download ISLL Papers Vol. 3 / 2010
ISLL Papers Vol. 3 / 2010. Bologna: Italian Society for Law and Literature (ISLL), ISBN 9788898010608. DOI 10.6092/unibo/amsacta/5578. In: ISLL Papers. The Online Collection of the Italian Society for Law and Literature A cura di: Carla Faralli; M. Paola Mittica. ISSN 2035-553X
19/12/2010 – Bruno Montanari, Il quadernetto del giudice. La colpa quotidiana di Josef K. (The judge’s notebook. The daily guilt of Josef K.)
Besides classical (and legitimate) readings, Kafka’s text seems to be open to a nonconventional interpretation able to point out the intrinsically existential trait of the text. The point of view is given by man’s finite structure. This structure implies that man must always decide within a situation, with all the joint conditionings and limits that the situation itself puts on knowledge and reflection. Because of his finite structure, man is, either consciously or unconsciously, accountable to others, and this is an absolute accountability since God is its constitutive principle. This is an existential situation that obliges K., and each of us, to wonder about the sense of life: the judge’s “little notebook” is a metaphor for that. Such a question could be advanced just on the border of reason, which imposes to overcome canons of rational legality: no general and abstract Law, either legal or ethical, could clear man once and for all.
03/11/2010 – Boaventura de Sousa Santos, The European University at Crossroads
We are very pleased to publish the lecture that Boaventura de Sousa Santos delivered on the occasion of the 22nd anniversary of the Magna Charta Universitatum, celebrated on September 16, 2010, at the University of Bologna. Santos does raise some compelling questions that force us to reflect on our changing university and on where we want to take research in this period of paradigmatic transition, and here Law and Literature can be one among several approaches that we can turn to in seeking to rid ourselves of some old schemes of thought.
03/10/2010 – Maria Francisca Carneiro, Maria Fernanda Loureiro, A Transdisciplinary Methodology for the Relationship Between Law and Literature
In this article, Carneiro and Loureiro consider some of the existing methodologies for research into the relationship between Law and Literature. The possibility of investigating literary elements of Law implicit in popular culture leads us to inquire whether the media can also be an object of studies of juridical literature. After that, considering that the link between Law and Literature is transdisciplinary by nature, they propose a methodology for this type of investigation.
19/09/2010 – José Calvo Gonzalez, Derecho y Literatura. La cultura literaria del Derecho (Law and Literature. Literary Culture of Law)
We are making available here the lecture that José Calvo Gonzalez gave for the First Symposium on Law and Literature held at Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florinopolis, Brasil, June, 7-9, 2010. Calvo presents a characterization of the meaning of Literary Culture of the Law, frequently used to embellishment of the oratorical and syntactic practices (De dicendi elegantia) and to educate to a reading culture, in two variants: a literary reading of the Law, and legal reading of the Literature. The question is what kind of literature one has to read and how to read, and to what kind of jurists it involves, distinguishing into the Law &Literature community three forms of dissidence and skepticism: Posner, an example of a leery and eclectic dissidence; Enrique E. Maré, actor of a judicious dissidence and a mature skepticism; and M. Todd Henderson, an example of mirthless dissidence.
29/06/2010 – Carlo Rossetti, Il teatro della giustizia, Edizioni Goliardiche, Trieste 2008, pp. 124
A Review by Alberto Bernini
27/06/2010 – José Raymundo Nina Cuentas, Derecho y literatura. Anotaciones sobre el significado de la creatividad literaria en el estudio y la aplicacion del derecho (Law and Literature. Notes on the sense of literary creativity in the study and in the application of law)
The essay offers a panoramic vision of the development of “Law and Literature” in Peruvian studies. It has as its principal purpose to show as to guiding juridical operators on the law’s boundaries is required a particular sensitivity that comes from other arts, and in this case from Literature. In this direction the author analyses the possibilities and conventional limits of the Law ad Literature approach.
25/06/2010 – Melina Girardi Fachin, Direitos Humanos e Fundamentais. Do discurso teorico pratica efetiva. Um olhar por meio da Literatura, Nuria Fabris Editora, Porto Alegre 2007, 142 pp.
A review by Cristina Monereo Atienza.
22/06/2010 – Ivan Pupolizio, Per una primavera dei diritti fondamentali (Toward a Spring of Fundamental Rights)
Ivan Pupolizio passes in review, with a critical comment, the ‘Lectures on the Rights’ delivered for the ‘Primavera de diritti’ (11 days of events in Bari ‘ from February 18 to February 28 ‘ at the Kursaal Theatre and in several other venues around the city). Spring of Rights was a cultural marathon endorsed by the Puglia Region, Ministry for the Mediterranean and realized by the Teatro Pubblico Pugliese in collaboration with the University of Bari and ISLL, with the objective to talk, through various arts and cultural languages, about the state of civil and new rights in our country and throughout the world. Theatre, dance, and music, a cycle of international conferences, meetings with the biggest NGOs, performances, exhibitions, video installations, ‘publicity theatre actions’, and much more.
