Equity as a question of decorum and manners: conscience as vision

This paper argues for a re-evaluation of the manner in which conscience is used by equity lawyers. Debates by early modern humanists sought an alignment between conscience and public office. Indeed, conscience had very little to do with the private morals or private compunction of the Chancellor. Rather, conscience was implicated at the level of duty, honestas and dignity. It required stricter attention to the metaphysics of public official conduct. In these terms, conscience was a humanist re-evaluation of a classical idea that gave heavier emphasis to the poesis of vision

Arguments; the visual mediation of arguments in the Renaissance

This chapter looks at the contemporary influences that shaped renaissance argumentation. The printing press and the use of woodcut images allowed the humanists to develop a practice of argumentation that was attuned to visual presentation. I scrutinize the way in which the print and emblematic revolution significantly altered the classical tripartite distinction of logos, pathos and ethos

Law and animalities

Scant attention has been paid by legal theorists to the relationship between law and animals. The paucity of literature on the subject reflects the assumption that animals lack moral status and are wholly outside the sphere of our normative understanding of the social order. Concerning itself primarily with the literature of medieval Christian bestiaries, this essay seeks to uncover a structural link between the didactic language of animals and the constitution of the interior domain of legal subjectivity. It will be argued that any understanding of the symbolic dimension of law, and thus any understanding of the link between law and the norms of subjectivity, needs to take seriously the specific function provided by this seemingly esoteric branch of literature. More specifically, it will be argued that the symbology of animals exposes the importance of theological concepts of salvation and redemption that remain tethered to current notions of legality and personhood

Law, orientalism and postcolonialism: the jurisdiction of the lotus-eaters

Book synopsis: Focusing on the ‘problem’ of pleasure Law, Orientalism and Postcolonialism uncovers the organizing principles by which the legal subject was colonized. That occidental law was complicit in colonial expansion is obvious. What remains to be addressed, however, is the manner in which law and legal discourse sought to colonize individual subjects as subjects of law. It was through the permission of pleasure that modern Western subjects were refined and domesticated. Legally sanctioned outlets for private and social enjoyment instilled and continue to instil within the individual tight self-control over behaviour. There are, however, states of behaviour considered to be repugnant to, and in excess of, modern codes of civility. Drawing on a broad range of literature, (including classical jurisprudence, eighteenth century Orientalist scholarship, early travel literature, and nineteenth century debates surrounding the rule of law), yet concentrating on the experience of British India, the argument here is that such excesses were deemed to be an Oriental phenomenon. Through the encounter with the Orient and with the fantasy of its excess, Piyel Haldar concludes, the relationship between the subject and the law was transformed, and must therefore be re-assessed