Edinburgh Critical Studies in Law, Literature and the Humanities – serie

The first study of the representation of corporations in US law, literature, and culture Covers key topics in company law including the emergence of corporate personhood, the regulation of monopolies, the piercing of the corporate veil, agent-principal relationships and examines their literary and cultural manifestationsPresents interdisciplinary readings of legal, literary and visual texts, including legal treatises, caricatures, novels, and magazine publicationsDraws on literary texts including Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton's The Squatter and the Don, James Fenimore Cooper's The Bravo, Frank Norris' The Octopus and Charles W. Chesnutt's The Partners Draws on cases including Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge (1837), Munn v. The State of Illinois (1877) and Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886) This book examines the way the corporation a legal concept of enduring and timely importance in the Anglo-American legal tradition was imagined in the nineteenth century historical imagination.Stefanie Mueller traces the ways in which literary and cultural representations of the corporation in nineteenth-century America helped shift how the corporation was envisioned; from a public tool meant to serve the common good, to an instrument of private enterprise. She explores how artists and writers together with lawyers and economists represented this transformation through narrative and metaphor. Drawing on a range of legal, literary and visual texts, she shows how the corporation's public origins as well as its fundamentally collective nature continued to be relevant much longer than previous scholarship has argued.

Examines the way the corporation a legal concept of enduring and timely importance in the Anglo-American legal tradition was imagined in the nineteenth-century historical imagination. Stefanie Mueller traces the ways in which literary and cultural representations of the corporation in nineteenth-century America helped shift how the corporation was envisioned; from a public tool meant to serve the common good, to an instrument of private enterprise. She explores how artists and writers together with lawyers and economists represented this transformation through narrative and metaphor. Drawing on a range of legal, literary and visual texts, she shows how the corporation's public origins as well as its fundamentally collective nature continued to be relevant much longer than previous scholarship has argued.

A wide-ranging intellectual history of the Critical Legal Studies Movement, drawing from personal accounts, academic works, and the media. The Rise and Fall of Critical Legal Studies unpacks Critical Legal Studies (CLS) to address what CLS was, how it came about, and what its legacy means for contemporary legal theories. Taking a CLS approach to CLS, a range of legal, literary, filmic, and philosophical lenses are applied to key theorists and their works, with a specific focus on Duncan Kennedy. Through this analysis, a dominant type of CLS is untangled, and in true Crit form, repeatedly questioned from different perspectives to see what it achieved. The Rise and Fall of Critical Legal Studies argues that CLS haunts the legal landscape, constricting emerging critiques of law. While the personal hierarchies of the Movement's founders ensured CLS was also limited.

A wide-ranging intellectual history of the Critical Legal Studies Movement, drawing from personal accounts, academic works, and the media. The Rise and Fall of Critical Legal Studies unpacks Critical Legal Studies (CLS) to address what CLS was, how it came about, and what its legacy means for contemporary legal theories. Taking a CLS approach to CLS, a range of legal, literary, filmic, and philosophical lenses are applied to key theorists and their works, with a specific focus on Duncan Kennedy. Through this analysis, a dominant type of CLS is untangled, and in true Crit form, repeatedly questioned from different perspectives to see what it achieved. The Rise and Fall of Critical Legal Studies argues that CLS haunts the legal landscape, constricting emerging critiques of law. While the personal hierarchies of the Movement's founders ensured CLS was also limited.

Sets a new trajectory for considering the intertwined relationship between theology and law through speculative cinemaOffers 7 close readings of Hollywood speculative fiction blockbusters as theological and jurisprudential texts: Shyamalan's Unbreakable, Snyder's Man of Steel, Lucas and Disney's Star Wars, Nolan's The Dark Knight & The Dark Knight Rises, Proyas' I, Robot, Nolfi's The Adjustment Bureau and Jackson's The HobbitExplores key themes of law including justice, the exception, law's violence, revolution, law's universality, sovereignty and property as theftExplores key themes of theology including the nature of evil, myth and mysticism, atonement, sacrifice, compassionate acts, visions of the divine and charity as giftThrough close readings of a range of popular Hollywood speculative fiction films, Timothy Peters explores how fictional worlds, particularly those that 'make strange' the world of the viewer, can render visible and make explicit the otherwise opaque theologies of modern law. He illustrates that speculative cinema's genres of estrangement provide a way for us to see and engage the theological concepts of modern law in our era of late capitalism, global empire and the crises of neoliberalism.

