11760 results in Socio-Legal Studies
Chapter Three - Law and Comics/Graphic Justice
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- By Angus Nurse
- Edited by Daniel Newman, Cardiff University, Russell Sandberg, Cardiff University
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- Law and Humanities
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Summary
Introduction: Intersections of Comics and Law
This chapter examines the development of law, comics and graphic justice as a distinct area of scholarly activity within the context of law and humanities study. The core focus of this chapter’s discussion is the Anglo-American conception of law and comics studies, particularly that situated within the UK, North America and Australia. In these areas socio-legal studies, and law and humanities scholarship incorporating comics study has firmly established itself since the 1990s. This is not to ignore the existence of other, wider forms of comics studies which consider law and graphic justice, and, indeed, even within this chapter’s discussion it is worth noting that law and comics and particularly ‘graphic justice’ scholars examine Japanese popular culture and manga comics. However, this chapter’s focus is on the Anglo-American and Global North field of law, comics and graphic justice study rather than a specific analysis of the texts and mechanisms contained within the discipline’s academic focus and in Anglo-American and Global North comics production.
Before exploring the development and nature of the law, comics and graphic justice field, some brief discussion of the nature of academic study of comics is necessary for context. The terms ‘comics’ and ‘graphic novels’ are sometimes used interchangeably and for the purpose of this chapter’s discussion the distinction between a weekly or serialised comic and a standalone graphic novel or graphic novel series is largely irrelevant. Undoubtedly there are differences between the two, particularly in those instances where a graphic novel represents a standalone story or collected narrative specifically constructed for the graphic novel medium as opposed to a long-running comic series such as the X-Men, which explores more diverse narratives and a series of narratives over a longer period. In the latter case, issues may be collected together as a trade paperback or collection, which arguably is almost indistinguishable from a graphic novel. In this sense, comics can be either short or several hundred pages long and there is considerable variation in what is accepted as a comic or graphic novel. However, for the purpose of this chapter’s discussion, the medium of comics and field of comics study is the core focus of the academic inquiry, that of visual storytelling usually based within the sequential art-based comic book form.
Chapter Six - Law and History
- Edited by Daniel Newman, Cardiff University, Russell Sandberg, Cardiff University
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- Law and Humanities
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Summary
Introduction: The Paradox of Law and History
Paradoxically, history is both everywhere and nowhere in legal education. On the one hand, history is ubiquitous in law schools: most lectures and textbook chapters explore how a case law has evolved over time and students are used to citing legal materials penned centuries ago. Yet, on the other hand, history is often missing in legal study: students are not interested in the time and context in which the cases occurred; they are solely concerned with their relevance in terms of their task of determining what the law is now so that they can critique the law within its own terms in an essay question, apply it to an idealised if often embellished factual scenario to answer a problem question or memorise it as if it was trivia for the purpose of succeeding at a multiple choice test. As the legal historian Frederic William Maitland put it in his 1888 inaugural lecture at Cambridge, ‘what the lawyer wants is authority and the newer the better; what the historian wants is evidence and older the better’.
This paradox has affected the development of law and history as a subject of study. On the one hand, there is a magnitude of research that explores the development of law over time, often with an eye on the social, political and cultural contexts. Yet, on the other hand, the number of academics who identify primarily as experts in this field, as legal historians, is much smaller. There is, of course, significant variation from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. History seems to be taught more in civil law jurisdictions generally; within common law jurisdictions the development of legal history as a subject is more advanced in the United States. There are also differences within jurisdictions. In England and Wales (which will be the focus of this chapter), a great deal of work that could be seen as coming under the umbrella of law and history has and is completed outside of law schools. History departments formerly led the way in terms of constitutional history, and more recently their attention has shifted to social history, which includes a significant focus on legal matters.
Chapter Five - Law and Geography
- Edited by Daniel Newman, Cardiff University, Russell Sandberg, Cardiff University
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- Law and Humanities
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Summary
Introduction: Studying the Legal in Legal Geography
Legal geography explores the interconnections between law and space, a field of study that relates law to context, while simultaneously revealing geography’s legal footprints. The rich interconnections between law and space, and the diverse ways that each co-inform and co-constitute the other are legal geography’s ‘core objects of inquiry’. In this chapter, we observe how this area of scholarship has evolved over nearly three decades, beginning in the mid-1990s, a generational confluence of law and geography that is neither a ‘sub-discipline of human geography nor […] an area of specialized legal scholarship’ but rather (or, at least) ‘a truly interdisciplinary intellectual project’.
