Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Now This: On the Gradual Production of Justice Whilst Doing Law and Music

  • Published:
International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper examines the role of performance in law and music as a structural means of their self-programming construction. Music and law are considered as parallel social practices or performative doings. The paper begins with a critical analysis of the special aesthetical features of present-day juridical practice as exemplified by legal trial and legal expertise. Drawing upon reflections on the modern discourse on aesthetics and art, the article then examines in greater detail the specific traits of performance in law and jazz music. Performative processes move from representation to presentation, from a preoccupation with rules and controlling to induced self-programming. Both law and jazz regard the unknown future as a resource for present decisions by “inventing” new possibilities; both require, expand and promote a responsibility that does not follow from statutes nor can be expressed in a code of ethics. Finally, the article addresses the performance situation in jazz. Jazz being polyphonic and improvisational by nature, improvisation makes explicit tradition by staging the context dependency of its performance. It is mediated by the knowledge, the operational history and the communication of the participants. Jazz is an exercise in the possibilities of an “aesthetics of imperfection” which can open up new ways of seeing law and politics.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Dedek, Helge. 2010. Die Schönheit der Vernunft. (Ir-)Rationalität von Rechtswissenschaft in Mittelalter und Moderne. Rechtswissenschaft 1: 58–85.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Authers, Benjamin. 2010. Truth in the telling: Procedure, testimony, and the work of improvisation in legal narrative. Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation 6: 1.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Messner, Claudius. 2016. Orientamenti del diritto. Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Radbruch, Gustav. 2003. Rechtsphilosophie (1932). In Rechtsphilosophie, ed. Ralf Dreier/Stanley L. Paulson, 1–193. Heidelberg: C.F. Müller.

  5. Haltern, Ulrich. R. 1999. Musik (und Recht) heute. HFR, 111–126. http://www.humboldt-forum-recht.de/deutsch/9-1999/index.html.

  6. Messner, Claudius. 2012. ‹Living› law: Performative, not discursive. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique 25 (4): 537–552.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Möller, Kolja. 2015. Rechtskritik und Systemtheorie. In Systemtheorie und Differenzierungstheorie als Kritik. Perspektiven im Anschluss an Niklas Luhmann, ed. Albert Scherr, 186–210. Weinheim/Basel: Beltz.

  8. Menke, Christoph. 2010. ‘Ästhetisierung’. Zur Einleitung. In “Ästhetisierung”. Der Streit um das Ästhetische in Politik, Religion und Erkenntnis, ed. Ilka Brombach/Dirk Setton/Cornelia Temesvári, 17–22. Zürich: diaphanes.

  9. Darian-Smith, Eve. 2013. Laws and societies in global contexts: Contemporary approaches. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Coombe, Rosemary J. 2001. Is there a cultural studies of law? In A companion to cultural studies, ed. Toby Miller, 36–62. Cambridge: Blackwell.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  11. Fischer-Lescano, Andreas. 2015. Soziologische Rechtsästhetik. Nach Feierabend, Zürcher Jahrbuch für Wissensgeschichte, 31–59.

  12. Viola, Francesco. 2015. Il diritto come arte della convivenza civile. Rivista di Filosofia del diritto 4 (1): 57–74.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Eco, Umberto. 2003. Dire quasi la stessa cosa. Esperienze di traduzione. Milano: Bompiani.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Krämer, Sybille. 2001. Sprache, Sprechakt, Kommunikation. Sprachtheoretische Positionen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

  15. Vesting, Thomas. 2010. Legal theory as media theory: Reflections on the necessity of linking theory of language and media theory. Ancilla iuris (anci.ch), 47–88.

  16. Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich, and Karl L. Pfeiffer. 1995. Materialität der Kommunikation. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Gaut, Berys. 2000. ‘Art’ as a Cluster Concept. In Theories of art today, ed. Noël Carroll, 25–44. Madison: Wisconsin UP.

    Google Scholar 

  18. Fish, Stanley. 1989. Doing what comes naturally. Change, rhetoric, and the practice of theory in literary and legal studies. Durham London: Duke UP.

