-
Accepting or Transgressing the Failure: Derrida and Agamben on Kafka’s Before the Law Law & Literature Pub Date : 2024-04-17 Mostafa Taherkhani
This paper explores Derrida and Agamben’s reading of Kafka’s Before the Law. As a highly symbolic text, Kafka’s short story has elicited numerous interpretations, among which Derrida and Agamben pr...
-
The Mothers of Us All: Extracts, with Comments, from the “Yellow Catalogue” Published by the Milan Women’s Bookstore – Paper No. 2: From Novels to the Figures, Themes and Strategies for a Political Practice Law & Literature Pub Date : 2024-04-10 Silvia Niccolai
The present paper is the second of three, constituting a whole project of translation and commentary composed of translated extracts from the “Catalogo n. 2 – Le madri di tutte noi,” published by t...
-
Examining Mass Incarceration: Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room Law & Literature Pub Date : 2024-03-28 Michael Tager
Rachel Kushner’s 2018 novel The Mars Room examines the nature and causes of mass incarceration in the United States. The novel follows American prison literature conventions in showing what prisons...
-
Traveling Outside of Time: Speculative Futurism and Environmental Justice Law & Literature Pub Date : 2024-03-28 Leila Neti
Subash Limbu’s recent science fiction film Ningwasum (2022) interrogates the contours of memory and futurity in relation to pressing concerns of climate change and indigenous rights. The experiment...
-
Planetary Gifts of Law and Literature Law & Literature Pub Date : 2024-03-28 Benjamin Goh
What remains of European thought in law and literature’s “global turn”? To address the question, this article reopens Nuruddin Farah’s Gifts (1993) alongside modern and contemporary writings on glo...
-
Censoring Kuli Pratha in British India Law & Literature Pub Date : 2024-03-28 Nandi Bhatia
In 1917, the United Provinces government in British India proscribed Lakshman Singh’s play titled Kuli Pratha arthat Biswin Shatbdi ki Gulami (The System of Recruiting Coolies, in other words, Slav...
-
Property, Propriety, and Publicity: A Different Look at Pope v. Curll (1741) Law & Literature Pub Date : 2024-02-26 Jennifer W. Reiss
The seminal copyright case of Pope v. Curll is typically cited by lawyers as the case which, for the first time in Anglo-American law, disassociated the physical copy of a literary work from its me...
-
Speaking Out: Graphic Narrative as Alternative Jurisdiction Law & Literature Pub Date : 2024-02-12 Clotilde Pégorier
Taking its cue from the recent “graphic turn” in law and humanities scholarship, this essay explores the potentially enabling possibilities of graphic literature as a site of doing justice. In part...
-
Vortext Law & Literature Pub Date : 2024-02-05 Shane Chalmers, Desmond Manderson
This article introduces the special issue of Law & Literature on “Colonial Legal Imaginaries | Southern Literary Futures”. The aim is to advance two imperative tasks. The first, analytic, task is t...
-
Derring Literarity: The Case of Negative Comparative Law Law & Literature Pub Date : 2024-01-31 Pierre Legrand
Abstract, To dare is to risk, and to err is to blunder. I suggest that the neologism “to derr” can helpfully refer to the audacious inscription of deliberately erroneous and therefore fictitious in...
-
Legal and Epic Alienation. Fritz Bauer’s Critique of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial (1963-1965) and Peter Weiss’s Dramatic Treatment of the Trial in the Investigation. Oratorio in 11 Cantos (1965) Law & Literature Pub Date : 2024-01-31 Kerstin Steitz
Beginning with the influences of Schiller’s humanist ideals on Hessian Attorney General Fritz Bauer’s expectations of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial as a legal working through of the past, this arti...
-
Law’s Will to Truth in The Sound of Things Falling Law & Literature Pub Date : 2024-01-25 Jorge González-Jácome
This article addresses law’s will to truth in The Sound of Things Falling, a novel written by Colombian author Juan Gabriel Vásquez. The novel’s main character is a law professor who feels the urge...
-
“Land[s] beyond the White World”: (Re)imagining the International through Fiction Law & Literature Pub Date : 2024-01-05 Christopher Gevers
From the turn of the nineteenth century Black Internationalists collectively mapped and subverted the (white) International as a colonial legal imaginary, its sociopolitical, historical and geograp...
-
The Drover’s Wife, the Legend of Molly Johnson: Leah Purcell’s Reclaiming of a Colonial Fetish Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-12-18 Honni van Rijswijk
Henry Lawson’s short story, “The Drover’s Wife,” has animated Australian nationalism since its publication in 1892. The story is much-loved, and has been perceived as representing a voice from the ...
-
The Tigers of Curzon Street Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-12-14 Desmond Manderson
This essay combines visual studies, history, literature, and theory to traverse the nature of colonial, postcolonial and decolonizing thought through the eyes of a tiger. In what ways and through w...
