Dr Fabian Steinhauer (Frankfurt/Basel), a network member, gave a seminar as part of the Kent Law School Staff Seminar series on Wednesday 8 March 2017.
PD Dr. Dr. Fabian Steinhauer, teaches law and media sciences at Goethe-University, Frankfurt and at the University of Basel. He has published widely at the intersection of law’s rhetorics and media, particularly on the role of images in law.
Recent publications include Bildregeln. Studien zum juristischen Bilderstreit, 2009 (trans..: Rules of Images: Studies in Legal Disputes about Images); Das eigene Bild, 2013 (One’s Own Picture); Vom Scheiden. Geschichte und Theorie einer juristischen Kulturtechnik, 2015 (On Parting: History and Theory of a Legal Cultural Technique).
He served as the co-editor (with Markus Krajewski) of Cornelia Vismann’s writings, Recht und seine Mittel (Law and its Means/Media), 2012, after her untimely death.
Fabian’s talk was entitled ‘Law and Cultural Techniques: On Judicial and Juridical Reproduction‘.
Here is an abstract:
Describing law as a cultural technique is to describe its media and materials, which enable and enact legal distinctions. Starting with the example of the history of the signature, I will explain some basic concepts of the German media theory and why they are of interest and relevance to law. Whereas Bruno Latour argues that there is a a contrast between technology and law, I will emphasise some basic similarities between technical and law’s dogmatic operations.
The Legal Materiality Network 