THE CABINET OF IMAGINARY LAWS Returning to the map of the island of Utopia, this book provides a contemporary, inventive, addition to the long history of legal fictions and juristic phantasms. Progressive legal and political thinking has for long lacked a positive, let alone an imaginary project, an account of what improved institutions and an ameliorated environment would look like. And where better to start than with the non-laws or imaginary legislations of a realm yet to come. The Cabinet of Imaginary Laws is a collection of fictive contributions to the theme of conceiving laws in the vivid vein of jurisliterary invention. Disparate in style and diverse in genres of writing and performative expression, the celebrated and unknown, venerable and youthful authors write new laws. Thirty-three dissolute scholars, impecunious authors and dyspeptic artists from a variety of fields including law, film, science, history, philosophy, political science, aesthetics, poetry, architecture and the classics become, for a brief and inspiring instance, legislators of impossible norms. The collection provides an extraordinary range of inspired imaginings of other laws. This momentary community conceives of a wild variety of novel critical perspectives. The contributions aim to excite reflection on the role of imagination in the study and writing of law. Verse, collage, artworks, short stories, harangues, lists and other pleas, reports and pronouncements revivify the sense of law as the vehicle of poetic justice and as an art that instructs and constructs life. Aimed at an audience disgruntled with the negativity of critique and the narrowness of the disciplines, this book will appeal especially to theorists, lawyers, scholars and a general public concerned with the future of decaying laws and an increasingly derelict legal system. Peter Goodrich is Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School and Visiting Professor in the School of Social Science at New York University, Abu Dhabi. Thanos Zartaloudis is Reader in Legal History and Theory at Kent Law School and Visiting Professor at the Center of Hellenic Studies, Harvard University. Part of the DISCOURSES OF LAW series series editors Peter Goodrich, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, USA Michel Rosenfeld, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, USA Arthur Jacobson, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, USA For information about the series and details of previous and forthcoming titles, see https://www .routledge .com /Discourses -of -Law /book -series /SE1036 The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Jacob Burns Institute for Advanced Legal Studies of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law to the series Discourses of Law. A GlassHouse Book THE CABINET OF IMAGINARY LAWS Edited by Peter Goodrich and Thanos Zartaloudis First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 A Glasshouse book Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Peter Goodrich and Thanos Zartaloudis; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Peter Goodrich and Thanos Zartaloudis to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-367-56659-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-56658-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-09882-9 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India CONTENTS Author Biographies viii Prelude: Peter Goodrich and Thanos Zartaloudis xvii 1 The imaginary origins of the common law 1 Piyel Haldar 2 A quiet and secret place – an enquiry on the Dreamer God, a god without a name 11 Pierre Legendre 3 Borges, The Keystone and the legal imagination 16 Tobias Smith 4 A triptych of lawlessness 19 Stephen Webster 5 When dragons did rise 35 C. F. Black 6 Doctorum agnomina: on the satirical laws of academia 41 Valérie Hayaert 7 The Corbels Act, London 1909 57 Jake Tilson 8 Report to the Treasurer of Injustice 62 Frederick Dolan vi Contents 9 Ennomie 67 William Watkin 10 Twelve theses on the exorbitant principle that a lawyer must work for the poor 72 Adam Gearey 11 Intha gnalamum poy thaano – imagining the other in contract 78 Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen 12 Ad vitam aeternam: a legal text that remains relevant 86 Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos 13 In nomine patris 93 Chiara Bottici 14 It is forbidden to sell your soul to the devil 98 Tiziano Toracca 15 The Court of the Monuments 102 Hayley Gibson 16 Lexicon Act 2020 114 Gary Watt 17 Carrier bag law 119 Bernard Keenan 18 Law in the round 125 Linda G. Mills 19 Kαὶ μηδὲν μόριον ἀποκεκρύφθαι: the bare life of the Stoic sage 129 Phillip Mitsis 20 Move over, Felix: Addressing the impact of the domestic cat 135 James Attlee 21 The Proof of Judicial Omniscience Act (UK) 144 David Campbell 22 The rule book of a dreamer 152 Niall Brooks Contents vii 23 The Dismantler 154 Karsten Schubert 24 Breathing law – real imaginings of what it might mean to matter differently 162 Daniela Gandorfer 25 Untitled. Unreliable. Unconfirmed 174 Deepak Unnikrishnan 26 Legal fictions: a dialogue imagining law 179 Elizabeth Cowie 27 COIL 185 Justin Clemens 28 Waiting for law: a play in one act 187 Stacy Douglas 29 The protocol of mobile rooms 192 Aristide Antonas 30 Law No. 9321/2028: Exceptional Regulations for Communal Living and Use on