-
Cecily Shoots a Rhinoceros: Big Game Hunting in British Somaliland and the 1900 Convention for the Preservation of Wild Animals, Birds and Fish in Africa Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-12-14 Katherine Isobel Baxter
In 1900, seven European nations gathered in London to agree the Convention for the Preservation of Wild Animals, Birds and Fish in Africa. The Convention sought to regulate game hunting across the ...
-
Shakespeare’s Strangers and English Law Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-11-07 Jessica Apolloni
Published in Law & Literature (Vol. 36, No. 1, 2024)
-
Mikhaïl Bakhtin and International Refugee Law: A Dialogic Approach to Treaty Negotiations and Cross-Cultural Legal Hearings Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-10-27 Robert F. Barsky
The current catastrophes in the Ukraine and the Gaza Strip, and the ongoing calamities in Afghanistan, Haiti, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Venezuela and elsewhere, all call out for a humanitarian approach t...
-
Orwell and Empire Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-10-24 Jay Parker
Published in Law & Literature (Vol. 36, No. 1, 2024)
-
Getting Legal Reason to Speak for Itself: The Legal Form of the Gutachten and Its Affordances Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-10-11 Jacco Bomhoff
Roughly translatable as “expert memorandum,” the term Gutachten and its cognates refer to, at once, a textual format, a problem-solving technique, and a highly distinctive writing style at the hear...
-
The Mothers of Us All: Extracts, with comments, from the ‘Yellow Catalogue’ published by the Milan Women’s Bookstore Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-10-11 Angela Condello, Silvia Niccolai
The present paper is Paper No. 1, and forms part of a series together with Paper No. 2 (From novels to figures: themes and strategies of a political practice – Part I), and Paper No. 3 (From novels...
-
Complicity and the Colonial Force of Law in the Courtroom of Katie Kitamura’s Intimacies Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-10-10 Róisín Á Costello
This article analyzes the account of the courtroom interpreter portrayed in Katie Kitamura’s novel Intimacies and argues that the book’s account presents the interpreter as an actor who must erase ...
-
Avant-Garde Literature and the Ground of Rights Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-09-05 Ryan Devitt
Abstract With its demonstration of human frailty and finitude, avant-garde literature offers a more rigorous jurisprudence of rights than juridical or legal discourse is capable of offering itself. The paper takes as example the lowering of fault requirements in Canadian criminal law, which weakens common-law protection of the fundamental right to liberty through a fault standard that is “not concerned
-
Before Borders: A Legal and Literary History of Naturalization Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-09-05 Sarah Raff
Published in Law & Literature (Vol. 35, No. 3, 2023)
-
The sentimental life of international law: literature, language, and longing in world politics Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-09-05 Shane Chalmers
Published in Law & Literature (Vol. 35, No. 3, 2023)
-
Judgment Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-08-29 Patricia Cochran
Published in Law & Literature (Vol. 35, No. 3, 2023)
-
Performing Hepatitis C, Problematising “Cure”: The Construction of Hepatitis C (Cure) in Social Security and Migration Law Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-07-07 Sean Mulcahy, Kate Seear, Suzanne Fraser, Adrian Farrugia, Dion Kagan, Emily Lenton, Kylie Valentine
Abstract Direct-acting antiviral (DAA) treatment for the blood-borne virus hepatitis C has shifted conceptions of the disease from a chronic infection – and, in some legal contexts, a “disability” – towards a non-permanent impairment capable of “cure”. The shift in treatment has also led to a shift in law. This paper explores the shift in Australian social security and migration judgments by drawing
-
Stopping the Boats, Changing the Narrative: How the Migrant Refugee Bildungsroman Became a Ghost Story Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-06-23 David Gurnham
Abstract What literary conventions best help us understand the migrant refugee’s claim for protection, and the terms on which law claims to offer it? One contender to have attracted attention recently is “bildungsroman” (“formation novel”), since the narrative of the refugee escaping danger and oppression to find safety and stability within a host state arguably maps onto bilgungsroman’s themes of
-
“Oracles of the Law:” Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s Legal Futurism Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-06-09 Thomas Dikant
Abstract This article undertakes a rhetorical reading of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s “The Path of the Law” (1897), attending particularly to Holmes’s use of the trope of the “oracle” in his legal philosophy to show how Holmes utilizes this figure to interrogate the Anglo-American legal tradition and to articulate his own, new understanding of the task of the law. For Holmes, lawyers reading the “sibylline
-
Grains of Allowance: Liberty, Toleration, and Justice in George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-06-02 Hilary Teynor Donatini
Abstract This article examines the representation of the justices of the peace in George Farquhar’s 1706 play The Recruiting Officer. I place this play in the context of Farquhar’s work of literary criticism, “A Discourse Upon Comedy” (1701), in which he claims “Liberty and Toleration” as guiding principles for his home-grown, anti-Aristotelian aesthetic. The political, legal, and theatrical history
