Thanks and Goodbye

Dear all,
we are at the end of our "Law and the Humanities" course and, I have to admit it, I'm a little bit sad. It was a pleasure to read your comments and discuss with you about so many unusual topics: some of your comments were really interesting and they made me think about a lot of issues from many different perspectives that I hadn't considered before and it is obvious that your enthusiasm was a source of great satisfaction for me. I do thank you all and I'm really sorry that I won't be able to be with you on June 9th. I would like to say goodbye with a quotation, which I think really represents our course. Well, it wasn't written by a lawyer but by one of the most famous theologians of all times (actually his father wanted him to become a lawyer...): his name was Martin Luther.

"Ein Jurist, der nicht mehr ist denn ein Jurist, ist ein arm Ding".

"A lawyer, who is no more than a lawyer, is a poor thing".

Summing up

I expected that the final lectures about Law and music should be a right conclusion for our course, but I think it was even better than I expected. As the wonderful examples played by M. Polimanti have shown, music is a phenomenon that shows a strong parallelism with law. History and traditions, writing and publishing texts, sensibility of society, technical innovation, have a great influence on music, just as in law.
Giorgio Resta insisted very much on a point that has been in the core of the whole semester. This idea is that it's time to break the cultural isolation of law. Since the 19th century (but in some ways since the beginning of the second Millennium) law has been taught and practised as a language for initiated, a religion with her priests and her rituals. Since some years, things are changing. Isolation of law isn't any more a way of increasing power and respect for lawyers. On the contrary, the tehcnical structure of a legal education can represent an obstacle for lawyers as they try to understand the deep functions of society.
That's why I think that the different cultural experiences we had during this course are more than a breath of air in the middle of a series of serious, technical and boring exams. Looking at law from an external perspective can really improve our understanding of law and – what is more important – can help us to evaluate the impact that law has on human beings and relationships.


I’m very keen to read your general impressions about the course. You can post them with your name if you want to discuss them with your colleagues and with me and Stefania Gialdroni, but if you want to be anonimous you can also send them to me per e-mail or even post them in my postbox.
Let me say that I’m proud of the success of this experience, and let me thank all of you for your enthusiastic participation.

Preappello!

Dear all,
finally we have fixed the time and the hall of your "preappello":

Monday 25th and Tuesday 26th, "Ex-economia" building (Via Ostiense 139), Hall 11, 9:30.

We've divided you into groups:
Monday, May 25th:
9:30:
1. Caciotti Giuseppe
2. Casini Ginevra
3. Ciucci Giorgia
4. Colorizio Alessia
5. Contartese Antonio
6. D’Antona Valentina
7. Di Bartolomeo Laura
8. Faranca Silvia

10:30:
9. Ferri Valeria
10. Fraia Andreina
11. Giuliani Pietro
12. Luzietti Camilla
13. Malizia Vanessa
14. Manzo Massimo

11:30:
15. Marinelli Valerio
16. Moreno Garcia Alaia
17. Oddone Pierluigi
18. Rosetta Antonio
19. Severini Andrea
20. Simeoni Alessandra
21. Viti Michele

Tuesday, May 26th:
9:30:
1. Buonanno Maria
2. Capece Minutolo Ferdinando
3. Cordani Flaminia
4. D’Annibale Daniela
5. Festucci Alessandro
6. Fiengo Astrid
7. Galanti Giuseppe (4:00 p.m., room 232)
8. Giacomini Giulia

10:30:
9. Hernandez Emanuela
10. Lanfranconi Fabiana
11. Mambrini Francesco
12. Marangoni Andrea
13. Petriccione Marina
14. Pischedda Federica
15. Westphal Caroline

Wednesday, May 27th:
1. Graziano Flavia (11:00 room 232)

A link about censorship and cinema

Hi all!
Maybe someone will be interested in deepening the topic of censorship. Unfortunately the website is in French but I'm sure you will understand a lot. It is incredibly good and complete and, anyway, it can give you some ideas.

http://bibliotheque.sciences-po.fr/fr/produits/manifestations/censure-cinema/index.html

Prof. Giorgio Resta's Lectures

LAW AND MUSIC:

"MOZART AT THE BAR:

The interplay between Legal Theory and Musical Interpretation"

Abstract

At a first look, law & music might appear as one of the most recent and less investigated frontiers of the law & literature movement. To some extent this is true. However, the interface between law and music has also been the subject of important studies in ancient times, in the middle age (one of the first examples is the anonymous treatise of the fourteenth century "Ars cantus mensurabilis mensurata per modus iuris") and during the twentieth century. Prominent legal scholars have written about musical estethics and musicology (f.i. Salvatore Pugliatti) and at the same time several important composers and musicians have had a legal training (among the others Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach, Schumann, Stravinsky). The most important intersection between the two disciplines is represented by the theory of interpretation. Interpreting and performing a score raises a set of questions involves a range of problems not entirely different from interpreting a constitution, a statute, a regulation, or even a legal precedent. Lawyers have frequently confronted themselves with the theory of musical interpretation, in order to enhance their self-comprehension of the legal techniques of interpretation. Not by chance, we can find the same debates between originalists, intentionalists and contextualists in law and in music as well. In my lecture I will try to elaborate more on this subject, with the aid of a professional musician (M° Enrico Maria Polimanti) who will illustrate the most important intellectual trends and the practical problems of interpretation day by day faced by a musical performer. I will also approach the subject from a comparative perspective, looking at the different ways in which civil lawyers (Betti, Pugliatti) and common lawyers (Jerome Frank, Posner) have conceived the interaction between law and music.

Readings:

- J. Frank, "Words and Music", in 47 Columbia L. Rev. 1259 (1947).

- S. Levinson, J.M. Balkin, "Law, Music and other Performing Arts", in 139 U.Pa. L. Rev. 1597 (1991).

- T. Hall, "The Score as Contract", in 20 Cardozo L. Rev. 1589 (1999).

- J.M. Balkin, S. Levinson, "Interpreting Law and Music: Performance Notes on "The Banjo Serenader" and "The Lying Crowd of Jewes", 1999.

C.V. Prof. Giorgo Resta:

Giorgio Resta is an Associate Professor of Comparative Law at the University of Bari, Italy, where he teaches courses on private comparative law, contracts and intellectual property. He is author of three books and numerous articles on privacy, fundamental rights, contracts and torts in comparative perspective. He edited the Italian translation of Hesselink’s “New European Legal Culture”. His book “Autonomia privata e diritti della personalità” has been selected as one of the best legal books of year 2005 by the Italian “Club dei giuristi”. He is currently serving as member of the scientific board of the Legislative Committee for the reform of third book of Italian Civil Code, appointed by the Italian Ministry of Justice. He is member of the Italian Association of Comparative Law and editor of “Il diritto dell’informazione e dell’informatica” and “Rivista critica del diritto privato”. He received several scholarships from the Canadian Government (Faculty Research Program), the Max-Planck-Institut für Internationales und Ausländisches Privatrecht (Hamburg, Germany), the Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches und internationales Patent-, Urheber- und Wettbewerbsrecht (Munich, Germany) and the Italian Research Council. He has been visiting scholar in the Yale Law School, the McGill Law School, the Law School of the University of Toronto, the Duke Law School, the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität (Munich, Germany), the Max-Planck-Institut für Internationales und Ausländisches Privatrecht (Hamburg, Germany). In 1995 he graduated with magna cum laude from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”. In 1999 he received his PHD in Private Law from the University of Pisa. He is member of the Italian bar. His principal academic interests are privacy, information property, media-law, contract and legal history.

