Kieran Tranter – författare

This book engages with the place of law and legality within Australia’s distinctive contribution to global televisual culture.

Australian popular culture has created a lasting legacy – for good or bad – of representations of law, lawyers and justice ‘down under’. Within films and television of striking landscapes, peopled with heroes, antiheroes, survivors and jokers, there is a fixation on law, conflicts between legal orders, brutal violence and survival. Deeply compromised by the ongoing violence against the lives and laws of First Nation Australians, Australian film and television has sharply illuminated what it means to live with a ‘rule of law’ that rules with a legacy, and a reality, of deep injustice. This book is the first to bring together scholars to reflect on, and critically engage with, the representations and global implications of law, lawyers and justice captured through the lenses of Australian film, television and social media.

Exploring how distinctively Australian lenses capture uniquely Australian images and narratives, the book nevertheless engages these in order to provide broader insights into the contemporary translations and transmogrifications of law and justice.

This book engages with the place of law and legality within Australia’s distinctive contribution to global televisual culture.

Australian popular culture has created a lasting legacy – for good or bad – of representations of law, lawyers and justice ‘down under’. Within films and television of striking landscapes, peopled with heroes, antiheroes, survivors and jokers, there is a fixation on law, conflicts between legal orders, brutal violence and survival. Deeply compromised by the ongoing violence against the lives and laws of First Nation Australians, Australian film and television has sharply illuminated what it means to live with a ‘rule of law’ that rules with a legacy, and a reality, of deep injustice. This book is the first to bring together scholars to reflect on, and critically engage with, the representations and global implications of law, lawyers and justice captured through the lenses of Australian film, television and social media.

Exploring how distinctively Australian lenses capture uniquely Australian images and narratives, the book nevertheless engages these in order to provide broader insights into the contemporary translations and transmogrifications of law and justice.

In 1918 a young Carl Schmitt published a short satirical fiction entitled The Buribunks. He imagined a future society of beings who consistently wrote and disseminated their personal diaries. Schmitt would go on to become the infamous philosopher of the exception and for a while the ‘Crown Jurist of the Third Reich’. The Buribunks – ironically for beings that lived only for self-memorialisation – has been mostly lost to history. However, the digital realm, with its emphasis on the informatic traces generated by human doing, and the continual interest in Schmitt’s work to explain and criticise contemporary constellations of power, suggests that The Buribunks is a text whose epoch has come.

This volume includes the first full translation into English of The Buribunks and a selection of critical essays on the text, its meanings in the digital present, its playing with and criticism of the literary form, and its place within Schmitt’s life and work. The Buribunks and the essays provide a complex, critical and provocative invitation to reimagine the relations between the human and their imprint and legacy within archives and repositories. There is a fundamental exploration of what it means to be a being intensely aware of ‘writing itself’.

This is not just a volume for critical lawyers, literary scholars and the Schmitt literati. It is a volume that challenges a broad range of disciplines, from philosophy to critical data studies, to reflect on the digital present and its assembled and curated beings. It is a volume that provides a set of fantastically located concepts, images and histories that traverse ideas and practices, play and politics, power and possibility.

In 1918 a young Carl Schmitt published a short satirical fiction entitled The Buribunks. He imagined a future society of beings who consistently wrote and disseminated their personal diaries. Schmitt would go on to become the infamous philosopher of the exception and for a while the ‘Crown Jurist of the Third Reich’. The Buribunks – ironically for beings that lived only for self-memorialisation – has been mostly lost to history. However, the digital realm, with its emphasis on the informatic traces generated by human doing, and the continual interest in Schmitt’s work to explain and criticise contemporary constellations of power, suggests that The Buribunks is a text whose epoch has come.

This volume includes the first full translation into English of The Buribunks and a selection of critical essays on the text, its meanings in the digital present, its playing with and criticism of the literary form, and its place within Schmitt’s life and work. The Buribunks and the essays provide a complex, critical and provocative invitation to reimagine the relations between the human and their imprint and legacy within archives and repositories. There is a fundamental exploration of what it means to be a being intensely aware of ‘writing itself’.

This is not just a volume for critical lawyers, literary scholars and the Schmitt literati. It is a volume that challenges a broad range of disciplines, from philosophy to critical data studies, to reflect on the digital present and its assembled and curated beings. It is a volume that provides a set of fantastically located concepts, images and histories that traverse ideas and practices, play and politics, power and possibility.

