Constitutional Theory: Schmitt after Derrida (Birkbeck Law Press)

This book advances a new reading of the central works of Carl Schmitt and, in so doing, rethinks the primary concepts of constitutional theory. In this book, Jacques de Ville engages in a close analysis of a number of Schmitt’s texts, including Dictatorship (1921), The Concept of the Political (1927), Constitutional Theory (1928), Land and Sea (1942), Ex Captivitate Salus (1950), The Nomos of the Earth (1950) and The Theory of the Partisan (1963). This engagement takes place from the perspective of constitutional theory and focuses specifically on concepts or themes such as sovereignty, the state, the political, constituent power, democracy, representation, the constitution and human rights. The book seeks to rethink the structure of these concepts in line with Derrida’s analysis of Schmitt’s texts on the concept of the political in Politics of Friendship (1993). This happens by way of an analysis of Derrida’s engagement with Freud and other psychoanalysts. Although the main focus in the book is on Schmitt’s texts, it further examines two texts of Derrida (Khōra (1993) and Fors: The Anglish Words of Nicholas Abraham and Maria Torok (1976)), by reading these alongside Schmitt’s own reflections on the positive concept of the constitution.

Politics & Social Sciences

De Ville, Jacques

Philosophy

Birkbeck Law Press

Liberia and the Dialectic of Law: Critical Theory, Pluralism, and the Rule of Law (Birkbeck Law Press)

Chalmers, Shane

Reference

Decolonising the Neoliberal University: Law, Psychoanalysis and the Politics of Student Protest (Birkbeck Law Press)

The Legality of Boxing (Birkbeck Law Press)

The first book of its kind dedicated to an assessment of the legality of boxing, The Legality of Boxing: A Punch Drunk Love? assesses the legal response to prize fighting and undertakes a current analysis of the status of boxing in both criminal legal theory and practice. In this book, Anderson exposes boxing’s 'exemption' from contemporary legal and social norms. Reviewing all aspects of boxing - historical, legal, moral, ethical, philosophical, medical, racial and regulatory - he concludes that the supposition that boxing has a (consensual) immunity from the ordinary law of violence, based primarily on its social utility as a recognised sport, is not as robust as is usually assumed.  It:    suggests that the sport is extremely vulnerable to prosecution and might in fact already be illegal under English criminal law outlines the physical and financial exploitation suffered by individual boxers both inside and outside the ring, suggesting that standard boxing contracts are coercive thus illegal and that boxers do not give adequate levels of informed consent to participate advocates a number of fundamental reforms, including possibly that the sport will have to consider banning blows to the head proposes the creation of a national boxing commission in the US and a similar entity in the United Kingdom, which together would attempt to restore the credibility of a sport long know as the red-light district of sports administration.  An excellent book, it is a must read for all those studying sports law, popular culture and the law and jurisprudence.

The Legality of Boxing: A Punch Drunk Love? (Birkbeck Law Press)

Anderson, Jack

Social Sciences

Constitutions: Writing Nations, Reading Difference (Birkbeck Law Press)

Bringing a postcolonial perspective to UK constitutional debates and including a detailed and comparative engagement with the constitutions of Britain’s ex-colonies, this book is an original reflection upon the relationship between the written and the unwritten constitution. Can a nation have an unwritten constitution? While written constitutions both found and define modern nations, Britain is commonly regarded as one of the very few exceptions to this rule. Drawing on a range of theories concerning writing, law and violence (from Robert Cover to Jacques Derrida), Constitutions makes a theoretical intervention into conventional constitutional analyses by problematizing the notion of a ‘written constitution’ on which they are based. Situated within the frame of the former British empire, this book deconstructs the conventional opposition between the ‘margins’ and the ‘centre’, as well as between the ‘written’ and ‘unwritten’, by paying very close, detailed attention to the constitutional texts under consideration. Pryor argues that Britain’s ‘unwritten’ constitution and ‘immemorial’ common law only take on meaning in a relation of difference with the written constitutions of its former colonies. These texts, in turn, draw on this pre-literate origin in order to legitimize themselves. The ‘unwritten’ constitution of Britain can therefore be located and dislocated in postcolonial written constitutions. Constitutions is an excellent addition to the bookshelves of all students of the philosophy of law, political theory, constitutional and administrative law and jurisprudence.

Pryor, Judith

Foreign & International Law

Being Against the World: Rebellion and Constitution (Birkbeck Law Press)

How can we save politics from the politician? How can we save ourselves? This book looks at the example of those who leave the city and break the social contract, rebellious exiles and freedom fighters escaping the wheel of necessity, and learns from them.

Guardiola-Rivera, Oscar

The Four Lacanian Discourses (Birkbeck Law Press)

This book proposes a taxonomy of jurisprudence and legal practice, based on the discourse theory of Jacques Lacan. In the anglophone academy, the positivist jurisprudence of H.L.A. Hart provides the most influential account of law. But just as positivism ignores the practice of law by lawyers, even within the academy, the majority of professors are also not pursuing Hart's positivist project. Rather, they are engaged in policy-oriented scholarship - that tries to explain law in terms of society's collective goals - or in doctrinal legal scholarship - that does not try to describe what law is, or to supply justifications for it - but which examines the 'internal' logic of law. Lacan's discourse theory has the power to differentiate the various roles of the practicing lawyer and the legal scholar. It is also able to explain the striking lack of communication between diverse schools of legal scholarship and between legal academia and the legal profession. Although extremely influential in Europe and South America, Lacanian theory remains largely unexplored (in the English-speaking world) outside of the field of comparative literature. In taking up the jurisprudential ramifications of Lacan's work, The Four Lacanian Discourses thus constitutes an original contribution to current theoretical and practical understandings of law.

The Four Lacanian Discourses: or Turning Law Inside Out (Birkbeck Law Press)

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Schroeder, Jeanne Lorraine

Psychology & Counseling

The Eye of the Law (Birkbeck Law Press)

Written by the eminent German legal historian, Michael Stolleis, these two ‘Essays on Legal History’ offer an original and compelling history of the symbolism through which law is characterised as being 'above' us. In ‘The Eye of the Law’, the history of this metaphor is followed from antiquity through to the present day: from the Greek Eye of Justice, the eye of the impartial judge of the Underworld, the Eye of God watching past, present and future, the Eye of the Prince, guiding his subjects, to the almighty Eye of the Law. While our belief in the law may have become brittle, nothing escapes what is now the Eye of Big Brother. ‘In the Name of the Law’ takes up the various formulas used to legitimate the decisions of the courts, from the times of absolutism over the 19th century until today. The speaker who speaks in the name of a higher being underlines his function: his authority comes from above. And it is ‘in the name of’ god, king, people, state, nation, or law, that a weak, earthly, justice receives its support.       

The Eye of the Law: Two Essays on Legal History (Birkbeck Law Press)

History

Stolleis, Michael

Historical Study & Educational Resources

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