Seeing,Moving, Catching,Accumulating: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Pokémon GO</Emphasis>, and the Legal Subject

This paper argues that the augmented reality gaming application for smart devices, Pokémon GO shows the fate of the legal subject as a neoliberal monster subjugated to the limitations imposed by hypercapitalism. The game, derived from Nintendo’s iconic Pokémon franchise, reveals the legal subject as a frenzied, diminished and impulsive being, allowed to see, move, catch and accumulate but unable to participate in more meaningful self-narration. It is not that the game is lawless, notwithstanding, anxieties in the semiosphere about users trespassing or engaging in criminal behaviour. Rather the game is over structured and highly limited, both within its game-play which is repetitive and impulsive, and in its absence of narrative. Unlike the classic Nintendo Pokémon games which are within the role-playing game genre, Pokémon GO abstracts the seeing, moving, catching and accumulating features of the classic games without the overarching narrative, questing and competition. In this Pokémon GO manifests the transformation of the liberal legal subject of capitalism to the neoliberal subject of a digital orientated hypercapitalism where seeing, moving, catching and accumulating is immediate and impulsive, obliterating the ‘prudent’ subject participating in their own self-narration.     

Universal Credit, ‘Positive Citizenship’, and the Working Poor: Squaring the Eternal Circle?

This article examines the potential effects of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 on the United Kingdom social security system, and on claimants. This legislation illustrates new modes of thought and ideology underlying the British welfare state. The introduction of the ‘Universal Credit’ has the potential to solve the ‘poverty trap’, where claimants are better off in receipt of welfare benefits rather than engaging with employment, and may assist low‐paid individuals into ‘positive’ citizenship. However, the practicalities of implementing Universal Credit might undermine legislators’ ambitions. It may be that the Act attempts too much reform to the social security system, trying to impose legislative uniformity on a highly complex set of socio‐economic circumstances which may be impervious to such rationalisation. This could result in the scheme requiring further reform, or even abolition. The ideological and historical underpinnings of Universal Credit are also examined to understand more clearly its nature and structure.     

Free Trade: What is it Good For? Globalization,Deregulation, and ‘Public Opinion’

Deliberation is an essential element in legitimate and sound decision making. The deliberative ideal has much resonance with ideas of ‘localization’, employing the value of local and applied knowledge. Participation is also of particular value under globalization. We argue that the capacity of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to absorb and reflect participatory aspects of decision making is crucial to its future legitimacy and status. Should the WTO be seen as one of the darker forces of globalization? Or as an emerging institution of global accountability? The latter depends upon recognition that the potential deregulatory effect of the WTO is contingent, and that the liberalization of international trade should enhance welfare, rather than be a goal in its own right. Deliberative solutions require a strong public sphere, and we therefore consider whether solutions based on ‘empowered consumer choice’, rather than public deliberation, are unsatisfactory responses to the deregulatory impact of international trade disputes and their outcomes.     

“Tort Tales” and TV Judges: Amplifying,Modifying, or Countering the Antitort Narrative?

This article joins the debate about the popular pervasiveness of antitort and antilitigation attitudes by examining whether, and to what extent, antitort or antilitigation sentiment is present in the narratives about law offered by reality‐based television judge shows. Given the persistent debate about tort reform and scholars' recognition of the role played in this debate by simplified narratives about the legal system, we analyze whether reality‐based TV judge shows as a genre contribute to the creation and dissemination antitort and antilitigation sentiment. Earlier studies led us to hypothesize that TV judge shows would largely support the antitort and antilitigation narratives. After coding over 55 hours of such shows, however, we conclude that they do not adopt this narrative. Rather, these shows present a view of the civil law system that largely treats plaintiffs' claims as legitimate and showcases the majority of defendants as wrongdoers. In spite of this, we argue that the particular dramatic qualities of TV judge shows limit their potential to serve as a strong counternarrative to antitort and antilitigation stories.     

