The Cabinet of Imaginary Laws

249 Pages·2021·38.104 MB·English

by  Peter Goodrich, Thanos Zartaloudis

THE CABINET OF IMAGINARY LAWS
Returning to the map of the island of Utopia, this book provides a contemporary,
inventive, addition to the long history of legal fictions and juristic phantasms.
Progressive legal and political thinking has for long lacked a positive, let alone an
imaginary project, an account of what improved institutions and an ameliorated
environment would look like. And where better to start than with the non-laws
or imaginary legislations of a realm yet to come.
The Cabinet of Imaginary Laws is a collection of fictive contributions to the
theme of conceiving laws in the vivid vein of jurisliterary invention. Disparate in
style and diverse in genres of writing and performative expression, the celebrated
and unknown, venerable and youthful authors write new laws. Thirty-three
dissolute scholars, impecunious authors and dyspeptic artists from a variety of
fields including law, film, science, history, philosophy, political science, aesthetics,
poetry, architecture and the classics become, for a brief and inspiring instance,
legislators of impossible norms. The collection provides an extraordinary range
of inspired imaginings of other laws. This momentary community conceives
of a wild variety of novel critical perspectives. The contributions aim to excite
reflection on the role of imagination in the study and writing of law. Verse,
collage, artworks, short stories, harangues, lists and other pleas, reports and
pronouncements revivify the sense of law as the vehicle of poetic justice and as
an art that instructs and constructs life.
Aimed at an audience disgruntled with the negativity of critique and the
narrowness of the disciplines, this book will appeal especially to theorists,
lawyers, scholars and a general public concerned with the future of decaying
laws and an increasingly derelict legal system.
Peter Goodrich is Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School and Visiting Professor
in the School of Social Science at New York University, Abu Dhabi.
Thanos Zartaloudis is Reader in Legal History and Theory at Kent Law School
and Visiting Professor at the Center of Hellenic Studies, Harvard University.
Part of the DISCOURSES OF LAW series
series editors
Peter Goodrich, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, USA
Michel Rosenfeld, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, USA
Arthur Jacobson, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, USA
For information about the series and details of previous and forthcoming titles,
see https://www .routledge .com /Discourses -of -Law /book -series /SE1036
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Jacob Burns Institute
for Advanced Legal Studies of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law to the
series Discourses of Law.
A GlassHouse Book
THE CABINET OF
IMAGINARY LAWS
Edited by
Peter Goodrich
and
Thanos Zartaloudis
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
A Glasshouse book
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Peter Goodrich and Thanos
Zartaloudis; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Peter Goodrich and Thanos Zartaloudis to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and
78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-56659-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-56658-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-09882-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
CONTENTS
Author Biographies viii
Prelude: Peter Goodrich and Thanos Zartaloudis xvii
1 The imaginary origins of the common law 1
Piyel Haldar
2 A quiet and secret place – an enquiry on the Dreamer God, a
god without a name 11
Pierre Legendre
3 Borges, The Keystone and the legal imagination 16
Tobias Smith
4 A triptych of lawlessness 19
Stephen Webster
5 When dragons did rise 35
C. F. Black
6 Doctorum agnomina: on the satirical laws of academia 41
Valérie Hayaert
7 The Corbels Act, London 1909 57
Jake Tilson
8 Report to the Treasurer of Injustice 62
Frederick Dolan
vi Contents
9 Ennomie 67
William Watkin
10 Twelve theses on the exorbitant principle that a lawyer must
work for the poor 72
Adam Gearey
11 Intha gnalamum poy thaano – imagining the other in contract 78
Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen
12 Ad vitam aeternam: a legal text that remains relevant 86
Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos
13 In nomine patris 93
Chiara Bottici
14 It is forbidden to sell your soul to the devil 98
Tiziano Toracca
15 The Court of the Monuments 102
Hayley Gibson
16 Lexicon Act 2020 114
Gary Watt
17 Carrier bag law 119
Bernard Keenan
18 Law in the round 125
Linda G. Mills
19 Kαὶ μηδὲν μόριον ἀποκεκρύφθαι: the bare life
of the Stoic sage 129
Phillip Mitsis
20 Move over, Felix: Addressing the impact of the domestic cat 135
James Attlee
21 The Proof of Judicial Omniscience Act (UK) 144
David Campbell
22 The rule book of a dreamer 152
Niall Brooks
Contents vii
23 The Dismantler 154
Karsten Schubert
24 Breathing law – real imaginings of what it might mean to
matter differently 162
Daniela Gandorfer
25 Untitled. Unreliable. Unconfirmed 174
Deepak Unnikrishnan
26 Legal fictions: a dialogue imagining law 179
Elizabeth Cowie
27 COIL 185
Justin Clemens
28 Waiting for law: a play in one act 187
Stacy Douglas
29 The protocol of mobile rooms 192
Aristide Antonas
