The body of the law is an ambiguous phrase. Conventionally, it designates the law as a determinate corpus; legal codes, statutes, and the rulings of common law. But it can also refer to the subjected body that is produced by and is part of the law. This subjected body is necessary for the law's existence.

Thinking Through the Body of the Law reconceives the role of the body in the founding, maintaining, and regulation of our legal systems and social order and elaborates on its implications for issues of legal responsibility and justice. Taking into account and sometimes challenging the tenets of critical legal theory, critical race theory, and feminist jurisprudence, these essays examine the body and the law as they relate to surrogacy, the Holocaust, land-rights for Aboriginals, murder, the media and insanity, taxation, genetic engineering, and sexy dressing and sexual harassment.

One of the first to provide a socio-legal comparative history of under-studied or ignored Jewish attempts in the 1930s "Anglosphere" to counter the rise in fascist and Nazi antisemitism, this book examines the ways in which Jewish individuals and organized communal bodies in the mid-to-late 1930s sought to counter this increasing antisemitic violence, physical and verbal, by using the law against their fascist and Nazi attackers. This is the first study to explore how Jews in these countries organized themselves, brought their oppressors to court, while seeking to convince their governments that an attack on Jews was a threat to the social order. The book analyzes the networks of knowledge and the personal relationships between and among key actors and institutions of the "Antisemitic International." Nazi "nationalists" always participated in networks that transcended borders. Case studies from Canada, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States, illustrate the ways in which different mechanisms of Jewish resistance were deployed throughout the mid-to-late 1930s. They embody significant concerns about the "turn to law" and the importance of litigation and legislation. Grounded in original archival research on three continents, the book examines the ways in which professional legal discourse about public order and democratic citizenship proffered by Jewish communities and individual Jews was countered by their Nazi opponents with legal and political arguments about "truth," "persecution," and Jewish perfidy. The book will be of interest to students, academics, and researchers working in the areas of Legal History, History, Jewish Studies, the study of Antisemitism, and the History of the far right, fascism and Nazism.

The Fragility of Law examines the ways in which, during the Second World War, the Belgian government and judicial structure became implicated in the identification, exclusion and killing of its Jewish residents, and in the theft - through Aryanization - of Jewish property. David Fraser demonstrates how a series of political and legal compromises meant that the infrastructure for antisemitic persecutions and ultimately the deaths of thousands of Belgian Jews was Belgian. Based on extensive archival research in Belgium, France, the United States and Israel, The Fragility of Law offers the first detailed exploration in English of this intriguing and virtually unexplored episode of Holocaust history. Belgian legal officials did not hesitate to invoke the provisions of international law found in the Hague Convention and those guarantees of individual freedom found in the national Constitution to oppose the demands of the German Occupying Authority. However, they remained largely silent when anti-Jewish persecution was at stake. Indeed, despite the 2007 official report of expert historians on Belgian state collaboration in the persecution of the country's Jewish population, the mythology of "passive collaboration" which has dominated Belgian historiography and accounts of the Holocaust in that country, must be radically rethought.

This is the first study of historical attempts by anti-animal cruelty groups to prosecute those involved in the killing of animals for food using the Jewish method of slaughter (shechita). It details cases from Australia, Canada, England, Scotland, and the United States, many for the first time, in which animal welfare groups prosecuted those engaged in shechita as part of their attempts to introduce compulsory stunning of animals before slaughter. Despite claims to the contrary, this study offers clear evidence of underlying, unrelenting antisemitic motivations in the prosecutions, and highlights the ways in which a basic idea of innate Jewish cruelty was always juxtaposed with an overtly Christian ideal of humane treatment of animals across time and borders.