Habermas,Feminism, and Law: Beyond Equality and Difference?*

In this paper, I argue that Habermas' proceduralist model of law can be put to feminist ends in at least two significant ways. First, in presenting an alternative to the liberal and welfare models of laws, the proceduralist model offers feminism a way out of the equality/difference dilemma. Both these attempts to secure women's equality by emphasising women's sameness to men or their difference from men have placed the onus on women to either find a way of integrating themselves into existing institutions or to confront the so‐called question of women's difference. The proceduralist model renders this dilemma irrelevant. Instead, it proceeds from the fact of sexual difference; a fact that produces competing and conflicting needs and interests that require interpretation by both men and women. This, I argue, marks a change in the very way we conceptualise the so‐called problem of women's difference, insofar as the question is no longer framed in these terms. Second, I argue that this deliberative process over the interpretation of conflicting interests affects a fundamental shift in the nature of legal institutions themselves, insofar as law is no longer a vehicle for promoting male interests.     

How to Deal with Future Existence: <Emphasis Type="Italic">sarvāstivāda</Emphasis>, Yogic Perception,and Causality

This paper mainly addresses the following issues: how Buddhists deal with future existence, the difference between yogic perception and the cognition of ordinary people with regard to future entities, and how Buddhists resolve the contradiction between the theory of momentariness and that of action and its fruit. According to the Sarvāstivādins, a future entity exists in reality as long as there is cognition that has this entity as its object. According to the Sautrāntikas, however, that theory does not hold true. A future entity is just what will occur hereafter, and it is never the case that such an entity exists at present. ?āntarak?ita and Kamala?īla do not directly negate an opponent’s argument that the distinction between past and future entities is made by yogic perception, but implicitly accept it. They state that because a future entity is situated in a causal stream (sa?tāna), yogis can cognize it through purified worldly cognition (?uddhalaukikajñāna). As for an effect that will occur in the future, Buddhists do not seem to follow the model that one and the same agent of action will necessarily receive the fruit of past action, which is often seen in other schools such as the Naiyāyikas and Mīmā?sakas. Rather, Buddhists adopt the theory of the uninterrupted succession of cause and effect.     

When Do Laws Matter? National Minimum‐Age‐of‐Marriage Laws,Child Rights,and Adolescent Fertility, 1989–2007

Using the case of adolescent fertility, we ask the questions of whether and when national laws have an effect on outcomes above and beyond the effects of international law and global organizing. To answer these questions, we utilize a fixed‐effect time‐series regression model to analyze the impact of minimum‐age‐of‐marriage laws in 115 poor‐ and middle‐income countries from 1989 to 2007. We find that countries with strict laws setting the minimum age of marriage at 18 experienced the most dramatic decline in rates of adolescent fertility. Trends in countries that set this age at 18 but allowed exceptions (for example, marriage with parental consent) were indistinguishable from countries that had no such minimum‐age‐of‐marriage law. Thus, policies that adhere strictly to global norms are more likely to elicit desired outcomes. The article concludes with a discussion of what national law means in a diffuse global system where multiple actors and institutions make the independent effect of law difficult to identify.     

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Avivakṣitavācya-dhvani</Emphasis> and the Deterritorialization of Signifier: A Liberating Experience for Language,Author and Reader

This paper aims to make an anti-canonical reading of the avivak?itavācya-variety of dhvani conceptualized by the ninth century Sanskrit literary critic ānandavardhana in his seminal work Dhvanyāloka. In this paper, I argue that avivak?itavācya-dhvani opens up a signifier to new significations that are not conventionally associated with it through a process of deterritorialization. In any language, convention functions as a structuring mechanism upon a signifier by clearly demarcating a rigid semantic ambit for it. By the term ‘conventional semantic ambit’, I mean the boundary of signification set by convention for each signifier. The primary problem associated with the imposition of a definite territory upon a signifier is that it prevents an individual signifier from representing any new significations that are not conventionally attached to it. For example, in the conventional semantic ambit, the word ‘cat’ cannot represent the idea of a ‘dog’. In the act of mapping a fixed territory for each signifier, convention also structures the individual-user of the language by forcing him or her to confine to a specific plan of dealing with signifiers. Thus, the individual user of language within a conventional semantic ambit is rendered absolutely passive, as s/he has nothing new to contribute or create, other than reproducing an always-already existing plan of functioning. It is precisely this structuring tendency of convention that gets challenged in ānanda’s avivak?itavācya-dhvani. Such a mechanism is definitely a liberating experience for both the signifier and the individual-users (both the author and the reader or speaker and listener) of the language who are forced to accept the signifiers in a specific fashion. Along with the exposition of avivak?itavācya-dhvani’s resistance to a signifier’s conventional semantic ambit, this paper also aims to conceptualize the figure of the reader that avivak?itavācya-dhvani anticipates for itself.