30 Law No. 9321/2028: Exceptional Regulations for Communal
Living and Use on the Ground of Higher Order Natural Sites 196
Thanos Zartaloudis
31 A confidential private placement memorandum 200
Pierre Schlag
32 The Statute of Snouts – an act for the elongation of noses 206
Peter Goodrich
33 Science and Scholarship Restoration Act 210
Bernhard Schlink
34 Constitutional exhaustion 212
Pierre Schlag
Index 219
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
James Attlee is a freelance writer, editor and publishing consultant living in
Oxford. He is the author of Under the Rainbow: Voices from Lockdown (And Other
Stories, 2021), Isolarion: A Different Oxford Journey (And Other Stories, new edition
2020), Guernica: Painting the End of the World (Head of Zeus, 2017); Station to Station
(Guardian Books, 2017), shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the
Year 2017, and Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight (Penguin, 2012), among
other titles. His digital fiction The Cartographer’s Confession won the New Media
Writing Prize in 2017.
Aristide Antonas, is a Greek architect, philosopher and literary author and a visiting
Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and the ETH Zurich. His art and
architecture work have had solo presentations in museums in Switzerland, Austria
and France while they have been featured in international shows as the Biennale of
Venice and documenta 14, Kassel. His published works include novels, short stories,
theatre scripts and essays.
Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen, is a socio-legal scholar whose research examines the
intersections between law, globalization and stratification from a critical feminist
perspective. Particularly, across a range of sites and different levels of analysis, their
work interrogates how law and legal institutions create, continue, and counter dif-
ferent kinds of socio-economic inequalities. Ballakrishnen’s writing has appeared
in, among other journals, Law and Society Review, Law and Social Inquiry, Fordham
Law Review, International Journal of the Legal Profession, and the Journal of Professions
and Organization. Their first book Accidental Feminism is published by Princeton
University Press (December 2020).
Author Biographies ix
C.F. Black is an Intellectual Explorer travelling through both cyberspace and the
ethereal legal world of the oldest traditions of the world. She is a descendant of
the indigenous Yugambeh-speaking peoples of South East Queensland, Australia.
Her scholarship brings a unique perspective to studies in legal theory. Her recent
works shine a light on the potency and potentiality of Indigenous legal traditions
to play a major role in helping the West come to terms with the impracticality of
an affluent lifestyle in a time of growing economic inequality. Her major publica-
tions include A Mosaic of Indigenous Legal Thought: Legendary Tales and Other Writings
(Routledge,2017) and The Land is the Source of the Law: A Dialogic Encounter with an
Indigenous Jurisprudence (Routledge, 2011). Much of her work including her articles
and chapters have been taught in universities around the world including Sciences
Po, Cornell University, Kent University, McGill University and University of New
Mexico. Her latest project with her colleague, legal philosopher Jan Mihal, is to
write a book which creates an innovative wormhole into the algorithmic digital
vortex. As Associate Professor adjunct at Griffith University, Australia her work
ventures into the world of sea rise and warnings emanating from popular literature.
She has given many keynotes and public seminars on Indigenous Jurisprudence.
Her burgeoning creative writings include short stories, political plays, poetry, and
sci fi fantasy novels for youth. Her art, photography and performance have been
exhibited in New York, Beijing, Denver, and various cities in Australia. Her interests
include plant consciousness, quantum physics, algorithmic decision making and
ancient myths, symbols, and laws.
Chiara Bottici is an Italian philosopher and writer. She is Associate Professor in
Philosophy and Director of Gender Studies at The New School for Social Research
and Eugene Lang College (New York). She is the author of Imaginal Politics:
Images beyond Imagination and the Imaginary (Columbia University Press, 2014), A
Philosophy of Political Myth (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and Men and States
(Palgrave, 2009). With Benoit Challand, she co-authored Imagining Europe: Myth,
Memory, Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and The Myth of the Clash of
Civilizations (Routledge, 2010). She also co-edited the collections of essays The
Politics of Imagination (Routledge, 2011, with Benoit Challand), The Anarchist Turn
(Pluto 2013, with Simon Critchley and Jacob Blumenfeld) and Feminism, Capitalism
and Critique (Palgrave 2017, with Banu Bargu). Her short stories have appeared in Il
Caffe illustrato and L’immaginazione, while her feminist experimental writing Per tre
miti, forse quattro was published by Manni Editore in 2016 and is forthcoming in an
English translation with Bloomsbury.
Niall Brooks practiced for many years in the UK as a solicitor-advocate, specialis-
ing in criminal defence and prison law. He has since dedicated his life to writing
poetry and fiction under various pseudonyms, including Otto Loser and Anton
Matins. He lives with his wife in central Europe.