Performing Law

Advances the law and performance nexus, inviting interdisciplinary thought across performance studies, literary criticism, visual art, and legal acting.

This volume expands disciplinary orientations within the legal humanities toward non-textual forms, giving new textures to the life of law and its performance. It is intended for students and scholars of law, legal theory, and jurisprudence, as well as humanities scholars. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.The words 'all rise' announce the appearance of the judge in the thespian space of the courtroom and trigger the beginning of that play we call a trial. The symbolically staged enactment of conflict in the form of litigation is exemplary of legal action, its liturgical and real effects. It establishes the roles and discourses, hierarchy and deference, atmospheres and affects that are to be taken up in the more general social stage of public life. Leading international scholars drawn from performance studies, theatre history, aesthetics, dance, film, history, and law provide critical analyses of the sites, dramas and stage directions to be found in the orchestration of the tragedies and comedies acted out in multiple forums of contemporary legality. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.