C.V. M° Enrico Maria Polimanti, pianist:

Enrico Maria Polimanti studied piano and chamber music at the Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia. Awarded of the prestigious Foundation Scholarship of the Royal College of Music, he moved to London where he studied with Yonty Solomon. Once back in Italy he attended courses at Accademia Chigiana di Siena, at the Scuola Superiore Internazionale del Trio di Trieste. He also took part in numerous international master classes given by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, András Schiff. He won several prizes in Italy, among them: Hyperion chamber music competition 2001(first prize), Euterpe 2003 (first prize, also special prize “Duo Binetti”), “Pietro Argento” 2003 (first prize, also “Prize of the Critics”), Seghizzi International Song Competition 2004 (“Prize for best pianist”). He plays as soloist and in chamber ensembles for numerous Festivals and concert seasons in Italy and abroad, recently: Orchestre International de la Citè Universitaire in Paris, Primavera in musica agli Uffizi and Radio Vaticana. He regularly gives lessons, lectures and lecture-recitals in several schools and associations of Rome, at Università Roma3, St. Petersburg College-Florida and Federazione Italiana di Musicoterapia. He translated Charles Rosen’s book “Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas” (Astrolabio-Ubaldini, Roma) and recently he has written the essay The Earth has many keys. Emily Dickinson in the italian contemporary music (Mazzanti, Venezia). He took part in several radio, television and cd recordings (lately Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle for the label “Tactus”). His solo and chamber music repertoire covers a wide range of works dating from early eighteen century to the contemporary epoch.

Prof. Georges Martyn's Lectures

Dear all,

we are at the end of this year's course and we will have a very full and interesting week. We will begin on May 20th with a lecture about "Law and Iconography" held by Prof. Georges Martyn from the Ghent University and we will end on May 21st and 22nd with two quite spectacular "Law and Music" lectures, where Prof. Giorgio Resta, from the University of Bari, will explain the links between legal theory and musical interpretation with the help of the pianist Enrico Maria Polimanti. First, some information about Wednesday's lecture:

LAW AND ICONOGRAPHY:

Readings:

1) A. H. Manchester and M. A. Becker-Moelands: "An Introduction to Iconographical Studies of Legal History", in W.M. Gordon-T.D. Fergus (eds.), "Legal History in the Making". Proceedings of the ninth British Legal History Conference, Glasgow, 1989, London, 1991, pp. 85-94 (Chap. 6).

2) G. Martyn, "Painted Exempla Iustitiae in Southern Netherlands", in "Symbolische Kommunikation vor Gericht in der Fruehn Neuzeit", hrsg. von R. Schulze, Berlin, 2006, pp. 335-356.

Prof. Martyn's CV:

Georges Martyn (Avelgem (B), 1966) studied Law (1984-89) and Medieval Studies (1989-91) in Leuven and received his Ph.D. in Legal History at the Catholic University of Leuven in 1996. He has been an ‘advocaat’ (barrister/lawyer) between 1992 and 2008 and is a substitute justice of the peace in Kortrijk (B) since 1999. He is professor at the University of Ghent (Department of Jurisprudence and Legal History) since 1999. He teaches and published books on ‘History of Politics and Public Law’, ‘General Introduction to Belgian Law’ and ‘Legal Methodology’. His scientific articles consider the history of legislation in the Netherlands in early modern times, the reception of Roman law, the evolution of the sources of the law in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and legal iconography (http://www.rechtsgeschiedenis.be/).

De Froment's Law and Cinema: Last Remarks

Dear students,
Thanks to this blog and the numerous discussions we had in class, I would like to summarize the important points you made about the relationship about law and cinema. There is nothing knew if you followed all of our discussions, and if you read the blog. But I thought I would be good to go over the main points before you move to the next lesson on law and cinema.
Like in class, I am not following a very strict outline, and I start with the same question: law and literature or law and cinema? As you will see, both literature and cinema have according to me good arguments to account for the law. I am not insisting so much on literature (this is not my task), my goal through this very brief comparison is only to clarify for you what it is at stake in the field of “law and humanities”.

LAW AND CINEMA, May 6-8, 2009

Many of you said, even if you immediately gave counter-arguments: “The relationship between law and cinema is a young one. Therefore, this relation is less obvious than the one between literature and law (for example)”.
Comment: of course, the absence of a long tradition makes things harder when one wants to characterize long-term evolutions between law and cinema. But the point I wanted to make was slightly different, and had to do with to the very physical “nature” of the law. Though they are many unwritten customs which produce legal effects, one thinks about law at first as a written text. Therefore it is clear that literature has substantial arguments when it comes to describe the law as a text. One needs however to distinguish here between two definitions of literature (the same in cinema, as we will see below).

1. Literature = (simply) books.

Then the question is whether some authors wrote great masterpieces about legal issues (“LAW IN LITERATURE”). You studied this question with Dr. Stefania Gialdroni this semester. As in cinema, it happens very often that some great minds, though not necessarily being lawyers from training, grasp the logic of the law in a very interesting way. I don’t know Italian literature well enough, but it is very clear that “realist” authors such as Balzac or Dostoievski (see for instance, Crime and Punishment, a wonderful reflection about law and social justice), thanks to great preliminary works, can teach us a lot not only about the law or Justice “ideal” – and that would more be the task of a philosopher – but also about its practical functioning (NB: at the time, the “division of labor” between writers, novelists and scholars was only emerging, it is therefore right to say that Balzac was a kind of sociologist). Another possibility is to make a giant survey of influential books which talk about law and draw conclusions as to the perception, the image of the law (cf. below, same reasoning about law and cinema).

2. Literature as a scientific (more or less…) discipline, with its set of tools.

From this point of view, the question is no more “law in literature”, but “LAW AS LITERATURE”: how are laws, judgments written… Can the tools developed by scholars in the field of literature help us to understand the law in a more accurate way? For instance, many scholars in the 1960s-1980s, in a field called “critical legal studies” used theories developed in the linguistic and philosophical field (structuralism and post-structuralism, from Saussure to Derrida) to address sharp critics against the law. The purpose of this move was to reveal the true nature of the law behind the superficial objectivity of the rule.
What about cinema then?
Well with cinema, it’s just like with law and literature. We could also characterize cinema simply as “all movies that have been made so far”, and therefore as an artifact of both elitist culture (cf. Michele’s comment about Pasolini’s “SALO' E LE 120 GIORNATE DI SODOMA”, not exactly a blockbuster… ) and POPULAR CULTURE (important point here). With this definition, studying law and cinema means studying LAW IN CINEMA.
Or, we can think of cinema primarily as an art, with, again, its techniques, and try to see how these techniques may, or may not capture the essence of the law (CINEMA AS A TECHNIQUE revealing the true nature of the law).
Of course, you have already noticed that these 2 approaches cannot really be separated from each other, but it’s easier for our reasoning.
Let’s summarize here what “cinema and law” in both these approaches can teach us about law, and maybe about cinema as well. (WHAT FOLLOWS IS AN ORGANIZED SUMMARY of what you discussed in class and of what you wrote on the blog; of course, some important points are missing, it’s not meant to be exhaustive).

