The Introduction examines the emergence and development of law and literature as an interdisciplinary field, while highlighting the ways in which eighteenth-century studies has contributed to and been shaped by the enterprise. Over the past twenty-five years, scholars have examined numerous connections between the era’s legal and literary discourses, emphasizing the formal complexities of both legal and literary texts. The chapters in this volume build upon and extend this body of work, taking up topics including the nature of legal and literary interpretation, the role of legal rhetoric in Britain’s industrial economy, the desire for and resistance to law during public health crises, the regulation of the legal profession, the emergence of the modern judicial decision, the place of law in Britain’s expanding empire, and the role of law in maintaining and rectifying gendered, racial, religious, and class-based inequalities. The Introduction presents an overview of these case studies, reflects on themes running through the volume, and offers suggestions for future work in the field.

Drawing on an ongoing conflict over hydrocarbon development in a protected area in Southern Bolivia, this chapter explores resource frontiers as key sites of juristocratic reckoning, where international and national discourses of rights are simultaneously invoked and undermined by violent processes of accumulation by dispossession. A leading example of transformative constitutionalism, Bolivia’s 2009 Constitution defined the country as a “Plurinational State” and recognized an array of new rights for Indigenous, originary, and peasant peoples, including in relation to territory and the environment. Yet state dependence on natural gas extraction has produced a widening gap between legal discourse and practice. This chapter asks: What new forms of politics emerge as communities at extractive frontiers reckon with the possibilities and limits of law and rights to confront ongoing processes of environmental dispossession? The arrival of oil companies in the Tariquía Reserve catalyzed a wave of human rights education in remote rural communities, yet a series of failed constitutional challenges have exposed the limits of law and rights as instruments to counter state-led extraction. Rather than turning away from rights, the chapter argues that community activists in Tariquía see themselves as custodians of the 2009 Constitution against the state. Their embodied praxis of territorial defense points to a form of juristocratic politics from below, in which the state’s monopoly on political and legal authority is called into question.

This chapter scrutinises the framework within which Kant decides to conduct his argument against Constant. Constant argues that the would-be murderer has forfeited his right to be told the truth. Kant argues that the duty to be truthful does not depend on that kind of right; that Constant fails to distinguish between truth and truthfulness with sufficient care; and that one should distinguish the question of whether lying is permissible (licence to lie) in emergencies from the question of whether lying is ever morally required (obligation to lie). In the 1797 essay, Kant addresses the second question through the first. If there is never a licence to lie, there can be no obligation to do so.

Marx’s early theory of labour and alienation originates from idealist concepts of spontaneity and formativity. His ideas of socialism and emancipation in the 1840s reprise aspects of Kantian autonomy and heteronomy and follow Fichte in linking labour with spontaneity. Marx formulates the dialectic of the will in a way favourable to the moment of particularity as membership in a social class, and sees one particular class as simultaneously a vehicle of universal interest and revolutionary transformation. Quantitative change is insufficient though necessary: a merely distributive socialism might enhance the living conditions of the workers, but would leave intact structures of exploitation which deprive workers of their agency as well as their happiness. His theory of history and emancipation, recently described as a self-actualisation account, can be more precisely identified as a variant of post-Kantian perfectionism, which, like Feuerbach’s, contains a strong admixture of pre-Kantian elements. This blending of heterogeneous elements has profound theoretical and practical consequences, notably in the absence of a developed concept of right.

The aim of this chapter is to explore different possible ways of thinking about the connection between the nature of contractual agreements and the rich array of notions that comprise the structure of contract formation. It starts from one axiom regarding the nature of contracts: contractual obligations and rights are necessarily brought about by both parties’ assents (the ‘Necessity of Agreement’ axiom or ‘NOA’). It is maintained that if we adopt NOA, there are at least two different mechanisms by which contracting agents may form a contractual agreement. One is well known to anyone familiar with modern contract law: ‘offer and acceptance’. The other has been interestingly neglected by most contract lawyers and theorists: ‘contractual subscription’. The notion of contractual subscription is developed, and then discussion of the concepts of offer and acceptance. Drawing on Reinach’s idea of a ‘social act’, an account of ‘juridical acts’ is provided. Juridical acts, it is argued, are a type of social act, and contractual offers are a type of juridical act. Finally, the role of another important notion in contract formation is analyzed, that of a ‘promise’. Contrary to several contemporary writers, it is held that the act of making a promise, in its elementary form at least, is neither necessary nor sufficient for the formation of a contract. The chapter concludes by offering a thesis regarding the connection between NOA and morality of contractual enforcement.

Hohfeld’s and Reinach’s ontologies of rights have rarely been compared. After having highlighted the similarities between them, the focus is on what is arguably their most fundamental disagreement. Hohfeld assumes from the outset that all rights are relations, and consequently claims that all liberties have correlatives, which he calls, for lack of a better term, “no-rights”. Reinach, for his part, maintains that liberties, unlike claims, essentially lack correlatives and counterparts, which is why he calls them “absolute rights”. Who is right? Do liberties have correlatives or not? It is argued that both Reinach and Hohfeld have overgeneralized an initially correct insight. Reinach is right, pace Hohfeld, that some liberties are absolute, but wrong that all are. Hohfeld is right, pace Reinach, that some liberties have no-rights as correlatives, but wrong that all liberties have such correlatives. A reconciled ontology of rights is proposed that makes room for both absolute and relative liberties.

