Miscellaneous

Shakespeare and Moot Court

Posted on January 22, 2010
Desmond Manderson, McGill University Faculty of Law, and Paul Yachnin have published "Shakespeare and Judgment: The Renewal of Law and Literature." It will appear as "Shakespeare Rules: Remembrance of Things Past" in volume 15 of The European Legacy (2010)...

The History of the Legal Profession

Posted on January 20, 2010
David Sugarman, Lancaster University Law School, has published "Beyond Ignorance and Complacency: Robert Stevens? Journey Through Lawyers and the Courts," in volume 16 of International Journal of the Legal Profession (2009). Here is the abstract.Brian Abel-Smith and Robert Stevens? Lawyers and the Courts (LATC), published in 1967, was the first major critical social history of the English legal system from the industrial revolution to modern times (1750-1965)...

Antigone and the Law

Posted on January 20, 2010
Bonnie Honig, American Bar Foundation, has published "Antigone?s Two Laws: Greek Tragedy and the Future of Humanism," as American Bar Foundation Research Paper No. 09-05. Here is the abstract.In Sophocles' Antigone there is one speech that attracts the ire and admiration of critics...

ABC's New Lawyer Drama Premieres Thursday Night

Posted on January 20, 2010
"The Deep End" premieres tomorrow night on ABC at 8 p.m., 7 Central Time. In the pilot: "Dylan is given an impossible pro-bono custody case; a 90-year-old man signs an agreement, thinking that Beth is his daughter; Liam tries to get a client to sign with the firm under false pretenses; Addy gets attention when she speaks her mind...

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Charles Reade and the History of Victorian Copyright Law

Posted on January 20, 2010
Barbara Lauriat, University of Oxford Faculty of Law, has published "Charles Reade's Roles in the Drama of Victorian Dramatic Copyright," in volume 33 of the Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts (2009). Here is the abstract.The following article describes the eccentric dramatist, novelist, journalist, and barrister Charles Reade?s direct involvement in shaping the UK law of copyright - particularly copyright in dramatic works...

Juries and Narrative

Posted on January 18, 2010
Robin H. Conley, UCLA Department of Anthropology, and John M. Conley, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill School of Law, have published "Stories from the Jury Room: How Jurors Use Narrative to Process Evidence," at 49 Studies in Law 25 (2009). Here is the abstract...

A New Book on The Law and Harry Potter

Posted on January 15, 2010
New Collection: The Law and Harry Potter, edited by Jeffrey E. Thomas and Franklin G. Snyder (Carolina Academic Press, 2010). This volume considers the depiction of law and legal institutions in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels. It contains more than twenty chapters by legal academics from the U...

A Collection on Law and Magic

Posted on January 15, 2010
New publication: Law and Magic: A Collection of Essays (Christine A. Corcos, ed., Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2010). This collection of 24 essays explores the very rich ways in which the rule of law and the practice of magic enrich and inform each other...

Law-As-Story

Posted on January 12, 2010
Palma Strand, Creighton University School of Law, has published "Law as Story: A Civic Concept of Law," at 18 Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal 603 (2009). Here is the abstract.This article introduces a social constructionist civic concept of law, which emphasizes the story nature of law and the fact that as a complex social system law emerges from and is grounded in collaborative communications among citizens...

A New Incarnation of Sherlock Holmes

Posted on January 06, 2010
From the New York Times, a review of the new Sherlock Holmes film, starring Robert Downey and Jude Law.

Legal Language and Its Meaning

Posted on January 04, 2010
Andrei Marmor, USC Gould School of Law, has published "Can the Law Imply More than it Says? On Some Pragmatic Aspects of Strategic Speech," as USC Law Legal Studies Paper No. 09-43. Here is the abstract. The content of the law is often determined by what legal authorities communicate...

Law and Power in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and "A Man For All Seasons"

Posted on January 04, 2010
Dan E. Stigall, U. S. Army JAG Corps, has published "The Rule of Kings and the Rule of Law: Representations of Law and Power in 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' and 'A Man for All Seasons'." Here is the abstract.The tension between the desires of the potentate and the 'immutable' nature of law is one that resonates in the human psyche because of the drama inherent in such a struggle...

Call For Papers

Posted on December 29, 2009
We live in a world of rapid global changes, which we nonetheless seek to understand with reference to general concepts. This world of change can be described in many different ways by taking account of a variety of factors. Among these we can distinguish a specific world-wide tendency for democratization, with social, individual and political dimensions...

Gary Watt's Equity Stirring: The Story of Justice Beyond Law

Posted on December 16, 2009
A wonderful, densely written book that you shouldn't miss: Gary Watt's Equity Stirring: The Story of Justice Beyond Law (Hart Publishing, 2009).Says Professor Watt in his introduction, "I start with titles, because one of the aims of this book is to explore the potential of a cultural discourse, based on equity, to resist a culture of entitlement, based on rights...

Call For Papers

Posted on December 16, 2009
Savage Thoughts: Interdisciplinarity and the Challenge of Claude Lévi-StraussInstitute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas McGill University, Montréal24-26 September 2010CALL FOR PAPERSClaude Lévi-Strauss was one of the great interdisciplinary writers of the twentieth century whose influence has been felt far beyond his home discipline of anthropology...

