Legal Theory and the Media of Law

"As many disciplines in the humanities have experienced a focus on culture's impact in recent decades, questions surrounding the significance of media such as writing, print, and computer networks have become increasingly relevant. This book seeks to demonstrate that a media and cultural theory perspective can also be highly productive for legal theory. Thomas Vesting approaches law as an artificial and constructive element within culture and emphasizes the many possibilities that varied forms of media have opened to law, from oral history through to scripture, print and modern day digital networks. While providing historical examples for these theoretical assumptions, the connections between media and law are reconstructed in a practical way and with an eye toward the future. The book closes with an analysis of our present age as a network culture and discusses how this metaphorical framework can be of use in thinking about issues such as constitutionalism, human rights, the state, democracy and education. 'Legal Theory and the Media of Law' will be of great interest to legal, cultural and media theorists as well as academics of politics, sociology and philosophy" -- Back cover Front Matter 1 Copyright 4 Contents 7 Preface and acknowledgements 10 PART I Language and Speech 13 1. Introduction: Legal theory as media theory 15 2. Language, media, subjectivity 41 3. On the orality of oral cultures 64 4. Oral legal culture and the “ethics” of the gift 92 5. Traces of oral legal culture in Homer (and Hesiod) 116 PART II Writing 143 6. Hot writing and cool 145 7. Tradition and innovation in writing cultures 175 8. Transitions to writing in law 203 9. Specialist writing: Roman civil law 237 10. The comprehensive text of Jewish law 262 PART III Print 285 11. The parchment codex and the “spirit” of Christianity 287 12. Print culture, print epistemology 315 13. “Incarnation” of sovereignty 340 14. “Excarnation” of sovereignty 364 15. The cultural framework of the liberal state 392 PART IV Computer Networks 421 16. Mass media and mass culture 423 17. The culture and epistemology of networks 453 18. Constitutionalism 481 19. Statehood and democracy 511 20. Further exemplary fields 540 Bibliography 571 Index 627