Imagined States examines representations of the law in British and Nigerian high-brow, middle-brow and popular fiction and journalism. Drawing on a rich range of examples, the book focuses on the imaginative role that the state of exception played in the application of indirect rule during British colonialism and in the legal machinations of the postcolonial state. It reads works by Chinua Achebe, Joyce Cary, Cyprian Ekwensi and Edgar Wallace, together with a range of Nigerian market literature and journalism.

Through detailed readings of popular science fiction, including the novels of Frank Herbert and Octavia E. Butler and television’s Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who, this is the first sustained examination of legality in science fiction. Kieran Tranter includes substantive worked examples of the law and legal concepts projected by these science fiction texts, such as Australian car culture, legal responses to cloning and the relationship between legal theory and science fiction. By examining science fiction as the culture of our total technological world, it journeys with the partially-consumed human into the belly of the machine. What it finds is unexpected. Rather than a cold uniformity of exchangeable productive units, there is warmth, diversity and ‘life’ for the nodes in the networks. Through its science fiction focus it argues that this life generates a very different law of responsibility that can guide living well in technical legality.

Through close readings of a range of popular Hollywood speculative fiction films Shyamalan's Unbreakable, Snyder's Man of Steel, Lucas's and Disney's Star Wars, Nolan's The Dark Knight & The Dark Knight Rises, Proyas' I, Robot, Nolfi's The Adjustment Bureau and Jackson's The Hobbit Timothy Peters explores how fictional worlds, particularly those that 'make strange' the world of the viewer, can render visible and make explicit the otherwise opaque theologies of modern law. He illustrates that speculative cinema's genres of estrangement provide a way for us to see and engage the theological concepts of modern law in our era of late capitalism, global empire and the crises of neoliberalism.

Daniel Paul Schreber (1842–1911) was a senior German judge and jurist. He formulated a unique juridical theology of private life and developed a critical account of oikonomia, the practice of governance and administration. But his theoretical work was largely ignored due to his mental illness and his desire to be a woman in a time inhospitable to transitions. Now, Schreber’s Law looks beyond Judge Schreber's mental health to reappraise his distinguished contribution to legal theory.Peter Goodrich evaluates Schreber’s jurisprudence by analysing the Memoirs and his interpreters in detail, and sets his work in the context of both the neo-Kantian pure science of fin de siècle German jurisprudence and 21st-century legal theory. In this way, Goodrich shows how Schreber’s work challenges the legal thought of his era and opens up a potentially vital approach to contemporary jurisprudence.

Daniel Paul Schreber (1842–1911) was a senior German judge and jurist. He formulated a unique juridical theology of private life and developed a critical account of oikonomia, the practice of governance and administration. But his theoretical work was largely ignored due to his mental illness and his desire to be a woman in a time inhospitable to transitions. Now, Schreber’s Law looks beyond Judge Schreber's mental health to reappraise his distinguished contribution to legal theory.Peter Goodrich evaluates Schreber’s jurisprudence by analysing the Memoirs and his interpreters in detail, and sets his work in the context of both the neo-Kantian pure science of fin de siècle German jurisprudence and 21st-century legal theory. In this way, Goodrich shows how Schreber’s work challenges the legal thought of his era and opens up a potentially vital approach to contemporary jurisprudence.

Explores the aesthetic frames that mediate the sense(s) and experiences of justiceClose analysis of films such as Pan’s Labyrinth, High Heels, Common Wealth, The Method, No Rest for the Wicked, Unit 7Engages with legal theory, film studies, aesthetics, and politicsApproaches law and film as multisensory, embodied practicesDraws on European case studies in a field largely dominated by Anglo-American discourseSensing Justice examines the aesthetic frames that mediate the sensory perception and signification of law and justice in the context of 21st century Spain. What senses do these frames privilege or downgrade? What kind of subjects do they show, construct, and address? What kind of affective and ethical responses do they invite? What kind of judgments do they invite? The book addresses these questions by moving away from the focus on narrative and through a close analysis of selected contemporary Spanish films—such as Pan’s Labyrinth, High Heels, Common Wealth, The Method, No Rest for the Wicked, Unit 7. By creating new frames of perception and signification, the films analyzed challenge the senses of law and justice traditionally taken for granted and reconfigure them anew. Engaging with legal theory, film studies, aesthetics, and politics, Sensing Justice provides a compelling illustration of how law and justice are multisensory and embodied experiences.

