"Lawyers and the law have long been the object of popular criticism and satire for the obscurity and incomprehensibility of their language. Legal Discourse provides a novel historical and systematic account of the language of the legal institution together with a sustained criticism of legal exegesis and `legalese' more generally. In the first part of the work the doctrinal history of the legal discipline and its concepts of language, text and sign are examined and assessed. In the second part the (...) contemporary disciples of linguistics, discourse analysis and communication studies are brought to bear upon the task of constructing a theory of legal discourse as a linguistics of legal power" -- Backcover. (shrink)

Languages of Law is an original and comprehensive study of the history, symbols and languages of the common law tradition. While the first part of this stimulating contribution to modern legal theory, 'Memory, Precedent and the Writing Systems of Law,' examines the technological, professional and polemical contexts of legal writing as a distinctive system of inscription and documentation, the second part of the text, 'Language, Image, Sign and Common Law' moves from historical to substantive analysis. The final chapters concentrate on (...) the visual legitimacy and symbols of law, and advance an original theory of the acceptance of law as a question of the imagery and aesthetics of legal representation. This is a book for students of legal history, legal system and legal method, jurisprudence and sociology of law, and for students of the history of language. (shrink)

_Oedipus Lex_ offers an original and evocative reading of legal history and institutional practice in the light of psychoanalysis and aesthetics. It explores the unconscious of law through a wealth of historical and contemporary examples. Peter Goodrich provides an anatomy of law's melancholy and boredom, of addiction to law, of legal repressions, and the aesthetics of jurisprudence. He retraces the genealogy of law and invokes the failures and exclusions—the poets, women, and outsiders—that legal science has left in its wake. Goodrich (...) analyzes the role and power of the image of law and details the history of law's plural jurisdictions and traditions of resistance to law. He explores mechanisms of repression and representation as constituents of modern subjectivity, using long-abandoned medieval texts and early appearances of feminism as resources for the understanding and renewal of legal scholarship. Not simply deconstruction but also reconstruction, this work is keenly attuned to the discontinuties, silences, and gaps in the cultural tradition called law. (shrink)

From early in his career Jacques Derrida was intrigued by law. Over time, this fascination with law grew more manifest and he published a number of highly influential analyses of ethics, justice, violence and law. This book brings together leading scholars in a variety of disciplines to assess Derrida's importance for and impact upon legal studies.

Laws of Postmodernity is the first work of legal scholarship to apply postmodern jurisprudence to an analysis of a number of substantive areas of law. In analyzing the cultural significance of law, the contributors show how critical jurisprudential analysis undermines positivistic attempts to support a normative viewpoint of the legal order. In addition, they criticize contextual, sociological accounts of legal phenomena. The contributors explore blasphemy laws in the wake of the Salman Rushdie affair, and French critical legal theory-- particularly the (...) work of Pierre Legendre--to highlight the repression of psychoanalysis within jurisprudence. Through detailed accounts, Laws of Postmodernity clearly illustrates the practical application and theoretical significance of postmodern jurisprudence. (shrink)

Law and the Unconscious: A Legendre Reader is e first work of the French legal philosopher Pierre Legendre to appear in English. Trained as a lawyer, a historian and a psychoanalyst, the work of Pierre Legendre has consistently confronted law with the teaching and methods of psychoanalysis. The present collection of essays addresses a fascinating and diverse set of themes including the doctrinal regulation of tears, dance and law, the desire for the absolute, the war of the texts, and the (...) power of the images. (shrink)

It is rare in the extreme for a judge to embed an enigma, here an intentionally encrypted message, in the text of a judgment. Using the occasion of the cypher inserted into the judgment of Peter Smith J in Baigent v Random House, this article patiently reconstructs the humanist concept of aenigmata iuris or legal enigmas so as properly to interpret this recent use. Legal enigmas are shown to be the residues of forgotten histories, references to lost texts, marks left (...) by encounters between law and its now marginal literary and poetic sources. Where current legal use treats enigmas as mere obscurities, this article argues that the enigma should be apprehended and appreciated as an image of juristic invention, the moment of devising a decision, the instant of creative encounter between ‘the sciences liberall’, doctrine and law. (shrink)

Populism in politics and policy orientations in law have thrown the jurisdiction of the academy and the disciplines of interpretation into disarray. Critique flounders in abstraction and negativity, law loses itself in particularity. Administering Interpretation brings together philosophers, humanists, and jurists from both continental and Anglophone jurisdictions to reassess the status and trajectory of interpretative theory as applied in the art of law. Tracking the thread of philosophical influences upon the community of legal interpretation, the essays move from the translation (...) and wake of Derrida to the work of Agamben, from deconstruction to oikononmia. Sharing roots in the philological excavation of the political theology of modern law, contributors assess the failure of secularism and the continuing theological borrowings of juridical interpretation. The book brings contemporary critique to bear upon the interpretative apparatuses of exclusion, the law of spectacular sovereignty, and the bodies that lie in its wake. (shrink)

Nietzsche and Legal Theory is an anthology designed to provide legal and socio-legal scholars with a sense of the very wide range of projects and questions in whose pursuit Nietzsche's work can be useful. From medical ethics to criminology, from the systemic anti-Semitism of legal codes arising in Christian cultures, to the details of intellectual property debates about regulating the use of culturally significant objects, the contributors (from the fields of law, philosophy, criminology, cultural studies, and literary studies) demonstrate and (...) enact the sort of creativity that Nietzsche associated with the "free-spirits" to whom he addressed some of his most significant work. (shrink)

In academic contexts, it is always likely thatan author who criticises another's work – in abook review, or an article – will know theother author personally. They may well befriends. Reflecting upon the intimacy of thepublic sphere, this article responds to thetone of a recent critique of the style andpolitics of postmodern jurisprudence. Questionsof style, tone and scriptural face are anunconventional point of entry into a discussionof feminism, aesthetics and law. It is arguedhere that these issues are intrinsic to theembodiment (...) of theory that Barron proposes. (shrink)

A recent collection of essays,Feminist Perspectives on Law and Theory,is here taken as the starting point for an analysis of the political trajectory of feminist jurisprudence. The ‘new wave’ of feminism borrows much of its inspiration from continental theory – from Derrida, Deleuze and Irigaray – and has been subject to criticism for its attention to language and its turn towards culture and aesthetics. Reviewing the materialist bases of the new wave, and particularly its concern with the immediacies of the (...) body and events, it is argued here that it represents a return to the radicalism of feminist legal theory. (shrink)