Law and Art

Justice, Ethics and Aesthetics

Oren Ben-Dor

• Publisher: Routledge-Cavendish
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780415560214
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136719745
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art & Politics

In engaging with the full range of 'the arts', contributors to this volume consider the relationship between law, justice, the ethical and the aesthetic. Art continually informs the ethics of a legal theory concerned to address how theoretical abstractions and concrete oppressions overlook singularity and spontaneity. Indeed, the exercise of the legal role and the scholarly understanding of legal texts were classically defined as ars iuris - an art of law - which drew on the panoply of humanist disciplines, from philology to fine art. That tradition has fallen by the wayside, particularly in the wake of modernism. But approaching art in that way risks distorting the very inexpressibility to which art is attentive and responsive, whilst remaining a custodian of its mystery. The novelty and ambition of this book, then, is to elicit, in very different ways, styles and orientations, the importance of the relationship between law and art. What can law and art bring to one another, and what can their relationship tell us about how truth relates to power? The insights presented in this collection disturb and supplement conventional accounts of justice; inaugurating new possibilities for addressing the origin of violence in our world.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Contributors
• Introduction Standing Before the Gates of the Law?
• Part I Philosophical Reflections Law between Ethics and Aesthetics
• Chapter 1 Poietic ‘Justice'
• Chapter 2 Repetition Or the Awnings of Justice
• Chapter 3 Judaism in the No Man's Land between Law and Ethics
• Chapter 4 Seizing Truths Art, Politics, Law
• Chapter 5 Like the Osprey to the Fish Shakespeare and the Force of Law
• Chapter 6 Agonic is Not Yet Demonic? At the Be-ginning there will have Be-come a De-cision
• Chapter 7 Nella Larsen's Feminist Aesthetics On Curse, Law, and Laughter
• Chapter 8 I Wish You Well Notes Towards an Aesthetics of Welfare
• Part II When Law Meets Art Creativity, Singularity and Performance
• Chapter 9 The Torch of Art and the Sword of Law Between Particularity and Universality
• Chapter 10 The Play of Terror
• Chapter 11 The Poetic Ocean in Mare Liberum1
• Chapter 12 Reading Law and Literature Three cases for conversation
• Chapter 13 Copyright Activism as Art Aesthetics, Ideology and Ethics
• Chapter 14 Musical Performance, Natural Law and Interpretation
• Part III Law, justice and the image
• Chapter 15 A Legal Phenomenology of Images
• Chapter 16 Flores Quae Faciunt Coronam or the Flowers of Common Law
• Chapter 17 Law, Ethics, and the Imagery of Suffering
• Chapter 18 Governor Arthur's Proclamation Images of the rule of law1
• Epilogue
• Index