Sensing Justice examines the aesthetic frames that mediate the sensory perception and signification of law and justice in the context of twenty-first-century Spain. What senses do these frames privilege or downgrade? What kind of subjects do they show, construct, and address? What kind of affective and ethical responses do they invite? What kind of judgments do they invite? The book addresses these questions by moving away from the focus on narrative and through a close analysis of selected contemporary Spanish films such as Pan's Labyrinth, High Heels, Common Wealth, The Method, No Rest for the Wicked and Unit 7. By creating new frames of perception and signification, the films analyzed challenge the senses of law and justice traditionally taken for granted and reconfigure them anew. Engaging with legal theory, film studies, aesthetics, and politics, Sensing Justice provides a compelling illustration of how law and justice are multisensory and embodied experiences.

Combining her expertise in legal theory and judicial practice in a continental European civil-law system, Jeanne Gaakeer explores the intertwinement of legal theory and practice to develop a humanities-inspired methodology for both the academic interdisciplinary study of law and literature and for legal practice. This volume addresses judgment and interpretation as a central concern within the field of law, literature and humanities. It is not only a study of law as praxis that combines academic legal theory with judicial practice, but proposes both as central to humanistic jurisprudence and as a training in the conduct of public life. Drawing extensively on philosophical and legal scholarship and through analysis of literary works from Gustave Flaubert, Robert Musil, Gerrit Achterberg, Ian McEwan, Michel Houellebecq and Juli Zeh, Jeanna Gaakeer proposes a perspective on law as part of the humanities that will inspire legal professionals, scholars and advanced students of law alike.

By accessing penal history through the mediator of individual memory authors can be seen to depict the cumulative dialogue between the English common law and its cultural representations across historical time. Offering legal readings of works by authors including Thomas Hardy, Charles Brockden Brown, Charles Dickens, Samuel Richardson, George MacDonald, Charles Kingsley, Alfred Tennyson, Charlotte Brontë, Robert Browning, Henry Fielding and Sir Walter Scott; this book explores this literary phenomenon and its legal significance during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In doing so it argues that the importance of precedent in Anglo-American common law creates a unique discourse of historical legitimacy that shapes both the cultural and official conceptions of criminality itself during this period. Within a Foucauldian framework, the book illustrates how the cultural memory of crime and punishment contribute to the development of formal and informal penal institutions. Key Features:*Generates a new framework for analysing the relationship between individual and cultural narratives, literary texts, and the cumulative "truth" created by the common law*Provides three case studies of adultery, child criminality, and rape testimony that demonstrate the impact of cultural narrative on legal development in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.*Legal readings of works by authors including Thomas Hardy, Charles Brockden Brown, Charles Dickens, Samuel Richardson, George MacDonald, Charles Kingsley, Alfred Tennyson, Charlotte Brontë, Robert Browning, Henry Fielding, Sir Walter Scott *Transformative readings of widely read works including Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland and Ormond, Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Charles Kingsley’s The Water-Babies, Alfred Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, Charlotte Brontë’s Jayne Eyre, Henry Fielding’s The Modern Husband and Sir Walter Scott ‘s Heart of Midlothian

Through interdisciplinary readings of a range of literary and legal texts across a 200-year period, this book uncovers the connections between the individual and collective memories of law and crime that affected the development of the law itself. It draws on 3 case studies adultery, child criminality and rape testimony that demonstrate the impact of cultural narrative on legal development in the 18th and 19th centuries. Erin Sheley shows how the symbolic relationship between adultery and threatened English sovereignty created a quasi-criminal legal discourse surrounding the private wrong of adultery; how the literary 'construction' of childhood by 19th-century fairy-tale writers affected the development of the juvenile justice system; and how evolving rules about rape victim 'character evidence' functioned as epistemological components of volatile national identity.

The first book to investigate the place of law in modern and contemporary dramaIllustrates the role of contemporary theatre in articulating legal and political issues to a modern audienceAnalyses a range of different genres in contemporary drama, including historical, poetic, realist, documentary and ‘in-yer-face’Each chapter focuses on a particular area of law alongside the work of a particular contemporary playwright Shows how modern playwrights engage with issues such as pornography, murder, terrorism, the function of Parliament, and the role of the monarchyTheatre, according to the prominent British playwright David Hare, is our most effective ‘court of justice’. This book assesses the credibility of this arresting claim in the immediate context of contemporary British theatre by investigating the place and purpose of law in a range of modern dramatic settings and writings. Each chapter focuses on a particular area of law and the work of a particular contemporary playwright, and in doing so illustrates the important role of contemporary theatre in articulating legal and political issues to a modern audience. Exploring a range of different genres in contemporary drama, including the historical, the poetic, realist, documentary and ‘in-yer-face’, this volume explores the capacity of modern playwrights to engage with issues such as pornography, murder, the contemporary experience of terrorism, the function of Parliament and the role of the monarchy.