  19. MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1981. After virtue. A study in moral theory. Notre Dame: Notre Dame UP.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Geertz, Clifford. 1983. Local knowledge. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Legnaro, Aldo, and Astrid Aengenheister. 1999. Die Aufführung von Strafrecht: Kleine Ethnographie gerichtlichen Verhandelns. Baden-Baden: Nomos.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Bellucci, Patrizia. 2002. A onor del vero. Fondamenti di linguistica giudiziaria. Torino: UTET.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Peterson, Jeremy. 2007. Unpacking show trials: Situating the trial of Saddam Hussein. Harvard International Law Journal 48 (1): 257–292.

    Google Scholar 

  24. Auslander, Philip. 2008. Liveness: Performance in a mediatized culture. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Nicholls, Tracey. 2010. Speaking justice, performing reconciliation: Twin challenges for a postcolonial ethics. Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation, 6 (1).

  26. Kennedy, David. 2016. A world of struggle: how power, law, and expertise shape global political economy. Princeton: Princeton UP.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  27. Somek, Alexander. 2006. Rechtliches Wissen. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Bung, Jochen. 2010. New Approaches to Legal Methodology. Ancilla iuris (anci.ch), 1–14.

  29. Nowotny, Helga. 2003. Dilemma of expertise. Democratising expertise and socially robust knowledge. Science and Public Policy 30 (3): 151–156.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Schlag, Pierre. 2002. The aesthetics of American law. Harvard Law Review 115 (4): 1047–1118.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Aesthetics and Ideology, ed. George Levine. New Brunswick: Rudgers UP, 1994.

  32. Scheible, Hartmut. 1988. Wahrheit und Subjekt. Ästhetik im bürgerlichen Zeitalter. Reinbek: Rowohlt.

    Google Scholar 

  33. Deleuze, Gilles. 1953. Empirisme et subjectivité. Paris: PUF.

    Google Scholar 

  34. Andina, Tiziana. 2012. Realismo in ontologia, idealismo in arte. Una tensione mortale. Methode 1 (1), 29–45. http://www.methode.unito.it/methOJS/index.php/meth/index. Accessed 9 June 2014.

  35. Messner, Claudius. 2004. Icaro, per esempio. La sofferenza e l’immagine. Sociologia del diritto XXXI (3): 57–76.

    Google Scholar 

  36. Manderson, Desmond. 2000. Songs without music: Aesthetic dimensions of law and justice. Berkeley, CA: California UP.

    Google Scholar 

  37. Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Harvard UP (or. Nous n’avons jamais été modernes, Paris 1991).

  38. Brunello, Mario, and Gustavo Zagrebelsky. 2016. Interpretare: Dialogo tra un musicista e un giurista. Bologna: Il Mulino.

    Google Scholar 

  39. Eco, Umberto. 1970. Il problema estetico in Tommaso d’Aquino. Milano: Bompiani.

    Google Scholar 

  40. Thornhill, Chris. 2007. German political philosophy. The metaphysics of law. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  41. Chanan, Michael. 1999. From Haendel to Hendrix: The composer in the public sphere. London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  42. Danto, Arthur C. 2000. Art and Meaning. In Theories of art today, ed. Noël Carroll, 130–140. Madison, WI: Wisconsin UP.

    Google Scholar 

  43. Ferraris, Maurizio. 1997. Estetica razionale. Milano: Cortina.

    Google Scholar 

  44. Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2014. Quand le sens ne fait plus monde. Esprit, 3–4.

  45. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 2000. Was ist Philosophie? Frankfurt: Suhrkamp (original publication: Qu’est-ce que la philosophie?, 1991. Paris: Minuit.

    Google Scholar 

  46. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1977. Philosophische Untersuchungen. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

    Google Scholar 

  47. Weber, Max. 1921. Die rationalen und soziologischen Grundlagen der Musik (1911). München: Drei-Masken-Verlag. http://www.zeno.org/nid/20011440767.

  48. Diederichsen, Diedrich. 2014. Über Pop-Musik. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch.

    Google Scholar 

  49. Ponzio, Augusto, and Susan Petrilli. 2008. Lineamenti di semiotica e di filosofia del linguaggio. Bari: B.A. Graphis.