1. Law in cinema.

a. A GENERAL (STATISTICAL) APPROACH: Cinema, popular culture and the law (cf. article from Friedman, Yale Law Journal). Cinema and legal culture. Almost all of you agreed on this point: cinema or cinema/television is currently the most important form of popular art. Therefore, by studying how law is treated, understood in films, one can draw conclusions about the perception of the law within a significant part of the population, because cinema is a great way to understand the cultural values of a society. For instance, the image of the law in movies is very different in Italy, where many films have recently insisted on how corrupt the legal and political system could be (cf. movies about the mafia) and in the US.
And because movies, TV shows are so important in our perception of the reality, the way law is handled in them influence very much the legal system itself! (some lawyers talk about a “CSI effect” ; people in France often say “your honor” to judges! ; in Germany, people are surprised when they enter a court for it doesn’t look like American tribunals!
Ø Cf. short excerpt from Machura’s article about “Globalizing the Hollywood Courtroom Drama”

But ATTENTION!!! Studying the perception of law within movies is fine. It is also important sociologically speaking. But one should pay attention to methodological issues. YOU CANNOT DRAW SOCIOLOGICAL CONCLUSIONS with one, two or even 5 movies. You need to have many different examples, and almost make a quantitative, statistical analysis… Of course, life is short, and you have better things to do right now. So you need to trust your own culture, or your intuition, and remark for instance that, “most of the time lawyers had a good image, but since the 1990s, it changed”, or “in Hollywood movies, lawyers are often depicted as” etc. But be cautious!

To be honest, I also have other things to do and I can’t watch movies all day long. That is why I introduced you through 2 movies, “12 Angry men” and “Dirty Harry”, which according to me represents two of the most important images of the law in Hollywood movies.
Ø In “12 Angry men”, Lumet shows that when the law is put into practice in the good way, the rule of law, the legal process can be the best tool against social prejudices. The ideal of a balanced Justice (cf. our/your! analysis of the opening scene of the movie is finally met through the process of law).
Ø But as we saw in “Dirty Harry”, and it happens in many other films, sometimes the bureaucratic/procedural nature of the legal order stands in the way of justice (cf. extract). This is the case in many thrillers, where members of the audience often know from the beginning who is guilty. Tension between Justice and respect for the legal order is also present in westerns. We can also think of one great Orson Welles’ movie calles Touch of Evil. In this movie, the sheriff Quinlan (Orson Welles himself) is convinced that a man is guilty of murder, but doesn’t have the evidence to prove it. He doesn’t hesitate to forge it! At the very end of the movie, the audience will learn that, in fact, the alleged killer was indeed guilty though nothing could prove it. Eventually, the death of this guilty man after a long chase doesn’t solve this philosophical/legal question we have already seen in 12 Angry men and in Dirty Harry: what is Justice? Should we let a man walk free if we can’t legally prove he’s guilty?
Ø To summarize, the relationship between law and Justice or between justice and Justice is a very important theme in the cinema history.

b. Films about the law.

Apart from this statistical/cultural approach of cinema considered as an important expression of popular culture, and popular legal culture (cf. for the definition of popular legal culture Friedman’s article), we can also study law within particular movies. As lawyers, we are in an excellent position to evaluate movies in which the law, lawyers, judges etc. play a very important role. Movies are most of the times fiction, so the question is not so much whether the movie is or isn’t “realistic” but whether it represents well the law, the idea of Justice, even in a symbolic way. Not everything is realistic in “12 angry men”, for instance it is not certain a judge would really behave like him if it was a matter of life or death, or that the jurors would be so biases at the beginning of their meeting. But S. Lumet wants to represent in a symbolic way the tension between the idea of Justice, and the day-to-day “bureaucratic production of justice” as some of you said it in the class (cf extract 1).Some great films can then be used to teach law, or to reflect about law. With “12 angry men”, we had the opportunity to reflect on the importance of prejudices in a trial, and to what extent they should be left to one side during the process. Society and its prejudices should never enter a tribunal. But it doesn’t mean law in itself is sufficient! On the contrary, whilst giving up step by step these prejudices, the jurors nevertheless invoke their own experiences but only to make a better interpretations of facts and therefore to serve the law (cf. extract n°2). Social knowledge can be used, but not to (pre)judge an individual, but to appreciate facts, or to be more accurate, legal facts (for instance: someone heard a noise = legal fact to be discussed; someone thinks the kid is probably guilty because he’s from the slums = prejudice that should never enter the jury room): cf. extract n°3 when the juror from the “slums” explains how to use a knife. Lumet makes us think about the ideal interaction of law and society, and how, in a democratic society where all opinions are respected, one can reach justice with our judicial institutions. The purpose of the movie is also certainly to warn future jurors against their own prejudices. The movie is a somehow a normative educational depiction of the legal system!
With “It’s a free world”, of course, a very different perspective is given us on the law, and the role it plays within society. I am just giving some insights here, because I hadn’t time to fully explain why I chose the movie during the class. Some of you made a comment saying 12 angry men was a better match than “It’s a free world” to talk about “Law and cinema”. I totally understand this opinion, and there are very strong arguments to support it. Nevertheless, here are some interesting points that we can study in the movie “It’s a free world”.
It’s very much a realistic movie. Everything or almost everything, although it’s highly symbolic, is supposed to account for an economic, social, legal reality. It’s somehow in-between a film and a documentary about a forgotten part of the labour market and what it means for our society. Of course, the focus is not only on the “law” or on the “legal system” in the narrow sense of the term. But the movie challenges the role we usually grant to the law. Ken Loach knows legal problems pretty well, and his scriptwriter, Paul Laverty, is a lawyer from training… and I think we can see it in the movie.
First, the movie underlines how often laws are broken, circumvented, unapplied. The movie starts with a sexual harassment scene (cf. extract n°4). But we can clearly see that Angie has almost no possibility to contest her dismissal, though the English in particular is particularly protective against all sorts of discriminations and sexual harassments on the workplace: law is not always the solution, and to praise for its better application may be a loss of time. Maybe mentalities, culture should change first! Second example: Rose abides very much by the law, she’s the one having the most naïve relationship to the rule of law: she believes that penalties provided in statutes are to be applied strictly (5 years for providing illegal workers for instance). But believing in the law doesn’t really make her a better person, as she is the one proposing a “legal” way to exploit even more workers through her double-shift housing system for temporary workers. And she also refuses to help the Iranian family. (cf. end of extract n°1)
Second, the movie provides us with a survey of legal practices in the world of temporary workers: in the extract n°1, you can see Angie’s client complaining about Polish workers’ behavior as soon as they have “papers”, which means as soon as they have regular contracts of employment (I guess). As you can see in Collins (ed.) Textbook, the most protective rights are granted primarily to regular “employees”, whilst “workers” (having a contract for and not of services), independent workers etc. have less and less rights. Loach show us therefore the ambiguous connection between labour laws and real practices and explain us that the fear of legal obligations as well as the will to have workers who obey like machines can explain the success of these new forms of employment.As often in Ken Loach, there are prejudices and biases, and employers’ awfulness is as exaggerated as employees’ kindness and fairness (cf. beginning extract n°2). Economists argue sometimes for example that the protection granted to some employees (protections very much defended by Ken Loach) are being “paid” somehow by this flexible workers, and some of us should be more flexible so that the others can be less flexible… But this movie is one of the rare attempt to capture the margins of our world, and to try to explain injustice in a subtle way. Besides, both Loach’s arguments (represented by the father) and liberal’s arguments are (almost) fairly exposed in the park scene (cf. extract n°3). I find the way in which Angie starts to work with illegal workers (out of social empathy and greediness) particularly interesting. Ken Loach seems to argue (cf. the father during the park scene) that immigrant workers should rather stay in their home land to develop their own economy, but it’s easy to find counter-arguments, especially for Italians (should have all qualified Sicilian workers stayed in Palermo instead of going to the US?)The main argument in Loach’s movie is well-represented in the very symbolic organization of the movie and in some particularly violent scenes (when Angie is beaten up in the street and at her own place, cf. extract n°5). You have probably noticed (that’s why I put together in extract n°4 the sexual harassment scene and the scene where Angie and Rose text some of their temp workers to have sex with them) that they are many symmetric elements in the movie, the victim often becomes the executioner, the friend becomes the enemy etc. During the class, I read you a passage of a famous M. Thatcher’s interview in which she states that “there is no such thing as society”. Loach’s argument through his production is to prove the contrary in a symbolic way (and of course fictional): our actions have always consequences (cf. scene in the park –extract 3-, where the grandfather accuses Angie to jeopardize her son’s future), “Thatcherian” individualism (whose birth in the labor world is described in a previous movie called the Navigators) destroy the very equilibrium of our existence which should be built on social solidarity. The division between work and life is broken, everything is affected by individualism, including the sex life.A last remark about Ken Loach’s movie. One could easily argue, apart from the fact that Ken Loach clearly doesn’t believe in capitalism (when the majority actually do), that this is quite a conservative movie in the end, praising for the impossible return of a golden age, which, in fact, may never have existed!

