Description
Book SynopsisThe study of catastrophe is a growth industry. Today, cosmologists scan the heavens for asteroids of the kind that smashed into earth some ninety million years ago, leading to the swift extinction of the dinosaurs. Climatologists create elaborate models of the chaotic weather and vast flooding that will result from the continued buildup of greenhouse gases in the planet''s atmosphere. Terrorist experts and homeland security consultants struggle to prepare for a wide range of possible biological, chemical, and radiological attacks: aerated small pox virus spread by a crop duster, botulism dumped into an urban reservoir, a dirty bomb detonated in a city center.
Yet, strangely, law''s role in the definition, identification, prevention, and amelioration of catastrophe has been largely neglected. The relationship between law and other limiting conditionssuch as states of emergencyhas been the subject of rich and growing literature. By contrast, little has been written about law and
Trade Review
"Law and Catastrophe is an edited collection that explores this inextricable and symbiotic relationship between these two concepts in the short span of five chapters. It presents to the reader a witty and often engaging group of literary essays that dissect various guises of how law and catastrophe interpenetrate."—Law and Politics Book Review
"Law and Castastrophe offers a diverse and fascinating set of essays. There has never been a more urgent need for such a work on catastrophe and law." —Anthony J. Sebok, Brooklyn Law School
"This cogent work is based on the insight that, even when it proves itself palpably unable to deal with catastrophe, law can yet reassert itself, reproducing the bases of its authority over and over again. Indeed, this very act of reassertion is revealed to be the basis of legal authority itself. This book is a must read for any scholar interested in seeing the performance of law when its veneer of total control and stability have been stripped away." —James R. Martel, San Francisco State University
Table of Contents
Contents Acknowledgments 000 Contributors 000 A Jurisprudence of Catastrophe: An Introduction 000 Lawrence Douglas, Austin Sarat, Martha Umphrey Catastrophe: Plowing Up the Ground of Reason 000 Linda Ross Meyer Catastrophes and Humanitarian Corporate Responsibility: A Conceptual Critique 000 Ronen Shamir Political Catastrophe and Liberal Legal Desire: Two Stories of Revolution, Remediation, and Return from the French Nineteenth Century 000 Sylvia Schafer Committed to Memory: Rebecca West's Nuremberg 000 Ravit Pe'er-Lamo Reichman Mandating the National Memory of Catastrophe 000 James E. Young Index 000
