Miscellaneous

Translation, Comparative Law, and Localism

Posted on November 19, 2009
P. G. Monateri, University of Turin School of Law has published "'Cunning Passages': Traductology, Comparison and Ideology in the Law and Language Story." Here is the abstract.My standpoint in this paper is that in affording the subject of Law and Language we face a mass of ?local issues?, and ?local puzzles?, but that we still lack a theory to grasp with the bulk of the matter...

Reza Banakar, University of Westminster

Posted on November 17, 2009
Reza Banakar, University of Westminster School of Law, has published "In Search of Heimat: A Note on Franz Kafka?s Concept of Law," in volume 22 of Law and Literature (Summer 2010). Here is the abstract.Are Franz Kafka?s descriptions of law and legality a figment of his imagination or do they go beyond his obsessive probing of his neurosis, reflecting issues which also engaged the social and legal theorists of the time? Does Kafka?s conception of law offer anything new in respect to law, justice and bureaucracy, which was not explored by his contemporaries or by later legal scholars? This paper uses Kafka?s office writings as a starting point for re-examining the images of law, bureaucracy, hierarchy and authority in his fiction; images which are traditionally treated as metaphors for things other than law...

Positions Open

Posted on November 16, 2009
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF LAW and SOCIETY JOB DESCRIPTION: Successful candidates will be expected to teach courses in each of the following categories: (1) Introduction to Law and Society and/or Introduction to Law and Justice, (2) Comparative Legal Systems, American Legal History, Contemporary Issues in Law and Society, and/or Legal Rhetoric, (3) Directed Readings and Thesis Supervision and (4) electives of the major...

Conference on Legal Fictions in Early Cultures, UCI

Posted on November 16, 2009
From Robin S. Stewart, Department of English, University of California, Irvine, Information on the Webcast of the UCI Graduate Student Conference "Legal Fictions in Early Cultures"Here's the link to the online version of the conference:http://www.humanities...

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Legal Fictions

Posted on November 10, 2009
Nancy J. Knauer, Temple University School of Law, has published Legal Fictions and Juristic Truth, in volume 22 of St. Thomas Law Review (2010). Here is the abstract. The classic legal fiction is a curious artifice of legal reasoning. In a discipline primarily concerned with issues of fact and responsibility, the notion of a legal fiction should seem an anathema or, at the very least, an ill-suited means to promote a just result...

The Significance of the Charles River Bridge Case

Posted on November 05, 2009
Alfred S. Konefsky, University at Buffalo Law School, SUNY, has published "Simon Greenleaf, Boston Elites and the Social Meaning and Construction of the Charles River Bridge Case," in Transformations in American Law: Essays in Honor of Morton J. Horowitz (sic), vol...

Law, Text, Terror

Posted on November 04, 2009
Ian Ward, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, Faculty of Law, has published Law, Text, Terror, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. Here is the abstract. The relationship between law and terrorism has re-emerged recently as a pressing issue in contemporary jurisprudence...

An Economic Analysis of Immoral Contracts in Roman Law

Posted on October 30, 2009
Péter Cserne, Tilburg Law and Economics Center (TILEC), and Gergely Deli have published "Contracts and Morals: Towards an Economic Analysis of Immoral Contracts in Ancient Rome," as TILEC Discussion Paper 2009-037. Here is the abstract. The way we nowadays think about ?immoral? contracts is based on a number of assumptions...

Conference on Religious Legal Theory

Posted on October 30, 2009
?Religious Legal Theory: The State of the Field? Seton Hall University School of Law Newark, New Jersey Thursday-Friday, November 12-13, 2009Seton Hall Law School will host Religious Legal Theory: The State of the Field, a conference to assess the state of the field of religiously-informed legal theory and its contributions...

Consentual Language

Posted on October 30, 2009
Janice Nadler, Northwestern University School of Law and American Bar Foundation, and J. D. Trout, Loyola University of Chicago, have published "The Language of Consent in Police Encounters," in Oxford Handbook of Linguistics and Law (L. Solan and P. Tiersma eds...

The Uses of Verbs

Posted on October 30, 2009
Who said the Civil War was fought over a verb: "The United States is" or "The United States are"?Minor Myers, Brooklyn Law School, has published "Supreme Court Usage and the Making of an 'Is'," at 11 Green Bag 2d 457 (Summer 2008). Here is the abstract...

O Dracula, Where Art Thou?

Posted on October 30, 2009
From MSNBC.com, why we are so fascinated with vampires. It's a thrill that's centuries old.

Word Imagery

Posted on October 29, 2009
Cristina Costantini creates "word clouds" out of her writings using a program called Wordle. See examples here and here. Very neat!

Oh, That Arnold!

Posted on October 29, 2009
From NPR, this story about a possible coded message from the Office of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to California State Assemblyman Tom Ammaino. Reporter Melissa Block asks an expert cryptographer for assistance.

The Use of Law and Literature

Posted on October 27, 2009
Katie Rose Guest Pryal, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has published "Law, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Copia: A Response to Skeptics." Here is the abstract.Recently, the law and literature (L&L) enterprise has been "reassessed" by a variety of scholars, whose opinions fall loosely into two camps...