2. Cinema as an art, with its techniques: is the cinematographic art well-adapted to the law?
It is so hard to separate dimension 1 from dimension 2 that I have of course already talked about some techniques which made cinema particularly adapted to account for the law production. Some of you made very nice comment about it during the class and on the blog (the last Georgia’s comment 12/05 for example) so I will just summarize it very quickly:
Ø a movie plot is in many respects very similar to a trial “plot” or even to the legal process in general (complicated facts step by step combined together in a rational story)
Ø similarities between lawyers and actors. Judges in England wear “wigs”. Ritualistic nature of the law particularly well-adapted to movies and cinema
Ø tension between Justice and law in action: in 12 Angry Men, we start with a static shot, before following people in dark and complicated corridors. Cinema can both combine this static and moving element of law
etc. etc.
Let’s go back to our first question, law and literature rather than law and cinema or the contrary? So, my opinion is, but it can be challenged, that both points can be argued. To grasp the image of law, lawyers etc. in our different cultures, both literature and cinema are essential. With the success of cinema and television, it may however be more relevant to study these last two if we’re interested in the modern image of law. What about techniques then? Well, as we said earlier, law is a text, which puts literature in a very good position to win our contest. Nevertheless, all arguments that we have pinpointed above (plot, actor-lawyer, representation of law-in-action etc.) plead for the victory of cinema. That’s your call!
Well, it was longer than I thought, congratulations for those who have read until there, and enjoy your last “law and the humanities” lessons.
Charles.

Prof. Esteban Conde's Lectures

Dear all,

Prof. Esteban Conde Naranjo, from the University of Huelva (Spain), will be our next guest. He will approach the Law and Cinema field of study from a completely different perspective: I'm sure you will enjoy it!

*

ABSTRACT

*
The lectures will introduce the ‘law and cinema’ contemporary scholarship, trying to look critically (from a european perspective) at some of its premises and results.
Therefore we will focus on underline one of the possible intersections between law and films: that of ‘cinema in law’ (or law on cinema). This approach is by far much less attended (and maybe less ‘funny’, more ‘serious’) than the classical ‘law in cinema’ studies or the (amusing and even ‘worrying’) ‘law as cinema/cinema as law’ debates.
More specifically we will tackle some US Supreme Court decisions (and indecisions) to concisely describe the way in which censorship on films has been –constitutionally and legally- formulated in the twentieth century.
The account should serve as an example –and encouragement- for those students interested in the development of similar subjects, which are not necessarily involved with totalitarian regimes or tendencies.
And above all, it is a proposal –and a provocation- concerning the unavoidable (self)analysis about the (individual, social, juridical, economical) limits and burdens of freedom of speech.

*

READINGS

*
A)
- The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 98, No.8, “Popular Legal Culture” (June 1989) (“Introduction”, pp. 1545-1558; Lawrence M. Friedman, “Law, Lawyers, and Popular Culture”, pp. 1579-1606)

- Stefan Machura/Peter Robson (eds.), Journal of Law and Society, Vol. 28, No. 1, “Law and Film” (March 2001). The “Introduction”, pp.1-8, includes a selected bibliography (1986-1999)

B)

- “Motion Pictures and the First Amendment”, The Yale Law Journal, Vol. 60, No. 4. (April 1951), pp. 696-719.
- John Wertheimer, “Mutual Film Reviewed: The Movies, Censorship, and Free Speech in Progressive America”, The American Journal of Legal History, Vol. 37, No. 2. (Apr., 1993), pp. 158-189.

*

Esteban Conde's CV:

*

Esteban Conde (Barcelona, 1971), Legal Historian (Universities of Barcelona –Autónoma- and now Huelva), received his Ph.D. in Law in 2003. He has written two books (1998, 2006) about the main (and constructive) role played by ‘enlightened’ censorship in Spain, and several articles on police power (its metaphores, tradition and development at the end of the Ancien Régime).
Over the past five years, he has used some interdisciplinary approaches as a tool to teach legal history: litterature and law, and more recently cinema and law.

About copying...

As you can imagine, I'm starting to check again your comments in order to come prepared to your exam. If someone among you thinks that we are not able to find out if he/she is copying from the Interent or even from another source, well, he/she is going to be diappointed. You risk a very bad mark: copying is absolutely useless if not stupid. Think twice before doing it again!

Exam

Dear all,

I would like to explain a couple of things about the exam.

First of all I would like to remind you that, if you want to take the exam before the 9th of June, you can choose to take it on May 25th or 26th but you should send me an email to confirm.

Second, I have the impression that you are a bit confused because we asked to some of you to write a paper. Before explaining I have to underline that what I'm going to say remains valid only if you follow the course until the end!!! We simply devided the students in 3 groups, according to how many times they wrote on the blog and how often they have commented during the lessons (of course prof. Conte tells me about that and if I'm missing something he will inform me again about all of you before the exam). The ones that wrote a lot (and some of you really did) and/or have commented a lot during the lessons, will take a quite simple exam. The ones that wrote less should prepare a topic they found interesting and discuss a bit about it. The ones that wrote just ones or twice should prepare a written text. In fact, on the blog we have the opportunity to judge also your written English and your capacity to think about legal questions, so it seems fair that who hasn't written should proof his qualities in a paper. I hope everything is clear!

Ken Loach in room 3!

Well, not Ken Loach himself, but his movie. It will be projected in room 3, just after the class.

De Froment's lectures

Law and cinema, May 6-8 2009. Outline

Introduction: why law and cinema? A call for interdisciplinarity and law & society studies

A. The “cinematogenic” nature of law (Wednesday and Thursday – first half of the class)

1. The love story between trial movies, the Hollywood film industry, and American courtrooms

(Question: why Hollywood trial movies –and American movies/TV shows talking about law in general outnumber European ones?

Famous examples (amongst many others): To Kill a Mockingbird (directed by R. Mulligan, starring G. Peck as Atticus Finch); 12 Angry Men (1957, directed by S. Lumet, starring H. Fonda as the dissenting juror).

