Lex Populi

This is a book about jurisprudenceor legal philosophy. The legal philosophical texts under consideration areto say the leastunorthodox. Tolkien,Buffy the Vampire Slayer,Harry Potter,Legally Blonde, and others are referenced as instances of what the author callslex populi"pop law". Here, however, issues of legal philosophy are heavily coded, for few of these pop cultural texts announce themselves as expressly legal.Lex Populireads these texts "jurisprudentially", with an eye to their hidden legal philosophical meanings, enabling connections such as: Tolkien's Ring as Kelsen'sgrundnorm; vampire slaying as legal language's semiosis; and Hogwarts as substantively unjust.Lex Populiattempts not only a jurisprudential reading of popular culture, but also a popular rereading of jurisprudence, removing it from the legal experts in order to restore it to the public at large: alex populiby and for the people.

William P. MacNeil is Associate Professor of Law at Griffith University.