The Language of Power in Racine

Posted on October 27, 2009
Eric Heinze, Queen Mary University of London School of Law, has published "'This Power Isn?t Power If It?s Shared': Law and Violence in Jean Racine?s 'La Thébaïde'" in volume 22 of Law & Literature (2010). Here is the abstract.The Seventeenth century witnesses the steady demise of the fragmented or overlapping power regimes that had been rooted in the European Middle Ages...

Documentary Films and Criminal Justice

Posted on September 28, 2009
Taunya Lovell Banks, University of Maryland School of Law, has published "What Documentary Films Teach Us About the Criminal Justice System - Introduction," in volume 8 of University of Maryland Journal of Race, Religion, Gender & Class (2009). Here is the abstract...

The Impact of Civil Law On Common Law

Posted on September 28, 2009
Vivian Grosswald Curren, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, has published "Voices Saved from Vanishing," at 70 University of Pittsburgh School of Law 435 (2009). Here is the abstract.Jurists Uprooted: German-speaking Émigré Lawyers in Twentieth-century Britain examines the lives of eighteen émigré lawyers and legal scholars who made their way to the United Kingdom, almost all to escape Nazism, and analyzes their impact on the development of English law...

The Third Man

Posted on September 25, 2009
Shulamit Almog and Amnon Reichman, University of Haifa Faculty of Law, have published "Ethics, Aesthetics, and Law: The Third Man?s Three Prongs," at 46 Studies in Law, Politics, and Society 169-201 (2008). Here is the abstract.The chapter explores the role of law in society and its relation to ethical conflicts as reflected through the prism of the film The Third Man...

The Rhetoric of Property Law

Posted on September 24, 2009
Johanna Gibson, Queen Mary University of London School of Law, has published "The Lay of the Land: The Geography of Traditional Cultural Expression," in Intellectual Property and Traditional Cultural Expressions in a Digital Environment 182-201 (C. B...

Marriage In Fine Art

Posted on September 24, 2009
Benjamin A. Templin, Thomas Jefferson School of Law, has published "The Marriage Contract in Fine Art," in volume 30 of the Northern Illinois University Law Review (2009). Here is the abstract. This paper studies the depiction of the marriage contract in Dutch, French and English genre paintings from the 14th to 18th centuries...

Student Law and Film Societies in the U.S.

Posted on September 23, 2009
For a listserv (the LAWPROF list) I put together some information on Law and Film Societies (not student orgs devoted to entertainment/sports/media law and career opportunities) at U.S. law schools. I'm reproducing it here. These societies have as their sole or added mission to show and discuss movies...

Function, Form, and the Criminal Law

Posted on September 22, 2009
Martha Grace Duncan, Emory University School of Law, has published "Beauty in the Dark of Night; The Pleasures of Form in Criminal Law," in volume 59 of the Emory Law Journal (2010). Here is the abstract.After learning that the man she loves is the son of her 'great enemy,' Juliet goes to her window and speaks: What?s Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man...

The Effects of Advertising

Posted on September 22, 2009
Mark Bartholomew, University at Buffalo Law School, has published "Advertising and Social Identity." Here is the abstract. This essay takes a stand in the brewing legal academic debate over the consequences of advertising. On one side are the semiotic democratists, scholars who bemoan the ability of advertisers to take control of the meanings that they create through trademark law and other pro-business legal rules...

The Masons (Collectively, Not Perry)

Posted on September 22, 2009
And on the Freemasons, suddenly hip, with the publication of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol.

James Ellroy Discusses American History and Crime Writing

Posted on September 22, 2009
From NPR's Morning Edition, an interview with crime writer James Ellroy, who discusses his newest novel, Blood's a Rover.

Bad Boys

Posted on September 16, 2009
Randy Cohen reviews the forthcoming Emmy show this Sunday on CBS and considers whether police dramas say anything true about the world of law enforcement.

Sports Metaphors and Analogies In Judicial Opinions

Posted on September 15, 2009
Douglas E. Abrams, University of Missouri School of Law, has published "Sports in the Courts: The Role of Sports References in Judicial Opinions," in Villanova Sports and Entertainment Law Journal (forthcoming). Here is the abstract. In cases with no claims or defenses concerning sports, the Supreme Court and lower federal and state courts frequently publish opinions that draw analogies to the rules or terminology of sports familiar to broad segments of the American people...

Law and Lawyers in Post-Colonial Literature

Posted on September 15, 2009
Renee Newman Knake, Michigan State University College of Law, has published "Beyond Atticus Finch: Lessons on Ethics and Morality from Lawyers and Judges in Postcolonial Literature," in volume 32 of Journal of the Legal Profession (2008). Here is the abstract...

The "House" Effect?

Posted on September 12, 2009
According to this article from MSNBC.com, some "House" viewers are taking the show too seriously, which can result in demands on physicians for unnecessary exams and tests. Sounds a little like medical students, who come down with whatever disease they're studying that week in class...

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