This chapter considers the extent to which the concepts recognised in the positive private law are answerable to concepts that exist outside of the law and in what ways the justification of positive private law rests upon its relationship to normative facts that exist independently of it. Reinach prompts reflection on these matters in that he directs his attention to a set of abstract entities (rights, claims etc.), and propositions relating those entities (a priori laws) which, he claims, do not owe their validity to the positive law, but exist in the same way as mathematical objects and truths. In this way, he goes beyond the positive law, and in a subtle sense to be explored, considers the positive law answerable to the a priori law.

This chapter explores the intricate legal concepts of co-ownership and neighbour relations under Chinese property law. The first section delves into co-ownership, explaining its categories: co-ownership by shares and common ownership. It discusses the rights and obligations of co-owners, the management of co-owned property and the legal remedies available for disputes. The chapter highlights how co-ownership can be established through contracts, partnerships and familial relationships, and examines how these relationships influence the management and division of property.

The second section focuses on neighbour relations, covering the concept and content of neighbour rights. It outlines the principles governing these rights, such as facilitating production and ensuring convenient living while balancing fairness and reasonableness. The chapter discusses the impact of civil customs on neighbour relations, providing case studies to illustrate how local practices influence legal decisions. By examining these elements, the chapter provides a comprehensive overview of how co-ownership and neighbour relations are regulated, emphasising the importance of harmony and co-operation in property management and dispute resolution.

This chapter discusses the overrepresentation of Malaysian Indians convicted of drug trafficking under section 39B of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1980 on death row. Using Eric Mitnick’s group-differentiated rights theory (1999, 2000, and 2006), it is argued that Malaysian Indians convicted of drug trafficking fall into two ‘non-rights bearer’ groups: first, as members of the Malaysian Indian ethnic minority from the lower social class who have been disregarded by the 1970 socioeconomic policy and 1990 national development policy; and second, as drug couriers who have been denied fair trial rights in the Malaysian criminal justice system. As ‘non-rights bearers,’ they have suffered from disadvantages meted out by various national laws and policies, and have been victims of neglect due to the politics of race in Malaysia and the war on drugs in Southeast Asia.

Political legitimacy entails a process of evaluation and eventually of judgment concerning whether or not, and to what extent, the exercise of political power (institutions, leadership, policies, and results) meets the conditions required by legitimacy. Despite the importance of the contribution of law to legitimacy, legitimacy cannot be purely and simply identified with and reduced to law. This is, in part, the case because law functions as an expression and vector of two other components of political legitimacy: values and consent. As such, this chapter is organized into three parts. First, I examine the meaning of values and consent and of their relationship in general. Second, I refer to the challenges that can be associated with values and consent. Third, I show how values and consent, provided that they are not the captives of these challenges, can operate as sources and criteria of evaluation and judgment of political legitimacy.

Chapter 5 explores the effects of identity strategies. In this chapter, an intersectional approach illuminates the parameters of identity and affect that define the universal citizen. The chapter argues that when activists embody identity strategies in public events, activists politicize the terms of personhood and citizenship, giving rights a specific, embodied form. The chapter first examines Free Gender’s deployment of their strategy of commensurability during their participation in memorial services for deceased lesbians. It shows how memorial services are a moment when members of the organization can provide support to the deceased’s family, the local community, and each other. By embodying the confluence of the identities of lesbian, African, and community member during this community activity, the organization challenges dominant notions of who is entitled to the right to live free of violence. The chapter then examines La Fulana’s participation in the annual Pride march in Buenos Aires. The deployment of lesbian visibility challenges the gendered and heteronormative parameters of the ideal citizen through lesbians’ embodied enjoyment and pleasure in public activity. The chapter concludes by considering the importance of embodiment and emotional context to the successful deployment of identity strategies.

Chapter 3 explores the identity strategies that La Fulana and Free Gender have employed in their activism. The chapter puts forward and defines two different identity strategies that organizations employ: commensurability and visibility. The first half of the chapter shows how Free Gender strategizes lesbian identity to be commensurate with other important social and political identities such as “woman,” “African,” and “community member.” Doing so allows Free Gender to advance its goal of eliminating violence against lesbians in their local community. The second half of the chapter shows how La Fulana develops a strategy of lesbian visibility to increase the salience of lesbian identity relative to other social identities. This strategy aims to correct the social and political erasure of lesbians in public that persists after the acquisition of citizenship rights. Overall, the chapter adds to the literature by explaining the kinds of strategies organizations may use when explicitly strategizing multiple identities at once, and how these strategies address the limitations of legally inclusive citizenship.