Aesthetics of Law and Literary License: an anatomy of the legal imagination

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.As a normative discipline, law defines its territory according to simple categories which establish absolute principles purporting to offer a single truth as to what is just and unjust, right and wrong, good and bad. In addition, linguistic and extrasemantic devices such as synecdoche, metonymy, rhythm and metaphor serve a referential function with which to penetrate the collective consciousness. The core assumptions derived from the implementation of socio-linguistic mechanisms transform the nature of legal analysis and are embedded within a diverse interplay of meanings. Aesthetic imaginings are evidenced to underpin and sustain ‘law’s symbolic processes and doctrines, institutions and ideas; that is, a realm of limitless fantasy, of free-flowing nomological desire, fixed around, and fixated upon controlling images that condense its central juridical concepts’; as the ‘jurists follow their own poetic and aesthetic criteria, their own spectral laws’ (MacNeil in Novel judgments: legal theory as fiction. Routledge, Oxford, p 9, 2012; Goodrich in Legal emblems and the art of law: obiter depicta as the vision of governance. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p 155, 2013). Yet still, founded on the negation of its own history, legal practice maintains that juridical arguments comprise only dialectical reasoning about objectively determined concepts: ‘law is a literature which denies its literary qualities. It is a play of words which asserts an absolute seriousness; it is a genre of rhetoric which represses its moments of invention or fiction… it is procedure based upon analogy, metaphor and repetition [that] lays claim to being a cold or disembodied prose’ (Goodrich in Law in the courts of love: literature and other minor jurisprudences. Routledge, Oxford, p 112, 1996). This article will explore the continuing commitment of modern legal practice to particular aesthetic values and how these are crucially implicated in a variety of legal competencies including the formation of key legal concepts and general intellectual activity

The politics and poetics of spaces and places: mapping the multiple geographies of identity in a cultural posthuman era

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.As transcendent technologies, ICTs exist beyond the divergent equivalence of human categories of difference such as race, gender and class, as well as operating outside traditional binary oppositions such as good/bad, love/hate, rational/irrational. Whilst a material grounding in earlier forms of embodied social experience remains a necessary prerequisite of interaction with virtual systems, a vast collection of technological applications now exhibit some degree of agency as they interact with humans and their environment. This development has enormous consequences for human life, human flourishing and social organisation; raising significant ethical concerns relevant to public and policy debates. It is, therefore, pertinent to explore key epistemological questions relating to the radical and accelerated remapping of the limits of what it now means to be human. Whilst this paper does not purport to offer a pragmatic solution, it constitutes an interdisciplinary conceptual platform from which to consider the nature of the evolving human-nonhuman-machine relationship and the possible implications for humanity, civilisation and other forms of social organisation in the modern hypermediated world. It is suggested that by reflecting on the various representations of contemporary technoculture and biotechnology from the perspective of the arts and humanities, it may be possible to isolate those important questions which relate to subjectivity, ethics, community and social transformation in order to prepare the groundwork for a comprehensive and critical theory of technology

Mapping the technologies of spatial (in)justice in the Anthropocene

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link

From Beethoven to Bowie: Identity Framing, Social Justice and the Sound of Law

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.Music is an inescapable part of social, cultural and political life, and has played a powerful role in mobilising support for popular movements demanding social justice. The impact of David Bowie, Prince and Bob Dylan, for example, on diversity awareness and legislative reform relating to sexuality, gender and racial equality respectively is still felt; with the latter receiving a Nobel Prize in 2016 for ‘having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition’. The influence of these composers and performers reached far beyond the concert hall. Conversely, musical propaganda has been a common feature of many dictatorships, most notably Nazism’s Adolf Hitler and Communism’s Joseph Stalin, and is still instrumental in the election campaigns of political parties. US President Donald Trump’s winning retro classic rock campaign playlist conveyed an idealised version of the past which aligned with the tastes and interests of his core constituency, and evoked feelings of nationalistic pride and patriotism. The eclectic selection of upbeat music effectively masked the underlying capitalist initiatives, corporate greed and allegations of financial impropriety that characterised both the Democrat and Republican campaigns. Although unable to impart meaning with the same level of precision as language, music has a potentially broader semantic capacity due to its greater elasticity. It constitutes a common language which has the ability to create a community of people that sings, speaks, reasons, votes and even feels the same way. Accordingly, this article explores the symbiotic relationship between music and law, identity politics and social justice, via the lens of musical semiosis