The first book to investigate the place of law in modern and contemporary dramaIllustrates the role of contemporary theatre in articulating legal and political issues to a modern audienceAnalyses a range of different genres in contemporary drama, including historical, poetic, realist, documentary and 'in-yer-face'Each chapter focuses on a particular area of law alongside the work of a particular contemporary playwright Shows how modern playwrights engage with issues such as pornography, murder, terrorism, the function of Parliament, and the role of the monarchyTheatre, according to the prominent British playwright David Hare, is our most effective 'court of justice'. This book assesses the credibility of this arresting claim in the immediate context of contemporary British theatre by investigating the place and purpose of law in a range of modern dramatic settings and writings. Each chapter focuses on a particular area of law and the work of a particular contemporary playwright, and in doing so illustrates the important role of contemporary theatre in articulating legal and political issues to a modern audience. Exploring a range of different genres in contemporary drama, including the historical, the poetic, realist, documentary and 'in-yer-face', this volume explores the capacity of modern playwrights to engage with issues such as pornography, murder, the contemporary experience of terrorism, the function of Parliament and the role of the monarchy.

The Anthropocene thesis contends that human impact on the environment has become so extreme that the earth system as a whole has been tipped into a new state. This new geological epoch demands sensitivity to the forces that traverse human and nonhuman life, the geological, ecological and atmospheric. In this book Daniel Matthews shows how sovereignty, the organising principle for modern law and politics, depends on a distinctive aesthetics that ensures that we see, feel and order the world in such a way that keeps the realities of climate change and ecological destruction largely 'off stage.' Through analysis of a range of legal, literary, ecological and philosophical texts, this book outlines the significance of this aesthetic organisation of power and explores how it might be transformed in an effort to attend to the various challenges associated with the Anthropocene, setting the grounds for a new, ecologically attuned, critical jurisprudence

Daniel Matthews shows how sovereignty - the organising principle for modern law and politics - depends on a distinctive aesthetics that ensures that we see, feel and order the world in such a way that keeps the realities of climate change and ecological destruction largely 'off stage'. Through analysis of a range of legal, literary, ecological and philosophical texts, this book outlines the significance of this aesthetic organisation of power and explores how it might be transformed in an effort to attend to the various challenges associated with the Anthropocene, setting the grounds for a new, ecologically attuned, critical jurisprudence.

The book provides an original and captivating perspective on international law and Giorgio Agamben's work. The manuscript is profoundly aesthetic-textual in its approach, as exemplified in its deft and insightful close readings of drama (Goethe's Faust), prose fiction (Melville's Bartleby and Benito Cereno) and lyric, be it devotional (Laudes Regiae, Handel, 'The Lord is a Man of War') or otherwise (Edwin Starr's 'War', Boy George's 'War Song'). Attentive to language, plot, theme and characterisation, these readings not only read the texts in question, but they also read them anew, yielding fresh, innovative, and unique cultural legal interpretations.

The book provides an original and captivating perspective on international law and Giorgio Agamben's work. The manuscript is profoundly aesthetic-textual in its approach, as exemplified in its deft and insightful close readings of drama (Goethe's Faust), prose fiction (Melville's Bartleby and Benito Cereno) and lyric, be it devotional (Laudes Regiae, Handel, 'The Lord is a Man of War') or otherwise (Edwin Starr's 'War', Boy George's 'War Song'). Attentive to language, plot, theme and characterisation, these readings not only read the texts in question, but they also read them anew, yielding fresh, innovative, and unique cultural legal interpretations.

By reading two bodies of literature not normally read together – the outlaw literature and espionage literature – Conor McCarthy shows how these genres represent and critique the longstanding use of legal exclusion as a means of supporting state power. Texts discussed range from the medieval Robin Hood ballads, Shakespeare’s history plays, and versions of the Ned Kelly story to contemporary writing by John le Carré, Don DeLillo, Ciaran Carson and William Gibson.

Outlawry and espionage would seem to be quite different phenomena, rarely discussed together, but this book shows that they have something in common - both involve exclusion from law. Challenging previous readings that view outlawry as a now-superseded historical phenomenon, and outlaws as figures of popular resistance, Conor McCarthy argues that legal exclusion is a longstanding and enduring means of supporting state power. Through close analysis of the literatures of outlawry and espionage, this book shows the important role of literature in representing and critiquing exclusion from law. It uncovers legal exclusion as a key theme in writing about outlaws and spies from the Middle Ages to the present day, as a means to offer critique and to demand justice.Texts discussed range from the medieval Robin Hood ballads, Shakespeare's history plays and versions of the Ned Kelly story to contemporary writing by John le Carre, Don DeLillo, Ciaran Carson and William Gibson.

