The Lawful Forest wins the Penny Pether Prize

We are delighted to announce that The Lawful Forest by Cristy Clark and John Page has won 2023's Penny Pether Prize.

Here's what the judges had to say:

"Cristy Clark and John Page's monograph, The Lawful Forest, is an exemplary work of scholarship in law and the humanities.

The Lawful Forest presents exceptional readings of property, protest, and geography in the common law through the concept of the forest. Thereby, Clark and Page prove an inventive, critical engagement with law, history and place. from pre-Norman England to the forest protests of the late 20^th and early 21^st century Tasmania and north-eastern New South Wales, and on to Thomas More's Utopia, Sophie Cunningham's City of Trees, and Richard Powers' The Overstory, Clark and Page challenge assumptions about customary legalities of space, place, and the radical commons.

The Lawful Forest is an invitation to understand the entwining of law and the forest, the lawful forest as a material form of wider spatial narratives that contribute to a polyvalent discourse of property, protest, and spatial justice.

This monograph is an incitement to imagine the long becoming of the lawful forest in our relationships with space and place. Clark and Page call forth and extend the field of law and the humanities by entreating us to open ourselves to the forest in a  critical reappraisal of the spatial hegemony of the law."

• Order your copy of The Lawful Forest: A Critical History of Property, Protest and Spatial Justice