Miscellaneous

Call For Papers

Posted on May 21, 2009
8th Annual Hawaii International Conference on Arts & Humanities January 13 - 16, 2010 Waikiki Beach Marriot Resort & Spa and Hilton Waikiki Prince Kuhio Hotel Honolulu Hawaii, USASubmission Deadline:  August 21, 2009(Submit well in advance of the above deadline and take advantage of our NEW low early bird registration rate...

New Legal Dramas For the Fall/Mid Season

Posted on May 21, 2009
Greedy Associates, the blog for FindLaw, posts about new legal dramas for fall and midseason. CBS promises us The Good Wife and ABC The Deep End.

Of Deism and Douglas Firs

Posted on May 20, 2009
Jessie Hill, Case Western Reserve School of Law, has published Of Christmas Trees and Corpus Christi: Ceremonial Deism and Change in Meaning over Time, in volume 59 of Duke Law Journal (2010). Here is the abstract.Although the Supreme Court turned away an Establishment Clause challenge to the words ?under God? in the Pledge of Allegiance in Elk Grove Unified School District v...

Imagining Law and Rights

Posted on May 20, 2009
John C. Gooch, University of Texas, Dallas, School of Arts & Humanities, has published Imagining the Law and the Constitution of Societal Order in Los Angeles Police Chief William Parker?s 1965 'Crime and the Great Society' Address. Here is the abstract...

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Defamation Through History

Posted on May 19, 2009
From The Irish Times, via the blog Cearta.ie: a musing on the "gist" or "sting" of a defamatory statement.

Angels, Demons, and Physics

Posted on May 19, 2009
Some physicists view the new Tom Hanks/Dan Brown thriller Angels & Demons as great publicity for their profession. Read more here in a Chronicle of Higher Education article.

Race, Property, and Gambling in Mark Twain

Posted on May 18, 2009
While I was looking for something else on SSRN, I came across this interesting paper by Naomi Reed.Naomi Reed, Columbia University, The Wagers of Whiteness, The Wagers of Blackness Gambling and Race in Pudd'nhead Wilson . Here is the abstract."The Wagers of Whiteness, The Wagers of Blackness" analyzes the late nineteenth-century erosion of African Americans' newly acquired citizenship rights by turning to the relationship between gambling, property, and slavery in Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)...

When Agencies Collide

Posted on May 18, 2009
If there's securities malfeasance, or should that be misfeasance--in a tv storyline should the SEC, the FTC, or the FCC be concerned? Or should we just pop some more popcorn, get out the soda pop (I'm not disclosing my favorite brand) and enjoy?Elena Marty-Nelson, Nova Southeastern University Law Center, writes about Securities Laws in Soap Operas and Telenovelas: Are All My Children Engaged in Securities Fraud? at 18 Southern California Interdisciplinary Law Journal 329 (2009)...

"There Oughta Be a Law!" A Scholar Re-Examines Fairy Tale History

Posted on May 18, 2009
The Chronicle of Higher Education's Jennifer Howard writes about Ruth B. Bottigheimer, whose works on the origins of fairy tales have other scholars up in arms.

Gender, Copyright, and Filk Literature

Posted on May 14, 2009
Melissa L. Tatum, University of Arizona College of Law, Robert E. Spoo, University of Tulsa College of Law, and Benjamin Pope, University of Arizona, have published Does Gender Influence Attitudes toward Copyright in the Filk Community? as Arizona Legal Studies Discussion Paper No...

In the Journals

Posted on May 13, 2009
In the most current issue of Law, Culture, and the Humanities (volume 5, issue 2, 2009): A number of Commentaries on the subject of "Critical Perspectives on Political Liberalism," including essays by Paul A. Passavant, Nomi Maya Stolzenberg, Jennet Kirkpatrick, Stewart Motha, and Richard A...

Paul Ricoeur and Legal Hermeneutics

Posted on May 13, 2009
George H. Taylor, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, has published The Distinctiveness of Legal Hermeneutics, in Ricoeur Across the Disciplines (Scott Davidson ed.; The Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009). Here is the abstract. In the larger field of hermeneutics, legal hermeneutics is characteristically described as exemplary...

Shakespeare on Today's Financial Crisis

Posted on May 08, 2009
Nate Oman writes about the current financial crisis and the Merchant of Venice over at Concurring Opinions. Professor Oman begins, "Over the weekend, I re-read A Merchant of Venice, and I was struck by the fact that Shakespeare manages to include in the play virtually every element of the current financial crisis...

Building a Race Law Canon

Posted on May 08, 2009
Rachel F. Moran, University of California, Berkeley, School of Law; University of California, Irvine, Law School, and Devon W. Carbado, University of California, Los Angeles, Law School, have published Introduction: The Story of Law and American Racial Consciousness--Building a Canon One Case at a Time, in Race Law Stories (2008)...

Choosing Words Carefully

Posted on May 08, 2009
Brian Bix, University of Minnesota Law School, has published Law and Language: How Words Mislead Us. Here is the abstract. This talk was the Reappointment Lecture for the Frederick W. Thomas Chair in the Interdisciplinary Study of Law and Language at the University of Minnesota...