-
“Speaking for the Dead to Protect the Living”: On Audre Lorde’s Biomythography, Law, Love, and Epistemic Violence in the Coronial Jurisdiction in the Kimberley Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-05-31 Sarouche Razi
Abstract From 2017–2019 I was counsel representing the families in a coronial inquest which looked at Aboriginal youth deaths in the Kimberley region of Australia with a particular regard to self-harm. A coronial inquest is a judicial proceeding that investigates unexplained deaths, unusual deaths, or deaths in state custody. In this paper I consider the epistemic violence my clients experienced, and
-
Portrait and Mugshot: Metonymical Foundation of Photographic Genres Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-05-30 Michaela Fišerová
Abstract This article focuses on the genre distinction between artistic and legal photographs of faces: while the artistic portrait tends to express the singular soul of the person pictured, the biometric mugshot aims to scan singular physical traits without any psychological expression. How do these photographic genres allow us to identify the represented person? What do each of them seek to recognize
-
The Right to Not Cut Our Owne Throats with Our Tongues: Proverbial Roots of the Fifth Amendment Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-05-18 José Manuel Pereiro Otero
As Leonard Williams Levy discussed in Origins of the Fifth Amendment and other works, the expression advising against cutting “our owne throats with our tongues” exemplifies the complex referential...
-
Colonial Law in India and the Victorian Imagination Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-05-18 Piyel Haldar
Published in Law & Literature (Vol. 35, No. 2, 2023)
-
Earthbound: The Aesthetics of Sovereignty in the Anthropocene Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-05-15 Karen Crawley
Published in Law & Literature (Vol. 35, No. 2, 2023)
-
Libertines and the Law: Subversive Authors and Criminal Justice in Early Seventeenth-Century France Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-05-15 Nicholas Hammond
Published in Law & Literature (Vol. 35, No. 2, 2023)
-
Introduction: Writing Inheritance in European Literature Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-02-03 Jakob Ladegaard, Beth Cortese
Abstract This introduction presents the rationale behind this special issue about European literature’s engagement with modern inheritance practices. It introduces some of the fundamental conceptual, legal, and historical aspects of inheritance in Western modernity, and outlines how the articles in this issue address them. The articles deal with literary and historic materials from the seventeenth
-
Speculative Constitutions in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle and the Rights of Nature Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-01-18 Ted Hamilton
Abstract This paper examines two speculative examinations of humanity as a unified species and agent of ecological change: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle and the rights of nature movement. Le Guin’s Cycle imagines the slow interplanetary reintegration of human polities against a backdrop of cultural and environmental difference. I read the novels of the Cycle as an allegory for the rights of nature
-
From Clapham to Salina: Locating the Reasonable Man Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-01-19 Simon Stern
Abstract “The man on the Clapham omnibus” is an often cited but poorly understood name for the standard of reasonable care in tort. It originated in a 1903 decision in which this formula was used not to articulate a legal standard but to describe an average person whose views have no legal significance. This figure finds a cousin in another personification, as “the man who takes the magazines at home
-
Corto Maltese and the Myriad Narratives of a More-than-Human Ocean: Revisiting Some of UNCLOS’ Ontological Assumptions Law & Literature Pub Date : 2023-01-12 Apostolos Tsiouvalas
Abstract Graphic novels have been previously recognized by scholarly research as a valuable conceptual lens for thinking critically about law. Asserting the need for a deeper engagement with the material foundations, ontological beliefs and epistemological grids that lie under the development of international law of the sea, this article delves into the imaginary oceanic universe of Hugo Pratt’s classic
-
Correction Law & Literature Pub Date : 2022-12-19
Published in Law & Literature (Vol. 35, No. 1, 2023)
-
A Court in the Backlands: A Nomadic Justice in Brazilian Literature Law & Literature Pub Date : 2022-12-13 Renan Porto
Abstract, This paper explores a conception of justice through a reading of the Brazilian novel The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, written by João Guimarães Rosa. In this novel, the character of Zé ...
-
Law and Love in Ovid: Courting Justice in the Age of Augustus Law & Literature Pub Date : 2022-11-25 Ian Ward
Published in Law & Literature (Vol. 35, No. 1, 2023)
-
Sensing Justice through Contemporary Spanish Cinema: Aesthetics, Politics Law & Literature Pub Date : 2022-11-25 Abigail Loxham
Published in Law & Literature (Vol. 35, No. 1, 2023)
-
Capital Letters: Hugo, Baudelaire, Camus, and the Death Penalty Law & Literature Pub Date : 2022-11-18 Briana Lewis
Published in Law & Literature (Vol. 35, No. 1, 2023)
-
The Emperor Augustus and Narratives of Legal Origin Law & Literature Pub Date : 2022-11-14 Rebecca Shaw
Any legislation, whether ancient or modern, is contextualised by constitutional tradition, of which narratives of legal origins are a key part. These stories are an important source of the law’s au...