2. What do we learn from movies about Law?

a. A distorted image certainly… but, “All I need to know about law, I learned it from Law & Order”

(http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?sid=5aef5d2d3d0360b97ad76494386672b7&gid=2211735278&ref=search)

Readings: P. Meyer and L.M. Friedman;
Movies (TV shows etc.): your own culture!
Question: did movies influence in any way your perception of law? To what extent is the lawyer’s image in Italy similar to the one presented in Hollywood movies?

b. Movies and the tension between legal procedures and Justice.

Ex: 12 Angry Men and Dirty Harry (1971)

B. Reflecting on law and society through Ken Loach’s “It’s a free world” (2007)

(YOU HAVE TO SEE THE MOVIE BEFORE Thursday, I will only show you some extracts during the class)

Readings:

• please spend 30-45 minutes on the internet to gather information about temporary workers (agency workers, part-time etc.) in Italy and in Europe. I will send you statistics as well.
• Collins, Ewing, McColgan, Labour law: text and material, Second Edition, 2005. I chose some relevant extracts to introduce you to the complexity of British labour law. Any parallel you will be able to draw with the current situation in Italy will of course be welcome.

The purpose of this class is to benefit from our legal knowledge to understand and/or to criticize a movie, whose aim is to teach the audience about the margins of our legal system.

1. Temporary work in Europe: a brief overview

2. Legality and illegality in Ken Loach’s movie: a subtle look at the true functioning of the labour market or an exaggerated account of the reality?

3. Father and daughter: Ken Loach’s pessimistic vision of the new legal and social order.

Conclusion (summary of the 3 lessons and open discussion)

READINGS

Dear students,

Here is a short list of readings to prepare our 3 classes on “Law and cinema”.
Please read them as carefully as possible: they will provide ideas, themes we will further develop during the lessons.

Lawrence M. Friedman, “Law, Lawyers, and Popular Culture”, The Yale Law Journal, Vol.98, N°6, Symposium: Popular Legal Cultures, June 1989, pp.1576-1606 (read only until p.1598) (http://www.jstor.org/stable/796606)

Phil Meyer, “Why a Jury Trial Is More Like a Movie than a Novel”, Journal of Law and Society, vol. 28, n°1, Law and Film, March 2001, pp.133-146 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/3657952)

Stefan Machura, S. Ulbrich, F.M. Nevis, N. Behling, “Globalizing the Hollywood Courtroom Drama”, Journal of Law and Society, vol. 28, n°1, Law and Film, March 2001, pp.117-132 (read only the first 3 pages, until p.119) (http://www.jstor.org/stable/3657951)

Hugh Collins, K.D. Ewing, A. McColgan, Labour Law: Text and Materials, Hart Publishing, 2^nd Edition, 2005, p. 155-196 (but with only about 15 pages to read).

MOVIES

Twelve Angry Men, S. Lumet, 1957

It’s a Free World, K. Loach, 2007 (viewing compulsory before Thursday’s class)

CHARLES DE FROMENT CV:

Charles de Froment is a PhD candidate both from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Paris) and from Goethe Universität (Frankfurt am Main). In 2006, he was awarded a 3-year European PHD scholarship (“European Doctorate in history, sociology, anthropology and philosophy of legal cultures in Europe”). He studied during the first year at the London School of Economics in London, spent the second one at the Max-Planck-Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte in Frankfurt am Main and the third at the Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane (SUM, Firenze).
He graduated in 2005 in History and Social Sciences from the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Paris), and received his M.A. in History from EHESS as well as a B.A. in Law from Université Paris-2 Assas in 2006.
In 2004-2005, he was a teaching assistant in the Romance Language Department at Harvard University.
His PHD dissertation is about the legal and social history of temporary work in Europe, especially in France and Germany.

Law and Cinema

Dear all,
before writing on the blog all the information about Charles de Froment talks, I would like to give you the titles of two movies he suggested. You are going to discuss about them during the next talks on Law and Cinema, but if you manage to have a look at them before, it could maybe be useful for the discussion. Anyway, we are trying to find a classroom to watch a movie together on Wednesday after the lesson, but it isn't sure (and it isn't compulsory, of course). By the way: Our university has a new, fantastic dvd player and there will be no problem next time to show a movie (I'm still "shell-shocked" by the MOV experience).

"It's a Free World..."
Director: Ken Loach
Cast: Kierston Wareing, Juliet Ellis, Leslaw Zurek
Drama
96 min.
UK, Italy, Germany, Spain, 2007
Best Screenplay, Venice Film Festival 2007
Best Film, Seville Film Festival 2007

"12 angry men"
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Jack Warden
Drama
96 min.
USA, 1957
Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival 1957

There is also a 2007 adaptation by Nikita Mikhalkov: "12".

Prof. Emanuele Conte's Lectures

Dear all,
next week Prof. Conte will talk about the interactions between Law and History. There will be only two talks, as Friday is the 1st of May. He suggested the following reading, that I will send you as soon as possible.

James Q. Whitman, "Bring back the Glory!", in "Rechtsgeschichte", 4 (2004), pp. 74-81.

Mathias Reimann, "Nineteenth German Legal Science", in "Boston College Law Review", 31.4 (1990), pp. 842-897, especially par. II and III.

http://www.giur.uniroma3.it/themes/GiurBlue/docenti/conte/conte.htm

Law and architecture

Among these pictures:
- Corte di Cassazione, Rome
- Palazzo H, Rome
- Facoltà di giurisprudenza, Univ.
La Sapienza, Rome
- Palais de Justice, Paris
- Palais de Justice, Rouen
- Rechtswissenschaftliche Fakultatet,
Bibliothek, Hamburg

- Royal Courts of Justice, London

-

Law and paintings and drawings and sculptures...

These are some of the pictures that you proposed becuase they all are, in a particular way, linked to the idea of law and/or justice. You will find among them:

- "La vision de Hugo" by Théophile-Alexandre Steinlein.
- "Portrait of the lawyer Hugo Simons" by Otto Dix.
- Buon Governo frescoes by Ambrogio Lorenzetti.
- "Les gens de justice" by Honoré Daumier.
- "Mercurio in volo" by Alessandro Romano.
- "Die Gerechtigkeit (The Justice), Tarot by Hans Rudolf Giger.

- "La consegna del Codice Rocco" (The delivery of the Rocco Code) by Giulio Bargellini (Ministry of Justice, Rome).

- "Electric Chair" by Andy Warhol.

- "Abu Ghraib 66" by Fernando Botero.

- "Gerechtigkeitsbrunnen" (Fountain of Justice), Berne, by Hans Gieng

- Lady Justice, Old Bailey, London

Exam Calendar

Dear all,
as you know, we will tell you all the details about the way we are going to examine you at the end of the course. Anyway, it is sure that if you don't write your comments on the blog you will be obliged to write a little essay in English. The exam calendar is the following:

JUNE & JULY:

9th June, h. 9:00

23th June, h. 9:00

21st July, h. 9:00

SEPTEMBER:

8th September, h. 9:00

22nd September, h. 9:00

Law and Architecture in London

Hi everybody!

First of all, it would be really great even if a little group of students could go to the Teatro India to see Civica's version of the MOV (as Emanuela suggested) which seems to be absolutely original. You now know the play quite well, I'm sure you will enjoy it!

Second, if you happen to go to London, especially after these talks about Law and Architecture, try to visit the Inns of Court too. Maybe you are not all aware that you can visit them. I suggest Lincoln's Inn (with lovely law bookshop) and, of course, Inner and Middle Temple (with the famous Temple Church...). They are all in the very centre of London, not far away from Trafalgar Square and near the High Courts of Justice too. I'm sure that the architecture will give you an idea of the barristers' status in England! By the way, if you have really patient friends/family, you can also see a criminal case in the Old Bailey (http://www.touruk.co.uk/london_sights/oldbailey1.htm). It's quite fun.

