law School, has published The Relevance of Colonial Appeals to the Privy Council in Texts and Contexts in Legal History: Essays in Honor of Charles Donohue, The Robbins Collection Center. Here is the abstract.

For the past two centuries, the colonial appeals to the Privy Council fell between the cracks on both sides of the Atlantic. For Americans, the creation of the Supreme Court and the absence of published reports of appeals implied legal discontinuity between “American” (post-1787) law and the pre-1787 British imperial world. For the British, the loss of the Atlantic colonies and the lack of printed precedents in appeals implied legal discontinuity between English common law and the colonial appeals. Elsewhere I have written about the importance of the appeals for colonial American legal history and the history of the development of the global law of the colonial world. Here I want to focus on the importance of the appeals for English legal history.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.

New Issue of the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law Now Available

The new issue of the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law (volume 30, number 1) is out. Here is a link.

Seventh International Osnabrueck Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of Law, August 6-13, 2017, University of Osnabrueck, Germany

Via Thom Giddens:

Contentious Claims - Negotiating Ownership in Law and Culture

7th International Osnabrueck Summer Institute (OSI) on the Cultural Study of the Law  http://www.osi.uni-osnabrueck.de/

The seventh International Osnabrueck Summer Institute on the Cultural Study of the Law will be held from August 6 to 13, 2017 at the University of Osnabrueck, Germany. It aims to encourage and further promote the interdisciplinary study and research of the interrelations between law and culture, based on the idea that the extended cultural study of the law will foster profitable scholarly exchange and dialogue between legal studies and the humanities.

The Institute will offer a combination of thematic workshop sessions, small group seminars and a final symposium for 15-20 international participants (doctoral, post-doctoral and advanced M.A. – see below for eligibility). The introductory workshop will address the range and potential of interdisciplinary studies and approaches in the field of law and the humanities. The remaining thematic sessions and small group seminars will focus on key issues and debates in current cultural legal studies, for example:

*  The historical emergence of dominant (legal) concepts of property as well as current struggles about culture as heritage, property and resource for creativity (including concepts such as copyright, intellectual property and authorship)

*  The cultural presence and representation of the law and the role of culture in the representation and dissemination of the concept of property (e.g. law and literature, life writing and human rights, visual culture and rights rhetoric)

The main objective of the OSI is to encourage scholarly exchange across disciplines and the critical debate of current research projects as well as work in progress. Participants will have the opportunity to present and discuss their own work both within the larger group and in individual sessions with members of the OSI faculty.

Confirmed faculty for the 2017 OSI include:

Marianne Constable (Rhetoric , UC Berkeley) Danilo Mandic (Law, U of Westminster) Cristina S. Martinez (Art History, U of Ottawa)

Sabine N. Meyer (American Studies, Osnabrück U) Richard Perry (Law, UC Berkeley)

Beth Piatote (Native American Studies, UC Berkeley) Leti Volpp (Law, UC Berkeley)

In addition, the OSI will feature a professional workshop presenting and discussing EU and GAES (German Academic Exchange Service) scholarship and grant opportunities for young international researchers.

Participant Eligibility

The Summer Institute invites doctoral and postdoctoral students from various academic fields whose research interests and projects are situated at the interface between law and the humanities and who are concerned with a better understanding of the interdependence of law and culture.

Doctoral candidates in the, humanities, law, the arts, literature, and related social sciences are encouraged to apply, as are advanced students pursuing a J.D. or its equivalent (such as an 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. While applications by doctoral/post-doctoral students are prioritized, the Summer Institute will also consider strong applications from advanced Master students about to conclude their studies and with a strong interest in interdisciplinary research. There are openings for up to 24 students to participate in the Summer Institute.

Due to its international audience, the Summer Institute will be entirely conducted in English.

Please note: The OSI neither offers German nor English language instruction classes.

Application Process

Students interested in taking part in the Summer Institute should submit their applications on our website no later than April 30, 2017. Detailed and updated information about the Institute, the sessions, international faculty, admission and fees can be found at:  http://www.osi.uni-osnabrueck.de/

Application Process* Applicants should complete:

*  The application form on our website (see below);

*  An up-to-date curriculum vitae;

*  A statement of purpose no more than two pages long, describing current scholarly interests, previous research, and how the Summer Institute would specifically further their interests and plans. Applicants are also encouraged to comment on their specific interest in interdisciplinary approaches and how these affect their own work.

Students interested in taking part in the Summer Institute should submit their applications no later than April 30, 2017. Detailed and updated information about the Institute, the sessions, international faculty, admission and fees can be found at:

http://www.osi.uni-osnabrueck.de/

*Questions*

Please direct all inquiries and questions to the OSI coordinator at lawandculture@uos.de