The Black Man as Hero in Film

Posted on May 08, 2009
Gretchen Bakke, Center for the Humanities, Wesleyan University, has published How the Black Guys Got to Kill All the White Guys and Still Be Good: An Essay on the Changing Dynamics of Race in American Action Cinema. Here is the abstract.There was a time, not so long ago, when a black man - a good black man - killing a white man in an action movie was tentatively accomplished...

Law, Language, and Scientific Rhetoric in Judicial Opinions

Posted on May 08, 2009
Colin P. Starger, New York University School of Law, has published The DNA of an Argument: A Case Study in Legal Logos, in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (Winter 2009). Here is the abstract.This article develops an original rhetorical framework for analyzing the logic of legal arguments and then applies it to unpack a post-conviction DNA testing controversy currently before the Supreme Court...

Control, Alt, Delete: J. J. Abrams Reboots the Star Trek Franchise For a New Generation

Posted on May 08, 2009
Manohla Dargis reviews the new Star Trek film for the New York Times here.

Call For Papers

Posted on May 08, 2009
Call For PapersInternational Annual Meeting of Israeli Law and Society Association, to be held in Tel Aviv on December 20-21, 2009.The main theme of the meeting is: Secularism, Nationalism and Human Rights: Law and Politics in the Middle East and EuropeProposals should be submitted to Michal Locker-Eshed, minerva@post...

Call For Papers: Critical Legal Conference 2009

Posted on May 06, 2009
Critical Legal Conference 2009"Genealogies: Excavating Legal Modernity"September 11-13, 2009Leicester, UKwww.le.ac.uk/law/clc2009Keynote Speaker: Marcela Iacub (EHESS/CNRS).Plenary Panellists: Peter Fitzpatrick (Birkbeck), Colin Gordon (Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Trust) and Véronique Voruz (Leicester)...

When the Fans Take Over: Star Trek and Fan Fiction

Posted on May 06, 2009
From Newsweek's latest issue, a discussion of Star Trek's fan fiction, referred to as "slash fiction," here.

Marilyn French Dies

Posted on May 06, 2009
Marilyn French, author of the 1977 bestseller The Women's Room has died at the age of 79. Her last novel will be published this fall. Read more here in a BBC article.

Gender and Stereotypes in Literature

Posted on May 06, 2009
Asha S. [sic], MEASS College, has published Reading Lolita in Tehran: Rehashing Orientalist Stereotypes, at 4 The Icfai University Journal of English Studies 47(March 2009). Here is the abstract. Popular narratives produced from the west, particularly since 9/11, perpetuate negative stereotypes about Middle Eastern Muslim women...

En Garde! Van Gogh, Gauguin, and That Missing Ear

Posted on May 05, 2009
Did Van Gogh really slice off his ear? More than 120 years later, a new book claims to set the record straight, and inform us that the famous earlessness was really the result of battery inflicted by fellow artist Paul Gauguin, a noted swordsman. Hans Kaufmann and Rita Wildegans set forth their theory in a new tome called In Van Gogh's Ear: Paul Gauguin and the Pact of Silence, Read more here and here...

Teaching Law and Literature: Various Approaches Across the Curriculum

Posted on May 04, 2009
Simon Stern, University of Toronto Faculty of Law, has published Literary Evidence and Legal Aesthetics, in Teaching Literature and Law (Austin Sara, Matthew Anderson & Cathrine Frank eds., NY: MLA, 2010)(MLA Approaches To Teaching Series). Here is the abstract...

The Art of Pun-ditry

Posted on April 28, 2009
Too good to overlook, and because I disagree with those who think puns are a lower form of intellectual life; I think good puns require esprit. Check out Joseph Tartakovsky's Pun For the Ages, in the New York Times (March 28, 2009). Mr. Tartakovsky is a law student...

More On the "CSI Effect"

Posted on April 27, 2009
Here's more on the "CSI Effect." Tamara Francita Lawson, St. Thomas University School of Law, has published Before the Verdict and Beyond the Verdict: The 'CSI Infection' within Modern Criminal Jury Trials. Here is the abstract. In criminal law, the term CSI Effect commonly refers to the perceived impact that the CSI television show has on juror expectation and unexpected jury verdicts...

The Many Meanings of Elvis

Posted on April 24, 2009
Sharon Cowan has published The Elvis We Deserve: The Social Regulation of Sex/Gender and Sexuality Through Cultural Representations of 'the King' as a Working Paper. Here is the abstract.This paper analyses the way in which the image, masculinity and sexual identity of Elvis Presley have been recently culturally deployed by particular social groups...

On the American Trial

Posted on April 23, 2009
Robert P. Burns, Northwestern University School of Law, has published The Death of the American Trial (University of Chicago Press, 2009). Here's an abstract from SSRN. This short essay is a summary of my assessment of the meaning of the "vanishing trial" phenomenon...

Fan Fiction and the RDR Books Decision

Posted on April 22, 2009
Megan L. Richardson, University of Melbourne Law School, and David Tan have published The Art of Retelling: Harry Potter and Copyright in a Fan-Literature Era as 14 Media & Arts Law Review 31 (2009). Here is the abstract.Simple assertions that fans are harmless may be belied by the copyright cases threatened and launched by authors of popular fictional works, against fans who write secondary works based on distinctive elements of the original stories...

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