12/05/2010 – Umberto Breccia, Cinema e diritto (Cinema & Law)
The traditional cycle of Letture that takes place annually at the University of Pisa this year has been joined to the screening of five films. The theme was Citizens and migrants. The films covered the topics of migration, discrimination, and multiculturalism. We propose here the contribution of Umberto Breccia who introduced the film cycle.
20/04/2010 – Flora Di Donato, Raffaella Rosciano, La costruzione giudiziaria tra categorie legali e culturali. Note a margine di Minding the Law di Anthony G. Amsterdam e Jerome S. Bruner (The judicial construction of legal and cultural categories. A Review of Minding the Law by Anthony G. Amsterdam and Jerome S. Bruner)
Di Donato and Rosciano work a critical review of Minding the Law (2000), a well-known book by Amsterdam & Bruner. They analyse in deep the processes of categorization, narration and rhetoric considered from the authors as typical of knowledge process in everyday life and in judicial activities. The emphasis is on the relationship between mind, culture and context activities that need to be considered for every theory of legal interpretation.
01/04/2010 – Maria Francisca Carneiro, Law and Aesthetics
The aim of this article is to describe some aspects of the relation between law and aesthetics. To do this, two lines of aesthetics are examined, one gnoseological and the other artistic. The beautiful and the good are related to the just by considering the possibility of the existence of poetics in law, including autopoiesis. An aesthetic theory of justice is sketched out based on the criterion of proportionality, which is common to both art and law, as well as the faculty of judging. The similarities and differences between aesthetic judgment and juridical judgment are therefore discussed. It is concluded that the ludic impulse, and therefore the game, is an element that is common to both aesthetics and law, in light of which the importance is stressed of carrying out deeper studies concerning the aesthetic game in law, for example through theories of the balance between determination and indetermination. Both in the game as in law, there are defined and undefined rules to be followed, and in both, there are also psychological and behavioral aspects in common.
18/03/2010 – Realino Marra, Gadda e la cognizione del delitto (Gadda and Our Understanding of Crime)
We are making available here the lecture that Realino Marra gave for the seminar Crime and Punishment: Images of Criminal Justice in German and Italian Literature, held in Genoa on 26 November 2009 and organized by the Genoa University School of Law in collaboration with the law school’s Giovanni Tarello Department and the Genoa Goethe-Institut, and with the support of the Italian Society for Law and Literature. German and Italian literature abounds with images relating to criminal justice. Along with Marra, Heinz Müller-Dietz, Adolfo Francia, and Klaus Lüderssen have illustrated in some classics of literature – in the work of Goethe, Manzoni, and Fontane respectively – those ‘occasions’ where law and life, by their mutual engagement, compel us to grapple with questions such as truth, responsibility, crime, and punishment. These occasions most typically involve trials, but they also involve investigations into crimes or anything the accused may have said or pondered upon before or after doing the act, and they generally involve any moment where the law comes into contact with those who are subject to it or where people find themselves in disagreement with the law’s authoritative provisions. The relations that come out of such episodes may take any number of forms and may even include the ‘nonrelation’ whereby the two worlds (law and life) find it difficult or even impossible to understand each other and communicate.
23/02/2010 – Marco Goldoni, Robert Cover’s Narrative Approach to Constitutionalism
This paper aims to prove that Robert Cover’s theory of narrative might play an important role in contemporary constitutionalism. In particular, it purports to show that the main insight of Cover’s legal philosophy should be found in the idea that meaning, and not authority or power, forms the basis for the legitimacy of constitutional order. The proliferation of legal meanings is valuable in itself and it represents an enrichment of social life. Violence will unavoidably emerge as a necessary evil in order to let normative worlds flourish. Nonetheless, narrative plays a central role in Cover’s theory because it is the source of legal meaning. Therefore, constitutionalism itself should be thought like a narrative, among many others, especially committed to the reduction of violence.
22/02/2010 – Barbara D’Amico, How far can we apply law and literature to the Italian system?
The essay analyses the application of the law in literature and law as literature strands in the Italian civil law system, focusing on the possible role of Literature as a revealing-customs-tool and as an indirect source in the law-making process. Studies on law discussions held by the Italian Parliament from the 70s until nowadays and the influence of the casuistic language on public opinion can help in understanding if legal doctrine and legal decisions absorb literature and vice-versa. The applications of the Law and Literature movement could also explain the role of journalism as a path between public opinion and legal matters in Italy.
07/01/2010 – Roberta Linciano, “Is That the Law?”: La farsa giustizia di Porzia nel Mercante di Venezia (“Is That the Law?”: Portia’s Mockery of Justice in The Merchant of Venice)
In this paper, the Author examines the role performed by the disguised lawyer Portia during the trial Shylock vs. Antonio in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. With reference to the social, political and economic background of the Elizabethan age, she explores Portia’s conception of justice, trying to assess if Portia acts as a loyal and equitable judge or as a vile impostor and investigating to what extent her conduct can be regarded as a model by modern lawyers or merely as a play upon the words.