As a discrete ‘intellectual project’, legal geography features several defining characteristics. Core to its mission is to emplace law and to bring law to landscape. Legal geography likewise takes a broad sweep of form: from grand theory to the ‘small’; from global observations of space, time and law to (sometimes very local) place-based case studies; and from explicit disciplinary articulation to an implied nuanced analysis. In the latter case, legal geography can play a significant, albeit often unacknowledged role in informing the scholarship.
Writing in 1994, the foundational legal geographer Nicholas Blomley quoted Lawrence Friedman and David Harvey, who each in turn (yet separately) recognised the limitations of their own disciplines. Friedman argued ‘law […] is too important to be left to lawyers’, while Harvey mirrored this sentiment word for word, noting that ‘geography is too important to be left to geographers’. Each gave voice to a gap that these two complementary disciplines had left lying on the field, a ‘hidden to plain sight’ lacuna of spatial relations where law fails to acknowledge the world it inhabits, and geographers ignore or undervalue how ‘social spaces, lived places, and landscapes are inscribed with legal significance’.
In writing this chapter, we acknowledge our own disciplinary perspective on legal geography. We are both lawyers, variously critical property and human rights theorists. In many ways, unlike the ‘progress report’ that David Delaney penned from 2015 to 2017, when he wrote across three sequential journal articles of legal geography’s evolution through a human geographer’s lens, our brief survey of the field is necessarily a legal interpretation. Rather than surmising what is the effect of law on geography, as Delaney ventures, we observe how geography has informed (and informs) the law.
Chapter One - Introducing Law and Humanities
- Edited by Daniel Newman, Cardiff University, Russell Sandberg, Cardiff University
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Summary
Introduction
In 1901 in his Rede lecture the distinguished English legal historian Frederic William Maitland was pondering about how the common law had survived the Renaissance. Looking at the Year Books of Henry VII and Henry VIII, he remarked that these ‘ancient law reports are not a place in which we look for humanism or the spirit of the Renaissance: rather we look there for an amazingly continuous persistence and development of medieval doctrine’. Indeed, while Renaissance-era writers were generally contemptuous of anything medieval, Renaissance-era legal writers were not only continuing to use but were actually praising medieval texts. Maitland questioned:
How was it and why was it that in an age when old creeds of many kinds were crumbling and all knowledge was being transfigured, in an age which had revolted against its predecessor and was fully conscious of the revolt, [that] one body of doctrine […] remained so intact?
Maitland’s argument was that the common law survived because it was taught, studied and perpetuated by the Inns of Court and those they trained. As Maitland commented it was ‘difficult to conceive of any system better suited to harden and toughen a traditional body of law than one which, while books were still uncommon, compelled every lawyer to take part in legal education and every distinguished lawyer to read public lectures’. Legal education served to fossilise the law, bestowing a sacred aura upon what would otherwise seem archaic. As he put it:
Law schools make tough law.
Over a hundred years after Maitland’s lecture and many hundreds of years after the Renaissance, the common law continues to thrive. Attributing this persistence to the continuing role of legal education provokes a ‘chicken and the egg’ controversy as to causation. Yet, the role of Law Schools in making and perpetuating ‘tough law’ is so fundamental that it is taken for granted. Though there are exceptions, legal education remains characterised by doctrinal legal studies. The first stage of legal education focuses on the learning of legal principles, with a focus on their application. Law students are trained to operate as jurists.
Chapter Twelve - Law and Theatre
- Edited by Daniel Newman, Cardiff University, Russell Sandberg, Cardiff University
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Summary
Prologue, ‘All the world’s a stage […]’
A figure steps onto a stage.
Silence falls as she looks into the audience. And then she begins to speak. The words are ornate and she delivers them like prophecy. A story unfurls: of broken dreams and bad decisions, of rights and wrongs. The speaker will be judged; lives will be changed.
