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Law, Media Theory and Cultural Techniques

Edited by Matilda Arvidsson, Panu Minkkinen and Tormod Johansen

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Published 31 March 2027

About this book

Assesses the value of media-theoretical insights for the critical study of law

  • Expands on contemporary topical debates on law, technology and media
  • Assesses the value of media-theoretical insights for the critical study of law
  • Encourages intellectual synergy between scholars in legal studies, media theory, the humanities, and the social sciences
  • Includes a lead essay by prominent media theorist Markus Krajewski

With German media theory as its focus, this book situates the work of Friedrich A. Kittler, Wolfgang Ernst, Bernhard Siegert, Markus Krajewski, Sybille Krämer and Geoffrey Winthrop-Young within contemporary legal scholarship. Media theory, and German media theory in particular, has been somewhat neglected in interdisciplinary legal studies. This is surprising given that Cornelia Vismann, a key figure in contemporary legal theory, was also a prominent media theorist. Her influence can be seen in legal scholarship addressing issues such as posthuman law, legal materiality, law and the arts, and law in the Anthropocene.

This book provides an informed starting point for developing new approaches to legal scholarship with media theory as its springboard. Bringing together an international range of scholars from across legal studies, media theory, the humanities and the social sciences, the book uses media theory to present historical as well as contemporary analyses of law’s cultural technologies.

It covers the historical materiality of legal practices; how legal spaces, bodily presence and performance shape legal experiences; and the transformation of law through automation and technology.

Table of contents

Acknowledgements

List of contributors

Editors’ Introduction to Media-Theoretical Perspectives to Law

1. Ad commentarium, from Aperitif to Digestif: Comments on the Occidental History of Comments
Markus Krajewski

Section 1: Historical Developments and the Materiality of Law

2. The Data Shadow as Cultural Technique: Kerstin Anér, Cold War Data Governance, and Contemporary Law
Matilda Arvidsson
3. The Technique of Sovereignty Around 1650
Friederike Kuntz
4. Two Bodies on the Page: The Ambivalence of Minor Text
Tormod Johansen

Section 2: Legal Space, Performance, and Embodiment

5. Im/mobilities: Courtroom Movement as Cultural Technique
James Campbell
6. Theatricality and Jurisprudence: Thinking through Law and Media with Cornelia Vismann and in Peter Weiss’s The Investigation
Leif Dahlberg
7.“La salle des pas perdus”: Waiting for Justice
Panu Minkkinen
8. Cultural Memory Techniques of Law
Benjamin Goh
9. Materialities of Planetary Sovereignty
Alexander Damianos
10. Iconography of Exceptionality
Gian-Giacomo Fusco

Section 3: Present/Future Legal Technologies

11. Law, Media, and Technology: Vismann with Simondon
Connal Parsley and Conor Heaney
12. A Media Archaeology of the Interception Warrant
Bernard Keenan
13. Handwriting, Typeface, Algorithm: Remediation in Law’s Signatory Practices
Trish Luker

Index

About the contributors

Matilda Arvidsson

Matilda Arvidsson is Associate Professor (Docent) in International Law and Associate Senior Lecturer in Jurisprudence at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Matilda’s recent publications include International Law and Posthuman Theory co-edited with Emily Jones (Routledge, 2024) and Constituent Power: Law, Popular Rule and Politics co-edited with Leila Brännström and Panu Minkkinen (EUP, 2020).

Panu Minkkinen

Panu Minkkinen is Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Helsinki. Panu is author of Thinking without Desire: A First Philosophy of Law (Hart, 2009), Sovereignty, Knowledge, Law (Routledge, 2011) and co-editor (with Matilda Arvidsson and Leila Brännström) of The Contemporary Relevance of Carl Schmitt: Law, Politics, Theology (Routledge, 2015) and Constituent Power: Law, Popular Rule and Politics (EUP, 2020).

Tormod Johansen

Tormod Johansen is Assistant Senior Lecturer in Public Law at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Tormod works on constitutional and administrative law, legal theory, and political theology. Tomod has written a number of journal articles and book chapters including ‘Law Beyond the Legal Form’ in Legal Form and the End of Law edited by Cosmin Cercel, Gian-Giacomo Fusco and Przemyslaw Tacik (Routledge, 2024).