the Ground of Higher Order Natural Sites 196 Thanos Zartaloudis 31 A confidential private placement memorandum 200 Pierre Schlag 32 The Statute of Snouts – an act for the elongation of noses 206 Peter Goodrich 33 Science and Scholarship Restoration Act 210 Bernhard Schlink 34 Constitutional exhaustion 212 Pierre Schlag Index 219 AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES James Attlee is a freelance writer, editor and publishing consultant living in Oxford. He is the author of Under the Rainbow: Voices from Lockdown (And Other Stories, 2021), Isolarion: A Different Oxford Journey (And Other Stories, new edition 2020), Guernica: Painting the End of the World (Head of Zeus, 2017); Station to Station (Guardian Books, 2017), shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year 2017, and Nocturne: A Journey in Search of Moonlight (Penguin, 2012), among other titles. His digital fiction The Cartographer’s Confession won the New Media Writing Prize in 2017. Aristide Antonas, is a Greek architect, philosopher and literary author and a visiting Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and the ETH Zurich. His art and architecture work have had solo presentations in museums in Switzerland, Austria and France while they have been featured in international shows as the Biennale of Venice and documenta 14, Kassel. His published works include novels, short stories, theatre scripts and essays. Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen, is a socio-legal scholar whose research examines the intersections between law, globalization and stratification from a critical feminist perspective. Particularly, across a range of sites and different levels of analysis, their work interrogates how law and legal institutions create, continue, and counter dif- ferent kinds of socio-economic inequalities. Ballakrishnen’s writing has appeared in, among other journals, Law and Society Review, Law and Social Inquiry, Fordham Law Review, International Journal of the Legal Profession, and the Journal of Professions and Organization. Their first book Accidental Feminism is published by Princeton University Press (December 2020). Author Biographies ix C.F. Black is an Intellectual Explorer travelling through both cyberspace and the ethereal legal world of the oldest traditions of the world. She is a descendant of the indigenous Yugambeh-speaking peoples of South East Queensland, Australia. Her scholarship brings a unique perspective to studies in legal theory. Her recent works shine a light on the potency and potentiality of Indigenous legal traditions to play a major role in helping the West come to terms with the impracticality of an affluent lifestyle in a time of growing economic inequality. Her major publica- tions include A Mosaic of Indigenous Legal Thought: Legendary Tales and Other Writings (Routledge,2017) and The Land is the Source of the Law: A Dialogic Encounter with an Indigenous Jurisprudence (Routledge, 2011). Much of her work including her articles and chapters have been taught in universities around the world including Sciences Po, Cornell University, Kent University, McGill University and University of New Mexico. Her latest project with her colleague, legal philosopher Jan Mihal, is to write a book which creates an innovative wormhole into the algorithmic digital vortex. As Associate Professor adjunct at Griffith University, Australia her work ventures into the world of sea rise and warnings emanating from popular literature. She has given many keynotes and public seminars on Indigenous Jurisprudence. Her burgeoning creative writings include short stories, political plays, poetry, and sci fi fantasy novels for youth. Her art, photography and performance have been exhibited in New York, Beijing, Denver, and various cities in Australia. Her interests include plant consciousness, quantum physics, algorithmic decision making and ancient myths, symbols, and laws. Chiara Bottici is an Italian philosopher and writer. She is Associate Professor in Philosophy and Director of Gender Studies at The New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College (New York). She is the author of Imaginal Politics: Images beyond Imagination and the Imaginary (Columbia University Press, 2014), A Philosophy of Political Myth (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and Men and States (Palgrave, 2009). With Benoit Challand, she co-authored Imagining Europe: Myth, Memory, Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and The Myth of the Clash of Civilizations (Routledge, 2010). She also co-edited the collections of essays The Politics of Imagination (Routledge, 2011, with Benoit Challand), The Anarchist Turn (Pluto 2013, with Simon Critchley and Jacob Blumenfeld) and Feminism, Capitalism and Critique (Palgrave 2017, with Banu Bargu). Her short stories have appeared in Il Caffe illustrato and L’immaginazione, while her feminist experimental writing Per tre miti, forse quattro was published by Manni Editore in 2016 and is forthcoming in an English translation with Bloomsbury. Niall Brooks practiced for many years in the UK as a solicitor-advocate, specialis- ing in criminal defence and prison law. He has since dedicated his life to writing poetry and fiction under various pseudonyms, including Otto Loser and Anton Matins. He lives with his wife in central Europe.