Law and Humanities: A Field Without a Canon

2013

Ever more often, researchers and scholars endeavor to situate law in its social, political, historical and cultural contexts. At the same time, there is a need to invest law and the social sciences with new roles and resources. We thus propose to look for the many intersections of law, culture and the humanities by presenting four topical preoccupations: (1) interlegality in everyday life; (2) the synesthesia of law; (3) material socio-legal studies; and (4) interactive ecologies of knowledges and methodologies. This will constitute part one of the paper. Parts two and three will look at two particular and very recent interdisciplinary relationships: those between law and music and between law and food. We thus propose it would be appropriate to expose students, learners and practitioners of all kinds to the difference that an understanding of the links between law, culture and the humanities makes.

Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais

Intersections in Law, Culture and the Humanities* Ever more often, researchers and scholars endeavor to situate law in its social, political, historical and cultural contexts. At the same time, there is a need to invest law and the social sciences with new roles and resources. We thus propose to look for the many intersections of law, culture and the humanities by presenting four topical preoccupations: (1) interlegality in everyday life; (2) the synesthesia of law; (3) material socio-legal studies; and (4) interactive ecologies of knowledges and methodologies. This will constitute part one of the paper. Parts two and three will look at two particular and very recent interdisciplinary relationships: those between law and music and between law and food. We thus propose it would be appropriate to expose students, learners and practitioners of all kinds to the difference that an understanding of the links between law, culture and the humanities makes.

International Journal of Law in Context, 2009

This paper was delivered as a plenary lecture, designed to respond to the one-day special conference focus upon links between socio-legal studies and the humanities.1 The paper focuses in particular upon the relationship between law and the humanities. It may be argued that the role of empirically sourced socio-legal research is well accepted, given its tangible utility in terms of producing hard data which can inform and transform policy perspectives. However, scholarly speculation about the relationship between law and the humanities ranges from the indulgent to the hostile. In particular, legal scholars aligning themselves as ‘black letter’ commentators express strong opinions about such links, suggesting that scholarship purporting to establish links between the two fields is essentially spurious, bearing in mind the purposive role of law as a problem-solving mechanism. The paper sets out to challenge such assertions, indicating the natural connections between the two fields and...

2015

This special issue of Critical Analysis of Law brings together a rich array of articles at the intersections of arts and legal history. In this introduction we reflect on some of the benefits and implications of this interdisciplinary juncture, which contemporary legal historians have been slow to engage. We highlight the significance of engaging with the arts for theoretical conundrums central to legal history: art as source, the philosophy of time, methodological scripts, and the relation of the descriptive to the normative. The arts, we argue, prove vital in tackling and breaching the limits of imagination imposed by our time and place — disciplinary place included.

Academic Questions, Vol. 26, Issue 1, 2013

This essay describes how the law review process generally works and then discusses what the humanities can learn and borrow from the law review process. It ends by advocating for a hybrid law review/peer review approach to publishing. The law review process is not a panacea for our publishing ills. It has several drawbacks and shortcomings. This essay highlights the positives and notes some of the negatives of the law review publishing process, but a lengthy explanation of all that is good or bad about law reviews is not my aim. Every law review has its idiosyncrasies and methodologies, but most share certain overarching procedures and protocols that can be evaluated in terms of their similarity.

Law, Culture and Humanities, 2020

This commentary considers the question of whether there is, or should be, a law and humanities canon by exploring the identity and value of the field and querying the concept of canon itself as an authoritative cultural technique of intellectual and social reproduction. I argue that the common trait which binds works in the field of law and humanities together is the connective 'and', which is inimical to the concept of a canon. Thinking with Barbara Hernstein Smith's work on value and evaluation, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht's criticism of canons and classics, and Frantz Fanon's understanding of personal universality, I show that the notion of an inclusive or 'global' canon is an oxymoron and argue that it ought to be resisted. (accepted version for Law, Culture and Humanities, vol. 16)

Chicago-Kent} Law Review, 2008

IONS AS DISADVANTAGES 1311 V. EMPIRICAL SOCIAL RESEARCH AS CORRECTIVE; STRENGTHS AND DEFICIENCIES OF LEGAL REALISM AND SOCIOLOGY OF LAW 1312 VI. LEGAL SPEECH ACTS; CLAIMING AS MODERNITY’S SPEECH ACT PAR EXCELLENCE 1314 VII. POLITICS, AS REALM OF APPEARANCE OF SPEECH AND ACTION, AND ITS DISREGARD IN MODERN LEGAL STUDY METHODS 1320 VIII. POETRY AND MUSIC. UNDER SOME CONDITIONS, THE BUREAUCRACY AND JARGON OF MODERN LAW CAN LEND ITSELF POETIC APPEARANCE 1323 IX. HISTORY AS LEGAL METHOD: LIMITS AND POSSIBILITIES 1324 X. TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY AIDS TO LEGAL LEARNING; COMPUTING ........ 1324 XI. IMAGES AND VISUAL LITERACY 1325 XII. SYSTEMS-THINKING IN THE KNOWING OF LAW 1326 XIII. USING CAMPUS SERVICES 1329 XIV. UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE PROFESSORS IN THE EDUCATION BUSINESS 1330 XV. CONCLUSION 1331 ∗ Professor, Department of Rhetoric, University of California at Berkeley. The author can be reached at [email protected]. This essay benefited from discussions following presentations in the Un...

"Humanities and Legal Clinics. Law and Humanistic Methodology”. TEORIA E CRITICA DELLA REGOLAZIONE SOCIALE. 2/2017, 2018

This short essay considers the different ways in which law professors and English professors teach courses in Law and Literature -- particularly the differences in the course materials and the analytic approaches used in understanding those materials. Courses taught on law faculties generally include fewer readings drawn from case law and legal theory. On the other hand, courses taught in English departments are more likely to emphasize similarities between the legal readings and works of fiction or drama. I discuss some of the disciplinary habits that make it difficult for faculty members in each area to come to terms with materials taken from another discipline, but I end by arguing that these barriers are not insurmountable and can even be addressed, to some extent, by focusing on analytical habits already available in the home discipline.