Erwin Rommel was the outstanding Axis field commander of the Second World War, respected, even admired, by his opponents. Here it seemed to the Allies, was a supremely professional soldier: chivalrous, decent, largely untainted by the crimes of the Nazi regime, carrying out his duty with often dazzling success. David Fraser's definitive study brings to Rommel's career not only the insights of an acclaimed biographer, but also those of a distinguished soldier. He shows how inspiringly spontaneous and superficially haphazard Rommel's style of leadership could be; how his hallmarks of boldness of manoeuvre, ferocity in attack and tenacity in pursuit, which characterised his great campaign in North Africa, were evident from his earliest battles in the First World War. Knight's Cross is first and foremost hte biography of a soldier, but Rommel reached a position in which he almost inevitably became embroiled in politics, including his alleged involvement in the plot to kill Hitler, which condemned him in the eyes of the Fuhrer he had served so loyally. Rommel is not, to David Fraser, a flawless hero: his failing as well as his genuis are recorded here. But he had that instinct for battle and leadership which set him apart from contemporaries, and places him among the truly great commanders of history.

From 1940 to 1945 the Channel Islands were the only part of Britain to fall under German Occupation. During that period, local courts continued to function and to apply Island law. Lawyers, judges and government officials in Jersey and Guernsey continued to swear oaths of allegiance to the British Crown. But German anti-Semitic laws and other measures were introduced and became part of the legal system. This book examines the ways in which officials co-operated in the implementation of legal measures against the Islands' Jewish community and their property. Resident Jews were registered by Island authorities and lists of Jewish property were compiled and submitted to the Germans by local lawyers and bureaucrats. Jews were banned from employment and from appearing in public. Businesses were "Aryanised". Wireless sets were confiscated because their owners were Jewish, and many residents were deported. Based on a thorough review of Island archival material and previously unknown evidence, this book offers the first jurisprudential and legal analysis of the moral and legal failures of law and lawyers to combat the Holocaust and Nazi legality on British soil.

A.W.N. Pugin transformed the Gothic Revival from an architectural style into an international movement. He decorated and furnished the Houses of Parliament, creating one of the icons of modern British identity in the process. His church designs were vastly influential, and although he was staunchly Roman Catholic, he did much to set the aesthetic tone of modern Anglicanism. The house he designed for himself at Ramsgate transformed the Victorian Gothic villa, demonstrating the ways a thoroughly modern house could draw integral lessons from the Middle Ages. And although his whole ideal was woven around a conception of English identity, his influence was international. Architects in the United States, northern Europe, and across the British Empire followed his lead, drawing from elements of his aesthetic and ideals, and in doing so, altered the look and feel of the nineteenth-century city. Despite the popularity of Pugin's work, this is the first single-volume overview of his architecture to be published since 1971. It summarises much new scholarship and provides a good introduction to his career as well as new insight for those who might already be familiar with it.

Cricket, law and the meaning of life ...

In a readable, informed and absorbing discussion of cricketa (TM)s defining controversies a " bodyline, chucking, ball-tampering, sledging, walking and the use of technology, among many others a " David Fraser explores the ambiguities of law and social order in cricket.

Cricket and the Law charts the interrelationship between cricket and legal theory a " between the law of the game and the law of our lives a " and demonstrates how cricketa (TM)s cultural conventions can escape the confines of the game to carry far broader social meanings.

This engaging study will be enjoyed by lawyers, students of culture and cricket lovers everywhere.

Caught between these covers is the authentic, forthright voice of Christian Watt, servant girl, lady's maid and fishwife. Born in 1833, her working life began in domestic service before the age of nine and ended with her selling her husband's catch from door to door. The tragic death of most of her close male family - her husband, four brothers and her favorite child - drowned by a sudden squall that sunk their boat, robbed her of her sanity. But cared for in the remarkable Cornhill Asylum in Aberdeen, a kindly doctor encouraged her to write her memoirs in pencil. In 1983 this bundle of papers, which included other family documents, was turned into a book by the historian David Fraser, and has been saluted as the Montaillou of Scotland.

Cricket, law and the meaning of life ...