This is a scene which lawyer and thespian alike have played a thousand times or more. Indeed, the resemblances between law and theatre often start here: with a single orator skillfully putting their case before an audience. Like an actor, a lawyer must interpret a central text and use it to tell a convincing story.
In each discipline, language is king. Without language, how would we articulate our individual and collective rights? How would we codify norms and behaviours? In literature, the power of language predates the written word: long before we could write, we could recite. We would gather around a fire to recount tales we’d heard a thousand times, and fashion new ones besides. Language is primal: it takes us back to who we were before.
But even the finest words can fall flat. Law and theatre require an orator: more than that, they require a conjuror who can bring the words to life. This is the intervention which separates theatre from literature: a live, transforming presence. A performance. There is a magic to this space: things emerge from it differently to how they entered. Things may happen twice but they do not happen the same. It’s not a paradox: it’s show business.
Enough of the abstract, for now. We will return to it in due course. Instead, let’s go back to the beginning.
Act One, ‘And all the men and women merely players’
Theatre’s purpose, says Hamlet, is ‘to hold […] the mirror up to nature’.
It can also show the law its true face. That, at least, seems to be a central tenet of law and theatre, which reframes legal actors as stage players and doctrinal issues as dramatic devices: the case its plot, the courtroom its stage. Law and legal matters have formed the two hour’s traffic of many a stage, from Oedipus Rex to Othello and beyond. The courtroom itself is a theatrical space, in which costumed lawyers wear wigs and billowing robes, take their assigned places and address an ‘audience’ of jurors.
Index
- Edited by Daniel Newman, Cardiff University, Russell Sandberg, Cardiff University
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Chapter Seven - Law and Literature
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- By Ian Ward
- Edited by Daniel Newman, Cardiff University, Russell Sandberg, Cardiff University
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Summary
Introduction: The Shaping of Law and Literature
The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the study of ‘law and literature’, what it is and what it does. The first part will survey the critical landscape, revisiting the evolution and the associated ‘strategies’ of literary jurisprudence. The second part will then provide an illustrative case study. On this occasion we will indulge a little sorcery.
The interdisciplinary relation of law and literature is hardly new. The merest glance at the writings of Sophocles and Shakespeare confirms this much. The respective fates of Antigone and Shylock have lost none of their resonance down the centuries. The study of ‘law and literature’ as an academic enterprise has, however, assumed a renewed energy over the last couple of generations. Literary jurists commonly date this evolu-tion to the pioneering work of James Boyd White in the 1970s and 1980s, which urged the appreciation that law expresses itself textually, and must therefore be read critically. The better lawyer knows ‘what reading means’. A conclusion famously shared by Stanley Fish, who supposes that the ‘practice’ of reading legal and literary texts should be the same, as both take ‘narrative’ form. Put simply, at its root, reading Milton’s Paradise Lost is no different from reading Donoghue v Stevenson or R (Miller) v the Prime Minister. It is only context that makes the experience feel different.
Here we might contemplate an original, essentially functional, distinction in ‘law and literature’ scholarship: between law as literature, and law in literature. Law as literature invites the lawyer to become a literary critic, to embrace the attendant challenges of textual indeterminacy. Law no longer becomes a matter of truth-seeking but of fashioning impressions. As Richard Rorty famously put it, the ‘strong poet’ is the hero of democracy, interpretive ‘contingency’ its resistance. In practical terms, this means that the literary jurist must also appreciate the skills of the literary critic, hermeneutics, post-structuralism, historical materialism, deconstruction, reader-response theory and so on. Appreciation does not demand approval. But it does require an acceptance that there are different ways of reading everything – albeit the same different ways, for lawyers and everyone else. A conclusion that sits more comfortably with the student of literature, perhaps, than it does the student of law.
And a good point at which to acknowledge a defining characteristic of ‘law and literature’ scholarship, evident from its very inception.
