Wordtrade.com
Law & Policy
Review Essays of Academic, Professional & Technical Books in the Humanities & Sciences
Magic and the Law
Magic and the Law: A collection of Essays edited by Christine A. Corcos (Durham: Carolina University Press) The nearly two dozen studies in this collection explore the very rich ways in which the rule of law and the practice of magic enrich and inform each other. The authors bring both a U.S. and a comparative law perspective while examining areas such as law and religion, criminal law, intellectual property law, the law of evidence, and animal rights. Topics include alchemy in fifteenth-century England, a discussion of how a courtroom is like a magic show, stage hypnotism and the law, Scottish witchcraft trials in the eighteenth century, the question of whether stage magicians can look to intellectual property to protect their rights, tarot card readings and the First Amendment, and an analysis of whether a magician can be qualified as an expert witness under the Federal Rules of Evidence.
LAW AND MAGIC explores a unique and interesting
area of legal study that covers a breadth of topics from the
historical persecution of alleged witches to contemporary cases of
intellectual property law surrounding magic tricks. This is an
important collection of essays that provides a definitive scholarly
source on research into the various interconnections between law and
magic. Written with wit and humour, the essays are a fascinating
read for legal and non-legal scholars alike.
The editor of this collection, Christine Corcos, is an Associate
Professor in the Department of Law and the Department of Women’s and
Gender Studies at Louisiana State University. Corcos has developed
an Internet blog on the subject of law and magic, and has published
numerous articles on media law, European legal history, as well as
intersections between law and popular culture. In addition to Corcos,
twenty-four other authors contributed to this collection. The vast
majority of these authors are lawyers and/or professors of law.
Other contributing authors teach and conduct research in
Communication Studies, Social Policy, Journalism, History, and
Interdisciplinary Studies. A strength of this collection is the
sheer volume of chapters written by well-qualified authors across
the United States, England, and Germany. One author in particular,
Loren Smith, is both a Senior Judge in the United States Court of
Claims and an accomplished magician.
In the opening section of the book, contributing authors explore the
intersections of law and magic in the areas of free speech and
religion. In one chapter, Julie Cromer, professor at Thomas
Jefferson School of Law, details the historical and current laws in
the United States pertaining to tarot card reading. While outlawed
in the sixteen and seventeenth centuries due to its assumed
connection to witchcraft, then due to eighteenth and nineteenth
century laws forbidding fortune-telling, the modern era of Tarot law
is characterized as having less severe legal control. When
contemporary laws and by-laws have been enforced to restrict Tarot
reading, Cromer reveals how they have been struck down for violating
the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
In the second section, authors explore Property
Law in relation to magic tricks, productions, and performances. In
one interesting chapter, which overlaps section one and two,
Christine Corcos explores copyright infringements in cases of actual
ghost writing where spirits have communicated with people, who have
in turn written down the content that has been spiritually
communicated. In one instance, an [*363] author faces a claim of
copyright infringement for publishing a book in which she claims
that Mark Twain communicated to her through a Ouija Board. In the
face of infringement claims, the author abandoned the text, though
never recanted that the spirit of Twain had written it.
Subsequent sections of the book cover several other topics such as:
the inclusion and exclusion of supernatural cases in the American
courts, the legalities of selling the secrets of magic, damages for
personal injuries suffered during magic acts, the inclusion of
magicians as expert witnesses, comparisons of magic performances to
courtroom performances, comparisons between lawyers and magicians,
criminal responsibility for acts performed under the influence of
hypnosis, and the historical legalities of using animals in magic.
The main strength of Corcos’ collection is its sheer size and
comprehensiveness, as it relates to a wide variety of aspects
pertaining to law and magic. At times this breadth does, however,
appear as a limitation, as it comes across as a catch-all of law and
magic scholarship without a definitive focus or aim. Further to
this, the term “magic” is used loosely to encompass acts from a
talking cat to fortune telling, to spirit-talking, to witchcraft.
For readers without much understanding of what magic is and all that
it encompasses, a clear definition of magic in the editor’s forward
would have better clarified the central topic of this work. Some
discussion of the importance of this area of study and its relation
to other forms of legal inquiry could have also been beneficial to
expand the relevance of the work beyond a specific niche area.
Exploring the commonalities between “Abra Cadabra” and “Due
Process,” this collection of essays makes a significant academic
contribution to a limited area of legal and pop-cultural
scholarship. Most of the chapters in this book are accessible enough
to be read by individuals without a background in law, while still
providing enough depth and intrigue to those who have made a study
of American law. This book should be read by scholars and
researchers who have interests in the various historical and
contemporary legal aspects of magic, the labour of musicians, and
the magic industry in general.
Headline 3
insert content here