-
Free Indirect Discourse in Court: An Overview of Contemporary Jurisprudence in French Press Law Law & Literature Pub Date : 2022-11-01 Anna Arzoumanov
This article analyzes two French court decisions which deal with fictionality and free indirect discourse. Two novelists, Mathieu Lindon and Eric Bénie-Bürckel, have been sued for contentious state...
-
The Confluence of Rhetoric and Emotion: How the History of Rhetoric Illuminates the Theoretical Importance of Emotion Law & Literature Pub Date : 2022-09-05 Maksymilian Del Mar
This essay argues that the history of rhetoric is a crucial resource for illuminating the theoretical importance of emotion in, for instance, reasoning, reading, knowing, acting, and judging. Takin...
-
Ian Ward, the Play of Law in Modern British Theatre Law & Literature Pub Date : 2022-08-26 Marett Leiboff
Published in Law & Literature (Vol. 34, No. 3, 2022)
-
Maksymilian Del Mar, Artefacts of Legal Inquiry: The Value of Imagination in Adjudication Law & Literature Pub Date : 2022-08-01 Edward Mussawir
Published in Law & Literature (Vol. 34, No. 3, 2022)
-
Stephanie Elsky, Custom, Common Law, and the Constitution of English Renaissance Literature Law & Literature Pub Date : 2022-07-21 Julia Reinhard Lupton
Published in Law & Literature (Vol. 34, No. 3, 2022)
-
Eros against Law: Levinas and Erotic Interiority in Don Juan of Kolomea Law & Literature Pub Date : 2022-06-29 Reuben Carias
Critiquing Levinas’s serenely ethical conception of Eros, this essay challenges the Levinasian notion that the Erotic maintains an ethical framework, resulting in the inevitable return to the ethic...
-
Disrupting Undocumentation: Municipal ID Cards against Passport Fetishism Law & Literature Pub Date : 2022-06-22 Michiel Bot
In this article, I interpret municipal ID card programs as disruptions of nation-state practices of documentation and what I call undocumentation: requiring specific documentation in a wide variety...
-
Legal Cultures in the Age of Goethe: An Introduction Law & Literature Pub Date : 2022-06-15 Matthew Bell, Daniele Vecchiato
Published in Law & Literature (Vol. 34, No. 2, 2022)
-
Squaring Law and Literature: Materiality – Comparativity – Constitutivity Law & Literature Pub Date : 2022-04-04 Eric Achermann, Klaus Stierstorfer
The relationship between law and literature has received widespread and multifarious attention. Numerous attempts have been made to categorize mutual relations, and the following constitutes one fu...
-
Fiat Lux/Fiat Lex: A Canticle for Leibowitz, Reason and Law Law & Literature Pub Date : 2022-03-29 Mark Thomas, Kieran Tranter
Walter M. Miller Jr’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959) is an enigmatic text. It is a depressing tale of the evitability of technoscientific civilization ending in apocalypse, a comedic story of igno...
-
The Law of Frank Herbert’s Dune: Legal Culture between Cynicism, Earnestness and Futility Law & Literature Pub Date : 2022-02-16 Björnstjern Baade
Abstract Frank Herbert’s Dune series has been analyzed with regard to various issues, such as politics, ecology and religion. Its legal aspects have been neglected so far. Contrary to the seemingly common perception that law does not play a significant role in Dune, this article will first show that law is indeed ubiquitous in Dune and shapes the narrative in important ways. Dune develops different
-
Peter Goodrich, Advanced Introduction to Law and Literature (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton MA, USA), 2021.pp. 119 Law & Literature Pub Date : 2022-01-06 Alan Durant
Published in Law & Literature (Vol. 34, No. 2, 2022)
-
Jesús R. Velasco, Dead Voice: Law, Philosophy and Fiction in the Iberian Middle Ages, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 256 pp, ISBN 9780812251869, Americas: $69.95, outside the Americas: £56.00 Law & Literature Pub Date : 2022-01-06 Maksymilian Del Mar
Published in Law & Literature (Vol. 34, No. 2, 2022)
-
The Utopian Law and Literature of Systematic Colonisation Law & Literature Pub Date : 2022-01-05 Shane Chalmers
Abstract Edward Gibbon Wakefield is usually remembered as the English political economist whose theorisation of “systematic colonisation” provided the blueprint for the establishment of British colonies in Australia and New Zealand. This paper re-reads Wakefield’s writings on systematic colonisation as works of utopian literature, which not only represented a social fantasy that was deeply capitalist