In a readable, informed and absorbing discussion of cricketa (TM)s defining controversies a " bodyline, chucking, ball-tampering, sledging, walking and the use of technology, among many others a " David Fraser explores the ambiguities of law and social order in cricket.

Cricket and the Law charts the interrelationship between cricket and legal theory a " between the law of the game and the law of our lives a " and demonstrates how cricketa (TM)s cultural conventions can escape the confines of the game to carry far broader social meanings.

This engaging study will be enjoyed by lawyers, students of culture and cricket lovers everywhere.

The body of the law is an ambiguous phrase. Conventionally, it designates the law as a determinate corpus; legal codes, statutes, and the rulings of common law. But it can also refer to the subjected body that is produced by and is part of the law. This subjected body is necessary for the law's existence.

Thinking Through the Body of the Law reconceives the role of the body in the founding, maintaining, and regulation of our legal systems and social order and elaborates on its implications for issues of legal responsibility and justice. Taking into account and sometimes challenging the tenets of critical legal theory, critical race theory, and feminist jurisprudence, these essays examine the body and the law as they relate to surrogacy, the Holocaust, land-rights for Aboriginals, murder, the media and insanity, taxation, genetic engineering, and sexy dressing and sexual harassment.

The work of William Wilkins is unique, both at the level of skill it displays and the length of time it occupies. Born of months, even years, of painstaking creation each picture exudes both artistry and joy; a celebration of perception which merits exposure to a wide audience. Focusing upon his remarkable pointillist technique, this book represents the long and celebrated career of the artist together with the slow maturation of his style.

A comprehensive, annotated, illustrated bibliography, with essays placing the work in perspective and describing the underground press of the day.

Based on over thirty years of research of government sentencing policy and work within the criminal justice system, David Fraser demonstrates that Britain's increased reliance on alternatives to imprisonment has allowed violent crime to flourish. The number of life-threatening attacks has increased rapidly over the last forty years but justice officials have masked this development within a blizzard of deceptive statistics. Anti-prison groups tell the public that violent offenders can be managed in the community under supervision and that prison makes offenders worse. Contrary to this misleading propaganda, the evidence presented here informs us that criminals under probation supervision as an alternative to imprisonment commit hundreds of the most serious crimes every year, while the government's figures - which are kept away from the public eye - make it clear that long prison sentences are our best protection against violent crime. Licence to Kill demonstrates that the death penalty was an effective deterrent to homicide but does not argue for its reintroduction. Instead, by acknowledging its effectiveness, David Fraser argues the case for a re-vamped sentencing system that is as effective as was the fear of the hangman's noose. By providing readers with an alternative perspective, he invites them to consider the idea of a new criminal sentencing framework.

The British public today endure some of the world's worst crime levels. According to the government's own estimates, 132 million indictable crimes alone are committed every year, the vast majority of which go unrecorded and undetected. Burglary is rife; street crime burgeoning and violence is escalating to unprecedented levels. Fear of crime means that many of us - especially the vulnerable and the elderly - have become prisoners in our own homes, leaving predatory criminals free to roam our streets. In this meticulously researched and passionately argued study of the contemporary British justice system, David Fraser offers a sobering indictment of post-war British governments, who have not only overseen but also fostered this spectacular and terrifying rise in crime. Almost without exception, governments - and the civil servants and academics who abet them - have sought to persuade us that criminals are victims of society and that they are best rehabilitated within the community rather than punished inside prisons. So pervasive has this 'anti-prison propaganda' become that few of whatever political complexion are now prepared to question its truth. However, as David Fraser cogently argues, community supervision and probation orders have simply left criminals free to reoffend, while the criminal justice system's near obsession with the well-being of criminals has come to override its concerns for their victims, whose interests and sufferings are callously ignored. Moreover, he suggests successive governments' failure to carry out what is their first duty - to protect their citizens - threatens to undermine our democracy, as more and more people - exasperated by the blatant injustice of the justice system - take the law into their own hands. Britain has indeed become 'a land fit for criminals'.