    Google Scholar 

  50. Dalhaus, Carl. 1983. Foundations of music history. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  51. Martinet, André. 1984. Double articulation as a criterion of linguisticity. Language Sciences 6 (1): 31–38.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  52. Levitin, Daniel. 2008. The world in six songs: How the musical brain created human nature. New York, NY: Dutton/Penguin.

    Google Scholar 

  53. Small, Christopher. 1998. Musicking: the meaning of performing and listening. Hanover, N.H.: New England UP.

    Google Scholar 

  54. Baxandall, Michael. 1972. Painting and experience in fifteenth century Italy. London: Oxford UP.

    Google Scholar 

  55. Kaduri, Yael. 2006. Wittgenstein and Haydn on Understanding Music. Contemporary Aesthetics, 4. http://www.contempaesthetics.org. Accessed 10 May 2014.

  56. Worth, Sol. 1975. Pictures Can’t Say Ain’t. Versus. Quaderni di studi semiotici, 85–108.

  57. Lyotard, François. 1973. Dérive à partir de Marx et Freud. Paris: Union générale d’éditions.

    Google Scholar 

  58. Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2008. Noli me tangere: on the raising of the body. New York, NY: Fordham UP.

    Google Scholar 

  59. Blumenberg, Hans. 2001. Licht als Metapher der Wahrheit. Im Vorfeld der philosophischen Begriffsbildung (1957). In Ästhetische und metaphorologische Schriften, ed. Anselm Haverkamp, 139–171. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

  60. Laborde, Denis. 2009. Faire la musique. Appareil, 3. doi:10.4000/appareil.850.

  61. Le Guin, Elisabeth. 2006. Boccherini’s body: An essay in carnal musicology. Berkeley, CA: California UP.

    Google Scholar 

  62. Sibley, Frank. 1959. Aesthetic concepts. Philosophical Review 68 (4): 421–450.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  63. Messner, Claudius. 2014. Luhmann’s Judgment. In Special issue Luhmann, ed. C. Messner, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique 27 (2), 359–387.

  64. Satta, Salvatore. 1994. Il mistero del processo (1949). In Il mistero del processo, 11–37. Milano: Adelphi.

  65. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1987. The force of law: Toward a sociology of the juridical field. Hastings Law Journal 38 (5): 814–853.

    Google Scholar 

  66. Dell’Anna, Maria V. 2013. In nome del popolo italiano. Linguaggio giuridico e lingua della sentenza in Italia. Roma: Bonacci.

    Google Scholar 

  67. White, James B. 1985. Heracles’ bow: Essays on the rhetoric and poetics of the law. Madison, WI: Wisconsin UP.

    Google Scholar 

  68. Krämer, Sybille. 1998. Sprache–Stimme–Schrift: Sieben Thesen über Performativität als Medialität. Paragrana 7 (1): 33–57.

    Google Scholar 

  69. Christensen, Ralph/Kent D. Lerch. 2005. Performanz. Die Kunst, Recht geschehen zu lassen. In Recht vermitteln - Strukturen, Formen und Medien der Kommunikation im Recht (Die Sprache des Rechts, vol. 3), ed. Kent D. Lerch, 55–132. Berlin New York: De Gruyter.

  70. Fischer-Lichte, Erika. 2008. The Transformative Power of Performance. A new aesthetics. Abingdon New York: Routledge (or. Ästhetik des Performativen, Frankfurt 2004).

  71. Dennis, James L. 1993. Interpretation and application of the civil code and the evaluation of judicial precedent. Louisiana Law Review 54: 2–19.

    Google Scholar 

  72. Hart, Herbert L.A. 1961. The concept of law. Oxford: Clarendon.

    Google Scholar 

  73. Jasanoff, Sheila. 2003. Technologies of humility: Citizen participation in governing science. Minerva 41: 223–244.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  74. Messner, Claudius. 2004a. Observing victims. Global Insecurities and the Systemic Imagination of Justice in World Society. In Imaginary Boundaries of Justice. Social Justice across Disciplines, ed. Ronnie Lippens, Oxford Portland: Hart, 185–202.

