Legal Concept of Art

Paul Kearns is a Lecturer in Law at Manchester University.

• The legal regulation of art: introduction; French and general mechanisms of control - the notion of outrage, the old article, the nature of the evil, the difficulty of assessment of the evil, experts, distinctively French legal mechanisms; American public morality doctrines; English doctrines - the Rushdie experience, the foetus earrings case, the facts, the appeal, comment; conclusions. The judicial approach to art: introduction; the case law; conclusions. Artistic as a category and criterion: introduction; how the law awards copyright protection; future development; a further look at quality tests; conclusions. The concept of art in defamation law: introduction; the problems - situation, situation; conclusions. The public funding of art: introduction; public funding policy - England, France, America; conclusion. The concept of art in the Anglo-American law of trusts: introduction; the law of charitable trusts; the law on non-charitable purpose trusts; conclusions. The conceptualisation of art in its international movement: the international movement of art; export and import regulations on art in England, France and America - England, France, America; the movement of art in the European Union; conclusions. Art and the custom law of the European Union and America: introduction; the treatment of art classification; two EU law paradigms - paperweights and photographs; conclusions. A short miscellany: jurisprudence; the law of armed conflict; cultural heritage, cultural property and art; freedom of expression. Some general conclusions. Appendices: postmodernism - a critical guide; a critique of the obscene in art, pornography, law and society; art and defamation - a comparative moral perspective; on the nature of art and law.

The book under review is a first. It addresses the relationship between the law of three jurisdictions (England, France and the USA) and art (including literature) and inaugurates a doctrinal and theoretical field which has been neglected in English Scholarship... Its main achievement lies in bringing together disparate areas of law dealing with art, and in suggesting that the concept of art should acquire juristic value and lead to doctrinal modifications in civil and criminal law... Offering a cogent argument for turning art into such a concept, which would cut across substantive classifications and procedural distinctions, is an important contribution to scholarship and policy.