Rethinking legal time: The temporal turn in socio-legal studies

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35295/osls.iisl.1811

Keywords:

legal personhood, rights of nature, legal time, climate change, private law

Abstract

This article introduces a temporal approach to law as potentially innovative for socio-legal studies. It argues that bringing a focus on time into legal thought and practice is an important move for decentering the individual subject as conventionally conceived and for developing legal tools capable of recognising networks, ties and assemblages, and challenging the anthropocentric character of modern law. It frames climate change and the ecological crisis as a context for rethinking a number of fundamental legal forms, such as property and contract, as ways in which modern law can deal simultaneously with different temporalities – the present, an intergenerational time and a planetary time. 

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

        Metrics

Views 465
Downloads:
13(S1)_Pecile_OSLS 349
XML_13(S1)_Pecile_OSLS 55


Author Biography

Veronica Pecile, University of Lucerne

Veronica Pecile, Lucernaiuris-Institute for Interdisciplinary Legal Studies, University of Lucerne. Affiliated Researcher. Frohburgstrasse 3, Luzern 6002, Switzerland. Email address: pecile@collegium.ethz.ch

References

Blomley, N., 1994. Law, Space, and the Geographies of Power. New York/London: Guilford Press.

Bresnihan, P., and Byrne, M., 2015. Escape into the City: Everyday Practices of Commoning and the Production of Urban Space in Dublin. Antipode [online], 47(1), 36–54. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12105

Browne, V., 2014. Feminism, Time, and Nonlinear History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Burdon, P., 2015. Earth Jurisprudence: Private Property and the Environment. New York/London: Routledge.

Capra, F., and Mattei, U., 2015. The Ecology of Law: Toward a Legal System in Tune with Nature and Community. Oakland: Berrett-Koehler.

Carson, A., 1995. Glass, Irony and God. New York: New Directions.

Chakrabarty, D., 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton University Press.

Chakrabarty, D., 2021. The Climate of History in a Planetary Age. University of Chicago Press.

Chowdhury, T., 2020. Time, Temporality and Legal Judgement. London: Routledge.

Crutzen, P., and Stoermer, E., 2000. The Anthropocene. Global Change Newsletter, 41(1), 17–18.

Cullmann, O., 2018. Christ and Time: The Primitive Christian Conception of Time and History. Eugene: Wipf and Stock.

Delaney, D., 1998. Race, Place, and the Law: 1836–1948. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Fitzpatrick, P., 1992. The Mythology of Modern Law. New York/London: Routledge.

Foster, S., and Iaione, C., 2015. The City as a Commons. Yale Law & Policy Review [online], 34(2), 281–349. Available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2653084

Foucault, M., 1980. Questions on Geography. In: C. Gordon, ed., Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977. New York: Pantheon Books.

Gilbert, J., et al., 2023. The Rights of Nature as a Legal Response to the Global Environmental Crisis? A Critical Review of International Law’s “Greening” Agenda. Netherlands Yearbook of International Law 2021: A Greener International Law—International Legal Responses to the Global Environmental Crisis [online], 47–74. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-587-4_3

Gosseries, A., 2008. On Future Generations’ Future Rights. Journal of Political Philosophy [online] 16(4), 446–74. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9760.2008.00323.x

Grabham, E., 2016. Brewing Legal Times: Things, Form, and the Enactment of Law. Toronto/Buffalo/London: Toronto University Press.

Grear, A., 2015. Deconstructing Anthropos: A Critical Legal Reflection on “Anthropocentric” Law and Anthropocene “Humanity“. Law and Critique [online], 26(3), 225–49. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-015-9161-0

Grear, A., 2019. Anthropocene “Time”? A Reflection on Temporalities in the ‘New Age of the Human’. In: A. Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, ed., Routledge Handbook of Law and Theory. London/New York: Routledge, 297–315.

Greenhouse, C.J., 1989. Just in Time: Temporality and the Cultural Legitimation of Law. The Yale Law Journal [online], 98(8), 1631–51. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/796609

Greenhouse, C.J., 1996. A Moment’s Notice: Time Politics across Cultures. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Halberstam, J., 2005. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives / Sexual Cultures. New York University Press.

Hall, S., 1996. When Was “The Post-Colonial”? Thinking at the Limit. In: I. Chambers and L. Curti, eds., The Postcolonial Question: Common Skies, Divided Horizons. London/New York: Routledge, 242–273.

Haraway, D., 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press.

Harvey, D., 2013. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. London: Verso.

Hermitte, M.A., 2011. La nature, sujet de droit? Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales [online], 66(1), 173–212. Available at: https://www.cairn.info/revue-annales-2011-1-page-173.htm

Jasanoff, S., 2010. A New Climate for Society. Theory, Culture & Society [online], 27(2–3), 233–53. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276409361497

Knop, K., and Riles, A., 2017. Space, Time, and Historical Injustice: A Feminist Conflict-of-Laws Approach to the Comfort Women Agreement. Cornell Law Review [online], 102(4), 853–928. Available at: https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/clr/vol102/iss4/1/

Koselleck, R., 2004. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kracauer, S., 1966. Time and History. History and Theory [online], 6(6), 65–78. Available at: https://doi.org/10.2307/2504252

Latour, B., 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Lefebvre, H., 2009. State, Space, World: Selected Essays. Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press.

