Legal Tales: Once upon a Time, the Law

Telling stories as a way of exploring the law—this is the premise of the present volume. It draws on a wide range of narrative forms: historical fables and animal allegories, science fiction and realist reportage, dreamlike speculations and fantastical tales, philosophical reflections and dystopian visions.

Across nine stories, the book invites readers to reflect on law and justice by posing strange and unsettling questions:

• Should there be laws aboard Noah’s Ark?
• Between absolute love and unleashed violence, what place is there for Pilate’s Roman justice in the trial of Jesus?
• What do the animal trials held in the West up to the French Revolution reveal?
• What if Robinson Crusoe, having set sail from Brazil in search of African slaves for his plantations, had not been shipwrecked on the outward journey—but on the way back?
• Where do the hidden passages of the majestic Palace of Justice lead?And what kind of justice lies buried in its secret depths?
• What is law for? The story of the Amoco Cadiz shipwreck offers a stark and contrasting answer.
• Can reality sometimes surpass fiction? The distortion of law in a modern democracy suggests it can. A dystopia emerges when, enthralled by their president Selfidor and his motto “Never two without me,” the people begin to forget the law.
• Killing your own clone—one equipped with artificial intelligence, no less—is it murder, or the destruction of a non-human entity?
• Over the years, the author loses touch with his beloved library. Books disappear; others turn up in the strangest places. What is The Liberated Library trying to tell him? And what kind of legal knowledge does it contain?

This book was originally published by Editions DALLOZ under the title Contes de la rue Soufflot (2024). Translated by Mark Byrne