Reimagining Justice: Aesthetics and Law

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link

Fundamental principles of rehabilitation and musculoskeletal tissue healing

OBJECTIVE: To review fundamental principles of tissue healing and physical rehabilitation as they apply to dogs recovering from cranial cruciate ligament (CCL) surgery STUDY DESIGN: Invited Review SAMPLE POPULATION: None METHODS: A multidisciplinary group of specialists in small animal surgery, rehabilitation/sports medicine, and human physical and occupational therapy reviewed the currently available evidence for rehabilitation post-CCL surgery. Because current evidence is limited, this group proposes guidelines for rehabilitation after CCL surgery based on the fundamental principles of tissue healing and physical therapy RESULTS: This Review proposes four fundamental principles of small animal physical rehabilitation based on the foundations of tissue healing and patient-centric and goal-oriented therapy. Postoperative rehabilitation programs should be designed such that patient progress is based on individual assessment according to the degree of tissue healing, strength, and achievement of functional goals. Therapists must fully understand phases of tissue healing, reassess the patient frequently, and use clinical reasoning skills to progress treatment appropriately for the individual patient. CONCLUSION: Until more robust evidence is available to guide treatment protocols, fundamental principles of rehabilitation should ideally be adhered to when providing rehabilitation, including after CCL surgery. CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE: While this Review specifically addresses post-CCL surgery rehabilitation, these fundamental principles should be applied broadly to animals enrolled in rehabilitation programs

Does she think she’s supported? Maternal perceptions of their experiences in the neonatal intensive care unit

Parents’ involvement in the care of their infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is critically important, leading many NICUs to implement policies and practices of family-centered care (FCC). Analyzing narrative interviews, we examined whether mothers of premature infants who participated in an intervention to help reduce anxiety, stress, and depression felt that their NICU experience reflected four key nursing behaviors previously identified as being necessary to achieving FCC. Fifty-six narratives derived from semi-structured interviews with the mothers were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively to examine whether the women experienced emotional support, parent empowerment, welcoming environment, and parent education, as well as whether differences in reported experiences were related to sociodemographic factors or maternal coping styles. Overall, the mothers reported more negative than positive experiences with respect to the four behaviors, and those who had negative interactions with the hospital staff felt a sense of disenfranchisement and failure as mothers. Sociodemographic factors and coping styles were significantly associated with the mothers’ perceptions of their experiences, although these relationships were not consistent. Achieving actual FCC in the NICU may require parent-informed evidence-based changes in NICU personnel training and infrastructure

CpG island methylation phenotype (CIMP) in oral cancer: associated with a marked inflammatory response and less aggressive tumour biology.

Studies in several tumour sites highlight the significance of the CpG island methylation phenotype (CIMP), with distinct features of histology, biological aggression and outcome. We utilise pyrosequencing techniques of quantitative methylation analysis to investigate the presence of CIMP in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) for the first time, and evaluate its correlation with allelic imbalance, pathology and clinical behaviour. Tumour tissue, control tissue and PBLs were obtained from 74 patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma. Pyrosequencing was used to analyse methylation patterns in 75-200 bp regions of the CpG rich gene promoters of 10 genes with a broad range of cellular functions. Allelic imbalance was investigated using a multiplexed panel of 11 microsatellite markers. Corresponding variables, histopathological staging and grading were correlated with these genetic and epigenetic aberrations. A cluster of tumours with a greater degree of promoter methylation than would be predicted by chance alone (P=0.001) were designated CIMP+ve. This group had less aggressive tumour biology in terms of tumour thickness (p=0.015) and nodal metastasis (P=0.012), this being apparently independent of tumour diameter. Further, it seems that these CIMP+ve tumours excited a greater host inflammatory response (P=0.019). The exact mechanisms underlying CIMP remain obscure but the association with a greater inflammatory host response supports existing theories relating these features in other tumour sites. As CIMP has significant associations with other well documented prognostic indicators, it may prove beneficial to include methylation analyses in molecular risk modelling of tumours