Cultural Legal Studies: Law’’s Popular Cultures and the Metamorphosis of Law

What can popular cultures offer law, as a basis for critical practice? This introduction to the ’cultural legal studies’ presents a new encounter with the ’cultural turn’ in law and legal theory. The collection brings together leading scholars from Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States to present a long-overdue identification and framing of its scope, methodologies and practice. Drawing on three different modes of cultural legal studies - storytelling, technology and jurisprudence - the collection showcases the intersectional practices of cultural legal studies and law in its popular cultural mode.

Cassandra Sharp’s research draws on a range of disciplinary methods to empirically explore individual responses to law. Her focus is the use of popular stories by individuals in challenging and constructing legal meaning and identity. She is a member of the Legal Intersections Research Centre (LIRC) at the University of Wollongong, Australia.

Marett Leiboff is a cultural legal studies and law and humanities scholar who is working on a monograph that explores theatrical jurisprudence. Her scholarship is grounded in her pre-law background in academic theatre studies. Marett is a member of the Legal Intersections Research Centre, University of Wollongong, Australia.