Chapter Fourteen - Law and Video Games
- Edited by Daniel Newman, Cardiff University, Russell Sandberg, Cardiff University
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Summary
Introduction
This chapter aims to position law and video games as an emerging and promising sub-field of law and humanities scholarship. Video games, sometimes referred to as ‘computer games’, ‘digital games’ or ‘electronic games’, have garnered an immense following, captivating billions of players worldwide and generating nearly $200 billion in revenue in 2022 alone. Despite the widespread popularity and significant market presence of video gaming, law and humanities scholarship has largely overlooked the exploration of video games as rich cultural artefacts with legal entanglements. Or perhaps, if there has been interest, the modal peculiarities of video games have acted as a deterrent for legal scholars to tackle them as a site of analysis.
Fortunately, within the field of game studies or ludology, the discipline that primarily studies video games, there has been a rapid evolution of literature examining video games as objects of analysis. This vibrant body of scholarship offers valuable insights and approaches that can greatly complement and inform emerging law and video games research. This interdisciplinary dialogue between fields holds the potential to shed light on the complex legal dimensions of video games and enrich our understanding of intricate interplay between the forms. Or as Greg Lastowka puts it simply, ‘those who study games and those who study law have things to learn from another’.
How to Play: A Video Game Tutorial
While it may seem trite to provide an explanation of the video game medium within this chapter, assuming familiarity may do a disservice to potential entrants into the field who haven’t yet had much exposure to the wonderful world of video games or may not have directly experienced their components for themselves. Unlike literature, art, music and film, video games occupy a somewhat niche space due to their historical reliance special-ised hardware – such as a console or gaming PCs – for play. However, with the advent of smartphones, video games have become increasingly accessible to a wider audience.
Video games resist simple definitions due to the fluidity of their constituent parts – they are multimodal combinations that may contain aspects of code, art, music, text, cinematic cut scenes, gameplay mechanics and narrative, which are combined to engage a person in play. Through these interactive experiences, players navigate virtual spaces, solve puzzles, combat enemies and manipulate avatars or in-game objects in pursuit of the game’s objectives.
Chapter Fifteen - Conclusion: Subverting the Law and Humanities Canon
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- By Sara Ramshaw
- Edited by Daniel Newman, Cardiff University, Russell Sandberg, Cardiff University
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Summary
Part I: On the Question of Canonicity
One question that dominated many of the papers and conversations that took place at the 25th anniversary of the Association for the Study of Law, Culture and Humanities (LCH) annual conference, hosted by the University of Toronto in Canada on 22–23 June 2023, was whether there is (or should be) a law and humanities canon? I spoke directly to this question on a panel with James Martel and Hyo Yoon Kang on the first morning of the conference. This question was picked up by many others during the two days, including past LCH president Susan Heinzelman in the plenary session entitled ‘LCH at 25: Looking Back, Thinking Forward’.
The question of canonicity as it relates to law and humanities scholarship is very relevant to this current collection of essays edited by Newman and Sandberg as it attempts to add to, or intervene into, the established law and humanities canon (if there is one), and thus must be interrogated for the message and power it holds in that regard. In my conference paper, which closely followed the argument set out in my published Commentary, I imagined law and humanities not as a ‘canon’ per se but as a ‘field without a canon’, or a canon that resists canonisation. I argued that arts and humanities–based practices utilised in legal research and teaching expose the law and humanities ‘canon’ to its dual (and somewhat contradictory) nature, as that which continually strains towards a pre-established archive, but must also leap ahead fearlessly to properly defy disciplinary boundaries and move the field beyond siloed thinking. This, to my mind, is one of the preliminary aims of law and humanities interdisciplinary scholarship and pedagogy. These practices consist not of a stable collection of set texts but instead signify a process of experimentation that is ever in flux and alive to possibility. It is this process of discovering new arts and humanities–based practices that ensures law and humanities remains a vibrant, yet ever-changing, field for years to come.
Canonisation, in its establishment of a field of intellectual thought that defines its parameters or the importance of certain texts and core issues at stake, invites community and consensus.