This book presents and engages the world-building capacity of legal theory through cultural legal studies of science and speculative fictions.

In these studies, the contributors take seriously the legal world building of science and speculative fiction to reveal, animate and critique legal wisdom: juris-prudence. Following a common approach in cultural legal studies, the contributors engage directly, and in detail, with specific cultural ‘texts’, novels, television, films and video games in order to explore a range of possible legal futures. The book is organized in three parts: first, the contextualisation of science and speculative fiction as jurisprudence; second, the temporality of law and legal theory and third, the analysis of specific science and speculative fictions. Throughout, the contributors reveal the way in which law as nomos builds normative universes through the narration of a future.

This book will appeal to scholars and students with interests in legal theory, cultural legal studies, law and the humanities and law and literature.

This book presents and engages the world-building capacity of legal theory through cultural legal studies of science and speculative fictions.

In these studies, the contributors take seriously the legal world building of science and speculative fiction to reveal, animate and critique legal wisdom: juris-prudence. Following a common approach in cultural legal studies, the contributors engage directly, and in detail, with specific cultural ‘texts’, novels, television, films and video games in order to explore a range of possible legal futures. The book is organized in three parts: first, the contextualisation of science and speculative fiction as jurisprudence; second, the temporality of law and legal theory and third, the analysis of specific science and speculative fictions. Throughout, the contributors reveal the way in which law as nomos builds normative universes through the narration of a future.

This book will appeal to scholars and students with interests in legal theory, cultural legal studies, law and the humanities and law and literature.

This book examines how science fiction informs the legal imagination of technological futures.

Science fiction, the contributors to this book argue, is a storehouse of images, tropes, concepts and memes that inform the legal imagination of the future, and in doing so generate impetus for change. Specifically, the contributors examine how science fictions imagine human life in space, in the digital and as formed and negotiated by corporations. They then connect this imaginary to how law should be understood in the present and changed for the future. Across the chapters, there is an urgent sense of the need for law – as it is has been, and as it might become – to order and safeguard the future for a multiplicity of vulnerable entities.

This book will appeal to scholars and students with interests in law and technology, legal theory, cultural legal studies and law and the humanities.

This book examines how science fiction informs the legal imagination of technological futures.

Science fiction, the contributors to this book argue, is a storehouse of images, tropes, concepts and memes that inform the legal imagination of the future, and in doing so generate impetus for change. Specifically, the contributors examine how science fictions imagine human life in space, in the digital and as formed and negotiated by corporations. They then connect this imaginary to how law should be understood in the present and changed for the future. Across the chapters, there is an urgent sense of the need for law – as it is has been, and as it might become – to order and safeguard the future for a multiplicity of vulnerable entities.

This book will appeal to scholars and students with interests in law and technology, legal theory, cultural legal studies and law and the humanities.

The contributions in this volume suggest that "the ethics project in legal education" is increasingly an international one. Even though the strength of commitment by both the profession and the legal academy to "ethics learning" within law schools varies, two fundamental questions confront all who work in this area. First, what is it that we want our students to learn (or, perhaps, in what manner do we want our students to develop) from the teaching of "legal ethics"? Second, how can we create a learning environment that will encourage the nature and quality of learning we think is important?

All the contributors to this volume take a strong stand on the importance of ethical legal practice and the role of law schools in developing students’ capacities in this area. They share a belief in the essential need to encourage law students to engage with the moral dimensions of legal practice. The questions that these scholars grapple with are therefore not of the "should we be teaching this?" variety, but "how might we best to go about doing this, so that our efforts within law schools really make some difference?" Each of the chapters in this volume adds uniquely to our understanding of these matters.

The contributions in this volume suggest that "the ethics project in legal education" is increasingly an international one. Even though the strength of commitment by both the profession and the legal academy to "ethics learning" within law schools varies, two fundamental questions confront all who work in this area. First, what is it that we want our students to learn (or, perhaps, in what manner do we want our students to develop) from the teaching of "legal ethics"? Second, how can we create a learning environment that will encourage the nature and quality of learning we think is important?