Thanks and something else

Dear all,

first of all I would like to thank you for your participation to the lectures and your comments on the blog: most of them are really interesting and I'm sorry that I'm not able to answer to all of them properly (today we reached the incredible number of 250 comments and there are still 6 speakers left!). Anyway, I would like to assure you that we are going to talk a little bit about them during your exam. I will try to look through your comments before the exam in order to discuss some issues with you later. Thank you also for the comments about the MOV movie that we couldn't watch together! Next time it will (has to) work, don't worry.

About Emanuela Hernandez's question, as you know, Prof. Watt was so kind to answer: I'm sure you will really enjoy his talks and I'm very sorry that I won't be there! The point is, I think, to analyse the symbolic dimension of architecture in its connection to law. I think that you can understand a little bit what it is all about reading David Evans' article I sent you. He writes about the Inns of Court in London. We don't have anything like that, but what about the architecture of tribunals in Italy? Do you know them? And the law faculties? Some of them are very ordinary buildings, some others certainly not. Why? Of course this is only one possibility.

Finally, I would like to tell you 2 things:

1) If you discuss some interesting topics about law and architecture during this week you can send me the images you proposed with a little comment: I will try to put on the blog some of them.
2) If someone wants my power point presentations just write me an email and I will send them to you.

It was really great to meet you finally!
Best

Quotation

Can you find the original English version of this quotation of Hannah Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem"?

"Un processo assomiglia a un dramma in quanto che dal principio alla fine si occupa del protagonista, non della vittima".

(H. Arendt, "La banalità del male. Eichmann a Gerusalemme", trad. P. Bernardini, Milano: Universale Economica Feltrinelli, 2008 (1964), p. 17).

Prof. Gary Watt's Lectures

Seminar One:

Wednesday 22nd April, 13:45 - 15:45, Hall 3
“Foundations: architectural metaphors of law and society”

“A lawyer without history or literature is a mechanic, a mere working mason; if he possesses some knowledge of these, he may venture to call himself an architect”.
Sir Walter Scott, Guy Mannering (1815)

“In that jurisdiction precedes law, in that it marks the point of entry into the juridical sphere and speech, it has to be visible in advance of utterance and hence must be a property of communal space, of the architecture of the institution, of context and vestment that can be apprehended prior to any discursive intervention in the name of legality.”
Peter Goodrich, “Visive Powers: Colours, Trees and Genres of Jurisdiction” (2008) 2(2) Law and Humanities 213–231, 214.

Preparation:
Identify an architectural metaphor employed in the legal language of Italy or elsewhere – and come prepared to discuss it. For a general introduction to the dominance of metaphors in US legal language, read Bernard J. Hibbitts, “Making Sense of Metaphors: Visuality, Aurality, and the Reconfiguration of American Legal Discourse”, 16 Cardozo L. Rev. 229 (1994) (accessible at http://faculty.law.pitt.edu/hibbitts/meta_con.htm)

Seminar Outline:
We will consider the significance to legal language of the architectural metaphors, including the metaphors of “the rule” and “the level ground”. We will also critically examine the following two quotes which use architectural metaphors to explain “equity”:

“The formall cause of Equity is the matching and levelling of facts falling out, and the circumstances thereof, with the rules of the Law, as buildings are framed to carpenters lines and squares...Not unfitly is Equity termed the rule of manners: for as by a rule the faults of a building are so discovered, so doth equity judge aright, both of the written law, and also of all mens actions and behaviours: and therefore such as are ministers of Justice, apply and frame their judgments, after the square and rule of good and legal, that is to say, of God’s Law, and the Lawes of Nature”
William West, Symboleography (1593)

“When the law speaks universally, then, and a case arises on it which is not covered by the universal statement, then it is right, where the legislator fails us and has erred by oversimplicity, to correct the omission-to say what the legislator himself would have said had he been present, and would have put into his law if he had known. Hence the equitable is just, and better than one kind of justice-not better than absolute justice but better than the error that arises from the absoluteness of the statement. And this is the nature of the equitable, a correction of law where it is defective owing to its universality. In fact this is the reason why all things are not determined by law, that about some things it is impossible to lay down a law, so that a decree is needed. For when the thing is indefinite the rule also is indefinite, like the leaden rule used in making the Lesbian moulding; the rule adapts itself to the shape of the stone and is not rigid, and so too the decree is adapted to the facts.”
Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics, Book V chapter 10

Seminar Two

Thursday 23rd April 10:00 - 11:45, Hall 4
“Honoré Daumier - law, architecture and the art of chiaroscuro”

“a painter so mighty, that no terms can exaggerate the greatness of his importance”.
- Julius Meier-Graefe (Florence Simmonds, trans.)



Preparation:
Bring a picture (by any artist) demonstrating chiaroscuro and be prepared to discuss its symbolic significance to the law AND/OR bring a picture of a contemporary or historical architectural site connected to the law and be prepared to discuss it (you will be supplied with extracts from D Evans, “The Architecture of the Inns of Court” (1999) 10(1) Law and Critique 1-25 and K F Taylor, In the Theater of Criminal Justice: The Palais de Justice in Second Empire Paris (Princeton University Press, 1993)).

Read the extract from the editorial to (2008) 3(1) Law and Humanities (set out below).

Seminar Outline:
We will discuss the legal significance of the architectural/chiaroscuro images you have found, and some others that I will bring to the seminar. Are you familiar with the phrases “black letter law” and “bright line rule”? Is anything in nature black and white? Is the law? Be prepared to produce your own chiaroscuro study of the law – materials will be supplied!

Gary Watt on law, architecture and the art of chiaroscuro in the work of Honoré Daumier, from the Editorial to 3(1) Law and Humanities (2008):

