This chapter aims to introduce the reader to the intertwining relationship between law and place from a variety of perspectives, including but not limited to doctrinal legal analysis. Legal geography, an interdisciplinary academic project that has gained popularity in the past decades, will also feature in the discussion, aiming to bridge a gap between two seemingly unrelated fields of study, which are, however, built on common conceptual ground: there cannot be law without a place of application. In this vein, law and geography go hand in hand in the dedicated study of the rules that shape, create, and govern place, and it is the present chapter's intention to posit that this relationship should be acknowledged in theory as well as in practice. Unambiguous as it may be, this relationship remains largely overlooked in the study of the law, which is seen as "insensitive" to the place-specificity of human activity.The chapter will commence with a short introduction to the existing academic thought on law and place by briefly touching on the interdisciplinary endeavours of legal geography, whilst highlighting the lacuna in "traditional" legal theory's appreciation of place and space. From there, the chapter will delve into the role of place and space in doctrinal legal thinking more explicitly, identifying areas of law that merit geographical attention, and advocating for an alternative interdisciplinary viewing of law and society through the geographical lens. Consequently, this chapter attempts to offer fertile ground for the cross-pollination of ideas with respect to the geographical appreciation of the law, and vice versa. An overview of place in lawTraditionally, the law has constituted its own academic discipline, distinct from the social and political elements that lead to the creation of legal rules. Under this prism, reading and applying the law appears to remain immune to non-doctrinal or black letter analysis, for fear that the impartial application of rules be jeopardised. It follows that any prejudiced or biased application of legal rules can affect legal certainty, which is incompatible with any democratic system of governance. This traditional viewing leaves little room for expansion into adjacent and related disciplines, when it comes to the way the law is read and applied; the law remains a rigid and impermeable construct. This is a sought-after quality of the law in a democratic legal system, as the law needs to be seen and recognised as such, and to be applied equally; however, this also constitutes the law's harshest critique and constrain, since phenomena such as social inequalities and geographical particularities do not seem to prima facie affect legal decision making. To address this lacuna, academic scholarship has expanded into socio-legal and geographical dimensions. Nevertheless, such projects remain mainly on the theoretical plain, as indeed, the study of the letter of law, alongside its application and enforcement, remain doctrinal in nature. For the purposes of the present, attention i...
The paper explores an urban squat in Ljubljana, Slovenia, following a chronotopic narrative approach. Urban squats often represent a manifestation of alternative notions of who belongs where, when, and why, questions that matter when issues pertaining to their legal status are raised. We examine the case of Autonomous Rog, a formerly squatted bike factory area in the city centre of Ljubljana that the Supreme Court of Slovenia described as “quasi-public.” The paper welcomes the Slovenian Supreme Court's ability to appreciate the social, spatiotemporal, and material elements that make up this idiotropic type of urban space, moving beyond the confines of human-centred legal analysis. We present the journey of Autonomous Rog through three distinctive chronotopic viewpoints, in order to accentuate the subversive human and material properties that found their way into the Slovenian legal system, as we reflect on the law's ability to embrace spatiotemporal representations in an urban context.
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