Chapter Eight - Law and Philosophy
- Edited by Daniel Newman, Cardiff University, Russell Sandberg, Cardiff University
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Introduction
This chapter looks at law and philosophy as it appears in the Law School. In contrast with some of the chapters in this volume, which consider emerging or prospective links between law and a humanities subject, law and philosophy are already closely bound together and have been a prominent part of the legal academy. They are bound by a shared interest in justice: probing relationships between state and citizen, unpicking the rules people are expected to live by and, centrally, exploring how to govern fairly. Concerns around justice are prominent philosophical concerns and play a central role in political philosophy, with justice central to debates in ethics as it looks at values, right and wrong action, obligations and rights. Within law, the field of legal philosophy takes its interest in what the law is and ought to be, which again brings justice concerns to the fore. Both political philosophy, which has tended to occur outside the Law School, and legal philosophy, from within, are typically brought together in the legal academy through the teaching of jurisprudence. Hence the connection between law and philosophy is firmly established with jurisprudence modules being common in Law Schools. And this impact of philosophy informs what is sometimes known as legal theory, which is the all-encompassing term for the approach that compliments and contrasts traditional black letter law.
Thus, legal theory derived at least in part from philosophy allows us to go beyond looking at the law in and of itself and ask bigger questions. As a teacher, for example, I use this theory to explore social justice, influenced by how such inquiry may explore the way law plays a role in structuring society to serve the ends of some, over others. For example, why do some people have their basic needs such as housing met while others do not? And what can be done to change things for the better? These questions can include asking how and why the law perpetuates certain structures of power. And thus, legal theorising can help us pursue issues of social justice – which can be such a powerful part of the legal academy and one of the topics that can most engage students. This gives us a means to explore the role that law plays in stratifying society along the lines of class, race and gender to name but a few prominent divisions.
Chapter Four - Law and Film
- Edited by Daniel Newman, Cardiff University, Russell Sandberg, Cardiff University
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Summary
Sam Bowden:
A lawyer should represent his client.
Max Cady:
Should ZEALOUSLY represent his client within the bounds of the law. I find you guilty, counselor! Guilty of betrayin’ your fellow man! Guilty of betrayin’ your country and abrogatin’ your oath! Guilty of judgin’ me and sellin’ me out! With the power vested in me by the kingdom of God, I sentence you to the Ninth Circle of Hell! Now you will learn about loss! Loss of freedom! Loss of humanity! Now you and I will truly be the same.
(Cape Fear 1991)Introduction
There has always been a mild obsession with lists of ‘best law/lawyer films’ as a starter for any work using film in the study of law which can be found from the turn of the century up until the time of writing. There are also Guides that exist to provide law teachers with material, as well as accounts of how the justice system operates in practice. In addition the role of ideology in film continues to be a theme. Interest comes, too, from slightly unexpected quarters. The impact of film generally as well as certain specific areas like race is also encountered as is writing on strongly related areas. Originally interest in the cinematic portrayal of law and lawyers tended to focus on the traditional American courtroom drama with specific attention on two classic films. First Sidney Lumet’s 1957 film Twelve Angry Men and second Robert Mulligans 1962 offering To Kill a Mockingbird. It also started with American legal academics who had an interest in film as a cultural phenomenon. The two films, noted above, were selected by the American Film Institute as the two finest courtroom dramas, which was defined as ‘a genre of film in which a system of justice plays a critical role in the film’s narrative’; two iconic actors, Henry Fonda and Gregory Peck, standing up against all odds to support the idea of ‘justice’. Both took up an unpopular stance demonstrating the importance of a fair trial against a backdrop of prejudice. The two films are powerful pieces of social drama with life-and-death decisions. However, Henry Fonda, as Davis Juror 8, in Twelve Angry Men, was not a lawyer but a member of the jury charged with determining the guilt or innocence of a young man accused of murder.
Chapter Ten - Law and Religion
- Edited by Daniel Newman, Cardiff University, Russell Sandberg, Cardiff University
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Summary
Introduction: An English and Welsh Case Study
The interaction between law and religion differs considerably across time and space. At one extreme, there are theocracies where the religion is law and societies where religious hands shape the laws of the land. There are states where a religion or a particular religious group is afforded a protected position, be it by constitutional recognition of one religion or by the existence of concordats or treaties with them endowing upon the religion equal status to the state. Other societies bestow legal status with resulting benefits and burdens on to those that register or come within particular definitions. Others still provide for freedom of religion and belief, with protections being extended to non-religious world views and often expressed in international agreements. Some states see their role as facilitating and, where needed, regulating the religious marketplace and others see the role of the state as being neutral and/or taking a secular stance (two approaches that are not identical and not completely compatible). These are, of course, ideal types. These models rarely, if ever, exist in their idealised perfect form. In many places in many eras, several of these characteristics exist and interact uneasily. This is often the result of historical religion-state relationships failing to keep up with wider political, social and legal change. The interaction between law and religion is invariably in flux – always contestable, ever changing often in subtle sometimes unseen ways.
