“It is time to address the places of law and ask: How and why does place matter in legal geographical scholarship? What can be found beyond the generic legal places? And What are the unexplored or …

“He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances.” James Joyce (1914) Dubliners He's done it again. My son's lastest YouTube video essay plough's furrows that I've always been ruminating upon myself throughout my adult life. This time he's documented the obsessive journalling of Robert Shields, a Mid Western, mid-Twentieth Century everyman, who took it upon himself to document every 5 minutes of his life (and in the process created a very sizeable archive of material for posterity).

“the South should not be reduced to a source of raw data that are to be inserted or simply included into the Northern theory factories” Diana Ojeda & Nicholas Blomley (2024) ‘Grounding legal geography: Conversations on law, space, and power across disparate geographies’. Politics & Space, 42(3):325-333 at 326. I had the pleasure of attending the First International Conference of Critical Legal Geography, which was held in Turin, Italy in February 2024.

"I started to draw pictures. Not of people, or buildings or street scenes. Of mountains. It was fun at first, then a fascinating pastime, building a mouontain on a blank sheet of paper...Memories crowd in on you as you delicately bring to life on paper the various features of the mountains you have seen so often. Your pen moves through a mist of dreams..."

“Past and future monopolize the poet’s sensory and intellectual faculties, detached from the immediate spectacle. These two philtres become utterly clear the moment one stops being hypnotized by the cloudy precipitate constituted by the world of today.” André Breton Noticing. Naming. Counting. That's at the heart of existence, right? We strive to understand the situations that we find ourselves in and then look for patterns.

Watchman! What of the night? No light we see,-- Our souls are bruised and sickened with the sight Of this foul crime against humanity. The Ways are dark---- "I SEE THE MORNING LIGHT!" John Oxeham (1916) ‘Watchman! What of the night?’ in All’s Well (New York: George H Doran Co) Some nights it feels like you haven’t slept at all. Perhaps your mind is churning on a work or family dilemma.

"This counter-reverie, this turn back towards the serious rather than the fanciful, is something that contemporary British psychogeographic writings mention only with distain (if they address it at all), but for a legal geographer this is the moment of law’s spatialization, this is the moment where law appears to consciousness and most clearly acts upon actor, via colonisation of their subjectivity.

YouTube video by Disambi

"The Building circular – an iron cage, glazed – a glass lantern about the size of Ranelagh – The Prisoners in their Cells, occupying the Circumference – The Officers, the Centre. By Blinds, and other contrivances, the Inspectors concealed from the observation of the Prisoners: hence the sentiment of a sort of invisible omnipresence. – The whole circuit reviewable with little, or, if necessary, without any, change of places."

"It is time to address the places of law and ask: How and why does place matter in legal geographical scholarship? What can be found beyond the generic legal places? And What are the unexplored or underused potentials of place in legal geography?" Päivi Kymäläinen (2025) 'Legal geography II: The possibilities and disruptions of place' Progress in Human Geography, DOI: 10.1177/03091325251320244…

YouTube video by Dis-ambi