AALS Section On Law and the Humanities Focuses on "Reasoning From Literature" at 2010 Conference

Posted on December 15, 2009
From Jessica Silbey, news of this year's AALS Section on Law and the Humanities2010 AALS Conference, New OrleansReasoning from LiteratureThe ?literary turn? in legal studies manifests in many ways in our legal discipline and practice. Be it with the birth of the study of law and literature in the 1980s, the growing attention to narrative theory and storytelling in the law in the 1990s, or the ?cultural turn? in legal studies in the 21st century (as some scholars have called the cultural analysis of law), reasoning from literature seems commonplace...

Juries and Narrative

Posted on December 08, 2009
John M. Conley, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, School of Law, and Robin H. Conley, UCLA Department of Anthropology, have published "Stories from the Jury Room: How Jurors Use Narrative to Process Evidence," at 49 Studies in Law, Politics, & Society 25 (2009)...

Matriculate At Lost U: Low Tuition, Lots of Relevance, High Fun Factor

Posted on December 08, 2009
The Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus Blog has this piece about Lost University, a project of the folks over at ABC's Lost, which links the show's content to, well, the real world. Real class materials include Bluray discs of the show, and you won't get any spoilers...

More Law and Baseball

Posted on December 07, 2009
And it's back.Aaron Zelinksy, Yale Law School, is publishing "The Justice as Commissioner: Benching the Judge-Umpire Analogy," in Yale Law Journal Online. Here's the abstract.Chief Justice Roberts has repeatedly compared the role of a Supreme Court Justice to that of a baseball umpire, and this analogy has assumed a prominent place in the contemporary debate over the appropriate role of a Supreme Court Justice...

Law and Baseball

Posted on December 07, 2009
Ross E. Davies, George Mason University School of Law, has published "It?s No Game: The Practice and Process of the Law in Baseball, and Vice Versa," in Seton Hall Journal of Sports and Entertainment (forthcoming). Here is the abstract. It is a commonplace that the relationship between baseball and the law is a long and close one...

Tax and Shakespeare

Posted on December 07, 2009
Ellen P. Aprill, Loyola Law School (Los Angeles, has published "A Tax Lawyer's Interpretation of Shakespeare," at 13 ABA Section of Taxation News Quarterly 13 (Fall 2009). Here is the abstract. Shakespeare has been quoted and invoked in numerous contexts, but, inexplicably, the insights his immortal words bring to tax law have been ignored...

Law in "Titus Andronicus"

Posted on December 03, 2009
Paul Raffield, University of Warwick School of Law, has published "'Terras Astraea reliquit?: Titus Andronicus and the Loss of Justice," in Shakespeare and the Law (Paul Raffield and Gary Watt eds.; Hart 2008) at 203-220). Here is the abstract. This paper considers the constitutional and political significance of Shakespeare?s Titus Andronicus, in the context of fin-de-siècle Elizabethan rule, during which period the jurisdiction of the prerogative courts threatened to supersede that of the courts of common law...

Contract Law in the Comedy of Errors

Posted on December 02, 2009
Paul Raffield, University of Warwick School of Law, has published "The Comedy of Errors and the Meaning of Contract," in Shakespeare's Imaginary Constitution: Late Elizabethan Politics and the Theatre of Law(3 Law and Humanities (2009)). Here is the abstract...

Religious Leaders and Constitutional Law

Posted on November 30, 2009
John M. Kang, St. Thomas University School of Law, has published "Appeal to Heaven: On the Religious Origins of the Constitutional Right of Revolution," at 18 William & Mary Bill of Rights 281 (2009). Here is the abstract. This Article explores the religious origins of the right to alter or abolish government...

Law and Art

Posted on November 22, 2009
A couple of articles on law and the art by the New York Times' Adam Liptak: here on Daniel Moore and here on Donald Johnson, serving three life terms for murder.

Singing About Species

Posted on November 20, 2009
Charles Darwin has his own minstrel. The Scientist's Victoria Stern writes about Philadelphia entertainer Brett Keyser, who sings about Mr. Darwin's accomplishments, both on the street and in a one-man show called "Darwinii: The Comeuppance of Man." Read more here (subscription; free)...

The Right of Publicity and "Crime of the Century" Cases

Posted on November 20, 2009
Edward Larson, Pepperdine University School of Law, has published "Murder Will Out: Rethinking the Right of Publicity Through One Classic Case," in volume 26 Rutgers Law Review (2009). Here is the abstract. In this forthcoming article, the author uses the protracted legal battles over the right of publicity stemming from the lasting celebrity created by the so-called ?crime of the century? to propose a legal test for applying the right of publicity generally...

It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Scrooge, and Other Tales From La La Land

Posted on November 20, 2009
Larry E. Ribstein, University of Illinois College of Law, has published "How Movies Created the Financial Crisis", in the Michigan State Law Review for Winter 2009. Here is the abstract. Narrative makes sense out of reality and can forcefully persuade listeners to a particular point of view...

Law, Humanities and the Medical Curriculum

Posted on November 20, 2009
Jennifer Bard, Texas Tech University School of Law, Thomas William Mayo, Southern Methodist School of Law, and Stacey A. Tovino, Drake University School of Law have published "Three Ways of Looking at a Health Law and Literature Class," in volume 1 of Drexel Law Review (Summer 2009)...

LCCHP Announces Winners of Annual Student Writing Competition

Posted on November 19, 2009
From the Lawyers' Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation (LCCHP)The Lawyers? Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation (LCCHP) is pleased to announce the winners of its 2009 annual student writing competition, sponsored by Andrews Kurth LLP. The first-place winner is Amelia Sargent of Stanford University Law School for a paper entitled ?New Jurisdictional Tools for Displaced Cultural Property in Russia: From ?Twice Saved? to ?Twice Taken??...

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