This chapter focuses squarely on the study of the interaction between law and religion in England and Wales in the early twenty-first century. Perhaps as a result of a lack of a single document amounting to a written constitution, a wide number and diverse variety of the ideal types described above apply in England and Wales today; often in non-ideal ways. For much of its history, English laws have been shaped by clerical hands and this continues to some extent today with bishops of the Church of England sitting in the House of Lords and representatives of that church having a special protected position on the local bodies that determine how religion is taught in schools and the laws on collective worship in schools. Education is but one example of a social function originally discharged by religions and enforced by church courts where the state has only relatively recently been active and this limits any attempt by the state to monopolise.
Chapter Thirteen - Law and Theology
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- By Norman Doe
- Edited by Daniel Newman, Cardiff University, Russell Sandberg, Cardiff University
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Summary
Introduction: Towards Legal Theology
In addition to the established field of law and religion whereby scholars study the interaction between religion and the law from a range of disciplinary perspectives, attention should also be afforded to the interaction between the disciplines of law and theology. Theology, the study of God, consists of a network of subdisciplines: in the Christian context, these include biblical theology, moral theology, ecumenical theology and so on. Each branch of theology has its own distinctive object of study, methods and purposes. For example, pneumatology studies the Holy Spirit, practical theology uses the pastoral cycle, and liberation theology seeks to transform unjust societal structures that oppress the marginalised. Each branch of theology has its own distinctive community of scholars. It is a common view (though perhaps a contested one, as between the different church traditions) that the main purpose of Christian theology is to proclaim the Gospel of Christ. The branches of theology, in turn, are vehicles for each of this core purpose.
This chapter explores how legal theology could become a branch of theology with its own distinctive objects of study, methods and purposes. What follows explores these themes, how the subdiscipline of legal theology might be defined and developed in the context of the study of the systems of law, order, and polity, of churches across the Christian traditions that deal with, for example, forms of regulation, ministry (lay or ordained), governance (institutions and functions), discipline, doctrine, worship, rites, property and external relations. It does so as to the following: (1) The object of study: legal theology should at its core be about the relationship between theology and church law – more particularly, the relationship between church law and each of the other branches of theology. (2) The method of study: legal theology may involve the theological study of church law and/or the legal study of theology using standard juristic methods (such as text and context, critical, historical, analytical) as well as methods used in the other branches of theology. (3) The purpose of study: the development of a community of scholars collaborating with a view to its impact on ecclesial practice. In each section, the potential for legal theology will be discussed by reference to three other subdisciplines of theology.
List of Contributors
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Chapter Nine - Law and Popular Music
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Summary
Introduction: A Developing Tune
This chapter focuses on law and music, emphasising the engagement by law and humanities scholars with popular music. It is in five parts. The first part identifies a long-standing ‘minor jurisprudence’ concerned with the parallels and cross-fertilisations between legal theorising and musicology, most often depicting judging/lawyering as forms of creative performance. In the second part it is identified that these explorations parallel more doctrinal scholarship on the legal forms – especially copyright – that surround music in the popular space. The third part discerns an area of law and popular music scholarship that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, formed from traces of textual signifiers in Critical Legal Studies (CLS) scholarship and the expanding of law and literature to a broader enterprise concerned with law and popular culture. The fourth part identifies law and popular music scholarship where music is seen as a challenge to the legal orthodoxy. In this work, there is the utilisation of popular music, particularly songwriters and their lyrics, as manifesting a cultural zeitgeist: the musician as the voice of a generation in protest against a legally embedded orthodoxy. The fifth part considers a trajectory within law and popular music of construing popular music as articulating a ‘popular jurisprudence’. This focus has a connection with the earlier ‘minor jurisprudence’ of legal theory and musicology. It identifies in the cultural project of popular musicians – their lives, lyrics, videos, album art, political and cultural legacies, and social media presences – an articulation, and critique, of received legal forms. Through singing, dancing and creating in the mainstream, fundamental legalities are presented, questioned and reappropriated.
