Law & Literature最新文献

{"title":"How Liberty Dies in a Galaxy Far, Far Away: Star Wars, Democratic Decay, and Weak Executives","authors":"Conor Casey, D. Kenny","doi":"10.1080/1535685X.2021.1991610","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2021.1991610","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In this article we argue that the story of Star Wars has much to tell us about perennial questions of constitutional design. The series offers a rich cinematic exploration of some of the most pressing real-life issues of politics and constitutionalism and is, we suggest, a fruitful source of insight for issues of constitutional design and regulation. This article proceeds in three parts. In Part I, we sketch the political context which grounds our analysis, outlining the key constitutional institutions of the Galactic Republic, and their rapid decline and fall as documented across the prequel trilogy. In Part II, we outline the existing contributions commentators have made in respect of Star Wars and its lessons for constitutional design and regulation—the problem with the concentration of government power in one person and the risks posed to political systems by excessive delegation of authority to the executive branch. We then introduce three more nuanced lessons that we think the films offer: the ‘Publius paradox’; the hollowness of legalism; and the dangers of confusion at the apex of power. In Part III, with detailed analysis of the films, we show how the Star Wars saga clearly illustrates these lessons: that a constitutionally weak executive, rather than a strong one, can be a cause of democratic decay and autocracy, as it proves incapable of meeting the demands of governance; that commitment to and obsession with law is not per se any bulwark against autocracy; and that unclear lines of constitutional authority pose a huge risk at times of strain and crisis. We argue that the constitutional problem Star Wars illustrates is more subtle and more important than the dominant accounts suggest: that under concentration of power creates the risk of overconcentration of power. If we fear the decay of democracy into autocracy and wish to respond to it, we must be careful not to excessively limit or diffuse power. If we do, and begin to see constitutionalism as solely or primarily a means of restraining government, we may limit government so much that we cause the very problem we seek to prevent.","PeriodicalId":368948,"journal":{"name":"Law & Literature","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126518486","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Guilty, until Proven Innocent: The Fossilization of Discriminatory Practices in Visa Law and Policy as portrayed in Anna Segher’s Transit and Juan de Recacoechea’s American Visa","authors":"Dharshani Lakmali Jayasinghe","doi":"10.1080/1535685X.2021.1991611","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2021.1991611","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Visas play a crucial role in facilitating international travel and immigration in contemporary times, particularly in enabling global mobility for citizens from the Global South. However, visa law and policy, from the time of their inception, have contributed to systemic human rights violations and loss of applicants’ dignity. Although the right to freedom of movement and human dignity are celebrated in multiple international covenants, material practices of visa law and policy impinge on these very rights and dignities; from the 1930s when visas were primarily used to limit the mobility of Jews, to contemporary times when the objects of visa law are primarily citizens from the Global South. This paper highlights the problem of the fossilization of such discriminatory practices embedded in visa law and policy by putting in conversation policy and legal research with close readings of two literary texts from Germany and Bolivia; Transit by Anna Seghers (1944) and American Visa by Juan de Recacoechea (1994). Although experiences of discrimination, violation, disrespect, and denial of rights are consistently and repeatedly experienced by visa applicants across time and space, as evident from the literary and non-literary examples discussed in this paper, only limited research exists on how visa law and policy impinge on human rights and dignity. This paper presents a critique of discriminatory practices that have become bureaucratized and normalized through visa law from the 1930s onwards. It identifies and problematizes ethical violations rising out of the practice of visa law and policy as they apply to citizens from the Global South. This work engages the evocative, empathetic, and representational capacity of literary texts to highlight existing issues related to the material practices of visa law and policy, which are categorized under four main types of violations: 1. pre-submission indignities 2. consular interactions and intimidations 3. indignities rising from the arbitrary collection of personal data and 4. the bureaucracy of documentation.","PeriodicalId":368948,"journal":{"name":"Law & Literature","volume":"35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125211186","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Renisa Mawani, Across Oceans of Law: The Komagata Maru and Jurisdiction in the Time of Empire (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018) pp 352. Paperback: $28.95","authors":"Dhiraj Nainani","doi":"10.1080/1535685X.2021.1981663","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2021.1981663","url":null,"abstract":"On May 23 1914, the steamship Komagata Maru arrived in Canadian waters, carrying 376 passengers from the Punjab province of British India. The aspiring migrants, who had endured an arduous journey across the Pacific Ocean (and had boarded from diverse ports such as Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Yokohama), quickly found that the British Dominion of Canada was not a very welcoming place. Only 24 passengers were admitted into Canada; the other 352, along with the ship they occupied, were forced to return to India, where a bloody homecoming awaited them. Renisa Mawani’s Across Oceans of Law is a masterful portrait of the Komagata