Desmond Manderson

Bio: Desmond Manderson is an academic researcher from Australian National University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Law and literature & Philosophy of law. The author has an hindex of 15, co-authored 108 publications receiving 925 citations. Previous affiliations of Desmond Manderson include University of Wollongong & West Virginia University College of Law.

From Mr Sin To Mr Big: A History Of Australian Drug Laws

Abstract: In this compelling legal and social history of the origins and development of drug laws in Australia, Desmond Manderson traces, in a lively and irreverent style, the gradual politicization of the drug law debate. He argues that the selective enactment of drug laws has been driven by fear, racism, powerful international pressures, and the vested interests of the medical profession, bureaucrats, and politicians, rather than by genuine concerns about the welfare of users. Behind the controversy that surrounds illegal drug use lie previously unexamined assumptions about how and why certain substances, such as opium, heroin, and cannibis, have been prohibited, while others, namely tobacco and alcohol, have not. Manderson boldly challenges these assumptions, while evaluating the power and efficacy of law as a means of achieving social change.

Danse Macabre: Temporalities of Law in the Visual Arts

Abstract: The visual arts offer refreshing and novel resources through which to understand the representation, power, ideology and critique of law. This vibrantly interdisciplinary book brings the burgeoning field to a new maturity through extended close readings of major works by artists from Pieter Bruegel and Gustav Klimt to Gordon Bennett and Rafael Cauduro. At each point, the author puts these works of art into a complex dance with legal and social history, and with recent developments in legal and art theory. Manderson uses the idea of time and temporality as a focal point through which to explore how the work of art engages with and constitutes law and human lives. In the symmetries and asymmetries caused by the vibrating harmonic resonances of these triple forces - time, law, art - lies a way of not only understanding the world, but also transforming it.

Songs without Music: Aesthetic Dimensions of Law and Justice

Abstract: In this pathbreaking and provocative analysis of the aesthetics of law, the historian, legal theorist, and musician Desmond Manderson argues that by treating a text, legal or otherwise, as if it were merely a sequence of logical propositions, readers miss its formal and symbolic meanings. Creatively using music as a model, he demonstrates that law is not a sterile, rational structure, but a cultural form to be valued and enhanced through rhetoric and metaphors, form, images, and symbols. To further develop this argument, the book is divided into chapters, each of which is based on a different musical form. Law, for Manderson, should strive for neither coherence nor integrity. Rather, it is imperfectly realized, constantly reinterpreted, and always in flux. Songs without Music is written in an original, engaging, and often humorous style, and exhibits a deep knowledge of both law and music. It successfully traverses several disciplines and builds an original and persuasive argument for a legal aesthetic. The book will appeal to a broad readership in law, political theory, literary criticism, and cultural studies.

Metamorphoses: Clashing Symbols in the Social Construction of Drugs

Abstract: In order to understand the nature and intensity of the debate over the reform of “drug” legislation, it is necessary to appreciate the aesthetic forces which influence attitudes to this question, and the symbolic meaning which is attached to the imagery of drugs. The “war on drugs” is a war about emotional imagery and contested symbols, and in particular about the idea of the boundary—a matter crucial to the metaphysics and social organization of Western society. At the same time, it will be argued, it is the failure to recognize that we are dealing with the symbolic realm which bedevils both drug users and legislative policy. The reification of symbols causes and perpetuates the very problems that are intended to be solved. In their fetishization of the objects of drug use, the law and the addict are far more alike than one might think.

Proximity, Levinas, And the Soul of Law

Abstract: "Proximity, Levinas, and the Soul of Law" links the controversial ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas to the common law legal tradition that has recently invigorated the idea of "the duty of care." Desmond Manderson argues that the ethicist and lawyer struggle with the same basic questions of why we should care for others and what responsibility really demands of us when we use the language of care, neighborhood, and proximity. Without compromising the integrity of either Levinas' poetic evocations of our spirit or the law's dense descriptions of our society, Manderson brings the two into constructive dialog. For the student of Levinas, the author offers an understanding of the implications and difficulties involved in applying ethics to law - major issues in continental philosophy. For the student of law, he provides a powerful framework through which to reconceptualize duty of care, the law of negligence, and the nature of legal judgment itself - major issues in legal theory.

The Production of Space

Abstract: ‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.

Outsiders Studies in the Sociology of Deviance.

Abstract: This 1966 paperback edition of a publication which first appeared in 1963 has by now been widely reviewed as a worthy contribution to the sociological study of deviant behavior. Its current appearance as a paperback is a testimonial both to the quality of the work and to the prominence of deviant behavior in this generation. In general the author places deviance in perspective, identifies types of deviant behavior, considers the role of rule makers and enforcers, and some of the problems in studying deviance. In addition, he develops a sequential model of deviance relying on the concept of career, a concept originally developed in studies of occupations. In his study of a particular kind of deviance, the use of marihuana, the author posits and tests systematically an hypothesis about the genesis of marihuana use for pleasure. The hypothesis traces the sequence of changes in individual attitude