On Our Last Leges

Publication Date

12-1-2023

Journal

Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies

Abstract

Common law is predicated historically upon a sense of the common, of custom and use time out of mind. The legal tradition has its roots in a guild, an elite community whose common opinion and conversations provided the substance and sensibility of the normative. Remediation of law, meaning here the changing media of legal transmission, the imaginal turn in the streamed and viral relays of law and its enforcement, confront a monochrome and linear textual tradition, the regimentations of the page, with the fragmentary and anarchic optics of online platforms and social media bytes and nibbles. Increased online visibility, this essay argues, forces the guild to face up to an expanded commons, the diversity of colors, the heuristics of the eye, and the nuances of viewing.

Volume

34

First Page

175

Publisher

Duke University Press, Indiana University Press

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1215/10407391-10898283

Keywords

color, images, legal commons, monochromacity, remediation, viserbalities

Disciplines

Law | Law and Gender

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