Manderson, D., 2019. Danse Macabre: Temporalities of Law in the Visual Arts. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Marella, M.R., 2021. An Anthropology of the Legal Subject: On the Transformation of a Legal Concept. Osservatorio Del Diritto Civile e Commerciale [online], 1(2021), 71–104. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4478/101966

Massey, D., 1994. Space, Place and Gender. Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press.

McNeilly, K., and Warwick, B., 2022. Introduction. In: K. McNeilly and B. Warwick, eds., The Times and Temporalities of International Law. New York: Hart.

Merchant, C., 1990. The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution. New York: Harper One.

Muñoz, J., 2009. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Utopia. New York University Press.

Orestano, R., 1968. Il problema delle persone giuridiche in diritto romano. Turin: Giappichelli.

Pecile, V., forthcoming 2023. I tempi del diritto: emergenza climatica e mutamento delle forme giuridiche. Sociologia del diritto.

Petersmann, M., 2022. Life Beyond the Law – From the “Living Constitution“ to the “Constitution of the Living“. Zeitschrift Für Ausländisches Öffentliches Recht Und Völkerrecht / Heidelberg Journal of International Law [online], 82(4), 769–800. Available at: https://doi.org/10.17104/0044-2348-2022-4-769

Rawson, A., and Mansfield, B., 2018. Producing Juridical Knowledge: “Rights of Nature” or the Naturalization of Rights? Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space [online], 1(1–2), 99–119. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848618763807

Reisch, L., 2001. Time and Wealth: The Role of Time and Temporalities for Sustainable Patterns of Consumption. Time & Society [online], 10(2–3), 287–405. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0961463X01010002012

Richardson, B.J., 2017. Doing Time: The Temporalities of Environmental Law. In: L. Kotzé, ed., Environmental Law and Governance for the Anthropocene. London: Bloomsbury, 55–74.

Riles, A., 2011. Collateral Knowledge: Legal Reasoning in the Global Financial Markets. University of Chicago Press.

Savigny, F.K., 1840–1849. System des heutigen Römischen Rechts. Berlin: Veit.

Scott, J.C., 1998. Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Soja, E.W., 1989. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso.

Spanò, M., 2019. Making the Multiple: Toward a Trans-Subjective Private Law. The South Atlantic Quarterly [online], 118(4), 839–55. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-7825648

Spanò, M., 2020. “Perché non rendi poi quel che prometti allor?“ Tecniche e ideologie della giuridificazione della natura. In: M. Spanò, ed., L’istituzione della natura. Macerata: Quodlibet, 103–24.

Spanò, M., 2022a. Cose senza corpo. Forma e materia degli istituti giuridici. Milan: Meltemi, 149–163.

Spanò, M., 2022b. Fare il molteplice: Il diritto privato alla prova del comune. Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier.

Stone, C.D., 1972. Should Trees Have Standing? Toward Legal Rights for Natural Objects. Southern California Law Review [online], 45, 450–501. Available at: https://doi.org/10.4337/jhre.2012.02.02

Tanasescu, M., 2022. Understanding the Rights of Nature: A Critical Introduction. Bielefeld: Transcript.

Terré, F., 2012. Du juridique et du social. Paris: Mare et Martin.

Thomas, Y., 1991. Imago Naturae. Note sur l’institutionnalité de la nature à Rome. Publications de l’École Française de Rome [online], 147(1), 201–27. Available at: https://www.persee.fr/doc/efr_0000-0000_1991_act_147_1_4171

Thomas, Y., 2002. La valeur des choses. Le droit romain hors la religion. Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales [online], 57–6, 1431–62. Available at: https://www.persee.fr/doc/ahess_0395-2649_2002_num_57_6_280119

Thompson, E.P., 1967. Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism. Past & Present [online], 38, 56–97. Available at: https://dhayton.haverford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Thompson_1967.pdf

Valverde, M., 2014. “Time Thickens, Takes on Flesh“: Spatiotemporal Dynamics in Law. In: I. Braverman et al., eds., The Expanding Spaces of Law: A Timely Legal Geography [online]. Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 53–76. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780804791878-005

Valverde, M., 2015. Chronotopes of Law: Jurisdiction, Scale and Governance. New York: Routledge.

Published

13-11-2023 — Updated on 20-12-2023

How to Cite

Pecile, V. (2023) “Rethinking legal time: The temporal turn in socio-legal studies”, Oñati Socio-Legal Series, 13(S1), pp. S386-S401. doi: 10.35295/osls.iisl.1811.