‘Minor Jurisprudence’ of Law and (Mostly Classical) Music
Law and music have a long-intertwined history. First Nations peoples of Australia describe essential legal relations with Country as ‘songlines’: that the proper relations between land, law and peoples are connected though song. In the mythmaking of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, his world and peoples and the discord they experience are constituted from the singing of ‘Great Music’ by the godhead Eru and angelic-like Ainur. However, the posited and doctrinal focus of the modern Western legal tradition has tended to be deaf to the potential foundational intertwining of law and music. Peter Goodrich has suggested: ‘Just as music has historically paid little attention to writing, law – cold prose, serious social speech – has generally marginalised music.’
Preface
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Summary
Interdisciplinary approaches to law are now commonplace at least in terms of legal research. Although in the Anglo-American world at least such work has tended to be predominantly social scientific in focus, there has also been an increase in interdisciplinary scholarship on law that draws upon the humanities. This is most notable in the large literature on law and literature as well as the development of a number of further ‘law and’ fields. Some of these (e.g. law and history, law and religion, law and philosophy) have been long-lasting but have been revived in recent years by increased interdisciplinary collaborations while other areas (e.g. law and television, law and comics, law and music) represent new areas of interest that have seen legal scholars interact with academics from other parts of the university and with practitioners, artists and producers. These ‘law and’ fields, however, tend to exist in isolation from one another and this limits their development in that they are not able to draw upon each other’s intellectual and methodological developments and because this means that they exist as small disparate fields at the margins of law as an academic discipline.
There is now a growing number of works that pay attention to ‘law and humanities’ as a field, including a small number of specialist journals, but these typically take a thematic approach and are not particularly accessible to newcomers and to a student readership. This edited work, therefore, fulfils a real and pressing need to provide an accessible, introductory but critical guide to law and humanities as a whole by exploring how various disciplinary ‘law and’ fields have developed. Law and Humanities contributes to further scrutinising the content and role of law, and how it can contribute and be enriched by being understood within the law and humanities tradition as a whole.
This edited collection provides an accessible introduction to law and humanities. It is designed to be the first port of call for students and scholars interested in particular ‘law and’ fields and law and humanities in general. It examines a number of ‘law and’ interactions in turn (ordered alphabetically). Each chapter is written by an expert in the respective field and will explore the nature, development and possible further trajec-tory of that particular disciplinary ‘law and’ field. As editors, we have encouraged each contributor to conceptualise their own discussion of their field.
Before Borders: A Legal and Literary History of Naturalization By Stephanie DeGooyer, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022. 216 pp. ISBN: 9781421443928
- Sherally Munshi
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- Journal:
- International Journal of Law in Context , First View
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 08 January 2024, pp. 1-7
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Mainstreaming equality and human rights: Factors that inhibit and facilitate implementation in regulators, inspectorates and ombuds in England and Wales
- David Barrett
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- Journal:
- International Journal of Law in Context , First View
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 08 January 2024, pp. 1-25
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To date the mainstreaming of equality and human rights law into public sector organisations has been underwhelming with the implementation of these norms being ad hoc and inconsistent. Existing research on factors that influence implementation has been either too general or too disjointed. This article has two aims to advance research on the implementation of equality and human rights: (i) to outline factors that influence the implementation of these norms and (ii) provide a more settled foundations for future research on equality and human rights implementation. It does this through interviews, undertaken in 2018–2019, with individuals responsible for leading the implementation of equality and human rights law within public sector organisations (specifically regulators, inspectorates and ombudsmen) in England and Wales. On the basis of this, the article makes suggestions for how the implementation of equality and human rights can be advanced further through changes to the regulatory environment.