Through detailed readings of popular science fiction, including the novels of Frank Herbert and Octavia E. Butler and television’s Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who, this is the first sustained examination of legality in science fiction. Kieran Tranter includes substantive worked examples of the law and legal concepts projected by these science fiction texts, such as Australian car culture, legal responses to cloning and the relationship between legal theory and science fiction. By examining science fiction as the culture of our total technological world, it journeys with the partially-consumed human into the belly of the machine. What it finds is unexpected. Rather than a cold uniformity of exchangeable productive units, there is warmth, diversity and ‘life’ for the nodes in the networks. Through its science fiction focus it argues that this life generates a very different law of responsibility that can guide living well in technical legality.

Why would Hawthorne and Eliot grant their fallen women an anachronistic right to silence that could only worsen their punishment? Why did Bronte and Gaskell find gossip such a useful source of information when lawyers excluded it as hearsay? How did Trollope's work as an editor influence his preoccupation throughout his novels with libel? Drawing on a range of primary sources including novels, Victorian periodical literature, legislative debate, case law, and legal treatise, Cathrine O. Frank traces the ways conventions of literary characterisation mingled with character-centred legal developments to produce a jurisprudential theory of character that extends beyond the legal profession. She explores how key categories and representational strategies for imagining individual personhood also defined communities and mediated relations within them, in life and in fiction. This book offers new readings of works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Eliot, Anne Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, Anthony Trollope, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan Doyle. It analyses their literary constructions of character in relation to specific legal cases and doctrines, including the right to silence, libel and privacy.

Examines legal and literary narratives of personhood in the 19th century Traces the concept of character through related areas of law, cultural discourses of character and the formal structures of the novel Offers new readings of works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Eliot, Anne Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, Anthony Trollope, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde and Arthur Conan DoyleAnalyses literary constructions of character in relation to specific legal cases and doctrines, including the right to silence, libel and privacyIncludes new work on Anthony Trollope's topical and editorial interest in libel Covers the relationship between libel, the development of privacy rights and emerging modernist aestheticsPresents a transatlantic approach to select works and issues, including the right to silence and privacy Why would Hawthorne and Eliot grant their fallen women an anachronistic right to silence that could only worsen their punishment? Why did Bronte and Gaskell find gossip such a useful source of information when lawyers excluded it as hearsay? How did Trollope's work as an editor influence his preoccupation throughout his novels with libel?Drawing on a range of primary sources including novels, Victorian periodical literature, legislative debate, case law, and legal treatise, Cathrine O. Frank traces the ways conventions of literary characterisation mingled with character-centred legal developments to produce a jurisprudential theory of character that extends beyond the legal profession. She explores how key categories and representational strategies for imagining individual personhood also defined communities and mediated relations within them, in life and in fiction.

This book is a study of the critical history of space, and the ways in which a dominant property ideology has entrenched an exclusionary and profoundly alienating version of spatial ordering. It focuses on select periods in time, when the seemingly linear trajectory of enclosure momentarily wavers and alternate spatial paths briefly materialize, before 'disappearing' from plain sight. Using the forest as a thematic device, Clark and Page explore the tensions that pervade our propertied relationships; between commodity and community, abstraction and context, and private enclosure and the public square.The book draws on a range of case studies including the 13th century Forest Charter, Thomas More's Utopia, the Diggers' radical agrarianism, the Paris Commune's battle for the right to the city, and Australian forest protestors of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Through analysis of these movements and their contexts, the authors illustrate the origin, history and legal status of the lawful forest and its modern-day companions. Although the dominant spatial paradigm is one where private rights prevail, this book shows that communal relationships with land have always been part of our law and culture.

Using the forest as a thematic device, Clark and Page explore the tensions that pervade our propertied relationships; between commodity and community, abstraction and context, and private enclosure and the public square. They draw on a range of case studies including the 13th century Forest Charter, Thomas More's Utopia, the Diggers' radical agrarianism, the Paris Commune's battle for the right to the city, and Australian forest protestors of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. By analysing these movements and their contexts, Clark and Page illustrate the origin, history and legal status of the lawful forest and its modern-day companions. Although the dominant spatial paradigm is one where private rights prevail, this book shows that communal relationships with land have always been part of our law and culture.