“Daumier’s work exhibits a complete mastery of composition, line, tone and – when used, which was relatively seldom – colour. A distinctive feature of much of his work is the bold use of chiaroscuro (or clair-obscur), which is the use of dark shadow and bright light to produce dramatic tonal contrast. This feature is the foundation for many of his greatest oil paintings - including Le Lutteur (1852-53); Les Deux Avocats (1855-7); L’Homme à la corde (1858-60); La Laveuse (1860-1) and Crispin et Scapin (1863-5) – and, of course, it is an almost universal feature of his caricatures, which were for the most part executed exclusively in black-and-white monochrome – or as we might term it nowadays, “greyscale”. One can attribute Daumier’s fascination with lawyers to many sources – including the fact that he was employed (at the age of twelve or thirteen) to act as a runner for a notary or bailiff in Paris and the fact that, around the same time, his father is said to have been a frequent visitor to the courts on account of his troubled business affairs – but whatever captured his artistic imagination, it was surely the singular contrast between lawyers’ white collars and black robes that captivated his artistic eye. In the introduction to the English language publication of Les Gens de Justice, Julien Cain notes that “Daumier saw this ‘magic lantern of black figures’ performed before his very eyes” (Les Gens de Justice (New York: Tudor Publishing, 1959) page 13). As for the deeply sardonic critique of lawyers that emerges through his work, that may be attributable to his republican – essentially revolutionary – political outlook, and to the fact that he was imprisoned in his early twenties for his caricature Gargantua (1831). This caricature depicts the last king to rule in France - Louis-Philippe I, so-called “King of the French” – seated on a commode throne continually “issuing” favours whilst being continually fed by the bourgeoisie....
Daumier deserves his place in the pantheon of Law and Humanities, because he exemplifies the central aim of the whole project – which is to cast external scholarly or artistic illumination upon law and lawyers. But do Daumier’s caricatures cast too bright a light? Is his clair too brilliant, with the result that his obscur is too dark, too cynical? We do not think so. If there is an extremism to Daumier’s caricatures, it is attributable to a great extent to the somewhat journalist context in which those works appeared. There was also the need to ensure that the work was attractive to the editors and to the paying public. Surprising as it may seem to us, Daumier sometimes struggled to have certain pieces accepted – even, and perhaps especially, towards the end of his career. Despite this, the passionate humanity of the man is clear from his caricatures – his depiction of the lawyer leaving court with a tearful widow and her “orphan” child achieves pity and avoids sentimentality. The picture is so well drawn, the legend accompanying it in Les Gens de Justice is otiose: “Vous avez perdu votre procès c'est vrai ..... mais vous avez du éprouver bien du plaisir à m’entendre plaider”. This caricature appears as plate number 35 in Les Gens de Justice (see Stone number 1371: www.daumier.org), and to conclude we will briefly consider the plate that immediately follows it. Plate 36 (Stone number 1372: www.daumier.org) depicts the grand staircase leading up to the Palais de Justice, which still stands at the heart of Paris on the Île de la Cité. Walking down the staircase are two lawyers, a few steps apart, each nursing a bundle of documents under his left arm. Each lawyer is looking straight ahead in full-frontal profile; faces devoid of passion, almost without expression – most un-Daumier-like. Their black robes drop straight, their white official scarves – an elongated version of what English barristers call “tabs” - hang from their collars rigidly perpendicular, as if starched. The plate carries the legend “Grand escalier du Palais de justice. Vue de faces” [fig 1 below]. The humour is as understated as was the pathos of the previous plate. The reference is architectural: here, in the language of architects, is a “front profile of the grand staircase”, and here – in the shape of lawyers – are two cold and rigid men of stone. The fact that the plate is itself a lithograph– and was therefore set in stone – adds a further dimension to the metaphor...Plate 36 was apparently based on an earlier wood engraving (1836), which is a pleasing metaphor for the way in which the law begins in nature before it is set in stone, but the evolution of the work does not end there. Daumier revisited the image around 1865 in the form of a mixed media work (charcoal, soft pencil, ink, watercolour and gouache on paper). The new version is entitled Le Grand escalier du Palais de justice [fig 2 below]. The pronoun “le” has been added, and the concluding clause “Vue de faces” has been removed. Accordingly, there is, on this occasion, no attempt to repeat the architectural joke. The composition of the picture broadly corresponds to the earlier lithograph, but there are significant differences. There is only one lawyer walking down the stairs, but that is not especially significant. What is significant is the fact that the lawyer is clearly moving – his hat is soft and sitting somewhat askew, his robes are flowing, his white scarf is ruffled and shifting and his feet can be seen stepping down the stairs, whereas before we did not see them. And there, on his chest, near his heart, is the smallest square of red – the ribbon of la Légion d’honneur. Apart from this small patch of red, the picture is grey or thinly washed in pale pink and yellow. There is hope in this image. The stone cold lawyer has moved. The colourless lawyer has a spark of passion in his heart. His face is still aloof but he is moving, and he is walking down from his lofty place, and he might just be walking towards humanity”.

Seminar Three
Thursday 23rd April 10:00 - 11:45, Hall 4

“On Cathedrals and the Theban Wall”

Dictus et Amphion, Thebanae conditor arcis,
Saxa movere sono testudinis, et prece blanda
Ducere quo vellet. Fuit haec sapientia quondam,
Publica privatis secernere, sacra profanis…leges incidere lingo.

Horace, De Arte Poetica

[Amphion too, the builder of the Theban wall, was said to give the stones motion
with the sound of his lyre, and to lead them -whithersoever
he would, by engaging persuasion. This was deemed
wisdom of yore, to distinguish the public from private weal,
things sacred from things profane…to engrave laws on tables of wood.]

“Civilisations cannot be built mechanistically – there must be art as well as science. Where the stones of law are stubborn we must turn to the art of equity. If law is the mason’s art of producing rectilinear stones from the bedrock of nature, equity is the sculptor’s art of revealing the human form from within the rectilinear stone. As the great American jurist, Judge Learned Hand, once said: ‘the work of a judge is an art…[i]t is what a poet does, it is what a sculptor does’” G Watt, Equity Stirring: The Story of Justice Beyond the Law (2009)

“law matters because of death and time and our care for others. Like architecture or language, it is part of the work of cultures which seeks to reach across time, and beyond life”
Desmond Manderson, ‘Desert Island Discs (Ten reveries on pedagogy in law and the humanities)’ (2008) 2(2) Law and Humanities 255–270, 270.


Preparation:
Be prepared to provide examples (from architecture and from law) as contributions to the discussion (see next).


Seminar Outline: We will debate this question: is the law like architecture? Is architecture utilitarian, functional, economically compromised, culturally constructed, culturally reflexive, symbolic? Is the law? Consider the architectural symbolism of the following images – what do they tell us about the law? (As a fun quiz – can you name the subject and artist of each image?) Does the identity of the artist matter? Why?

The architects of medieval cathedrals encountered the irony that a cathedral built along rectilinear lines to a great height required such thick walls and pillars to support it that the light was blocked out - thus the physical form of the building came to obscure a substantial symbol (and sense) of the spiritual enterprise. Medieval architects found a solution in the “flying buttress” – the prop of stone that pushes against the wall of the cathedral from the outside and, by opposing, supports the whole structure. The flying buttress allowed for thinner walls and wider windows and better illumination. Does the law need a flying buttress? Does the law have one?

Prof. Gary Watt's C.V.

Gary Watt (b. 1969) is a graduate of New College, Oxford University, and a qualified Solicitor (non-practising). He is currently an Associate Professor and Reader in Law at the University of Warwick, having joined Warwick Law School in 1999. Since 2005 he has also been a visiting professor in comparative common law at the Université René Descartes (Paris 5) and since 2004 he has been one of the editors of the Mortgage group in the Project for a Common Core of European Private Law based at the Università di Trento. Gary is a passionate advocate for scholarship and teaching in the various fields of law and humanities and is one of the two founding editors of Law and Humanities (Oxford, Hart publishing) - the first UK-based journal dedicated to the examination of law by the lights of humanities’ disciplines. He is the co-editor of Shakespeare and the Law (Oxford, Hart publishing, 2008) and the author of numerous books, chapters and articles, including Trusts and Equity (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003) (currently in 3rd edition, 2008) and a forthcoming book on law and literature: Equity Stirring: The Story of Justice Beyond Law (Oxford, Hart publishing, 2009). He has also co-written for BBC Radio 3's Between the Ears strand with ‘Prix Italia’ winner Antony Pitts. Gary’s enthusiasm for his subjects (and for teaching them) has led to invitations to deliver lectures and seminars in places as diverse as Hong Kong, the US, Italy, Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam, and the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Gary was named UK “Law Teacher of the Year” in 2009.

Dr. Stefania Gialdroni's Lectures

Shakespeare in Law.
“The Merchant of Venice” and “Measure for Measure”: A legal historical perspective

Outline:

15.03.2009:
Who was William Shakespeare? Legends and exaggerations vs. historical investigation.
16.03.2009:
Equity and Discrimination.
17.03.2009:
Usury and Liberty of Contract.