Conclusion
- Mathew John, O.P. Jindal Global University, India
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- Book:
- India's Communal Constitution
- Published online:
- 05 August 2023
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- 04 January 2024, pp 123-133
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Summary
To sum up and draw this book to a conclusion, the Communal Constitution was introduced as a pathological tendency in Indian constitutional practice that identified the Indian people along religious lines. Normatively, this presents a straightforward problem pointing to the task of defending, justifying, and pulling constitutional practice back to the Indian Constitution's much-celebrated promise of equal liberties. However, to make explicit the contours of the Communal Constitution, this book has consistently bracketed off and distanced its gaze from the search for normatively preferred or correct solutions. In the place of normative argument the previous chapters have emphasised communal aspects in constitutional design and practice that have belied and cohabited with the Constitution's much-celebrated liberal ambitions. Even so, as the Communal Constitution acquires salience against the background of the Constitution's liberal values, those aspirations also set the ground along which the discussion of the previous chapters is best appraised.
The Liberal Background
With the hindsight of the previous chapters, the Communal Constitution could be described as a frustration or even critique of liberal secular aspirations as it has operated in Indian constitutional practice. The hegemonic grasp of liberal secular ideas is under severe stress both in India and in all parts of the modern world. In everyday politics a surge in populist authoritarian and nationalist movements attempts to dismantle the open and fraternal institutional culture that makes equal liberties possible. In the realm of ideas, liberal secular values have always been subject to challenge. However, this has been especially so over the last few decades with a significant body of scholarship pointing to various challenges or impossibilities in engendering and fostering liberal secular politics. This body of work is too large and varied to meaningfully recount, but it is important to mention that its emphasis on a critical reconstruction of liberal secular norms as they have been shaped and passed on by state practice forms an important backdrop to this book's account of the Communal Constitution. Accordingly, exploring the imprint of religion on how the Indian people are identified, all previous chapters have attempted to make salient the challenges posed to the Indian Constitution's bid to demarcate its people as a liberal community of free and equal citizens.
Thus, as the previous chapters have shown, the equal liberty of citizens has not always been the preferred choice to delimit the identity of the Indian people.
Introduction
- Mathew John, O.P. Jindal Global University, India
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- Book:
- India's Communal Constitution
- Published online:
- 05 August 2023
- Print publication:
- 04 January 2024, pp 1-16
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Summary
Constitutions are statements of ambition. They are the pathways along which a political community envisions its hopes and aspirations. Over time, constitutions are also maps of failure and frustration. This book identifies one such constitutional failure, which it terms India's Communal Constitution. The Communal Constitution picks out a tendency in the Constitution to cast the identity of the Indian people along religious lines. Needless to say, this tendency gnaws at the heart of Indian constitutionalism, the liberal promise of equal liberties. Therefore, describing the grasp of the Communal Constitution, this book examines the manner it might be best understood alongside the Constitution's aspiration to forge a liberal and secular polity.
Outline of the Problem
To elaborate the communal orientation of the Indian Constitution and the drag it exerts on its liberal goals, a few distinctions and clarifications are useful to kick-start the discussion. In studies on communal tendencies in Indian constitutional politics, a standard point of departure has been the rise of Hindu nationalism over the last century, and especially in the period after the rise of the Ram Janmabhoomi–Babri Masjid dispute. These studies examine the phenomenon of Hindu nationalism in Indian public life and the extent to which it has undermined constitutional commitment to secular ideals. By extension, these studies are a comment on the inability of the broadly liberal and secular consensus embodied in the Constitution to hold its own against its adversaries.
In relation to the rise of religious nationalism, some scholars have suggested that the religious and group-oriented character of Indian society has not been well disposed to liberal secular norms. In turn, it could be argued that these dimensions of Indian society have not facilitated a robust defence of its liberal constitutional state. Whatever stance one takes in relation to these arguments, it is important to note that they seek to explain socio-cultural forces that exert an external influence on constitutional institutions and values. In other words, these arguments on the working of constitutional institutions foreground forces like Hindu nationalist mobilisation as influences that are analytically distinct and largely external to the liberal secular organisation of the Indian Constitution.
The sway of Hindu nationalist mobilisation has never been more pressing on India's liberal constitutional state as parties vowing allegiance to it hold the levers of state power in many parts of contemporary India.