All the contributors to this volume take a strong stand on the importance of ethical legal practice and the role of law schools in developing students’ capacities in this area. They share a belief in the essential need to encourage law students to engage with the moral dimensions of legal practice. The questions that these scholars grapple with are therefore not of the "should we be teaching this?" variety, but "how might we best to go about doing this, so that our efforts within law schools really make some difference?" Each of the chapters in this volume adds uniquely to our understanding of these matters.

The study of legal ethics and the legal profession has emerged as a distinct and important field of scholarship over the last 30 years. However, as in other disciplines, academic recognition can in turn entrench static and powerful meta-theories and narratives about professional ethos and practise, this collection seeks to disrupt this homogenising impulse and to present alternative voices by bringing together a range of international scholars writing about legal ethics and the legal profession.

The book features significant and timely contributions which take contemporary and non-mainstream perspectives on the current and future shape of the legal profession. The essays not only describe the rapidly changing profession but canvas different approaches to scholarship on the legal profession. The collection seeks to explore a diverse and contextualised profession from a number of angles. Authors examine how the public sees lawyers and how lawyers see their own profession; how we practise law and how this practice shapes lawyers; how such cultural and professional practice intersects with institutional structures of the law to create certain legal outcomes; and how we regulate the legal profession to modify or institute ethical practice.

The volume provides insights into legal culture and ethics from the perspective of authors from Australia, Canada, England, the United States, New Zealand and Kenya – a diversity of national perspectives that give valuable insights into developments in the profession at the local and global level. It also illustrates diversity within the profession by tracing differing professional career trajectories based on raced or gendered barriers, alternative ethical strategies and the impact of organisational cultures in which lawyers practice.

The study of legal ethics and the legal profession has emerged as a distinct and important field of scholarship over the last 30 years. However, as in other disciplines, academic recognition can in turn entrench static and powerful meta-theories and narratives about professional ethos and practise, this collection seeks to disrupt this homogenising impulse and to present alternative voices by bringing together a range of international scholars writing about legal ethics and the legal profession.

The book features significant and timely contributions which take contemporary and non-mainstream perspectives on the current and future shape of the legal profession. The essays not only describe the rapidly changing profession but canvas different approaches to scholarship on the legal profession. The collection seeks to explore a diverse and contextualised profession from a number of angles. Authors examine how the public sees lawyers and how lawyers see their own profession; how we practise law and how this practice shapes lawyers; how such cultural and professional practice intersects with institutional structures of the law to create certain legal outcomes; and how we regulate the legal profession to modify or institute ethical practice.

The volume provides insights into legal culture and ethics from the perspective of authors from Australia, Canada, England, the United States, New Zealand and Kenya – a diversity of national perspectives that give valuable insights into developments in the profession at the local and global level. It also illustrates diversity within the profession by tracing differing professional career trajectories based on raced or gendered barriers, alternative ethical strategies and the impact of organisational cultures in which lawyers practice.

It has been over thirty years since the founding crises that birthed legal ethics as both a field of study and a discrete field of law. In that time thinking about the ethical dimension of legal practice has taken several turns: from justifications of zealous advocacy, to questions of process and connections to specifically legal values, to more recently consideration of legal conduct as part of a wider field of virtue. Parallel to this dynamism of thought, there has also been significant changes in how legal professions, especially within those that possess a common law heritage, have been regulated and the values and conceptions of legitimate conduct that has informed this regulation.

This volume represents an opportunity for a comprehensive review of legal ethics as an international movement. Contributors include many of the key participants to the legal ethics field from the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, including David Luban and Deborah Rhode, as well as many of the recognised emerging thinkers.

The theme of the book is taking stock of the last thirty years of legal ethics practice and scholarship and also a forum for new ideas and new thinking regarding the conduct of lawyers and the moral and social responsibility of the legal profession. The contributions also consider the topic of dynamism. Over the last decade significant developments in both the expectations of professional conduct and the regulation of the profession has been experienced in all jurisdictions, which has seen traditional, and once sacred, conceptions of lawyering challenged and re-evaluated. The contributors also look at the theme of affirmation. Within an increasingly complex environment of change and dynamism, this volume reaffirms that there is value within the field of legal ethics. That is the project of reflecting on the unique ethical and conduct requirements of lawyering can not be submerged into a broader field of applied philosophy, management or regulatory studies. While this volume does not deny the opportunities that exist for interdisciplinary engagement with philosophy, social science or politics, it affirms legal ethics as a legitimate and highly relevant field of inquiry.