Suggested readings:

Daniel J. Kornstein, Fie Upon your Law!, in “Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature”, 5.1 (1993): A Symposium Issue on “The Merchant of Venice” (Spring, 1993), pp. 35-56.

Jay L. Halio, Portia: Shakespeare’s Matlock?, in “Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature”, 5.1 (1993), A Symposium Issue on "The Merchant of Venice". (Spring, 1993), pp. 57-64.

Susan Oldrieve, Marginalized Voices in “The Merchant of Venice”, in “Cardozo Studies in Law and Literature”, 5.1 (1993): A Symposium Issue on “The Merchant of Venice” (Spring, 1993), pp. 87-105.

Stefania Gialdroni's curriulum vitae (*12.08.1977)

Stefania Gialdroni graduated in 2003 from the University of RomaTre (Law faculty), where she immediately started a collaboration with Prof. Conte, the chair of “Medieval and Modern Legal History”. In 2004 she started the “International Max-Planck Research School for Comparative Legal History” in Frankfurt am Main (Germany). In 2006 she started the Marie-Curie “European Doctorate in History, Sociology, Anthropology and Philosophy of Legal Cultures in Europe”. In the framework of the European Doctorate she spent one year (2006-2007) as a visiting PhD student at the London School of Economics (LSE) and one year as a visiting PhD student at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris (EHESS), where she is still studying at the moment.
On February 11th 2009 she received her PhD “en cotutelle” between the Universities Milano-Bicocca (Private Law and History of Private Law Legal Science) and EHESS, Paris (History and Civilisation). The title of her PhD dissertation is: “A Legal History of the East India Company. Limited Liability and Majority Principle in 17th Century England”.

Easter Holidays

Dear all,

this post is just to confirm that next week there won't be any Law and the Humanities talk. See you on Wednesday 15th.

Have a nice week!

Is law only a complicate way to affirm political power?

As a graduate in law, Kafka knew pretty well the Austrian legal system. His critics of that system is deep and hopeless. Would you share the same attitude towards law, after having learned it for years at the University? Do you know any Italian novel which shares the same pessimistic attitude Kafka shows towards the law?

Dr. Marc Harreman's Lectures

Dear all,
next week Dr. Marc Harreman will introduce you to Kafka's world. After that, there will be a short pause (Easter Holidays...): you will have some time to think about all the lectures and the readings before starting again on Wednesday 15th April.

Program “Law & Franz Kafka”:

Lecture 1 (Wednesday, 1 April 2009, 13.45h - 15.45h) ‘Franz Kafka is Law-and-literature’ - Introduction to Franz Kafka, his life and his work.

Lecture 2 (Thursday, 2 April 2009, 10.00h - 11.45h) ‘The Trial (Der Prozess)’ - Kafka’s most famous novel.

Lecture 3 (Friday, 3 April 2009, 10.00h - 11.45h) ‘Franz Kafka in Law-and-literature’ - Franz Kafka in judicial opinions and scientific discussions (Robin Posner vs. Richard Posner).

Readings:
Martha S. Robinson, The Law of the State in Kafka’s Trial, in “ALSA F.” 6(1982), p. 127-148.
Robin West, Authority, Autonomy, and Choice: The Role of Consent in the Moral and Political Visions of Franz Kafka and Richard Posner, in “Harvard Law Review”, 99 (1985), p. 384-428.

Richard A. Posner, The Ethical Significance of Free Choice: A Reply to Professor West, in “Harvard Law Review”, 99 (1986), p. 1431-1448.

Two parables of Franz Kafka:
- The problem of our laws (‘Zur Frage der Gesetze’)
- The gate-keeper (excerpt from “The Trial”)

Curriculum Dr. M.M.L. Harreman:

Marc Harreman is an expert in the field of Dutch and European civil and procedural law and has published several articles in these fields. Mr. Harreman was born in Geleen in 1970 (The Netherlands). He completed his law degree in 1994 at the Rijksuniversiteit Leiden. During his law study, Mr. Harreman studied at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg in Germany under the Erasmus scholarship program. Mr. Harreman taught, as a guest professor, arbitration law at the University of Letland in Riga and worked for different law firms in Austria and in The Netherlands, including Reif-Breitwieser in Vienna and Russell in Amsterdam. From 2000 to 2008 Mr. Harreman was a Lecturer of Civil Law at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam and holds a Ph.D. awarded by this University. He wrote his dissertation on: “Seizures for security in order to obtain consignment of goods", English translation of the Dutch title: "A study regarding the application of art. 730 of the Code of Civil Proceeding, also from a historical point of view”, published by Boom Juridische Uitgevers, The Hague, 2007.

Dr. Magnus Ryan's Lectures

Dear all,

Dr. Magnus Ryan, from the University of Cambridge, will be our second speaker, starting from next Wednesday (25.26.27 April).

His topic will be "Law and Literature" and in particular "Law and Shakespeare". To be ready for the lectures, he suggested to read 3 plays that you can easily find on the web:

1) Measure for Measure
2) Richard II
3) King John

As suggested readings you should study:

a) Chap. 1 and 2 of: Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology, Princeton, 1957
We will try to scanner the two chapters and send them to you all. If not, you will have to go to a library...

b) PP. 593-594 (only two pages not the whole text) of Part Six of An Homily Against Disobedience and Wilfull Rebellion (1571):
http://www.footstoolpublications.com/Homilies/Bk2_Rebellion21.pdf


You should read the plays considering the following questions:

1. Measure for Measure:
- Justice and Equity
- The personal qualities of the judge
- Stoicism
- What circumstances justify leniency?
2. King John
- Might and right
- Possession and right/legitimacy: What legal mechanisms are appropriate to a kingdom and what to piece of private property?
- Rebellion: What is Shakespeare telling us? Are the barons wrong or right to resist John?

3. Richard II
See Kantorowicz in general, but the most interesting approach to the play is to contrast Shakespeare's attitude to kingship here with what he says in King John.

To have an idea about Dr. Ryan's cv and interests you can have a look here: http://www.historycambridge.com/default.asp?contentID=838

Law and ITALIAN literature

Dear all,

first of all I would like to thank you for all your proposals about the topic "law and Italian literature", which are in general really interesting and smart. I would just to stress, for the last time, that we are writing a list of Italian literature with some references only to French literature. You have also to distinguish between literary works (novels, poems, plays, etc.) and philosophical, sociological, political works. To summarise:

1) Italy and France

2) Literature

The Merchant of Venice

Hi there!
As one of you suggested, considering that "The Merchant of Venice" produced a great impression in many of you, I'm creating this post to collect all the comments on "our Merchant", which definition is maybe not really appropriate as the protagonist of this play is certainly not Antonio...So, post your comments about Schylock and Portia here!

I remind you of the links that maybe you missed in the moltitude of the comments:
serious Orson Welles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa1IZ7ewdOwOr
and passionate Al Pacino: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmafewX-HCw

For the future: write your comments referring to the post that presents the professor you are referring to. In most cases I will create a post for the most popular topics.

Merchant of Venice and Italian Law

Today professor Skeel asked to help him for his next article about literature and Ialian law. We are already doing it by compiling our list of "Italian Fiction worth reading for Lawyers". So keep suggesting more titles, always with dates of first publication and date of birth and death of the authors.
In addiction, you can comment this post with the ideas you had about law by reading the Merchant of Venice, just to check if this piece of English literature can help also Italians to better understand law.