This volume investigates interdisciplinary intersections between law and the humanities from the Renaissance to the present day. It allows for fruitful encounters between different disciplines: from literature to science, from the visual arts to the post-human, from the postmodern novel’s experimentation to most recent approaches towards the legal interpretation of literary texts. This productive dialogue fosters original perspectives in the interpretation of and reflection upon identity, justice, power and human rights and values, thus underlining the role of literature in the articulation of relevant cultural issues pertaining to specific periods.

A review and analysis of existing scholarship on the different national traditions and on the various modes and subjects of law and humanities.

The collection of essays presented here examines the links forged through the ages between the realm of law and the expressions of the humanistic culture.We collected thirty-five essays by international scholars and organized them into sections of ten chapters based around ten different themes. Two main perspectives emerged: in some articles the topic relates to the conventional approach of law and/in humanities (iconography, literature, architecture, cinema, music), other articles are about more traditional connections between fields of knowledge (in particular, philosophy, political experiences, didactics).We decided not to confine authors to one particular methodological framework, preferring instead to promote historiographical openness. Our intention was to create a patchwork of different approaches, with each article drawing on a different area of culture to provide a new angle to the history being told. The variety of authorial nationalities gives the collection a multicultural character and the breadth of the chronological period it deals with from antiquity to the contemporary age adds further depth of insight.As the element that unites the collection is historiographical interpretation, we wanted to bring to the fore its historical depth. Thus for every chapter we organized the articles in chronological order according to the historical context covered.Looking at the final outcome, it was interesting to learn that more often than not the connection between law and humanities is not simply a relation between a specific branch of the law and a single field of the humanities, but rather a relation that could be developed in many directions at once, involving different fields of knowledge, and of arts and popular culture.We are grateful to Luigi Lacchè for his contribution to this collection. His essay outlines the coordinates of the law and humanities world, laying out the instruments necessary for an understanding of the origins of a complex methodology and the different approaches that exist within it.This project is the result of discussions that took place during the XXIII Forum of the Association of Young Legal Historians held in Naples in the spring of 2017. The book was made possible thanks to the advice and support of Cristina Vano.The Editors

The Legal Case: Cross-Currents in Law and the Humanitiesre-examines the seemingly familiar notion of a ‘legal case’ by exploring the histories, practices, conventions and rhetoric of ‘case law’. The doctrine of stare decisis, whereby courts are bound by precedent cases, underpins legal reasoning in the common law world. At the same time, the legal case is itself a product of institutional and linguistic practices, and raises broader questions about the foundations and boundaries of law. The idea of the ‘case’ as an ordered, closed narrative with a determinate outcome is, for example, integral to medical, psychoanalytic, as well as forensic discourses; whilst the notion of the ‘strange case’ is a popular one in the English fiction of the late nineteenth century. What is at stake in the attempt to categorise or define a situation as a legal case? Is the notion of binding precedent in ‘case law’ really distinctive to the common law? And if so, why? What can the concept of a ‘case’ in other disciplines and discourses tell us about how it operates in law? With contributions from legal philosophers, legal historians, literary critics, and linguists, this book moves beyond the jurisprudential discussion of the nature and authority of the legal case, as it draws on insights from philosophy, m linguistics, narratology, drama, and film.

The law is heavily implicated in creating, maintaining, and reproducing racialised hierarchies which bring about and preserve acute global disparities and injustices. This essential book provides an examination of the meanings of decolonisation and explores how this examination can inform teaching, researching, and practising of law. It explores the ways in which the foundations of law are entangled in colonial thought and in its [re]production of ideas of commodification of bodies and space-time. Thus, it is an exploration of the ways in which we can use theories and praxes of decolonisation to produce legal knowledge for flourishing futures.

The importance of science and technology and future of education and research are just some of the subjects discussed here.

Through analysis of 5 plays by Shakespeare, Paul Raffield examines what it meant to be a 'stranger' to English law in the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean period. The numbers of strangers increased dramatically in the late sixteenth century, as refugees fled religious persecution in continental Europe and sought sanctuary in Protestant England. In the context of this book, strangers are not only persons ethnically or racially different from their English counterparts, be they immigrants, refugees, or visitors. The term also includes those who transgress or are simply excluded by their status from established legal norms by virtue of their faith, sexuality, or mode of employment. Each chapter investigates a particular category of 'stranger'. Topics include the treatment of actors in late Elizabethan England and the punishment of 'counterfeits' (Measure for Measure); the standing of refugees under English law and the reception of these people by the indigenous population (The Comedy of Errors); the establishment of 'Troynovant' as an international trading centre on the banks of the Thames (Troilus and Cressida); the role of law and the state in determining the rights of citizens and aliens (The Merchant of Venice); and the disenfranchised, estranged position of the citizen in a dysfunctional society and an acephalous realm (King Lear). This is the third sole-authored book by Paul Raffield on the subject of Shakespeare and the Law. The others are Shakespeare's Imaginary Constitution: Late Elizabethan Politics and the Theatre of Law (2010) and The Art of Law in Shakespeare (2017), both published by Hart/Bloomsbury.