  75. Cover, Robert M. 1983. The supreme court: Foreword—nomos and narrative. Harvard Law Review 97 (4): 4–68.

    Google Scholar 

  76. Sebeok, Thomas A. 1991. A sign is just a sign. Bloomington: Indiana UP.

    Google Scholar 

  77. Simon, Josef. 1989. Philosophie des Zeichens. Berlin New York: de Gruyter.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  78. Foucault, Michel. 1986. Sex als Moral. Gespräch mit H. Dreyfus und P. Rabinow. In Von der Freundschaft. M. Foucault im Gespräch, 69–84. Berlin: Merve.

  79. Foucault, Michel. 1980. Le philosophe masqué. Dits et Écrits, vol. IV, text n. 285.

  80. Messner, Claudius. 2011. Subjectivation as Problem and Project. Is there an Existentialist Motif in Foucault? In Crime, Governance and Existential Predicaments, ed. James Hardie-Bick and Ronnie Lippens, 36–60. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

  81. Gioia, Ted. 2006. The history of Jazz. Oxford: Oxford UP.

    Google Scholar 

  82. Kunzler, Martin. 2005. Jazz Lexikon. Berlin: Directmedia.

    Google Scholar 

  83. Caporaletti, Vincenzo. 2015. Razionalità dell’improvvisazione – Improvvisazione della razionalità. Itinera 10: 189–215.

    Google Scholar 

  84. Gioia, Ted. 2007. L’arte imperfetta. Il Jazz e la cultura moderna. Milano: excelsior1881 (or. The Imperfect Art, New York 1988).

  85. de Groot, R. 2010. Music at the limits: Edward Said’s musical elaborations. In How the West Was Won: Essays on Literary Imagination, the Canon, and the Christian Middle Ages for Burcht Pranger, ed. Willemien Otten/Arie Vanderjagt/Hent de Vries, 127–45. Leiden: Brill.

  86. De la Motte, Diether. 1991. Il contrappunto. Milano: Ricordi.

    Google Scholar 

  87. Wolff, Christian. 2000. Johann Sebastian Bach. Frankfurt: Fischer.

    Google Scholar 

  88. Landgraf, Edgar. 2014. Improvisation as art: Conceptual challenges, historical perspectives. New York: Bloomsbury.

    Google Scholar 

  89. Mertens, Wim. 1983. American minimal music. London: Kahn & Averill.

    Google Scholar 

  90. Hancock, Herbie. 2014. The Ethics of Jazz, Set 1: The Wisdom of Miles Davis, Set 2—Breaking the Rules. The 2014 Norton Lectures, Cambridge, MA: The Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University. http://mahindrahumanities.fas.harvard.edu/content/norton-lectures. Accessed 9 June 2014.

  91. Foucault, Michel. 2003. L’ermeneutica del soggetto. Corso al Collège de France (1981-1982). Milano: Feltrinelli (or. L’herméneutique du sujet, Paris 2001).

  92. Ramshaw, Sara. 2013. Justice as improvisation: The law of the extempore. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  93. Said, Edward W. 1991. Musical elaborations. New York: Columbia UP.

    Google Scholar 

  94. Derrida, Jacques. 2005. Rogues. Two essays on reason. Stanford: Stanford UP.

    Google Scholar 

  95. Bucholtz, Barbara. 2003. On canonical transformations and the coherence of dichotomies: Jazz, jurisprudence, and the University Mission. Univ. Richmond Law Review 37: 425–469.

    Google Scholar 

  96. Laplanche, Jean/Jean-Bertrand Pontalis. 1967. Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse. 7th edition 1981. Paris: PUF.

  97. Walzer, Michael. 1992. On the Role of Symbolism in Political Thought (1967).In The Self and the Political Order, ed. Tracy B. Strong, 64–76. London: Blackwell.

  98. Austin, John L. 1956–57. A Plea for Excuses. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, 57, 1–30.

  99. Derrida, Jacques. 1998. Le toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy. Paris: Galilée.

    Google Scholar 

  100. Derrida, Jacques. 2004. Play: The first name. Genre 36: 331–340.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche, Università del Salento, Complesso Ecotekne – Pal. R1, Via per Monteroni, 73100, Lecce, Italy

    Claudius Messner

Authors
  1. Claudius Messner
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Claudius Messner.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Messner, C. Now This: On the Gradual Production of Justice Whilst Doing Law and Music. Int J Semiot Law 31, 187–214 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-017-9518-9

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-017-9518-9

Keywords

Search

Navigation