On the Use of the Humanities for Legal Expertise: The New Advocate

This paper presents a response to the question of whether there is or should be a law and humanities canon. It is Franz Kafka’s The New Advocate (Der Neue Advokat). Between the lines of this text, a brief argument has been added concerning the use of the humanities for legal expertise. While the main text – a work of fiction – narrates the story of Dr Bucephalus, the war-horse of Alexander the Great, and his becoming admitted to practice as an advocate and to study the law, the added argument contributes little by way of additional commentary or interpretation of this fiction. Instead it suggests that legal scholars, rather than treating their art and expertise as a means only to advocate for public causes, should also not neglect the studious inutility of it. The suggestion states that jurisprudence is the source of this expertise and therefore, in so far as it ensures that law may be studied out of a genuine scholarly interest in it, remains the site for a work of law and the humanities. The main text concludes that it may be better to have done what Bucephalus has done and, under a quiet lamp, to bury oneself in the lawbooks.

Interdisciplinarity 3.0: The Hub of the Universe or Fantasy Island?

This contribution provides, in a condensed form, the argument on the topic of interdisciplinarity within Law and the Humanities of my recent book Judging from Experience. Law, Praxis, Humanities. It also engages with recent proposals for the future, both in Law and Humanities and as far as the humanities in themselves are concerned. Its main point is that any “Law and” field that remains theoretical and does not seek to inform legal practice will suffer from a lack of impact of the kind university administrators demand from academic researchers. If interdisciplinary fields are to thrive, they need to provide nourishment to the legal professional by combining the findings of academic theory (including but not limited to legal doctrine) with the specifics of doing law.

The Oxford Handbook of Law and Humanities

How might law matter to the humanities? How might the humanities matter to law? In its approach to both of these questions, The Oxford Handbook of Law and Humanities shows how rich a resource the law is for humanistic study, as well as how and why the humanities are vital for understanding law. Tackling questions of method, key themes, and concepts and a variety of genres and areas of the law, this collection of chapters by leading scholars from a variety of disciplines illuminates new questions and articulates an exciting new agenda for scholarship in law and humanities.