Kid Pro Quo: Re-Imagining the Role of Empathy in Ownership and Law

Abstract

The law and literature tradition has to date largely focused on texts that directly explore a legal issue or an encounter with a bureaucratic legal institution. Post-apocalyptic texts describing worlds with no central legal institutions have largely been left unexamined even though they often envisage alternate forms and roles for the law. The paper analyses Adrian J. Walker’s The End Of The World Running Club (2014) to explore a possible distribution of resources based on characteristics and actions with which we empathise. Drawing upon Aristotle’s theories of literature, the methods of creation of legal communities in general is considered.