Maru “incident,” which revolves around a Punjabi British subject called Gurdip Singh. Mawani uses the “ocean as method” – here, employed through a reading of sea space through the writings of Hugo Grotius and Carl Schmitt, ship logs and manifests, political commentary in newspapers of the time, and the memoirs of Singh himself – to chart the spatial and legal repercussions of Singh’s emancipatory desire to operate an Indian-owned steamship company. This desire resulted in an interrogation and disruption of the “imperial reach that imposed spatial, temporal, and racial inscriptions across the earth.” Although Mawani divides her book across five different aspects of the event, her book consistently engages with three themes as the narrative unfolds. The first involves contestations, of which the distinction between the sea as a “free space” (mare liberum) and a “closed space” (mare clausum) is central. In reading Grotius and Schmitt together, Mawani elides how the British Empire’s mastery of trans-oceanic trade – including a so-called “pivot” from slavery to indentured","PeriodicalId":368948,"journal":{"name":"Law & Literature","volume":"106 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128139690","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Modernism and the Law","authors":"Paul K. Saint-Amour","doi":"10.1080/1535685X.2021.1981667","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2021.1981667","url":null,"abstract":"background—turns his attention to such questions as the status of international law and the ostensible value of human rights. Such analyses show that, despite some lingering conceptual questions, M€ollers has written an extremely rich book, combining a rarely seen analytic rigor with a truly immense range of reference. Anyone with an interest law, practical philosophy, social theory, or aesthetics will find much valuable analysis in its pages.","PeriodicalId":368948,"journal":{"name":"Law & Literature","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124174134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ethics of Tragedy: Dwelling, Thinking, Measuring","authors":"Julen Etxabe","doi":"10.1080/1535685x.2021.1981666","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685x.2021.1981666","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":368948,"journal":{"name":"Law & Literature","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132978606","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Illan Rua Wall, Law and Disorder: Sovereignty, Protest, Atmosphere (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021)","authors":"E. Christodoulidis","doi":"10.1080/1535685X.2021.1981662","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2021.1981662","url":null,"abstract":"Modernism and Censorship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Sean Latham, The Art of Scandal: Modernism, Libel Law, and the Roman a Clef (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Ravit Reichman, The Affective Life of Law: Legal Modernism and the Literary Imagination (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009); Sascha Bru, Democracy, Law, and the Modernist Avant-Gardes: Writing in the State of Exception (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009); Paul K. Saint-Amour, ed., Modernism and Copyright (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Rachel Potter, Obscene Modernism: Literary Censorship and Experiment 1900–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Lisa Siraganian, Modernism and the Meaning of Corporate Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020). 2. Robert Spoo, Without Copyrights: Piracy, Publishing, and the Public Domain (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). 3. See Shloss v. Sweeney, 515 F. Supp. 2d 1068 (N.D. Cal. 2007).","PeriodicalId":368948,"journal":{"name":"Law & Literature","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121056435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Possibility of Norms: Social Practice Beyond Morals and Causes","authors":"Liam Egan","doi":"10.1080/1535685X.2021.1981665","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2021.1981665","url":null,"abstract":"What do we mean when we talk about norms? To what objects are we referring? The surprising answer given by Christoph M€ollers in his ambitious new book, The Possibility of Norms, is that, for all the talk of norms—whether it is in philosophy, in critical theory, in legal contexts, or even in aesthetics—no one is quite certain. M€ollers, a prominent legal scholar in Germany, traces the source of this uncertainty to an overt reliance on concepts adopted from practical philosophy, which is not so much interested in describing norms as it is in evaluating and eventually justifying them. But how can we hope to justify what we cannot even properly describe? Given the persistent confusion over the true nature of norms, The Possibility of Norms aims to provide a definition of the normative that would (a) allow for the accurate empirical description of norms, and (b) be general enough to find currency in the numerous disciplines for which norms are an issue. Providing such a positive account of the normative requires that M€ollers diagnose the various problems that arise from existing conceptions of normativity, something he attempts in chapters 1 and 2. These opening sections will be of much interest to practical philosophers, especially considering the number of candidate theories that are analyzed and critiqued: analytic theories of action, theories of reflective endorsement, the “pan-normativism” of Robert Brandom, Habermasian discourse ethics, moral realism, and more. Many, though not all, of these competing theories share the view that normativity is grounded in reasons for action, a view M€ollers thinks leads us into murky territory. If social norms are to be identified and described empirically, they must have concrete, material, spatio-temporal coordinates. But M€ollers argues that the emphasis on reasons “creates an ontological gradation in favor of a non-material norm conception, belonging to the realm of reasons, which stands in the way of grasping social","PeriodicalId":368948,"journal":{"name":"Law & Literature","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121311471","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Pale Criminal, the Guilty Conscience, and the Constitution of Crime: Nietzsche Reading “Raskolnikov”","authors":"P. Ranasinghe","doi":"10.1080/1535685X.2021.1976475","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2021.1976475","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Friedrich Nietzsche’s classic Thus Spoke Zarathustra contains a short chapter entitled “On the Pale Criminal.” The chapter provides rich insights into the psychology of the criminal by examining what Nietzsche calls the image of the deed. This article argues that “On the Pale Criminal” is well situated to reveal insights about the meaning of crime. The article subjects Nietzsche’s “On the Pale Criminal” to a detailed exegetical reading to unearth the possibility of theorizing crime anew. To aid in this endeavor, the article reads “On the Pale Criminal” alongside and against Fyodor Dostoevsky’s influential Crime and Punishment, focusing, again exegetically, on the psychological turmoil of Rodion Raskolnikov, the protagonist of the novel, who gives vivid color to, and brings to life, Nietzsche’s pale criminal. After explicating the essence of the pale criminal, the article explores what this might reveal about the meaning of crime. The pale criminal, the article contends, reveals the way guilt (in the legal sense) and the guilty conscience (in the psychological sense) precede thought and deed, and shows that crime is constituted not by thought and deed, but by an already present, ex ante, guilt which feeds the requisite culpability of crime, including the very birth of crime itself. Guilt, this article contends, precedes crime, not the other way around.","PeriodicalId":368948,"journal":{"name":"Law & Literature","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130761070","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Transnational Gendered (Im)mobility in Border Cinema: Iraqi Refugee Women in Australia","authors":"Jyhene Kebsi","doi":"10.1080/1535685X.2021.1971908","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2021.1971908","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Hope by Steve Thomas is a feature documentary that tells the story of the SIEV-X tragedy during which around 400 Iraqi women, men and children drowned as they were trying to reach Australia by boat. This article focuses on Hope’s representation of Amal Basry, a Muslim veiled female asylum seeker who survived this tragedy. Through its discussion of Amal Basry, this paper reveals the intersectional forces that face female asylum seekers. This article adopts a transnational feminist approach to question the neo-Orientalist reduction of Muslim women’s problems to their religion. Hence, it seeks to shift the focus to the state crimes committed against refugees and to the impact of Australia’s harsh immigration policy on them and their families. Exploring Australia’s violation of the non-refoulement principle, and its disregard for its international obligations towards refugees, unveils the often-unstated spatial oppression that torments Muslim female asylum seekers due to Australia’s cruel refugee policy. My main argument is that Hope complicates the flat category of the “Muslim woman” through its focus on Iraqi veiled women’s agency, the struggle against the racialized border militarization and the criminalization of their movement.","PeriodicalId":368948,"journal":{"name":"Law & Literature","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132020941","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Why Art and Law?","authors":"Joan Kee","doi":"10.1080/1535685X.2021.1917883","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1535685X.2021.1917883","url":null,"abstract":"Witness Blanket is a large-scale, three-dimensional work assembled from almost nine hundred objects sourced from First Nations individuals, groups, churches, government buildings, treatment centers, institutions, and individuals including a small woven basket, a vibrantly patterned sash and a drum set contributed by the Kwikwetlem First Nation (Figure 1). Conceived and executed by Carey Newman, it was first unveiled to the public in 2014 as a monument to the generations of Aboriginal children removed from their homes and forcibly assimilated into Euro-Canadian society from 1870 to 1996. Incarcerated in church-run “residential schools” funded by the Canadian government, student-inmates were forbidden from speaking their native languages or practicing their native customs. Newman, whose own father endured time in a Residential School, negotiated a contract with the Canadian Museum of Human Rights that conspicuously diverged from typical acquisition agreements. Rather than an instrument enabling a final transfer of ownership rights, the agreement recast acquisition as an ongoing process of caretaking to be renewed at various intervals. The finalization of the agreement through an indigenous ceremony became the first instance that a state-owned enterprise ratified a legal contract through indigenous traditions. The agreement is a step towards a broader conception of law wrought through the process of enmeshment rather than as a delimited set of rules and claims. Witness Blanket is perhaps most convincing as a trust jointly administered by Newman and the Canadian Museum of Human Rights for the benefit of multiple audiences; the donation of objects reads not only as a voluntary surrender of title to property, but also as an act of entrustment. But although the Canadian government formally apologized to former Residential School students in 2008, the words provided insufficient relief. Witness Blanket renews the urgency of this history by virtue of its scale. Twelve meters long, approximately 3.2 meters high and weighing a staggering 1590 kilograms, the work involved hundreds of contributors and will likely include hundreds more as it travels from one venue to","PeriodicalId":368948,"journal":{"name":"Law & Literature","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-09-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122858225","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}